Marienne Lysford did not remember the carriage ride home. She remembered only the heat behind her eyes. The pounding in her skull. The taste of humiliation crawling up her throat like bile.
The moment the doors of the Lysford estate closed behind her, something inside her snapped.
"GET OUT!"
Her scream tore through the entrance hall.
A maid barely had time to react before a porcelain vase was ripped from its pedestal and hurled across the room. It shattered against the wall, fragments slicing across the marble floor.
"ALL OF YOU—GET OUT!"
Servants scattered in panic.
Marienne's hands shook violently as she tore at the clasp of her gloves and flung them aside. Her chest heaved, breath ragged, eyes burning.
"She did it," Marienne snarled, pacing like a caged beast. "She did it on purpose—"
A maid hesitated near the doorway.
"My lady, please—"
Marienne grabbed a silver tray and threw it. It struck the maid's shoulder with a sickening crack, sending her sprawling to the floor with a cry.
"DON'T TOUCH ME!" Marienne screamed. "DON'T LOOK AT ME!"
Blood spotted the marble. No one dared move.
Marienne laughed — a sharp, broken sound that didn't belong to her.
"Of course," she hissed, voice trembling with fury. "Of course it was her."
She stormed across the room, knocking over chairs, ripping down a framed portrait of herself and Cassian — their engagement portrait — and smashing it to pieces beneath her heel.
"I knew it," she whispered, shaking. "I always knew."
Seraphine Arden.
That name. That cursed name. The woman who never raised her voice at court. The woman who never fought openly. The woman who smiled softly while winning everything.
Marienne clawed at her own hair.
"No matter what I do," she thought wildly, "no matter how perfect I am..."
It was always her.
Seraphine with her gentle eyes and ruined devotion. Seraphine with her quiet patience and unwavering presence. Seraphine who didn't need to beg for love because Cassian gave it to her without knowing he was doing it.
Seraphine. Seraphine. Seraphine. Seraphine!
Marienne screamed.
She saw the way he looked at Seraphine. Even when he stood beside her. Even when he refused to touch her. Even when he punished her with silence—
Her nails dug into her palms.
It was always you.
She had felt it long before tonight. At banquets. At court. In the way Cassian's eyes always followed Seraphine for half a second too long. In the way his voice softened only once in a room full of nobles.
Marienne let out a strangled laugh.
"So you win," she whispered. "You always win."
Her breath hitched. Her vision blurred. But then her spine straightened. Her lips curled.
"No," she said aloud, voice shaking but defiant. "No. I will never admit it."
You may have his heart, she thought viciously, but I have his future.
Seraphine could warm his bed. Seraphine could haunt his dreams. Seraphine could make him break in moments of weakness. But Marienne had something Seraphine would never have.
The Empire. The engagement was not love.
It was command. Absolute. Irrevocable. Unbreakable.
Marienne pressed her trembling hands against her chest, forcing her breathing to slow.
The Emperor had decreed it. To sever the engagement would mean severing Cassian from the Empire itself. From his command. From his army. From the identity that defined him.
Cassian Vale was a soldier before he was a man. His loyalty did not belong to a woman. It belonged to the Empire.
And Marienne smiled slowly, coldly, even as tears burned behind her eyes.
"You can never take that from me," she whispered. Her gaze hardened. "You can seduce him. Break him. Haunt him." Her voice dropped to a venomous murmur. "But he will stand beside me in public. He will wear my name. He will bow to the Emperor with me at his side."
She laughed again — brittle, furious.
"And when you finally destroy yourself trying to take what cannot be taken," she whispered, "I will still be standing."
Her jaw clenched.
"I will never give him up."
Never.
Not to Seraphine. Not to love. Not even to the truth she refused to name.
Marienne Lysford straightened amid the wreckage of her home, breathing hard, eyes blazing.
Let Seraphine play her little games. Let her think she had won. Marienne would endure.
Because in the end, the Empire always won. And so did she.
----
Cassian Vale accepted his engagement the same way he had accepted every order that shaped his life.
Without ceremony. Without protest. Without illusion.
He stood alone in the audience chamber when the decree was read aloud, the Emperor's voice echoing against stone older than memory. Courtiers watched him closely, as they always did, searching his face for resistance, hesitation, ambition, fear. They found nothing.
Cassian knelt. Not because he was grateful. Not because he was pleased. But because obedience had long since replaced choice.
"To serve is my duty."
That was all.
There was no romance in his acceptance. No private hope buried beneath the words. No secret belief that things might somehow bend in his favor.
Cassian had never been foolish enough to believe that.
He had learned early— on blood-soaked fields and burning borders— that the Empire did not survive on happiness. It survived on sacrifice. On men who understood that their lives were tools, not treasures.
Love was a luxury. And luxuries were the first things a nation abandoned in war.
So when the Emperor spoke of unity, of stability, of a marriage that would bind noble houses and secure the loyalty of restless factions, Cassian listened the way he listened to marching orders.
He did not ask why. He did not ask what of me. He did not ask what it would cost.
He already knew. His heart did not factor into the equation. It never had.
He understood, with cold clarity, that his feelings were irrelevant to the survival of the state. The Empire had raised him, armed him, bled him dry in its service. In return, it demanded not his affection but his future.
And he gave it.
Not because he believed Marienne Lysford was his destiny. Not because he imagined happiness would grow from duty. But because he believed something far older and harsher: That personal desire had no right to outweigh the survival of millions.
Cassian had sent men into battle knowing they would die. He had signed orders that erased entire companies for the sake of a line on a map. He had stood over mass graves and called it necessary.
Compared to that, surrendering his own future was simple.
He did not confuse loyalty with happiness. Loyalty was discipline. Happiness was irrelevant.
And so, when the engagement ring was placed into his palm, he closed his fingers around it without trembling. He did not imagine the life it represented. He did not picture children, warmth, or peace.
He thought only of the Empire's borders. Of supply lines. Of enemies held at bay.
He placed his heart— her— aside with the same practiced restraint he used to bury fallen soldiers. Wrapped it tight. Locked it away. Told himself it was already dead.
That was how Cassian survived.
Obedience, to him, was never devotion to a person. It was allegiance to an institution.
The Empire was not a woman who could love him back. It was not a man who could betray him. It was an idea— vast, merciless, eternal.
And if the Empire demanded his future, he would surrender it. Silently. Completely. Without asking to be understood.
Because understanding had never been part of the bargain.