The snow fell in thick, swan-feather flurries, dyeing the borderlands in silver.
Cloaked against the storm, she stood in the whiteness, her cheeks flushed from the cold—yet nothing could still the warring tempest within her heart.
Mochen held her hand, his gaze like winter stars: bright, burning, yet restrained.
"Come," he urged. "Beyond these woods lies my kingdom’s border. They won’t catch us now."
Her lips trembled—not from the chill, but from the fracture in her resolve.
Then, just as she stepped forward—
A familiar footfall crunched behind her. Steady. Relentless. Heavy with the weight of a throne.
"So you truly mean to leave like this?"
She whirled around. Through the snow-laced trees, a figure in obsidian robes emerged, his edges sharpening with each step. Frost dusted his shoulders, his expression glacial—yet beneath it, pain surged like a riptide.
The Crown Prince.
Instinctively, she retreated—but Mochen moved in front of her, shielding.
"She’s made her choice, Your Highness. Turn back."
"Choice?" The prince’s laugh was bitter. Snow caught in his lashes, unheeded. "She is adrift. She doesn’t yet know her own heart."
"I won’t let you take her." His voice dropped, near-whisper, yet honed to a blade’s edge.
She stared at them—one, a dream from her youth; the other, the madness and obsession of her gilded cage. Both had defied fate for her. Both would fight to ruin.
"I—" Her voice frayed in the wind, nearly swallowed.
But before she could speak—
An arrow shrieked through the storm.
The enemy had spotted them.
Mochen yanked her behind him as the prince unsheathed his sword—and in a heartbeat, the two men moved as one, back-to-back, cutting down the ambush with lethal synchrony.
Amidst the whirl of snow and steel, she understood: her choice was never just about love.
It would decide the fate of kingdoms.
ns216.73.216.20da2
and then Add to home screen.