Seraphine's POV-
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The letter was already gone.
Seraphine noticed it the moment she opened her writing desk - the small drawer where she kept her personal seal, her private letters, her mother's handwriting on folded paper. The drawer looked the same. Everything looked the same. But the seal was sitting at a slightly different angle, and one letter was missing from the stack.
She stood very still.
When? She ran through the last three days in her mind. The seal had been there on Tuesday - she had used it herself to write to the head gardener about her mother's herb collection. Yesterday she had been in meetings all morning. Her chamber had been empty.
Someone had come in while she was gone.
Someone with a key.
She pressed her mother's jade pendant hard against her chest and breathed. It's nothing, she told herself. You're imagining things. She was good at talking herself out of fear. She had been doing it for years - every cold look from Empress Vael, every meeting she wasn't invited to, every time her brother Daxton changed the subject when she walked into a room. She always found a reason not to worry.
She braided her hair, put on her best dress, and told herself today would be fine.
Today was her birthday, after all.
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The Great Hall was full when she arrived. That was the first wrong thing. Her birthday had never been a large event - a small dinner, a few polite gifts, her father nodding at her from across the table. But today the hall was packed with nobles, advisors, military generals, and members of the high court. Candles burned along every wall. The imperial herald stood at the front with a scroll in his hands.
Seraphine stopped walking.
The room went quiet.
Not the good kind of quiet - not the hush of a crowd waiting for something wonderful. This was the quiet of people who already knew what was coming and were relieved it wasn't happening to them.
Empress Vael stood beside the emperor's throne, dressed in deep red. She was smiling. Not the polite smile she used at dinners. A real one. The kind that meant she had been waiting for this moment for a very long time.
Seraphine's father sat on his throne and stared at a point on the wall above her head. He did not look down at her. Not even for a second.
Her stomach turned to ice.
Run, something inside her said.
She didn't run. She walked forward, because running would mean she already knew, and she still needed to believe - just for one more minute - that this was something she could survive.
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"Seraphine Ashveil," the herald's voice rang out across the hall, "Third Princess of the Dawnspire Empire, you stand accused of high treason against the crown."
The words hit her like cold water.
Treason.
The herald unrolled his scroll and began to read. A letter, he said. A letter written in her hand, sealed with her crest, sent to the enemy lords in the eastern mountains - promising them secrets about the empire's northern defenses in exchange for gold and political protection.
Seraphine listened to every word and felt something strange and terrible settle over her. She had not written that letter. She had never written that letter. But her seal - the one that had been moved in her drawer - was on it. Right there on the scroll. Her seal. Her handwriting, copied so well she almost doubted herself.
Almost.
"I did not write that," she said clearly.
No one answered her.
Four nobles stepped forward one by one and signed the decree the herald was holding. She watched each one. Old men she had known since childhood. Men who had eaten at her father's table. Men who, two years ago, had smiled at her in the hallways and called her "Your Highness" like it meant something.
They did not look at her either.
And then Daxton stepped forward.
Her brother. Her older brother who used to sneak her extra dessert from the kitchens when she was six years old. Who taught her how to ride her first horse. Who said, just last month, "You're the only honest person in this whole palace, Sera. Don't let them change that."
He picked up the pen.
"Daxton." Her voice came out smaller than she intended. Just his name. Nothing else. Please. Please don't.
He paused. His hand stayed on the pen. For one second - just one - she saw something move across his face. Pain, maybe. Or shame. Something real underneath the careful blank expression he wore like armor.
Then he signed.
The sound of the pen scratching the paper was the loudest thing she had ever heard.
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Empress Vael stepped forward, and her smile had gotten bigger.
"Exile," she announced. Her voice was smooth and warm, like she was announcing something generous. "To the Ashfen Wastes. Effective immediately."
Murmurs rippled through the court. Not protests. Just people shifting, looking away, making sure they weren't too close to Seraphine in case whatever had happened to her might somehow spread to them.
A guard stepped toward her. Then another. Seraphine didn't move. She looked at her father one last time. He was still staring at the wall above her head. Twenty-two years of being his daughter, and in this moment he looked at her like she was furniture he had already decided to throw away.
She reached up and gripped her mother's pendant.
The second guard reached for it. His fingers closed around the chain - and then he screamed and jerked back, shaking his hand, his palm already blistering red like he had grabbed a burning coal. An imperial mage hurried forward, examined the pendant quickly, and waved his hand.
"Minor ward," he said. "Harmless heirloom. Let her keep it."
They marched her out.
She walked with her head up and her shoulders straight and she did not cry, not once, all the way through those golden halls and out the enormous front doors that slammed shut behind her like the palace itself was glad to be rid of her.
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The carriage ride to the Wastes took four hours. When it stopped, the door opened, her bag was thrown out, and the carriage turned around without a single word.
Seraphine stood at the edge of the Ashfen Wastes and looked into the dark.
Then she looked down at the pendant in her hand.
And she felt it - something she had never felt before. A faint, warm pulse. Like a heartbeat that wasn't hers. Like something inside the jade was breathing.
Like it had been waiting for her to get here.
Her fingers tightened around it, and the pulse got stronger.
What are you? she thought.
The pendant answered.
It burned.