CHAPTER 1 — Murder in the Library
~Violet's POV~
"Phew!" I sighed in relief, cracking my neck and shoulders before placing the stainless bucket and mop in the storage room.
I stepped out, glanced around the kitchen, which had been the last place for me to clean after attending to the Princess and triple-checking her luggage, then gave a nod.
"You did well, Vi. Now for your reward."
No matter how stressful preparing the Crown Princess's things for her wedding to the Dragon king and her departure tomorrow was, what gave me solace was the fact that this work came with a free pass to the best library in the kingdom.
At least, just before I was whisked away to another land, I had this whole building of fantasy to indulge in.
The library had always been that for me—my escape into a better life, but mostly, my craziest sexual fantasies.
I giggled, locking the kitchen door and heading to the library.
I never knew why I was selected for the role of personal maid to Crown Princess Valeria, when several qualified candidates from decent backgrounds and proper training had applied.
Regardless, I hoped to complete a rare dark romance erotica reverse harem book I was reading about a human mated to a werewolf, a Lycan and her stepbrother, as well as the forbidden love between them.
I was rooting for the Lycan Alpha because he knew how to love and claim her in bed in ways…
Clank!
I froze, my feet halting as my ears picked up the loud sound coming from down the massive hallway stretched out around me, leading to the library.
At the same time, a cold wind blew past me, pricking the hair on my skin as goosebumps spread on my body. I swallowed… hard.
Thanks to the torches mounted on the walls, it didn't feel too lonely.
My first thought was to take a turn and head back, but my curiosity got the better of me. I made my way to the library, hoping to catch the culprit or nothing.
"Maybe it was a book falling and nothing more," I mentally assured myself.
But when I stepped into the library, the sight that greeted me wasn't something I could have prepared myself for.
My lips parted, a soundless gasp escaping my lips as I stared at the body lying in a pool of blood on the floor.
"W-Wha…"
My eyes instantly recognised that blue silk flowing nightwear, which I had personally picked for Princess Valeria.
That was the last thought that crossed my mind. With the fastest speed my feet could muster, I dashed inside the library, panic filling my eyes and voice.
"No. No… Princess Valeria."
I touched her face and shook her body, ignoring how her blood smeared on my clothes…. I immediately lifted her hand.
As soon as my fingers wrapped around her wrist to check for a pulse, my knuckles brushed against something cold and hard lying beside her open palm.
I glanced down.
A dagger.
The blade was dark with dried blood, its ornate handle etched with the royal crest of the Human Kingdom. My brows furrowed, confusion and panic wrestling inside my chest as my eyes darted between the weapon and the Princess's lifeless face.
Why would she have a dagger?
Without thinking — without a single ounce of the common sense I apparently owned — I wrapped my fingers around the handle and lifted it.
The moment I did, the library doors exploded open.
The sound was so violent, so sudden, that I screamed and stumbled backward, landing hard on my palms as a flood of armoured royal guards poured into the room. Their boots thundered against the marble floor, their torches blazing, and every single sword they carried was drawn and pointed directly at me.
I blinked. Once. Twice.
"Drop the weapon!" The lead guard's voice cracked through the room like a whip. "Drop it now!"
My hand flew open. The dagger clattered to the floor between us, and I scrambled to my feet with both hands raised high above my head, my heart slamming so hard against my ribs I could barely breathe.
"It — it isn't what it looks like," I gasped, my voice shaking so badly the words barely formed. "I found her like this. I came to the library and she was already on the floor, I was only trying to help her, I swear on my life I did not—"
"Seize her."
Two guards lunged forward before I could finish my sentence, each one grabbing an arm and wrenching it behind my back with enough force to make me cry out. The rough iron of their gauntlets bit into my skin, and as they dragged me forward past the pool of blood, I caught a glimpse of my own reflection in the polished floor.
My hands. My arms. My clothes.
All of it was soaked in the Princess's blood.
I looked exactly like a murderer.
"Please — please listen to me," I begged, my feet scrambling uselessly against the floor as they hauled me toward the doors. "I am her personal maid. I have served her for months. Why would I ever — why would I want to—"
"Save your confession for the King," the lead guard said flatly, and that was the end of it.
They dragged me through the palace in a way that felt designed to humiliate. Every servant we passed stopped and stared. Every guard we walked by stood straighter, their eyes following me with a mixture of shock and disgust. By the time the great iron doors of the throne room were pushed open and I was thrown — literally thrown — onto the cold marble floor, my knees were scraped and my whole body was trembling.
I barely had the chance to lift my head before the room filled with the sound of heavy footsteps and low, urgent murmuring.
The King's council was already assembled, their long robes pooling around their feet as they stood in a tight, whispering cluster to the left of the throne. Several of them looked at me the way someone looks at a rat they've found in their kitchen — with revulsion, and a calm certainty that the situation needed to be dealt with immediately.
Then the doors at the far end of the room opened, and King Soren Slade walked in.
I had seen the King from a distance many times over the months I had served in the palace, but I had never been in the same room as him, not like this, not with his full attention aimed at me like a loaded crossbow. He was a tall man, broad-shouldered and cold-eyed, and the rage radiating off him as he crossed the throne room made the temperature in the entire space seem to drop by several degrees.
He stopped directly in front of me.
I opened my mouth.
His hand connected with my cheek before a single sound left my lips.
The slap was so hard my vision went white. I hit the floor sideways, my ears ringing, the metallic taste of blood blooming instantly at the corner of my mouth. I lay there for a moment, too stunned to move, the cold marble pressing against my cheek as the ringing slowly faded back into the sound of the room.
