LOGINBlurb: Paige Rimestone never got to choose her fate. She wakes up inside a book she once loved, cast as a girl who dies too soon. Her future husband wants riches more than he wants her alive. Survival means turning to someone feared by everyone. The cold Duke Noah Wingknight. He might be cruel, but he’s also the closest thing to protection in a world that already wrote her off. From memories of who she was before, she pressures the Duke into agreeing to a half-year fake engagement. He gives her protection under his name. In return, she follows his hidden plans without question. He looks nothing like the monster she expected, his charm slipping under her skin before she can stop it. While pretending to be the woman on his arm, someone else lingers just out of sight, eyes fixed and unblinking. A second player waits nearby, fingers tracing blade edges, patience wearing thin. Death was supposed to be outsmarted by Paige. Yet love arrived, carried in the arms of someone meant to ruin everything she built.
View More(Paige’s POV)A flicker of noise, then music spills through the city's core. Lord Protector Eamon hosts what burns brighter than torchlight. The crowd moves like smoke - shifting, rising, never still. This gathering breathes on its own, restless under stone arches. Laughter cuts through cold air instead of silence. People press close, drawn without needing reason. Flame jumps when wind passes; so does celebration.A blaze of lamps spills from his mansion, a fresh sprawl of white marble and gilded edges rising too tall against the night. Crowds of carriages jam the roadways, each one coughing out nobles wrapped in bold silks - hues pulled by sea routes: loud as tropical birds, pale as salt-worn reef, or a strange golden sheen that pulls shadows inward. Perfume hangs thick - not just blossoms from distant soil or sizzling meat on spits - but underneath, something unfamiliar. It clings. Reminds me of fruit left too long in sun, mixed with warmth rising off ba
(Paige’s POV)Back in the city as leaves fall, it's as if stepping into a different life. Behind lies the North - sharp, unyielding, real - now giving way to the murkier rhythms of the heartland. Most days on the road, Lysander rests, his frame quietly mending from what he faced, absorbing it piece by piece. A stillness marks him now, not fear, but watchfulness, deeper than before. That old dread has lifted; something firm sits where it once pressed.Footsteps slow when we reach the citadel's gate. Noah waits there - still, dressed in dark fabric that drinks the light, feet planted like he belongs to the ground itself. His arms are locked behind him, spine straight, a pose meant to say control. Closer now, the mask slips just enough: eyelids flicker too fast. A twitch rides along his jawline. Stillness holds, but not quite.When the carriage door swings open, he loses hold. Suddenly everything slips through his fingers.A shape appear
(Paige’s POV)Beyond the mountain's core, where breath hangs sharp and faint, seconds dissolve. Up there, clocks lose their grip. Cold stretches moments until they snap. Thinness rewires how long things feel. Meaning of time unravels like thread in wind.A single minute passes. Then ten. After that, sixty more tick by. Slowly, the sun slips down, pushing shadowed shapes from the mountain tops so they crawl like dark fingers over the land beneath. Not a sound exists - just the hush of air whispering between cliffs far above.Stillness grips me as I face the shadowed gap my boy vanished into. My body begs to bolt forward, pull him close again, shield him from whatever waits. Yet Kieran’s words lock me in place, tighter than iron cuffs. The path ahead belongs only to bloodline heirs.Alex holds back, planted there like he’s bracing against a gust. Weight shifts among the guards - feet scuffing dirt, shoulders twitching. These ones thrive
(Paige’s POV) Stillness here holds weight. Not hollow, but fed by seasons of slow work beneath the surface. From that ground rise daily things - real ones - the smell of baking wheat drifting up from the kitchens below, Lysander’s voice ringing sharp then fading against old stone, my fingers meeting Noah’s without looking when night finally settles inside our room. Footsteps above might miss it, yet underground, roots twitch at faint quivers seconds ahead. Though silent, earth holds signs just beneath what eyes catch. Something stirs beneath the soil, though no dreamer speaks of it. Instead, voices rise where roots run deep. Hill Folk come to the Citadel one morning, their hands empty, their expressions heavy. Not gifts they bring this time, instead silence hangs around them like damp cloth. Kieran, who is Borog’s son and now speaks for his clan, steps forward without ceremony into the stone-walled chamber. W
(Noah’s POV)Back toward the great hall, every step drags like stone. Each yard stretches wider than before. The path refuses to shorten. Distance grows even when I hurry. My feet weigh more with each beat. Nothing moves faster, not even time. This stretch of ground owns a slow cu
(Paige’s POV)A single beat hangs still. The King gasps, uneven, fading, while crimson spreads sharp across the cold floor. That color stains everything.A sudden roar tears through everything. Sounds crash like broken glass across the sky.Chaos spills into
(Paige’s POV)A haze of fear, pages scattering like ash. Darkness swallows every thought except the next breath.Nowhere looks the same. Furniture once polished and placed with care has been pushed toward walls, out of the way. Across the bare floor stretch wide sheets
(Paige’s POV)Above Highvale, the hall feels different than Blackstone’s. Smoke-stained walls are missing here. Instead, silence hangs thick, laced with beeswax polish and something softer - a whisper of rot beneath flower arrangements that look just a little too neat. Damp wool a






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