Esmira (Enora)
My father was in the antechamber.
Princess Esmira’s father.
Didn’t Lord Aven say he was in his room, freshening up?
I stared at the maid, my mind going blank.
Every instinct I had screamed at me to run — to climb through the window, to crawl under the bed, to do anything other than face a man who would look into my eyes and see a stranger where his daughter should be.
It seemed I would die tonight after all.
“Luna?” The maid shifted on her feet.
“Shall I let him in? You know the Alpha is not a very patient man.”
What would Lord Aven do in this situation?
I wondered, my heart pounding.
The maid was staring at me anxiously, shifting from one foot to the other, her gaze occasionally straying toward the door.
“I — tell him—” I started, trailing off, my voice shaking.
“Tell him I’m not feeling well. Tell him that I need a moment to—”
The words froze on my lips as the tapestry at the corner of my room moved, and a door opened.
It was a narrow side entrance, and the tapestry had been its cover.
It swung inward, and a woman stepped through.
She was beautiful.
She had striking red hair, vivid as fire, tumbling past her shoulders and green eyes that swept the room with intelligence.
She was pale and thin, with bandaged wrists visible above the sleeves of her dress, and she carried herself with a grace that made the air in the room feel different.
The maid noticed her too and immediately bowed.
“My lady.”
Who was she?
The newcomer looked at the maid without returning her greeting.
“Leave us.”
The maid hesitated, glancing at me.
“But my lady, Alpha King Eldric is—”
“Are you deaf?” The newcomer turned to the maid with a glare.
“I said leave.”
The maid fled the room, closing the door behind her, and I was alone with a stranger who was staring at me with so much malice as though I’d offended her.
“I see, you survived.” She scoffed, her eyes scanning the length of my body.
“Survived?” I eyed her with confusion.
What was she talking about?
“So.” The woman said again, prancing toward me, her lips curling into a smirk.
“You went through with it.”
I blinked, wondering what she was talking about.
“I’m sorry — do I—”
“Don’t play that game with me, Esmira.” She stopped a few paces away from me, her green eyes glistening.
“I warned you. I told you what would happen that night if you went through with this wedding. I told you that if you took Roderic from me, you would regret it for the rest of your life.”
That was when it dawned on me.
Roderic.
This woman knew Roderic, and the way she talked about him, as if he belonged to her, meant she could only be one person.
Lysara.
The woman Roderic loved.
The woman whose name he had whispered against my skin while he moved inside me.
I couldn’t blame him.
If this was Esmira’s competition, he had every right to be angry.
Lysara was now standing three feet away and looked like she wanted to kill me.
“Look at how years of friendship crumbled because you wanted what belonged to me.”
So Lysara and Esmira had been friends?
“You think because you wear that crown, you’ve won?” Lysara continued, her voice colouring with cruel amusement.
“You think because your father has armies and you have the backing of House Sorvane, that gives you the right to take what was never yours?”
I should say something, I thought.
Since she didn’t suspect I wasn’t Esmira, if I continued to stay silent, she would know something was wrong.
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.
I had no script for this.
Lord Aven had never prepared me to meet the woman who loved my husband.
“What is it?” she probed.
“Cat got your tongue? Has your treachery and betrayal eaten so deeply inside you that you cannot speak? Answer me, Esmira. How does it feel to betray your best friend?”
My chest tightened as the familiar anxiety swelled inside me again.
I had to say something.
“I’m sorry,” I said quietly.
“It was never my intention to—”
“There are no witnesses here, Esmira.” She cut me off.
“You don’t need to play coy with me. If you were sorry and didn’t mean to hurt me, then why did you marry him?” She stopped, pressing her hand to her mouth, choking on a sob.
“We love each other, Esmira. For him, I was willing to do anything, and yet you took the one thing I’d always desired, and now you stand before me, trying to apologise?”
In a flash, she spun me around, grabbing my shoulders until they ached from her fingers digging in.
“He’ll never love you.” A cruel smirk curved her lips even as her eyes glistened with unshed tears.
“You know that, don’t you? He told me himself. The night before your wedding, he held my face and swore that no matter what your family forced him to do, his heart would always be with me.”
“I don’t want to fight with you, Lysara,” I said quietly.
It was the truth, and it was all I had.
In response, Lysara laughed, the brittle sound filling the room and making me flinch.
“You don’t want to fight? How noble. How perfectly, disgustingly royal of you.” She stepped closer.
“You claim he met you first and all of that, but you know what the difference is between us, Esmira? I would have died for him. I almost did.”
