Saren
The sun was golden on the snow that morning, the kind of light that softened even stone. She watched him from the balcony, the Duke , her husband, laughing with stable hands as he fed a restless mare.
He smiled more easily now.
And it unsettled her — how natural it had begun to feel, waking in his arms, sharing tea by the fire, walking side by side through halls that once loomed with cold.
She had planned to endure this marriage, to wear affection like a mask. She had not meant for her fingers to memorize the lines of his face, or for her voice to grow gentler when she said his name.
She had not meant for him to matter.
But he did.
Still, Saren had always been a daughter of the crown — raised to calculate, to survive, to serve a throne that would never be hers. Her brother would inherit the empire. She, the silence between.
And so, when the letter arrived in the middle of the night — sealed with her family's sigil and delivered by a silent hand — she opened it without pause.
She read it by firelight, alone in the library.
One sentence. That was all.
"The time is near. Are you still willing?"
Her hand did not tremble as she folded the letter and fed it to the flame. But her eyes lingered on the fire too long.
When Alric found her later, curled in the velvet chair, he came without question, knelt beside her, and rested his forehead against her knee.
"I've never known peace," he murmured, "until you."
And Saren, heart split between loyalty and longing, touched his hair — gently — and whispered,
"Then let me be your peace, my lord."
...to be continued.....
Author's Note:
She planned to fool him.
He planned to forget her.
Now look at them—
sharing tea, stealing glances, and pretending it's all just politics.
Ah, love…
the most dangerous plot of all.
—your author