The palace gates rose like sharpened teeth against the sky—a portcullis of black iron behind which walls of pale, seamless stone soared, windowless and severe. It was less an entrance and more a maw, swallowing the line of carriages into a shadowed throat of a tunnel.
Emerging into the main courtyard, the world exploded into a controlled riot of power. The expanse was a sea of nobles, guards in foreign colours, and diplomats shouting in a discord of languages. The air smelled of horse sweat, crushed herbs, and the cold odour of wet flagstones. Gisela's carriage pushed through the press toward the inner keep.
It was then she saw the other procession cutting across the tide: a train of sombre black coaches emblazoned with the gold castles of Castile. In the lead carriage, the shutter was drawn. Inside sat Sophia.
At twenty-three, her stepsister was a portrait of elegant bitterness. Sophia, who had been married to the aged King Alfonso of Spain when Gisela was still a babe in the cradle, had built her entire identity on hating the half-sister whose mother replaced hers. Her gaze, sharp as a stiletto, found Gisela's.
There was no kinship in it. Only a cold, furious recognition. In Sophia's eyes, Gisela saw the venom of someone who had been broken in first, who now resented the newer model for its mere existence. Sophia's hatred was a perfect mirror to Henry's cruelty—another force that had shaped Gisela's world before she could speak.
The Spanish carriage lurched forward, breaking the line of sight. Sophia turned her face away, a dismissal as final as a slamming door. The brief eclipse was over.
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The carriage door opened to a wall of cold air and louder noise. A guard's hand, sheathed in worn leather, appeared. Gisela placed her fingers in it and descended, the solid impact of the ground a minor shock after hours of swaying suspension. Her eyes drifted upward, tracing the impossible height of the pale walls, drawing a breath that felt thin and insufficient.
He was simply there. Henry.
Materialized from the chaos as if the crowd parted by its own will. His arm encircled her waist, a band of familiar, unyielding pressure. She hadn't seen him approach; she felt him. The heat of his body against her back, the slight, possessive pull that aligned her posture with his. Then, his breath—a warm, deliberate stroke on the chilled skin of her neck, just below her ear.
A tremor, fine and uncontrollable, locked her spine. Slowly, she lifted her head to look at him.
He was not looking at the palace, the guards, or the spectacle. His gaze was already fixed on the side of her face, studying the minute reactions he had just orchestrated. His expression held a quiet, dark satisfaction—the curator noting the desired effect on his most delicate exhibit. In the roaring din of the courtyard, their silence was a perfect, intimate void.
Henry lowered his head, his nose tracing the line of her neck. He inhaled deeply, a long, possessive draw of scent and skin. Gisela's composure flickered.
"You should not act so… not here," she whispered, the perfect, public smile still fixed on her lips.
He stilled. "Then where?" His voice was a dark ripple against her ear. "Behind closed doors?" His mouth found the spot his nose had explored, kissing her neck with a slow, devouring precision. A shiver, unbidden and traitorous, unlocked her spine. Her breath shallowed into silent, ragged increments; a muted moan escaped her as her eyes drifted shut. The crowd, the noise, the palace—all dissolved into the sensation.
They did not see the figure approach until she was directly before them, a shadow in silk.
"Greetings, King Henry of Great Britain."
The voice was soft, familiar acid. Gisela's eyes flew open. Henry lifted his head with the slow menace of a predator interrupted, his gaze glacially cold.
"I am Sophia. The Spanish Queen." A wide, flawless smile graced her lips as she offered a minuscule, elegant bow. Her eyes, however, remained fixed on Gisela. "It is such a pity my sister did not introduce me first. She can be… thoughtlessly foolish at times." The insult was delivered with sweet concern.
Her hand, cool and light, rose to cup Gisela's pale cheek. The touch was a violation. Leaning in, she whispered in German, the language of a childhood from which she had exiled Gisela: "Meine einzige, wunderschöne Schwester muss wirklich Glück haben." (My one and only, beautiful sister must be very lucky.)
The words hung, a perfumed poison. With a final, gleaming smile that touched neither woman's eyes, Sophia turned and melted back into the throng with effortless grace, leaving the taste of rust and roses in the air.
A violent, silent tremor seized Gisela. Her nails bit into her own palm, a sharp, grounding pain as her eyes burned with pure, undiluted rage.
Henry's hand closed over her fist. His grip was not to comfort, but to dismantle. His fingers, strong and deliberate, pried hers apart one by one until her hand lay limp and exposed in his, a captured bird. The pressure was instructional.
"Your first lesson," he said, his voice a low, sharpened steel in the cacophony. "Your weakness is my private currency. You will not spend it publicly. The break is for me to witness, and me alone." He spoke of her unraveling as his personal privilege, a spectacle he owned.
He guided her not with a partner's care, but with a warden's direction, into the palace's cavernous mouth. The roar of the courtyard faded, replaced by the hollow echo of their steps on vast, cold flagstones. They moved through grand, empty antechambers that hummed with recent absence. The air was stale with the ghost of extinguished incense and the faint, sweet decay of scattered petals—the detritus of a concluded sacrament.
She recognized the silence. It was the specific, hollow quiet that follows a solemn vow. The sacred theater—the blessings, the contractual words that bound her father to a new wife and a new future—was over. The doors to the great hall were shut, but from behind them thrummed the unmistakable roar of a feast in full, drunken swing: laughter like breaking glass, the clatter of goblets, and a soaring, frantic melody.
Henry paused at the threshold. His hand on hers became a vise.
"Now," he instructed, his breath cold against her temple. "You will be the happiest creature in this room. Your father's contentment, the success of his alliance, hangs on the authenticity of your joy. See that it is flawless."
He pushed the door open. A wall of heat, light, and noise assaulted them. A hundred faces, flushed with wine, turned. At the high table, her father, Lord Wilhelm, glanced up from his new bride. His gaze swept over Gisela, not with relief, but with a swift, calculating assessment. Seeing her present, correct, and on Henry's arm, he offered a shallow, satisfied nod—a king acknowledging that a piece had been successfully moved on his board.
The final, slender thread within Gisela snapped. She had not arrived late. She had been withheld, and then delivered precisely to serve as the living proof that all was well. She was not a daughter at a celebration. She was the final, necessary prop in a play that had started without her.