The palace night breathed its usual frost-laden silence, crimson drapes stirring like ghosts in the chill wind. Before the great bronze mirror, the Crown Prince stood clad in obsidian robes embroidered with dragons—their golden threads catching the candlelight as if aflame. His reflection showed nothing but imperial composure, yet his grip on the jade cup betrayed the storm beneath.
"Gone?" The word dropped like a blade. "You're telling me she vanished into thin air?"
The guard knelt deeper. "Reports indicate she fled toward the mountains, Your Highness. We've lost the trail—"
Crack.
Shards of jade skittered across marble as the Prince's fist shattered the cup. Water pooled like a betrayed tear at his feet.
"Turn every stone. Burn every village if you must." His voice was deathly calm. "She doesn't get to leave this game."
He strode into the courtyard, letting the icy gale scour the heat from his skin. Yet no wind could extinguish the fire in his chest—the gnawing realization that her escape wasn't just defiance.
It was rejection.
"Did I... mean nothing?" The whisper escaped before he could cage it. All those calculated maneuvers, every carefully placed chess piece—had she seen through them all? Seen through him?
Memories ambushed him: her cold laughter when he'd cornered her in the library, the way she'd flinched from his touch last winter as if his fingers carried poison. The signs had always been there. He'd simply refused to read them.
Rain began to fall, needling his face as he gripped the balcony rail. Each drop felt like her voice: You can't control everything, Your Highness.
"Then let it be war," he hissed.
By dawn, orders were sealed with his personal sigil—black wax imprinted with a dragon's claw. Every mountain pass would be watched, every harbor patrolled. She'd learn the cost of spurning the throne's favor.
Yet as the ink dried, his hand trembled.
For the first time in his life, the master player had been outmaneuvered.
Not by schemes.
But by a woman who'd dared to walk away.
ns216.73.216.103da2
and then Add to home screen.