Christopher.

I had waited four years to consolidate my hold on her, and I wasn't about to relinquish the trophy to my brother just because he returned from the front in glory and medals. Christopher might have the military might, but I had the crown... and an obsession with Emma that I was prepared to pursue to the bitter end, no matter how much blood had to be spilled in the palace.

The sound of arguments echoing in the imperial office meant nothing to me. I watched Emma from where I stood, erect, pale, and with that aristocratic coldness that had been burning in my gut since the day I met her.

Christopher didn't understand anything. My brother thought I was a despicable cynic who had played with his honor, that I had slept with Eleanor out of sheer lust or spite. How wrong he was. Eleanor had never meant anything to me; sleeping with her sister was an act of pure desperation, a miserable and twisted attempt to provoke her, to tear through that damned mask of ice and make her react, to wrest from her even a single glance of jealousy, rage, or pain. I wanted to see some emotion in those dark eyes that only knew how to look at me as if I were invisible.

I wanted her to love me. God knows I was going crazy trying to get her to look at me with the same devotion she had shown Christopher before he left for the frontier. But she always remained distant, immaculate, untouchable... a marble statue that refused to surrender her soul to me.

I watched as my brother took a step toward her, trying to shield her with his shadow as if she belonged to him again. I smiled a lopsided, bitter, dangerous smile, feeling a pang of sick possessiveness burn my chest.

Christopher was unaware of the extent to which my mind was consumed by her. He didn't know I wouldn't let her go so easily. I knew perfectly well what had happened between them under the willow tree the night before the war. I knew about the oath, the stolen kisses, and the gold chain she now clutched to her chest as if it were her only refuge.

They were wrong if they thought this family drama and the broken engagement were going to take the woman of my life away from me. If Emma didn't love me willingly, she would hate me, but she would be mine.

"The engagement between my daughter and the Crown Prince is canceled immediately! I will not hand over the future lady of the empire to a man who defiles her honor with his own sister-in-law!"

I completely ignored the duke's shouts, my father's stunned reaction, and the chaos that had just erupted in the room. My eyes remained fixed solely on my wife.

For the first time in four years, she looked up and held my eye contact.

I noticed her slender, trembling fingers instinctively move up to her chest, playing with the links of the gold chain—my chain—pressing it against her skin. I saw her swallow hard as she took in the pallor of my face and the coldness with which I regarded her, shuddering slightly at the full weight of my presence. Amid the scandal and accusations echoing in the office, Emma and I were trapped in our own universe, her gaze locked on mine in a silent confirmation that my brother's game had come to an end.

For the next few days, the atmosphere in the palace remained tensely calm, almost too quiet to be real. It was the kind of thick silence that precedes the worst storms on the battlefield.

I was in the imperial office with my father, reviewing the thick parchments containing accounting reports and military deployment maps of the provinces. The scent of wax, leather, and ink filled the room as the Emperor read silently, oblivious to the firestorm threatening to destroy his precious empire from within.

Suddenly, the peace of the main wing was shattered.

The duchess's shrill cries, Emma's mother, echoed through the marble corridors, drawing near with uncontrolled fury. The walls of the room barely muffled her venomous words:

"That engagement will be broken off today! How dare that shameless boy?!" the woman screamed, beside herself, ignoring imperial protocol. "To demand that my daughter silently accept her own sister as a lover! That she have no shame or respect for the lineage or the future Empress!"

I clenched the parchment in my hand until the paper crackled in my fists. A jolt of pure rage shot down my spine. So Madden had finally shown his true colors, trying to subject Emma to public humiliation in front of Eleanor.

Just as my father looked up from his desk, frowning at the interruption, the echo of soft, slow footsteps made me instinctively turn my face toward the entrance.

The heavy mahogany doors swung open. The duke, Emma's father, entered first, his face red with indignation, followed by the duchess, but for me the rest of the world vanished the moment she crossed the threshold.

Emma was coming behind her parents.

"Your Majesty, this is an intolerable affront!" the duke declared in a thunderous voice, facing the Emperor.

