The morning light did not wake Gisela—it assaulted her. It struck her face like a slap, harsh and insistent. She turned away with a low groan, the movement pulling at the fresh, tender wounds on her back. Consciousness returned slowly, and with it, the awareness of an unfamiliar weight: a soft blanket draped over her. She had no memory of seeking its comfort.
Then she felt it—the presence in the room.
Her eyes flew open. A shadow sat beside the bed, still and silent as a stone gargoyle. As she startled, he turned his head. The motion was smooth, deliberate. The shift made the blanket slip from her grasp, pooling at her waist and baring her chest to the cold, scrutinizing air. Her small breasts, their soft pink nipples tightening instantly against the chill, were exposed. She snatched the blanket back, clutching it to her like a shield.
"Hen— Henry. You frightened me." Her voice was sleep-ravaged, an attempt at composure already fraying.
He did not acknowledge her fear. "How long have you been sitting there?"
"It is irrelevant," he replied, his voice devoid of warmth. His attention rested on a parchment in his hands, his brow slightly furrowed in what looked like disdain. He let the silence stretch, a calculated torture, before speaking again. "A missive from your father. King Wilhelm extends an invitation. To us." His gaze lifted, sharp and penetrating, pinning her to the bed. "Most particularly, to you. His daughter."
He paused, watching the confusion and dawning anxiety tighten her features. A devilish, almost imperceptible light glinted in his eyes.
"…To his betrothal ceremony."
The words landed not as news, but as a carefully placed explosive.
"Ceremony?" The breath left her lungs. "He is to be married?"
She stared, the shock a cold wave that momentarily eclipsed her pain. In Henry's steady, holding gaze, she saw not just the announcement, but the promise of new games, new humiliations, meticulously arranged on her father's stage.
"He cannot be so foolish. Only a madwoman would accept a proposal from such a monster," she breathed, the words a blend of disbelief and venom.
"It is a strategic union. With the Princess of France." He paused, letting the prestige of the alliance hang in the air before delivering the provocation with a surgeon's precision. "It is, by all accounts, an advantageous match."
Her gaze lifted to his, the shock hardening into something cold and flinty. A dry, hollow scoff escaped her.
"You know… I was ten years old," she began, her voice eerily steady, as if reciting a cursed scripture. "They made me watch from the balcony. I stood behind the stone rail, looking down as they forced my mother to her knees in the courtyard. I saw the axe fall." Her eyes were fixed on a point in the past, seeing it all from that terrible, privileged height. "My father never loved her. She was not his first wife, nor his second. He discarded them. He took my mother solely for her womb, desperate for the heir she never gave him." A single tear traced a path through the morning light on her cheek, followed by another. "I never learned what crime he accused her of. But I saw her face as she looked up, searching the windows, searching for me. I did not see the face of a guilty woman. I saw the face of a woman who knew the truth, and whose only crime was knowing it."
The tears fell not with sobs, but in a silent, relentless stream, each one a testament to the old, unhealed wound now torn open.
"That day was the seed," she whispered, the confession brittle as old parchment. "The day the fever first found me. I have hated it ever since."
He settled on the edge of the bed, the mattress dipping under his weight. His hand rose, not to comfort, but to claim. His fingers gripped her chin, forcing her trembling face up. With a slow, deliberate sweep of his thumb, he smeared the wetness from her cheek, his gaze pinning hers—a cold, clinical examination.
"All these years," he murmured, his voice a velvet-wrapped blade, "have you ever considered that your shrine is built on a lie? What if the martyr you mourn was, in truth, the villain of the piece? A wolf who learned to wear her fleece with exceptional skill?"
"No!" The denial tore from her, raw and guttural. She slapped his hand away, the sound sharp in the quiet room. "Do not dare speak of her that way. You know nothing."
"And you," he countered, his composure unshaken, his eyes analyzing her fury like a specimen, "were a child clinging to a fairy tale. You knew only the narrative that spared you."
He stood, the false intimacy severed. "The betrothal ceremony is tomorrow at dusk. The royal tailor will attend you. You will wear red." He paused at the threshold, a dark silhouette against the light. "A profound, unignorable crimson. The color that pleases me."
He turned, delivering his final words with the quiet precision of a headsman checking his blade.
"And prepare yourself, Gisela. A surprise awaits you. Be ready at the stroke of noon."
He left, closing the door with a soft, definitive click. The echo of his promise hung in the sunlit room, colder and more imprisoning than any lock.
---
"Noon?"
The word was a fragile thread of sound, severed almost before it left her lips.
The door did not simply open—it was filled. A silent procession of maids streamed in, a wave of crisp linen and uniformly bowed heads, their formation too perfect, too synchronized. The last vestige of her private dread was violently crowded out.
Gisela stood, letting the blanket fall from her shoulders. Ignoring the protest of her wounded back, she fixed her gaze on them, scanning each downturned face with a desperate, searching intensity.
"Where is Hilda?"
Her voice was not loud, but it was a blade—cold and sharp with the authority she still dared to wield.
The maid at the front, with piercing blue eyes that held no warmth, kept her gaze lowered. "His Majesty instructed our delegation to attend you, Your Grace."
"Are you deaf?" Gisela's tone dropped, each word a chip of ice. "I did not ask for the King's instructions. I asked for Hilda. I require her service. Now."
"But the King's ord—"
"I am your Queen." The interruption was swift, absolute, a whip-crack in the still air. "And I am not requesting. I am commanding. Bring Hilda to me. This instant."