The day before my seventeenth birthday, everything changed.

For seven long years, my world had been no larger than the tower I was confined in. Stone walls. Narrow windows. Shadows that stretched too long when evening fell. My nanny, a few servants who came and went with their heads bowed, and silence—endless silence.

So when the heavy sound of boots echoed up the staircase that morning, I knew something was different.

The door opened. Sunlight spilled in from behind the line of knights who stepped inside. Their armor gleamed, polished for ceremony, not for battle. Their eyes, though, betrayed surprise. Surprise that I even existed.

“The princess,” one whispered to another, as if the word itself tasted strange on his tongue.

I stood where I always stood, near the window, my back straight, my hands folded neatly before me. My heart beat hard against my ribs, but my face was calm. That calm was my armor.

The captain stepped forward. “Her Highness is to be moved to the main castle. At once.”

The tower had been my prison, but it had also been my shield. My protection against a world that had no place for me. And now even that small shield was being taken away.

I followed them without resistance. What else could I do?

As we descended the narrow spiral stair, one of the younger knights muttered under his breath, “So it’s true. She was hidden away here all these years.”

“Poor thing,” another replied softly.

I felt their pity like thorns pressing into my skin. Pity was worse than hatred. Hatred could be fought. Pity reduced you to something less than human—something weak, a shadow of a life.

They did not understand. They would never understand.

I was not a princess to them. I was a treaty. A signature written in flesh.

The walk from the tower to the main castle should have been short, but it felt endless. The corridors I had not walked in years stretched before me, echoing with memories. I remembered holding my mother’s hand once, too long ago. I remembered laughter, soft and distant. All ghosts now.

When we reached the main castle, I was swallowed in preparations. Maids surrounded me, whispering, fussing, pulling at my hair, my dress, my skin as if trying to shape me into someone who mattered. Their hands were brisk, professional, but their eyes could not hide it: confusion, curiosity, disdain.

Why polish a jewel that would never be displayed?

Why dress a forgotten princess for a wedding no one would attend?

They did not know the truth. Few did.

The treaty, written seventeen years ago, demanded my life as its price. The King of Werewolves was to take me as his bride.

I had been ten then, too young to understand, but not too young to feel the weight of chains. I had lived with it every day since.

And at night… I dreamed.

The same dream, over and over, until it became part of me.

In the dream, I stood before the chambers of Emperor Lev. The guards bowed low, opening the grand doors. The chamber inside was vast, draped in velvet, heavy with the scent of cedarwood and fire. I walked through it like a ghost, my eyes drawn to the balcony where the moon hung swollen and silver.

I would breathe the night air, pretending for one moment that I was free.

But freedom never lasted.

The howls would come. First one, then hundreds, rising like a tide. The ground would shake. My blood would freeze.

“His Majesty has found his mate,” the guards would say with joy, their voices loud enough to crush me.

And I would know—know that I was not that mate.

The celebration of wolves echoed while I knelt on the chamber floor, my lips trembling, my hands cold.

And when the King came for me, furious and unrelenting, I would not wait for him to kill me.

In the dream, I bit down on my tongue, choking on my own blood until the world went black.

And I would wake, night after night, tasting death.

It was worse than torture.

It was prophecy.

I learned to wear my smile like a veil. To hide the hollowness beneath. The maids who dressed me each day could not see the truth in my eyes, but I knew it was there: resignation.

Because how can you hate the man who is destined to kill you, when your heart has already claimed him as its own?

I loved him.

I loved a man I had never met, except in my dreams.

The Emperor Lev, the King of Werewolves.

My love for him was unrequited, unspoken, a quiet, desperate thing that bloomed in the dark corners of my heart. I loved him even as I feared him. I loved him even as I saw, again and again, my death at his hands.

What a cruel fate.

What a crueler heart, to love regardless.

So when the maids massaged my skin with scented oils, when they laced me into dresses embroidered with gold thread, when they painted my lips the color of roses, I smiled at them as if it mattered.

Inside, I was only counting the hours.

One day left until my seventeenth birthday.

One day left until the dream became real.

That night, I lay on the grand bed of the main castle, softer than anything in the tower. The sheets smelled faintly of lilies. The air was heavy with the promise of tomorrow.

I closed my eyes.

And for the first time in a year, I did not dream.