As the days at court passed, the anguish of seeing her became a daily torture. I spent my time watching her from the shadows of the marble corridors, desperately searching for the wild child who used to hold my hand in the gardens. But nothing remained of her. Her dark eyes, once filled with pure devotion, seemed to have lost all spark of life. She stared at me expressionlessly, as if gazing at a stranger or a ghost from the past. She almost never said a word; the icy silence with which she avoided me hurt more than any complaint or insult.

It was killing me to know that I was trapped in an unwanted commitment, maintaining that perfect facade of coldness while my brother strolled around the palace without the slightest respect for her.

One night, in the dimness of my military quarters, my trusted captain—the man who had fought beside me in the mud of the frontier and knew the true value of my pain—approached my desk. He observed the shadows beneath my eyes and the dagger I kept twirling between my fingers.

“Sir,” he murmured in a low, grave voice, taking a step forward. “The entire palace knows that this lady belongs to you. If you command it, I can cause your brother to suffer an unfortunate accident tonight. I will end the life of the crown prince for daring to lay a single finger on his wife. No one will suspect us.”

I tightened my fist around the dagger's hilt and closed my eyes for a second, feeling the bloody rush burn my chest. However, I ended up slowly shaking my head.

"No," I replied in an icy voice that echoed in the room. "Not yet."

I stood up and went over to the window overlooking the rooms in the east wing, where she was resting.

"First, I must win back her heart. I must make her mine again willingly, remind her of the oath we swore under the willow tree, and pull her out of that icy pit where my father imprisoned her," I said.

"The entire empire owes you its life, my son. Go to your chambers and rest. As you can see, we already have the future Empress that the crown needs."

I knew very well that my father valued Emma above any other noblewoman; he had always considered her the ideal consort for the future of the empire because of her poise and lineage. But seeing her there, tied to Madden—the same brother who didn't hesitate to defile his honor by secretly sleeping with Eleanor—ignited a dark fire in my gut.

The gnawing pain of betrayal transformed into a pure, searing rage. I clenched my fist over my medal until the metal cut into my skin, holding my brother's gaze as a single bloody promise was seared into my mind: I didn't care what the crown said or what wedding they had planned, Emma belonged to me, and I would burn the entire empire to the ground before I let him touch her.

Four years. Four long years in the frozen hell of the frontier, watching my comrades fall in the mud, listening to the cries of innocents caught in the war, and leaving behind every trace of the compassion I once possessed. The frontier had hardened me, cold and ruthless, carved to stone by death and blood. But beneath the chainmail and that impenetrable armor, a single purpose beat: to return to her.

The people of the empire cheered my name all along the grand avenue. Bronze trumpets blared, and flower petals rained down on my horse as if I were a war god. They welcomed me like a legendary hero, but I couldn't care less about the throne or the glory. All my eyes desperately sought was the silhouette of my wife.

As I crossed the marble arches of the throne room, my steady pace came to an abrupt halt.

All the toughness and coldness I learned the hard way on the front lines crumbled in a single second, leaving me completely disarmed.

There, on the imperial dais, stood Emma. She wore heavy silks of crimson and gold, with her usual upright posture and refined elegance. But she wasn't alone. Beside her, holding her arm with a nonchalant possessiveness, stood Madden, my older brother.

I instinctively placed my hand on my chest, clutching the silver medal she had given me beneath my clothes, searching for some kind of respite. It was then that I noticed her cleavage: resting upon her pale skin was the gold chain of my lineage, the same one I had placed upon her the night she swore to wait for me.

Emma was motionless, rigid as a marble statue. She couldn't look me in the eye. Her gaze was fixed on the ground, encased in an icy shell, a coldness so profound it shattered my soul.

—You have returned victorious, Christopher—resonated the majestic voice of my father, the Emperor, from the golden throne—.

The months on the frontier passed amidst mud, the relentless cold, and the constant smell of blood and gunpowder. Each day was a fierce battle for survival, a white hell where the brutality of war threatened to erode any man's sanity.

However, amidst the chaos of the military camp, I had only one anchor.