"Your Majesty, she—" one of the guards started.
"Get her up," the King said.
They hauled me back onto my knees. My cheek was burning, my eyes were watering, and every single instinct I had was screaming at me to make myself as small and invisible as possible. I kept my head bowed and my hands pressed flat against my thighs to hide the fact that they were shaking.
The council erupted.
"She must be executed immediately!" The sharp, reedy voice came from a thin man near the front, his grey robes marking him as one of the senior advisors. "A maid raising her hand against the Crown Princess? There is only one sentence for that, Your Majesty, and it must be carried out publicly. Her blood must be the atonement for what has been lost tonight, or every servant in this palace will believe they can act with impunity!"
A chorus of agreement rippled through the council, overlapping voices piling on top of each other, and I squeezed my eyes shut.
This is it, I thought, my throat tightening. This is how I die. In a room full of people who have never once learned my name, on a cold floor, covered in someone else's blood.
"Your Majesty." A different voice cut through the noise — deeper, more controlled, belonging to a heavyset man near the back whose dark blue robes I recognised as those of the King's chief diplomatic advisor. He stepped forward, his expression grave. "Before we proceed, there is something the council must consider."
The room quieted enough for him to continue.
"The Dragon King's fleet was sighted at the border three days ago. His emissaries have already confirmed that he expects to receive his bride before the week is out." He let that sit in the air for a moment before he continued, his voice dropping lower. "If Princess Valeria does not arrive as agreed, we will not simply be breaking a treaty. We will be handing the Dragon King a reason — a legitimate reason — to march. And I do not need to remind anyone in this room what happened to the last kingdom foolish enough to give him one."
The silence that followed was a different kind of silence. Heavy. Cold.
King Soren had not moved. He was standing with his back to me now, one hand braced against the arm of his throne, his knuckles pale with the force of his grip. I could see the muscles working in his jaw from where I knelt, the barely contained fury in every line of his body.
"Your Majesty," another council member said carefully, "we cannot send a dead princess to the Dragon King."
"Obviously," the King said, and the single word came out so quietly and so dangerously that every person in the room went very still.
One of the senior guards, apparently misreading the silence as permission to act, stepped forward and drew his sword. The scrape of the blade leaving its scabbard was deafeningly loud in the quiet room, and I felt every muscle in my body seize up as the tip of it turned in my direction.
King Soren lifted one hand.
The guard stopped.
Nobody breathed.
The King turned around slowly, and when his eyes found mine, what I saw in them was not grief, not confusion, not even the white-hot rage from moments before. It was something colder and far more deliberate — the look of a man doing rapid calculations behind his eyes, weighing options, measuring costs.
"Silence," he said.
The word was barely above a murmur, but it landed like a thunderclap. Every voice in the room died at once.
The King descended the two steps from the dais and walked toward me with slow, unhurried steps, stopping close enough that I had to tilt my head back to look at him. He stared down at me for a long moment, his expression unreadable, and I forced myself to hold his gaze even though every cell in my body was screaming at me to look away.
When he finally spoke, his voice was low and bone-chillingly calm — the kind of calm that was far worse than shouting.
"You killed my daughter," he said. "And for that, you will pay the ultimate price."
My heart dropped straight through the floor.
The guard with the drawn sword took one step closer, and I squeezed my eyes shut, my breath coming in short, silent gasps, my mind scrambling desperately for anything, any words, any argument that could possibly—
The King lifted his hand again. The guard halted.
"However."
My eyes flew open.
King Soren was still looking at me with that same cold, measuring expression, but something had shifted in it. He clasped his hands behind his back, tilted his head slightly, and said, "I have an ultimatum for you, maid."
The word maid landed like a small, deliberate insult — a reminder of exactly how insignificant I was in this room, in this palace, in this entire situation.
"You have two choices," he continued. "The first is the sword." He said it so casually, the way someone might suggest a choice between two dishes at dinner. "The second..." He paused, and something moved behind his eyes — something that was not quite mercy, and not quite cruelty, but lived in the cold, uncomfortable space between them. "The second is that you fix the situation you have created."
I blinked. "I — I don't understand, Your Majesty. How could I possibly—"
"You will go to the Dragon Kingdom," he said, cutting me off cleanly. "You will wear my daughter's wedding gown. You will speak her name, carry her title, and take her place at the Dragon King's side. You will secure this treaty and prevent this kingdom from going to war. And you will do all of it without a single soul — especially the Dragon King — ever suspecting that the woman standing at the altar is not Princess Valeria Slade."
The throne room went completely silent.
I stared at him.
He stared back.
And then, slowly, the full weight of what he had just said finished settling over me like a death sentence wearing a different mask — because the sword, at least, would have been quick.
"You…" My voice came out barely above a whisper. "You want me to marry the Dragon King?"
King Soren's expression did not change by even a fraction.
"I want you to be useful to me for once," he said. "Which, given that you have just destroyed the most important political arrangement this kingdom has made in fifty years, seems like the very least you owe me."
He turned away, walking back toward his throne, and added over his shoulder in that same quiet, terrible voice, "You have until sunrise to decide. After that, the offer expires and the sword is the only option left on the table."
The guards closed in around me again, and as they dragged me back toward the doors, my mind was completely, utterly blank — wiped clean by the sheer impossibility of the choice sitting in front of me.
Marry the most feared, monstrous king in the known world.
Or die before morning.
I almost laughed.