Bride Of Eldoria

Chapter 2 The Doll with the Broken Smile I was five the first time I understood that cruelty could wear a pretty face. It was the eve of Seraphine’s tenth birthday. Wynnehold glittered like a jewel box: chandeliers blazing, musicians in the gallery, every noble in Aurenfall crammed into our great hall to worship at the altar of my eldest sister’s beauty. Seraphine floated through the crowd in a gown of moonlight silk, golden curls crowned with pearls the size of quail eggs. Lords twice her age knelt to kiss her hand. Ladies sighed over her dimples. Even the king’s envoy (a duke with a face like a bored vulture) declared her “the living dawn of Aurenfall.” I watched from the servants’ gallery above the hall, hidden behind a stone balustrade. My nursemaid had fallen asleep in the nursery again, snoring off last night’s gin. No one noticed I was gone. Below me, Seraphine laughed (high, tinkling, perfect). She spun in a circle so her skirts flared like wings. The guests applauded as

Chapter 4The First Blood on the MarbleI was twelve the day Father struck me.It happened in the map room at the top of the west tower (his sanctuary, forbidden to everyone but his adjutants). The air always smelled of ink, lamp oil, and the faint iron of old battles. Maps covered every wall, some so ancient the parchment cracked when you breathed on them. Red pins marked Eldorian incursions. Black pins marked villages that no longer existed.I had been summoned.That alone was unusual. Father communicated with me the way one communicates with vermin: through servants, slammed doors, or icy silence.But that morning a footman delivered a note in Father’s own slashing hand:West tower. Noon. Do not be late.I went.I wore my least-mended dress (gray wool, high neck, sleeves too short). My hair was braided tight enough to hurt. I had learned that pain kept me alert.The guard outside the map-room door looked surprised to see me, but he stepped aside.Inside, Father stood at the great o

Chapter 6Unwanted Honour Elara, age 19,I wake to a silence so absolute it feels like drowning.No clank of buckets, no Seraphine murdering scales on her lute, no crows squabbling on my sill.Just the soft, suffocating hush that comes right before a scream.The fire is dead. Frost feathers the inside of the window in curling, delicate patterns that look almost like wings. Or scales. My breath fogs white.On the little table beside my bed, the black scale I’ve hidden since I was nine stands on edge, trembling like a hound that has finally caught the scent.It has never done that before.I reach for it without thinking. The instant my skin touches obsidian, heat spears through my palm so violently I jerk back. For one heartbeat I see ember-bright eyes staring at me across centuries of darkness, and a voice like smoke and sorrow says my name as though it is the only word left in any language.Elara.Then it’s gone, and I’m just a girl on a frozen bed with a heart trying to hammer its

Chapter 8Kingdom Of Eldoria ElaraNine days.Nine days in a stone box beneath Highmont Palace where the only light is a torch that never quite reaches the corners.Nine days of chains that burn cold, of water that tastes of rust, of bread hard enough to break teeth.Nine days of silence so complete I start talking to the black scale just to remember my own voice.It answers, sometimes.Not in words. In heat. In pressure against my ribs like a second heart trying to crawl out.I keep replaying the throne room.Every face. Every cheer. Every lie.Most of all, I replay my family.Father’s voice, ringing false: My daughter volunteers herself…Mother’s perfect tears that never smudged her paint.Seraphine’s sapphire tiara already gleaming in her hair like she was born to wear it.Isla whispering my name until the doors shut.On the fourth day a guard shoves a broadsheet under the cell door.I unroll it with shaking fingers.The headline is in letters an inch tall:GENERAL WYNNE APPOINTE