“Lysara, please.” I tried to wiggle free of her hold.
“Please.”
“Where were you when he had to put up with House Sorvane? Or when he cried himself to sleep every night? When he wanted to die from heartbreak after losing his family?” Her tone turned aggressive, her eyes blazing with contempt as she shook me.
“You sat in your palace in Ceranthia while I moulded him into the man he is today. While you waited for your father to hand you a throne and a husband you didn’t earn.”
“That’s not—”
“Don’t fucking lie to me!” Her voice tore through the room.
“Don’t you dare stand there and lie to my face! I read your father’s letter. I saw the threat if Roderic refused to take you as his Luna. And I knew those were your words. You forced yourself on him like the shameless bitch you are.”
I finally managed to untangle myself from her hold and stumbled backwards.
My shoulders hit the window frame.
Her breathing had gone ragged, her eyes wild, and for a terrible moment, I thought she would lunge at me.
Instead, she did something worse.
Her hand moved to the letter opener on the vanity beside me.
The instant she held it, I knew what she was going to do.
A tear rolled down her cheek as she lifted it and smiled.
“If he can’t be with me, he would never become yours.”
She drew the blade across her forearm in one swift motion.
Blood welled immediately against her pale skin.
She gasped, her knees buckled, and then she screamed.
“HELP! SOMEONE HELP ME! PLEASE!” You are reading on g.com, the official source.
She collapsed to the floor, clutching her arm, blood streaming between her fingers and pooling on the marble.
Her screams echoed through the chambers.
“I didn’t—” I dropped to my knees beside her.
“I didn’t do that to you. You did that yourself—”
I tried to stop the bleeding, but she swatted my hand away, screaming louder.
The moment she heard footsteps approaching, the rage in her eyes vanished, replaced by helplessness.
“I’m sorry,” she sobbed as the doors burst open and maids rushed in.
“I’m so sorry, Your Majesty. I shouldn’t have come. I only wanted to make peace. I only wanted to tell you that I accepted the marriage and to give you my blessings.”
“She’s bleeding!” one of the maids cried, dropping to the floor and pressing a cloth to Lysara’s arm.
“Please forgive me,” Lysara wept, reaching for my hand with blood-slicked fingers.
“I didn’t mean to cause trouble. We’re friends, Esmira.”
I was still in a daze.
Thirty seconds ago, she had been screaming at me with hatred in her eyes.
Now she was on the floor, sobbing and begging for forgiveness, and every maid in the room was looking at me as though I were a demon.
“I didn’t do this,” I said, raising my hands.
“I didn’t touch her, I swear.”
Suddenly, the antechamber door crashed open, and a massive man filled the doorway.
His eyes swept the scene, and his face darkened.
“Darling, are you alright? Are you hurt?” His gaze moved to me.
The instant I heard darling, I knew this had to be Alpha King Eldric—Esmira’s father.
I ducked my head, lowering my gaze.
“I’m fine, Father,” I managed in a low voice.
“Then what in the goddess’s name is happening here? Your maid said you were resting and would come to me later.”
Before I could answer, Lysara wailed louder, drawing his eyes downward, and a maid was explaining in frantic bursts that Lady Lysara had come to make peace and that I had attacked her.
Eldric’s gaze flitted back to me, his eyes widening with disbelief, before he turned his attention to Lysara.
He knelt beside her and collected the blood-soaked cloth from the maid, applying pressure to the wound himself.
“Get the healers,” he barked at the nearest maid.
“Now.”
The maid barely made it to the door before it opened again, and Lord Aven swept in, followed closely by Roderic.
Lord Aven paused at the threshold, his eyes widening with shock as his gaze darted from me to Alpha King Eldric and back.
Roderic pushed past him into the room.
His gaze flitted to me for a second and then landed on Lysara.
The moment he saw her, he rushed to her.
“Ly.” He said, dropping beside her.
“What happened to you? Why are you bleeding?”
Lysara grabbed Roderic’s sleeve, hiccupping.
“Don’t be mad at Mira,” she said tenderly.
“It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have come here knowing she’s still angry with me.”
“What are you saying?” Roderic’s eyes darkened.
“Did she do this to you?” His gaze found me, sparking with fury.
“Did you do this to her, Esmira?”
“No!” I shook my head frantically.
“She — I—”
Roderic’s body trembled.
His eyes flashed with anger, then went completely black.
When he spoke, his voice boomed across the room, and we all felt it in our bones.
“GUARDS! SEIZE HER!”
He was pointing at me.