Chapter 3
I stared at the letter and laughed until tears streamed down my face.
Would a man truly forget his own wedding for the sake of a cousin?
Would he truly scorn his betrothed in her name?
What did he take me for, some simpleton he could toy with at his leisure?
Right before the steward's eyes, I cast the letter and every one of those costly trinkets into the hearth, watching the flames consume them all.
"Take this message back to the Crown Prince," I said, my voice hard and cold. "Tell him the House of Sinclair has no taste for a marriage it cannot hope to deserve."
The steward's face drained of all colour, and he stumbled out in terror, barely keeping his feet beneath him.
My father studied me, hesitating. "Charlotte, are you quite certain? To break this engagement is to defy a royal decree."
"I have thought it through," I said. "I no longer wish to be the Crown Princess.
"I would rather devote myself to a life of prayer and solitude, and spend my days beseeching heaven for your health and Mother's."
His eyes grew moist as he lifted me, and he let out a long, weary sigh. "So be it. A Sinclair does not suffer insults of this kind.
"If the Crown thinks so little of us, then we shall think even less of a union with it."
*****
For days afterward, Valdrada blazed with gossip.
Charlotte, daughter of the Royal Preceptor, had boldly defied a royal decree, broken her betrothal, and petitioned to withdraw into a convent for a life of devotion.
Edward, beside himself with fury, ordered his men to surround Sinclair Manor and seal every entrance.
Yet, by my father's careful arrangement, I slipped quietly out of Valdrada, unseen by any watchful eye.
Before I departed, a piece of news reached my ears.
Trouble was brewing in Vastmarch. Alexander Hawthorne, commander of the Hawthorne Legion, had driven the enemy back a hundred miles, utterly alone in the vanguard.
Rumour had it that this general was a ferocious warrior, merciless in battle, always concealed behind a silver mask that never revealed his true face.
Cold as midwinter ice, hard as stone, he was the god of war whom all of Vastmarch both feared and revered.
In that moment, a wild and resolute notion took root deep within me.
Rather than remain trapped in the quagmire of Valdrada, I would rather venture out beneath an endless sky and find a place where no one knew my name, where I could begin anew.
I left the letter of farewell upon my dressing table. On it, I wrote: [From this day, we walk separate paths. May we each find freedom and our own portion of happiness.]
From this moment forward, Valdrada would see Charlotte no more. My road led to Vastmarch.
*****
I left Valdrada. With my father's aid, I passed through the city gates in a plain, unmarked carriage, hidden beneath the cover of night.
From that hour, the daughter of the Royal Preceptor was gone. What remained was only a nameless orphan bound for the wild Vastmarch.
The wheels turned steadily on, carrying me away from all the splendour of Valdrada and shattering the five-year dream I had once clutched so tightly to my chest.
I did not look back even once.
The gilded cage behind me held nothing that was worth clinging to any longer.
Edward and Lillian were like a poisoned thorn driven deep into my heart.
Now, I would tear it out with my own hands, and even if it meant bleeding raw and unflinching, I would not hesitate.
The carriage rolled onward for more than ten days.
The landscape beyond the window shifted from the gentle poetry of the south, where apple orchards and soft rains had once coloured the world, to the wild, windswept emptiness of the north.
The air was no longer tender. It bit at my cheeks like a blade, leaving them stung and raw.
I lifted the curtain and gazed out across the endless, desolate expanse.
Here, there were no graceful colonnades or manicured gardens, no gentle southern voices drifting upon the air.
Only the mournful cry of war horns and the soaring songs of the nomads echoed across the barren land.
Everything in this place was utterly unlike Valdrada. Everything was new, and my heart would have to become new along with it.
The caravan master was a cheerful man called Bob Peters.
Seeing that I was a lone young woman travelling unaccompanied, he made a point of looking after me.
"Miss, you don't seem like you hail from these parts," he said, handing me a waterskin.
"I have travelled from very far away," I answered quietly.
"What brings you to Vastmarch, then? Life here is harsh."
"I am searching for someone."
"Who are you looking for?"
I shook my head and said nothing. I could hardly speak the truth aloud.
I did not even know whether Alexander, the notorious silver-masked general, would ever consent to receive me.
Nor had I any idea whether he would accept someone like me, a disgraced woman who had broken her engagement and become the scandal of Valdrada.
This journey north was nothing less than a desperate wager, one in which I had staked everything I had left in this life.
If I lost, it would simply mean being broken in a different place.
If I won, perhaps I would at last find a sky wide enough to breathe beneath.
*****
Another fortnight crept by, and finally we reached Frostgard, the heart of Vastmarch, a fortress city standing like a sentinel against the untamed north.
The city walls soared overhead, built of immense black stone, grim and unyielding.
Every inch of them bore the scars of battle, etched with the gouges of swords and axes, silent witnesses to years of relentless war.
The soldiers at the gate looked cold and forbidding, clad in black plate armour, nothing like the indolent imperial guards of Valdrada.
There was a lethal sharpness in their eyes. These were Hawthorne's Legion, the force that held the border under Alexander's command.
As I stepped from the carriage and set my feet firmly upon the hard-packed earth, a strange sense of steadiness settled over me, as though I were truly grounded for the first time in my life.
Here, there were no intrigues, no tangled affairs of the heart. What mattered were only life and death, survival and sacrifice.
Perhaps this was where I truly belonged.