One week later, Kaelith had officially graduated, and she had to admit that the whole thing had gone suspiciously well.
No magical disasters.
No public humiliation.
No one had tripped while receiving a diploma and taken down half the ceremonial platform with them.
Honestly, for a royal graduation involving demons, nobles, and a disturbing amount of enchanted silk, that counted as a miracle.
Kaelith had survived the speeches, the applause, the endless formal greetings, and the parade of professors who had suddenly decided they liked her now that she was no longer their problem.
She had even managed not to laugh during the most insufferable speech of the day, which she felt deserved a second diploma for self-control alone.
The best part, however, had been Elysia crying.
Not weeping dramatically, unfortunately.
Kaelith would have treasured that forever.
No, it had been softer than that.
Her mother had dabbed very delicately at the corners of her eyes, looking so proud and emotional that Kaelith had nearly laughed and hugged her at the same time.
Malvoria, of course, had stood beside her looking majestic and entirely unsurprised, though Kaelith had caught the slight softness in her expression too.
That had been enough.
It had been nice.
Disgustingly nice.
Enough that Kaelith had almost felt something dangerously close to direction.
Almost.
Then the ceremony had ended, the parties had started, and the feeling had sensibly passed.
Now she was back at the castle, deeply graduated and magnificently unemployed.
A glorious state, in her opinion.
For the first few days, she had celebrated the way any responsible woman with too much charm and too little self-restraint would.
She had drunk expensive wine, ignored every polite inquiry about her future, and spent an alarming amount of time stretched across sofas while relatives tried to decide whether she was having a quarter-life crisis or simply being herself.
Kaelith personally saw no meaningful difference.
This morning, however, she had decided to sleep like a woman with no duties, no plans, and no appointments with destiny.
Which meant she had crawled into bed sometime after dawn and pulled the sheets around herself with the full intention of not opening her eyes again until noon.
Possibly later.
The room was dim, cool, and blissfully quiet.
Heavy curtains kept out most of the summer light, and the massive bed in her suite was exactly as comfortable as a demon princess’s bed had every right to be.
The kind of bed that encouraged laziness as a moral philosophy.
Kaelith lay sprawled on her stomach in a soft tangle of sheets, one arm under the pillow, white hair streaked with red spilled across the dark fabric.
This, she thought in the drifting edge of sleep, was what victory felt like.
Then someone started pounding on her door.
Kaelith groaned into the pillow.
No.
Absolutely not.
The pounding came again, louder this time, followed by two familiar voices shouting through the wood with all the grace of a military attack.
“Kaelith!”
“Wake up!”
“We received a letter!”
Kaelith cracked one eye open and immediately regretted consciousness.
Ruby and Violet.
Of fucking course.
Only her twin sisters could sound equally excited and murderous before breakfast.
She rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling with the expression of a woman reconsidering her relationship with family.
“Go away,” she called hoarsely.
“Whatever it is can wait until I’m less dead.”
“No, it can’t!” Ruby shouted back.
“It looks important!” Violet added.
“Then burn it!” Kaelith yelled.
“That’s what important letters deserve!”
There was a beat of silence.
Then the door swung open.
Kaelith sat up so fast she nearly strangled herself with the sheet.
“Did you just pick the lock?” she demanded.
Ruby stood proudly in the doorway with a hairpin in one hand and zero shame in her soul.
Her red hair was tied up messily, one grey eye and one purple gleaming with triumph.
“No,” Ruby said.
“Yes, you did.”
Violet slipped in behind her carrying an elegant cream-colored envelope with a gold seal stamped into the wax.
Unlike her sister, she looked annoyingly composed this morning, silver hair braided over one shoulder, expression bright with curiosity.
“We did it for a noble reason,” Violet said.
“There is no noble reason to break into my room before noon.”
Ruby looked around.
“You’re not dressed.”
Kaelith stared at her.
“I was asleep, you absolute menace.”
“Still,” Ruby said, as if this were somehow her sister’s fault.
Kaelith pulled the sheet higher around herself and glared at both of them.
“I swear by every cruel god in existence, if this letter is about some boring post-graduation event, I will kill you both and tell Mother it was self-defense.”
Violet lifted the envelope slightly.
“It’s not boring.”
Ruby nodded.
“It has royal seals.”
That gave Kaelith pause.
She narrowed her eyes.
The envelope did, in fact, look official.
More official than any decent morning should allow.
The paper was thick and expensive, edged in silver leaf, and the wax seal bore an emblem she did not immediately recognize from across the room.
That alone was irritating.
Royal letters never brought anything fun.
Unless they contained invitations to banquets with beautiful women, which this very clearly did not.
Kaelith rubbed a hand over her face.
“Why is it here?”
Violet walked farther into the room and sat delicately at the edge of a chair.
Ruby did not bother with dignity and simply threw herself onto the end of Kaelith’s bed like a reckless red-haired curse.
“It arrived for you,” Violet said.
“That explains so much.”
“It came to the main receiving hall with three separate magical verification stamps,” Ruby added.
“One of the scribes nearly fainted.”
Kaelith blinked.
That was… slightly more interesting.
Not good.
But interesting.
She sat up straighter, letting the sheet fall loosely around her waist now that she had accepted sleep was dead.
“Give it to me.”
Instead of handing it over immediately, Violet turned the envelope in her fingers and studied the seal again.
“I think it’s from the Elven Kingdom.”
Kaelith stopped.
Just for a second.
Not because that meant anything in particular, but because it was odd.
She had no real ongoing business with the elf court.
Their politics were elegant, exhausting, and usually conducted by people with frightening cheekbones and no sense of humor.
She respected that from a distance.
Ruby looked delighted by the faint crease appearing between Kaelith’s brows.
“See?
Now you care.”
“I care in the sense that I distrust all official correspondence and especially correspondence before noon.”
Violet finally held out the envelope.
Kaelith took it and frowned down at the seal properly now.
The emblem was indeed elven, all delicate lines and silver branches woven around a crowned crest.
The wax was dark green.
The sort of detail chosen by a people who took beauty almost as seriously as manipulation.
“What the hell did I do?” she muttered.
Ruby grinned.
“That’s always an excellent question where you’re concerned.”
Kaelith ignored her and broke the seal.
The parchment inside was folded with crisp precision.
No one had ever sent a threatening or inconvenient letter in messy handwriting, and that felt deeply unfair to her.
She unfolded it slowly, eyes skimming the formal introduction first.
Then she frowned.
Then she frowned harder.
Violet leaned forward.
“What does it say?”
Kaelith kept reading.
The words rearranged themselves into nonsense.
Then somehow into worse.
Ruby crawled closer on the bed.
“Kaelith.”
There was laughter somewhere outside the room, distant and harmless, servants moving through the corridor, the normal living sounds of the castle continuing as if the world had not just tilted under Kaelith’s feet.
“No,” she said out loud.
Ruby and Violet both went still.
Kaelith read the line again.
And again.
Same words.
Same neat official script.
Same absolutely impossible message.
Her heartbeat began to thud once, twice, three times in a slow stunned rhythm.
“What?” Violet asked.
Kaelith looked up at them.
For the first time that morning, or maybe the first time in weeks, she was fully awake.
Then, because apparently the universe had decided graduation was not enough suffering, she lowered her eyes to the parchment once more and read aloud the line that shattered the last remains of her peaceful, unemployed life.
“Kaelith Daemara is officially married to Princess Irielle.”