The heavy, warm exhaustion from our little desk encounter finally took over, weighing down my eyelids until the vault ceilings of the study blurred into pitch blackness.
I honestly thought sleep would give me a nice, peaceful escape from all the stress, but my brain had other plans.
The moment I closed my eyes, the darkness didn’t stay quiet.
It dragged my consciousness straight into the cold, repressed memories of a childhood that didn’t belong to me, but to the broken princess I now replaced.
The first thing I felt in the dream was the freezing, annoying sting of winter air against my skin.
I was seven years old, standing in the middle of the grand training courtyard in the isolated northern wing of the palace.
The stone tiles beneath my small boots were covered in a thin sheet of frost that made my toes feel completely numb.
My breathing came out in small, ragged puffs of white steam, and my tiny hands were shaking as I clutched a heavy wooden practice sword that was way too big for me.
“Again, Evangeline,” a cold, booming voice commanded from the raised wooden platform above.
King Reginald, my father, stood under the shelter of the stone awning, wrapped in expensive furs that completely hid his slight frame.
He looked down at me with dark, hollow eyes that held absolutely zero warmth.
He looked like a man who was constantly stressed out by his own political failures, a king who knew his council laughed at him behind his back because he was the first ruler in three generations born without a single drop of bloodline magic.
He was weak, and because he was weak, he was determined to make me tough, no matter how much of me he had to break.
“I can’t, Father,” my small, raspy voice pleaded, tears literally freezing on my cheeks before they could even drop to the stones.
“My arms hurt.
The sword is too heavy.”
“A queen does not complain,” my father snarled, gesturing sharply to the master-at-arms standing beside me, a brutal warrior with a scarred face.
“Hit her again.
If she cannot find the strength in her muscles, she will find it in her survival instincts.”
The heavy wooden staff of the trainer swung out without a single shred of mercy, striking the side of my thighs with a loud thud.
I collapsed instantly onto the freezing stone floor, the wooden sword clattering away as I let out a loud sob.
I scraped my knees against the frost, the bright red blood looking terrifyingly vivid against the white ice.
My mother had died giving birth to me, leaving me entirely alone in the hands of a desperate, terrified tyrant.
There were no gentle hugs in my childhood, no soft bedtime stories, and no kind words to soothe a frightened little girl.
There was only the training courtyard, endless lectures on economics, and the suffocating pressure of a legacy that felt like an iron collar.
“Look at her,” my father whispered, his voice dripping with pure disgust as he walked down the stone steps, his cane clicking sharply against the tile.
He stopped right in front of my trembling form, looking down at me as if I were a defective piece of machinery.
“Seven years old, and still entirely hollow.
The high lords are already whispering, Evangeline.
They know you haven’t shown a single spark of magic.
If the Lanster family discovers the royal line is truly magicless, they will march their northern armies into this palace and kick us off the throne before the winter ends.”
He reached down, his rough fingers gripping my jaw tightly, forcing my small face up so I had to look into his desperate eyes.
“You do not have the luxury of being a child,” he hissed, his grip bruising my skin.
“You do not have the luxury of crying.
If you do not have magic, you must become a weapon of pure stone.
You must learn to look at the court and see nothing but targets to eliminate.
Do you understand me?”
I couldn’t speak.
I could only nod through my tears, my tiny hands clenching into fists against the freezing ice.
That was the exact day the little girl died, and the monster began to take root.
My father took away all my toys, fired every gentle maid who tried to comfort me, and replaced them with cold scholars and brutal military strategists.
My daily schedule was run like a prison camp.
I spent six hours a day studying the complicated, corrupt histories of the noble houses, learning exactly who hated whom, who owed money to the treasury, and whose bloodline could be used as leverage.
The remaining hours were spent in the courtyard, learning how to bleed without crying, and how to strike an enemy where it hurt the most.
By the time I turned twelve, my father introduced the testing crystals.
Every single Sunday morning, I was brought into the high treasury hall, where a massive, glowing shard of ancient crystal sat on a black velvet pedestal.
The noble children of the other houses were already throwing fireballs and manipulating the air by that age, proving their divine right to rule.
But every time I pressed my palms flat against the cold surface of the stone, the crystal remained completely dark, reflecting nothing but my own pale, exhausted face.
