Chapter 2

I came down with a raging fever. One minute I was burning alive, and the next I was freezing to the bone.

The maids the king sent stood around watching me with cold, empty eyes.

"Country girls are different. Her body is cheap and low-class."

"She hasn't learned to act like a Duchess yet, and she's already half dead."

Their words cut deep.

I opened my eyes, my throat so dry it felt like it was on fire. "Water..." I croaked, my voice barely a whisper.

They completely ignored me.

They sat there, trading the latest Capital City gossip. To them, I wasn't a princess or a duke's heir's wife. I was some corpse left to rot.

Edward never once came to check on me.

But Lily, dressed in a pink dress, glided into the room with a flirtatious grace. She pinched her nose, looking utterly disgusted. "Ugh, what's that awful smell?"

She came to my bedside, leaned in, and ran her fingers across my cheek in a slow, taunting stroke. "Your Royal Highness, really, what's the point of all this misery? Lord Edward loves me. Even if you drop dead, he still wouldn't look your way."

I stared at her, my lips moving, but no sound came out.

She let out a sharp, gloating laugh, her voice cutting through the room. "Oh, I almost forgot to tell you, I caught that pigeon you sent."

My heart clenched.

She pulled a tiny note from her sleeve and waved it under my nose.

"Dad, they were way too harsh," she read it out, dragging each word with exaggerated mockery before bursting into sharp laughter. "Look at you, barely hanging on, and you still want to cry to your brute dad for help?

"You really think the Ironridge Battalion, thousands of miles away, is going to come riding in to rescue you?"

She held the note to the candle, and the fire swallowed it up in an instant. The firelight twisted her face into something more vicious and menacing.

"Isabella, you and your father are nothing but the king's lapdogs," she sneered. "From now on, you're mine to break."

Then she grabbed the water off the table and splashed it right in my face.

The cold water shocked me awake. I started coughing so hard I thought I might cough up a lung.

Lily admired my misery, looking pleased as she turned and walked out.

From the doorway, their voices drifted in, Lily and Edward, teasing and laughing together.

"Lord Edward, how many days do you think she can hold out?" Lily sneered, her voice full of contempt.

"If she dies, all the better. Saves me from having to look at her," Edward said, cold and indifferent.

Dead? I couldn't die. Dad was still waiting for me. The fifty thousand friends of Ironridge were still waiting for me.

I forced myself up, struggling as I knocked over the medicine cup by my bed. Shards of porcelain sliced into my palm, blood welling up.

I dipped my finger in blood and scrawled those words across the bedsheet again: [Dad, they're way too harsh.]

Then I whistled a secret tune, one only Dad and I knew.

A fierce eagle swept in through the window and perched on my arm. Dad's gift, Stormwing. He always said, as long as I was breathing, Stormwing would find me, no matter what.

I tied the bloody scrap to Stormwing's leg. "Go on, Stormwing. Tell him, his Bella is waiting," I whispered, barely holding onto consciousness.

Stormwing let out a sharp cry and soared into the pitch-black night.

Edward, Lily, your days were numbered. My dad would come soon.