The night they came for me, I did not scream.
That was their first mistakeâbelieving that silence meant surrender.
It happened in my own home. The fortress meant to keep danger out. I had walked these halls with the certainty that nothing could touch me here. That the name I carried was enough to keep the wolves at bay. But power makes enemies, and enemies do not always strike in daylight.
The night was silent, the kind of quiet I had once found comforting. The kind that now betrayed me.
I had not sensed them at first. Not until the moment my chamber door openedâtoo quiet, too careful. I turned, expecting one of my maids. Instead, I saw shadows in the candlelightâfour men, masked, clothed in dark.
I reached for the gun under my pillow, but they moved faster. A hand clamped over my mouth before I could summon a sound. Another wrenched my arms behind me, steel biting into my wrists. My breath came sharp and quick, a desperate rush of survival, but it was futile.
The struggle was brief. I kicked, bit down on the fingers silencing me, tasted bloodâmetallic and warm. It earned me a fist to the ribs, knocking the wind from my lungs. A strike to my legs, forcing me down onto cold marble. My nightgown twisted around my thighs as they wrenched me into place. The floor was hard beneath me, my cheek pressed against the chill of it.
They spoke then, their voices low and cruel. A warning. A lesson.
Fingers tore at fabric, wrenching it apart, baring me to the night. The air was cold against my skin, but their hands were worseârough, foreign, unyielding. A grip too tight on my hips, nails digging into soft flesh, bruises forming before the pain even registered. They laughed when I tensed, when I thrashed against their hold, savoring the way I flinched at their touch.
The weight of them crushed me, forced me down. I could hear my own heartbeat, too fast, too loud. The scent of leather and sweat clung to the air, thick and suffocating. Hands I did not know. Voices I would never forget.
One of them ran his fingers down my spine, slow, deliberate. "Not so powerful now, are you?"
I bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood. I did not beg. I did not give them the satisfaction of my fear.
And so, they carved their lesson into meâbrutal, unrelenting.
I do not remember which of them went first. Only the weight pressing me into the ground. The bruising grip on my hips, the bite of nails into flesh. The sharp, tearing pain. A body that was mine and yet suddenly not.
I remember thinking, distantly, of a younger version of myself. A girl with sharp eyes and a sharper tongue, who believed she was untouchable. Who walked through fire and never learned to fear the burn.
The world had long decided that women like meâwomen with power, with names too heavy to eraseâcould only be broken in one way. Not through exile. Not through death.
Through humiliation.
They thought they could strip me of everything in the dark. That when they left, I would be nothing but the remnants of a woman who once stood too tall, who once spoke too sharply. That the weight of their hands would reduce me to ruin.
They thought I would break. They thought they had won.
They thought wrong.
But I let them believe itâjust for now.
Because by the time I am done, they will pray for death.
When it was over, I lay still, staring at nothing, listening to their retreating footsteps. The blood between my thighs was warm, the bruises already blooming. My body a mess of agony.
I did not move for hours.
I bathed until my skin was raw. I scrubbed the scent of them from my body until the water ran red, until only I remained. Until my own reflection did not look like a stranger wearing my skin.
I covered the bruises, painted my lips the color of war. My dress was whiteâpristine, untouched. Because that was the lie I chose to wear today. That nothing happened. That they did not matter.
But Caius knew.
The moment I stepped into the dining hall, his gaze lifted from his untouched coffee, sharp and dissecting. He took in the stiffness of my shoulders, the faintest tremor of my fingers when I reached for the teapot. The way my breaths were measured, controlled.
For the first time since we were married, he truly looked at me.
He said nothing at first, only watched. His fingers tapped against the porcelain rim of his cupâa slow, measured rhythm. There was no outburst, no immediate fury. Just the kind of silence that felt like an executioner's pause before the blade fell.
"Who?" he asked, voice like glass, sharp enough to cut.
I took my seat, porcelain clinking against silver as I prepared my tea. "It doesn't matter."
His fingers curled into a fist. He exhaled slowly, controlled. "Don't lie to me, Yna."
I met his eyes thenâthis man who was my husband only in name, who had never spared me more than a glance unless required. I saw it there, buried beneath the ice. Not pity. Not sympathy.
Rage.
A slow, quiet thing, curling at the edges of his composure, too controlled to be anything but lethal. The kind of fury that did not burn fast and bright but smoldered until it consumed everything in its path.
I almost laughed. "What are you going to do? Mourn me?"
His jaw tightened, but he did not rise to the bait. Instead, he set his cup down with deliberate precision, his fingers flexing once against the table before stilling entirely.
"Tell me who."
I brought my cup to my lips, the heat scalding my tongue, grounding me. "And what will you do, Caius?" My voice was quiet, steady. Dangerous. "Will you fight for a wife you never wanted? Will you grieve a woman you do not love?"
For a moment, he said nothing. And then, in a voice lethal with promise, he said,
"I will burn the world for the woman they dared touch."
Something inside me cracked, just for a second. A hairline fracture in the mask I had carefully placed. I pressed my lips together, willed my voice to remain steady.
"I don't need your pity."
His fingers twitched against the table. "Good. Because I don't have any to give."
Silence stretched between us, taut and unyielding. And in that silence, something shifted. For the first time, we were not just two strangers bound by duty. For the first time, there was something else in his gaze, something neither of us were ready to name.
But I knew this much.
The men who did this to me thought I would break.
I will make them regret it.