And every single Sunday afternoon, the punishment for my failure grew worse.
“You are making me look like a fool!” my father screamed during one of his typical, red-faced rages, throwing a heavy glass inkwell straight at my head.
It missed by an inch, shattering against the stone wall behind me and splashing black ink all over my clothes like a permanent stain.
“The Duke of the North just presented his twin children to the court, and both of them can freeze a lake with a single breath!
A hollow, useless daughter who can barely hold a dagger straight!”
I stood perfectly still in the center of his study, my face completely expressionless, my hands tucked neatly behind my back.
My father didn’t know it, but his constant pressure wasn’t building a loyal successor.
He was building a deep, dark reservoir of pure hatred.
I didn’t just hate the high lords who mocked me.
I hated the kingdom.
I hated the throne.
And most of all, I hated the pathetic, weak man standing in front of me, who used me as a shield to hide his own cowardice.
“I will run the tactical simulations again tonight, Father,” my twelve-year-old voice said, entirely flat and devoid of any human emotion.
“I will find a weakness in the North’s shipping lanes.”
My father stopped pacing, looking at me with a strange look of satisfaction that quickly twisted back into his usual frown.
“Good.
At least your brain isn’t entirely useless.
Go to your room.
You don’t eat until the simulation is complete.”
I turned and walked out of the room without a single word, my boots clicking against the stone floor in a steady, cold rhythm.
As I walked down the long, lonely corridors toward my high stone tower, I looked out the narrow windows at the glittering lights of the capital city below.
The people out there thought their princess lived a life of luxury and royal comfort.
They had no idea that inside these thick stone walls, a monster was being systematically molded out of pure resentment
By the time I reached my sixteenth year, the transformation was completely finished.
The crying, terrified little girl from the frost-covered courtyard was nothing but a distant ghost, replaced by a young woman whose very presence made the palace servants tremble in fear.
I had learned the lessons my father taught me all too well, but I didn’t use them to protect his legacy.
I used them to make everyone around me suffer just as much as I had.
I became the Cruel Princess, the evil queen in training that the entire court whispered about with pale faces.
If a maid made a single mistake while doing my hair, I didn’t just reprimand her, I had her thrown into the lower dungeons for a week without light, watching her terrors from the top of the stairs with a cold, bored expression.
If a young noble lord from a minor house dared to look at me with pity because I lacked magic, I used my knowledge of his family’s secret debts to systematically bankrupt his house within a month, forcing his father to beg my father for mercy on his knees.
I took absolute pleasure in finding the weak spots in everyone’s lives and pressing down on them until they shattered.
The court didn’t just mock me anymore.
They were absolutely terrified of me.
“She’s a demon,” I overheard one of Lord Silas’s old gossiping aunts whispering behind a heavy silk tapestry during a royal banquet.
“She has no magic, yet she walks through the halls like she owns our very souls.
Look at her eyes.
There is nothing human behind them.”
I didn’t stop to confront her.
I simply signaled the royal food testers to add a heavy dose of laxative to her wine goblet later that evening, watching from my high seat with a slow, wicked smirk as she suddenly clutched her stomach and scrambled out of the hall in absolute humiliation.
I didn’t need bloodline magic to control the palace.
I had information, I had cruelty, and I had an absolute lack of empathy.
But the peace didn’t last long, because my father’s political failures were finally catching up to him.
The Duke of the North, House Lanster, had become far too powerful.
Their control over the northern ice magic had allowed them to monopolize the winter trade routes, effectively starving the capital’s treasury.
My father was panicking, spending his nights drinking heavy wine and pacing his study until his knees bled from the strain.
He was cornered, and as always, his first instinct was to use me as an asset to fix his problems.
“The treaty is signed,” my father announced one evening, his voice shaking as he slammed a heavy parchment scroll onto his desk.
He looked old, desperate, and pathetic, his hands trembling so hard he could barely hold his wine chalice straight.
“You are turning seventeen next month, Evangeline.
It is time for you to fulfill your final purpose for this family.”
I stepped forward, my dark silk skirts rustling against the stone floor as I picked up the parchment, my silver eyes scanning the elegant, flowing script.