I held between my fingers the small silver medal that Emma had taken from her neck the night we said goodbye, the treasure she gave me in exchange for my gold chain. I remembered with almost painful clarity the way she brushed her lips against the metal before placing it in my palm, looking into my eyes, her voice breaking, as she promised, "I will always wait for you, Christopher. No matter how far you go, my heart is yours. "

I brought the medal to my lips and kissed the cold metal, desperately searching for the ghost of its jasmine scent in the mist of the military night.

It had been almost six months since I had last held her in my arms. I missed everything about her: her reserved and elegant gait, the warmth of her small hand intertwined with mine, and the pure devotion with which she gazed only at me. In a world where everyone sought the power and attention of the crown, my beloved wife was my only refuge of peace.

I closed my fist around the collar, pressing it against my chest above my chainmail. The roar of the wind in the mountains foretold another battle at dawn, but I didn't care how many enemies I had to bring down or how much blood I had to spill. I was going to survive this hell. I would return to the capital, break down any obstacle that stood between us, and make her my wife forever.

gently on her chest, adjusting it around her delicate neck while staring intently into her eyes.

"Keep this, my love," I whispered in her ear, my voice rasping with the lump in my throat. "I will return from the border unharmed, and when I do, no matter what the world or the empire dictates, I will make you my wife and take you as my one and only queen."

Ever since we were children in the vast gardens of the imperial palace, Emma was always a quiet enigma. While her sister Eleanor sought the court's attention with boisterous laughter and elaborate gowns, Emma preferred the refuge of the library or the shade of the old willows. She possessed a serene and reserved elegance that few could understand, but with me, it was always different. I never knew the exact moment when childhood affection transformed into a deep and inevitable love, but we soon became inseparable. Wherever I went, the warmth of her small hand intertwined with mine was the only constant in my life.

The night before my departure for the border to command the troops in the war, the air of the empire felt heavy, like an omen.

I secretly summoned her beneath the majestic willow tree, where the golden light of the full moon filtered its glimmers through the leaves. Emma arrived wrapped in a dark cloak, her face pale and her eyes clouded with tears she struggled to hold back. Her usual reserve completely crumbled the moment she stood before me.

"Don't go, Christopher... please," she pleaded, her voice breaking, taking a step forward and clinging desperately to the breastplate of my armor. "Let's leave here tonight. Let's flee far from the empire, where no one knows us, where neither the crown nor your father can find us. Don't leave me alone."

Hearing her plea tore at my soul. I ran my hands over her icy cheeks, wiping away her tears with my thumbs, and drew my face close to seal her lips with a hungry, deep, desperate kiss. I kissed her with the devotion of a man who knows he is walking toward death, feeling her surrender to my touch, trembling in my arms as the moon bore witness to our vow.

When we were only a few millimeters apart, I unfastened the gold chain around my neck, the one with my family crest that had been with me since birth. I put it on her.

The edge of the sword still felt heavy in my hands when I returned from the front, but Emma's promise alone was all that kept me going. I had sworn to her, under the shade of the old willows by the palace, that upon my return from the war I would take her as my wife and make her mine forever.

However, as I crossed the threshold of the imperial hall, my world crumbled.

My father, the Emperor, seated on his throne of gold and ivory, announced in a booming voice Emma's official betrothal to Madden, my older brother. The empire needed a refined Empress, of noble birth and impeccable lineage, and Emma's fate had been sealed by the crown while I bled on the battlefield.

I watched my brother from a distance. The crown prince's crown rested upon his head, but treachery gleamed in his eyes. Everyone in the palace knew, in hushed whispers behind the tapestries, that Madden was already sharing a bed with Eleanor, Emma's sister. He was cheating on her in broad daylight, defiling the family's honor as he prepared to take the woman I loved for purely political gain.

My fingers tightened around the hilt of my dagger beneath the royal cloak. Emma stood there, erect, with her characteristic impeccable elegance, clad in the heavy silks of the empire. But when our eyes met in the middle of the great hall, I saw in the depths of her dark eyes the same consuming pain that threatened to burn me to the core. She belonged to my lineage, she was to be my Empress, and I would never allow Madden's shadow to touch her.