Prologue:
Condemnation
“SERENA ROSENBERG, I HEREBY BREAK OFF MY engagement with you!” a loud voice boomed.
The Rosewood Academy’s graduation party, a grand and festive affair, was also a means for the royals and nobles enrolled at the school to make their societal debuts. I was in attendance when Crown Prince Edward declared that he would be breaking off our engagement. He spoke in a monotone, conveying that he held no sort of emotion toward me. I felt the blood drain from my face, my fingertips growing cold.
The glittering venue fell silent.
“Why? Why, Prince Edward?” I asked. “What exactly have I done?”
My desperation was apparent when I called out my fiancé’s name. Though our parents had decided upon this engagement, I had always loved and respected Prince Edward.
“What have you done, you ask?” Prince Edward spat, an expression of mockery on his handsome face. “Serena, do you truly believe that I’ve been oblivious to the countless cruel acts that you’ve done to Eleanor?”
Eleanor hailed from the house of a lower-ranking noble and was rather insignificant to me. She was an annoying saintess who could use just a little bit of light magic.
I gazed around the crowd in search of her and spotted the girl hiding behind Prince Edward, along with a few of her academy friends as they formed a protective barrier. I could barely see her expression—a face filled with melancholy.
“It’s all Eleanor’s fault!” I argued. “She tried to enchant you, Your Highness! You’re engaged to me, and yet she tried to win your affection! So I…”
I hadn’t done anything wrong. As the daughter of a duke and the fiancée of a royal, I simply showed the cheeky lower-ranking noble her place. She deserved everything that I did to her, and I couldn’t understand how I was at fault.
“Serena, Eleanor is truly a splendid lady,” Prince Edward said. “Perhaps she’d stolen my gaze a few times in the past, but I swear that nothing occurred between us. She was very much aware of her rank and never forgot that I was engaged to you. Yet you suspected us, formed your own conclusions, and treated Eleanor—a saintess and a treasure of our nation—terribly. I’ve got plenty of evidence and I absolutely cannot overlook your actions—not as the crown prince of this nation, and not as a man.”
As a man? I thought. So my suspicions are true, then. Prince Edward’s love for me had waned, and he favored Eleanor.
“I only did what was expected of me as the daughter of a duke!” I cried. “Do you not all agree?”
As the duke’s daughter, I’d made many friends throughout my academy years. I was different from that measly lower-ranking noblewoman who’d appeared out of nowhere.
I was certain that most of the students would take my side. But when I gazed around, everyone was giving me the cold shoulder. I tried to lock eyes with some of them in the crowd—a few of them had even told me that Eleanor planned to steal His Highness away from me.
No one took my side. Those who’d acted so friendly with me just yesterday stared at the ground awkwardly. Even my squires sensed the hostile air and tried their best to keep their distance.
“Your friends are the ones most aware of your wretched crimes,” His Highness said. “Though I do pity you that not a single one of them is coming to your aid.”
When he ordered his guards to take me away, I tried my best to evade their grasp.
“Prince Edward!” I screamed.
Tears streamed down my cheeks, but not once did he turn around. The guards dragged me away and out of the party venue.
✦ ✦ ✦
The king cast judgment upon me, and I was sentenced to death. My harsh sentence was due to the overexaggeration of the little pranks that I’d played on the saintess. I mean, all I’d done was try to drop a flowerpot on her head from the second floor, mix some sort of drug into tea to force her to drink it, hire a ruffian to plan a kidnapping, feign an accident to run her over with a carriage, and hire an assassin take her out!
Since all my attempts were unsuccessful, surely I should’ve been innocent. What an unfair ruling! I cried internally. God is dead!
In any case, my death had been decided—by poisoning. I was told in a patronizing tone that I’d been spared hanging as an act of mercy because I was a high-ranking noble.
Wine laced with poison was pushed upon me, but needless to say, I declined to drink it. I hadn’t done anything wrong, but they quickly tied me up and pinched my nose. When I finally had to open my mouth to breathe, they poured the liquid into my mouth. The wine barely touched my tongue as it went down my throat, and I couldn’t tell whether it tasted good or bad as my consciousness slowly faded away. The memories of my childhood until that moment flashed before my eyes as my deepest regret filled my mind.
If only I’d had capable subordinates.