My heart stopped for a fraction of a second before my usual coldness locked it back into place.
It was a marriage contract.
A permanent alliance with House Lanster.
“You are marrying the young Duke of the North, Lysander Lanster,” my father whispered, leaning over the desk, his eyes wide with a manic, desperate hope.
By marrying him, he will inherit the throne upon my death, and our family line will be saved from total ruin by the council.
The Lanster bloodline will merge with ours, and the next generation will finally have the power we lack.”
A deep, suffocating wave of pure rage began to swell inside my chest, hot and violent, burning through the icy armor I had spent my entire life building.
“You want me to marry Lysander?” I asked, my voice dropping into a dangerously calm, low whisper that made the candles on the desk flicker slightly.
“You went through all that terrible upbringing, you broke my bones in the courtyard, you locked me in a tower, and you forced me to live like a monster just for a random guy from the North to take the throne?”
“It is the only way!” my father screamed, slamming his cane against the floor, his face turning an angry, ugly shade of red.
“You are hollow, Evangeline!
You have no power!
You cannot rule this kingdom alone!
The council will murder you within a week of my death!
You are nothing but a temporary placeholder, and your only value is the crown on your head and the blood in your veins!
You will do as I command!”
“No,” I whispered.
The word left my lips before my logical brain could stop it.
The sheer, built-up resentment of ten years of abuse, ten years of isolation, and ten years of being treated like a piece of property finally reached its boiling point.
“What did you say?” my father gasped, his eyes wide with disbelief as he stood up from his chair, raising his gold cane as if he were about to strike me just like he did when I was a helpless seven-year-old child in the frost.
“You dare defy me?
You ungrateful, useless parasite!”
“I said no,” I growled, taking a sharp step forward, my silver eyes locking onto his with an intensity that made him actually take a step back.
“I am not your asset to trade away, Father.
I am the one who fixed your council.
I am the one who kept your kingdom from going bankrupt while you drank yourself into a stupor in this room.
I went through hell to become a weapon, and I will not give my throne to a stranger just because you are too weak to hold it yourself!”
“You will marry him!” he roared, lunging forward, his heavy cane swinging directly toward my face.
But the blow never landed.
The moment his cane cleared the edge of the desk, something inside my chest snapped with a sudden, violent finality.
It wasn’t the calm, calculated numbers of Melissa, or the icy cruelty of the princess.
It was an ancient, long-dormant volcano that had been buried deep within the blood cells of the royal line, waking up for the very first time in my life.
A blinding, deafening explosion of pure, hot-red fire erupted directly out of my palms.
It wasn’t a standard fireball or a neat magical spell.
It was a massive, uncontrollable wave of liquid heat, a destructive crimson blast born from pure, concentrated rage.
The shockwave blew the heavy mahogany desk backward, shattering the glass windows of the study into a million glittering pieces.
My father didn’t even have time to scream.
The moment the red fire hit his frame, his expensive furs, his flesh, and his bones were instantly turned to ash.
The heat was so intense, so incredibly absolute, that it didn’t even leave a skeleton behind on the stone floor.
Within a single second, the King of the realm was reduced to a small, smoldering pile of grey ash.
The crimson fire faded as quickly as it had arrived, leaving the study completely ruined, charred black, and smelling heavily of sulfur and melting iron.
I stood perfectly still in the center of the destruction, my hands still smoking, staring down at the pile of ash where my father had stood just a moment before.
My mind went completely blank, the sheer shock of what I had just done shattering the last thread of my sanity.
I had magic.
I had an ancient, terrifying power.
And I had just accidentally killed the king.
Panic, cold and suffocating, seized my throat.
I looked at the broken windows, hearing the distant shouts of the palace guards rushing toward the tower.
I knew what would happen if they found me here.
The council would declare me a cursed monster and execute me before the sun rose.
Driven entirely insane by fear and guilt, I grabbed a small vial of dark green poison from my father’s discarded medical chest, uncorked it with trembling fingers, and drank the entire contents in a single, desperate gulp.
As the lethal fluid burned through my throat, my body collapsed onto the charred stone floor right beside my father’s ashes.
The original, evil Evangeline closed her eyes and died in the dark.
And that was the exact second the darkness broke, and I , Melissa , woke up inside her body.