Scarlett had looked at the ring so many times that the damned diamond had started to feel like a witness.
It lay in the open velvet box on her kitchen table, small and viciously bright under the amber lamp, catching the light like it knew exactly how much trouble it had cost. Three jobs.
Three fucking jobs on top of classes, training, and the royal guard prep program, all because Scarlett had taken one look at the price and thought, fine, I'll bleed for it.
And she had.
Her back still ached from the late-night shifts at the weapons hall. Her hands still carried faint little cuts from helping at the smithy on weekends.
Half the city knew her face by now. Not as a noble daughter. Not as some polished, expensive failure from House Draven.
Just Scarlett. Tired, stubborn, foul-mouthed Scarlett, who apparently loved one woman enough to work herself half to death for a ring she still wasn't sure she had the nerve to use tonight.
She sat at the edge of her sofa in a black shirt and dark trousers, already dressed for dinner, elbows braced on her knees, the velvet box open in her palm.
One year.
A whole fucking year.
One year since Aliyah had said yes with her eyes shining and her mouth still pink from kissing.
One year of dates, arguments, laughter, soft mornings, hard nights, and the terrifying realization that Scarlett no longer understood the shape of her life without Aliyah standing somewhere inside it.
That was the problem.
No, scratch that.
That was the joy. Also the problem.
Because Aliyah was in her graduation year now. Her last year. Her final stretch at the university before the rest of her life came calling with all its jeweled hands and royal obligations.
Princess duty. Celestian expectations. The castle. The court. The whole glittering cage.
And Scarlett, in one very unguarded part of herself, was afraid.
Not the clean fear of combat, where the danger had a face and a weight and a direction.
This fear was uglier.
What if Aliyah left?
What if she went back to the Celestian castle because duty demanded it and never really came back?
What if Scarlett stayed here with her little apartment, her weapons, her books, and the ghost of a woman who had turned her life inside out?
It was stupid. Aliyah loved her. Scarlett knew that. She had felt it in a hundred quiet ways. In the key Aliyah carried to this apartment.
In the casual intimacy of their routines. In the way Aliyah touched her when no one was watching, like affection was no longer something to hide.
But love did not erase politics. Love did not erase family. Love definitely did not erase the Celestian royal machine, that elegant, manipulative bastard of an institution.
Scarlett looked down at the ring again.
Maybe tonight she would ask.
Not for marriage, not yet. She was not insane.
But maybe for something more solid. A promise. A plan. Something to anchor them against the future before it came crashing through the door.
A knock sounded.
Scarlett froze.
She wasn't expecting Aliyah for another twenty minutes, and Aliyah never knocked anyway. She had a key and the shameless confidence to use it.
Another knock. Sharper this time.
Scarlett's stomach dropped with the kind of instinct that arrived before thought.
Fuck.
She stood, slipped the ring box shut, and shoved it into the inside pocket of her coat hanging over the chair. Then she crossed the apartment and opened the door.
Her parents stood on the threshold like a bad memory dressed for the evening.
Her father looked exactly the same. Tall, severe, expensive coat, silver-threaded hair slicked back, mouth cut in its usual line of aristocratic disappointment.
Her mother stood beside him in dark green silk, beautiful in the cold ornamental way a blade was beautiful. Her jewelry glittered. Her eyes did not.
Scarlett's first thought was immediate and unfiltered.
Fuck.
Her second was worse.
How the hell did they get this address?
Neither of them waited to be invited in. Of course they didn't. Her father stepped past her as if the apartment already belonged to him by blood-right contamination.
Her mother followed with a glance around the room so faintly disgusted it made Scarlett want to break something expensive.
"What do you want?" Scarlett asked, shutting the door harder than necessary.
Her father turned. "Still no manners."
Scarlett folded her arms. "And yet here I am, surviving."
Her mother's gaze swept over Scarlett's clothes, the set table, the low candlelight. She was too sharp not to understand what she was seeing. "You were expecting her."
The way she said her made Scarlett's shoulders lock.
