The Girl Who Shouldn’t Exist

There was a chill behind her door.

Seraphine turned too quickly, convinced someone had been there. But when she opened it, only the quiet hallway waited—a stretch of candlelit stone and frost-laced windows. No guards. No servants. Nothing but air that somehow felt disturbed.

She closed it slowly.

Something about this place was beginning to make her bones itch. It wasn’t just the silence or the old, creaking walls. It was the way people looked at her—as if she carried a name she hadn’t been told yet.

As if they were waiting for her to become someone she wasn’t sure she wanted to be.

She went back to her desk. A letter half-written sat in front of her, the quill still wet. She had meant to write to Aunt Imelda, the only family left who still dared speak to her. But what could she say?

> I’ve returned to the palace that exiled us. The Queen is dying.

She says I’m useful. That I’m meant to watch. But what am I really here for?

No. Even that was too much to trust to ink.

Instead, she walked to the fire and tossed the page into the flames.

As the paper curled and blackened, she caught her reflection in the window glass. For a moment, it wasn’t her face staring back.

It was a girl younger than she remembered. Darker hair. A slash of dirt across her cheek. Bare feet on snow.

And then it was gone.

---

The next morning, Seraphine was summoned to the Conservatory Hall for a private audience with the Crown Prince.

She had never met him, though his name—Crown Prince Lucien Alaric of Elowen—had been sewn into her childhood like a warning. Too pretty. Too reckless. More concerned with poetry than politics.

When she arrived, he was playing the piano.

And not well.

“Lady Valemont,” he said without rising. “Do you dance?”

She blinked. “Not since I was eight.”

He looked up at her, hair golden and eyes feverish. “Excellent. I don’t like perfect dancers. They take themselves too seriously.”

“Is this an interrogation or an audition?”

Lucien smiled—charming, careless. “Neither. The court tells me you’re clever. My mother thinks you’re dangerous. I simply wanted to see if you’re beautiful in person.”

She raised an eyebrow. “And am I?”

He stood then, crossing the room with too much ease for a man with so much power and so little responsibility. He stopped an arm’s length away.

“You’re terrifyingly beautiful,” he said softly. “And I like being scared.”

Seraphine held her ground. “Then you’ll enjoy what happens next.”

Before he could ask, the doors opened again—sharp and sudden.

General Caelum D’Arden stepped in, his expression unreadable, his coat dusted with the morning’s snow.

Lucien sighed dramatically. “And now the silence has arrived.”

Caelum didn’t spare him a glance. “The Queen has summoned Lady Valemont again.”

Lucien looked at Seraphine. “Already? I haven’t even frightened her properly.”

“She doesn’t frighten easily,” Caelum said coolly. “That’s why she’s here.”

Their eyes met then—Seraphine and Caelum—and the air between them went still.

Not warm.