Althea Aury Valemont.

The Sixth Princess.

The Saint of the Kingdom.

The Darling of the Capital.

The Ruby of the Temple.

Those were the names sung in the streets, the titles whispered in reverence by devotees who bowed to her shadow. To the kingdom, she was a miracle incarnate, the girl blessed by the gods, the proof of divine favor walking among humans. But behind those names, behind the immaculate smile she wore, Althea was something else entirely.

She was the daughter of a disgraced elf, a woman cast out by the very palace and temple that now paraded Althea as their living saint. Her smile, the same one etched into tapestries and portraits, had been honed since childhood, sharpened not from joy but from necessity.

She had been told again and again.

'Smile. Smile at those who scorn you. Smile for those who watch you, waiting for you to stumble. Smile, because they want to see you shine while they keep you in a cage.'

Beneath that sweetness lay pain. And rage.

Rage that burned hotter every time she compared herself to her siblings. She envied them, envied the freedom they were born into and squandered without realizing its worth.

Alaric, the First Prince, bore the weight of expectation but also privilege, his path laid out clearly before him.

The elder princesses, married off once they were deemed past their prime, were spared the grinding, unrelenting scrutiny that chained Althea's every step.

Even the younger ones, children still too untested to be caught in the Gambit, enjoyed a kind of reckless liberty she had never known.

And then there was the one who had slipped free entirely.

The Tenth Prince. Muzio.

He had run. He had vanished from the palace, slipping through its iron grasp, living outside the suffocating games of succession. He had managed what she, with all her strength and all her divine blessings, had never dared.

For that, Althea could not help but hate him a little. So when he returned, gaunt, battered, a shadow of himself, the first thing that surged up in her was not joy, but fury.

How dare he come back after leaving?

How dare he stand here, after tasting freedom like no other?

He squandered her hope that he would stay away, only to return for this?

To play some role in the succession trials?

Her hand struck before she could think, the sharp crack of her palm against his cheek echoing louder in her chest than in the air. Anger had roared through her veins, anger at his audacity, at the unfairness of his escape, at his return in such a pathetic state. But when the heat of that rage began to ebb, she truly saw him for the first time.

He looked worse now than even before he had fled. Half-dead then, and half-dead still.

As if the world beyond the palace had done nothing but mirror the neglect he had suffered inside it. One of his eyes were bandaged, his body wasted, and the careless way he carried himself told her more than words ever could, Muzio had grown so accustomed to pain, to being discarded, that he had stopped valuing his own life at all.

And that realization pierced deeper than her anger.

Because, despite everything, Althea understood what it meant to wear a mask until it hardened into skin.

Maybe, for the sake of her half-brother's companions, she had allowed them to see her, Althea, not the Sixth Princess, not the Saint, not the flawless Ruby of the Temple. Just Althea. And yet, even when stripped of titles, the role clung to her like incense in the fabric of her dress.

She had slapped him. She had help him escaped once again. She had fed him. She had healed him. She had even gone so far as to bind herself to him in a death curse, of all things, a deal as reckless as it was loathsome, done wholly on his terms.

And still, she did not understand what he was truly planning. But when she looked into his eyes, she knew one thing... that same fire burned there still, the same flame she had seen on the night he fled the palace. It was the one thing about him that had never changed, no matter how battered his body had become.

Althea had never wanted to make a deal with him. The Gods knew she had sworn she would not. But against her better judgment, she relented. She always did, when it came to him.

For the past three days, she had watched him closely. Her runaway half-brother seemed… older somehow. Not in years, but in bearing. He had shed some of that sharp-tongued petulance that once defined him, replacing it with a languid sort of poise that was no less dangerous.

His words now came measured, laced with subtle manipulation, though his face, honest to a fault, betrayed every flicker of what he left unsaid. Althea could see through him. She always could. And yet, she let him be.

For even when his barbs slipped out, snide remarks delivered with that unguarded, too-blunt expression, she could not bring herself to scold him as she once might have.

He had survived too much to still be the boy who ran away.

So when he asked her to entertain something utterly absurd, like accepting an invitation from that odious foreigner, Mr. Genevra, she did not strike him down for it. She should have.

Genevra was a snake in red frockcoat, a foreign noble who played merchant, peddling influence and trinkets in equal measure. Every instinct told her to keep her distance.

And yet… she relented again.

She saw it. A flicker of purpose behind Muzio's reckless suggestion. And in her half-brother's eyes, that familiar fire burned once more.

It was the same fierce gaze she had seen on the night he had run away from the palace, the same intense look from the night she had seen him again in the capital after years of being hidden away.

And those eyes again, tonight, as he walks to his death.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.