"Yes," Scarlett said flatly.
Her father's mouth tightened. "Then this is well timed."
The quiet in the room changed. Thickened.
Scarlett knew that tone. She had grown up under it. It was the sound of control reaching for her throat.
"She'll be here soon," Scarlett said. "So whatever bullshit you came to dump on my floor, do it fast."
Her mother laughed once under her breath. Not amused. Just cruel. "You always did mistake vulgarity for strength."
"And you always mistook money for love. We all have hobbies."
Her father stepped closer. "Did you still not get the princess money like we asked you?"
There it was.
No preamble. No elegance. Just the rot stripped bare.
Scarlett felt something cold and ugly open beneath her ribs.
For one wild second, she was nineteen again, standing in her family's drawing room while her parents discussed her future like they were planning the purchase of a horse.
A Celestian princess at the university, her mother had said. Rich. Romantic. Sheltered enough to be manageable. Get close. Secure your position. Make yourself useful for once.
At the beginning, Scarlett had listened.
That was the filthiest part.
At the beginning, the plan had existed. She had known who Aliyah was before she ever approached her. She had known exactly what House Draven hoped to gain. Influence. Proximity. Access. Maybe money, if they could twist it right.
Then Aliyah had smiled at her with that dry, unimpressed mouth. Then Aliyah had looked at her like she was worth listening to. Then Aliyah had trusted her, laughed with her, kissed her, loved her.
And the whole rotten plan had become unbearable.
"I never took a damn thing from her," Scarlett said.
Her mother's expression sharpened. "Then what have you been doing for the last year?"
Loving her, Scarlett nearly said.
The answer stayed locked behind her teeth.
Her father gave a harsh, humorless exhale. "We did not send you to charm a princess for nothing."
Scarlett's laugh came out vicious. "You didn't send me anywhere. I left."
"You left with our name," her father snapped. "Our expectations. Our investment."
"Investment?" Scarlett stepped closer now, anger waking hot and clean in her blood. "Is that what this is to you? You want me to crawl into a woman's bed for your account books?"
Her mother's eyes flashed. "Do not pretend moral outrage now. You understood perfectly in the beginning."
The words hit like a slap, not because they were false, but because they were not false enough.
Scarlett's jaw locked.
Yes. In the beginning she had understood. She had let herself be pointed toward Aliyah like a knife. She had thought maybe she could use the princess, charm her, take what House Draven wanted, and walk away with a lighter conscience than she deserved.
Instead she had fallen in love.
Stupidly. Completely. Beyond recovery.
And now here were her parents, dragging the corpse of that original sin into her fucking living room.
"That was before," Scarlett said, low and dangerous. "It stopped being that before I ever touched her."
Her father sneered. "Did it? Or did you simply get soft?"
Scarlett wanted to hit him. She really, really wanted to hit him. Years of discipline were the only reason his teeth stayed where they were.
"I'm done with you," she said. "Get out."
Her mother looked at the set table again, at the candles, at the second glass waiting by the plates. Then she said, with exquisite malice, "Does she know?"
Scarlett went still.
The silence that followed was so absolute it seemed to swallow the whole room.
No.
Aliyah did not know.
Scarlett had told herself a thousand times she would explain. Tell her everything. The beginning, the lie, the shame of it, the way it had changed almost immediately into something real. But every time she imagined saying the words, she saw Aliyah's face and lost her nerve.
Coward, a voice inside her hissed.
Her mother smiled then, small and lethal. "I thought not."
The lock clicked.
Scarlett's blood turned to ice.
The front door opened behind her.
Aliyah stepped inside with her key still in hand, the evening air following in around her like a chill.
She looked beautiful, as always, dressed for their anniversary dinner, black hair falling over one shoulder, red eyes bright and alive.
Then she looked from Scarlett, to Scarlett's parents, to the expression on Scarlett's face.
And whatever she had heard on the other side of that door had already done its damage.
Aliyah's mouth tightened. Her gaze went hard.
When she spoke, her voice was not loud. That made it worse.
"Is this true?"