ISABELLA'S POV
The chains around my wrists were too tight.
Not tight enough to break bone but tight enough to remind me that I didn't belong here. That whatever this place was, this gilded hall with its crimson banners and shadow-drenched marble I had entered it not as a guest, or a subject, or even a criminal…
But as a threat.
"On your knees," the guard growled behind me.
I didn't kneel.
The slap came fast iron to cheek, my lip splitting against the force of it. Copper flooded my tongue. My knees buckled before I could stop them, and I hit the floor hard. The stone was cold. Colder than it should've been, like the palace itself had never known warmth.
A voice echoed across the chamber. Deep. Bored.
"Bring her forward."
They dragged me like a sack of grain.
Every eye in the room watched me. Nobles in embroidered robes sat high above me in judgment, their faces twisted into masks of disgust. I knew what they saw: a girl in torn servant's clothes, bruised, bleeding, and too proud to cry.
I should've cried. Queens cry before they die. It makes the moment more poetic.
But I wasn't a queen. I was nothing.
Until now.
They threw me down in front of a throne I couldn't bear to look at. Not yet. The crown sat on it like it was waiting for someone, someone who'd never show up.
I bit the inside of my cheek. I wouldn't ask again what I was accused of. I'd already been told.
Treason.
The prince had been murdered.
And apparently, I, Isabella, palace laundress, orphan of the Outer Province, barely twenty years old was the one who had killed him.
"Lady Isabella of no house," the high judge sneered, rising from his velvet-lined seat. "You stand accused of regicide. Your life belongs to the crown."
I raised my head.
"My life never belonged to the crown."
Gasps.
He stepped down. His robe whispered against the floor like it was telling secrets. "Then let the crown decide what to do with you."
My stomach turned.
Because I knew what that meant.
The Queen's Trial.
They were going to put me through it. The test designed for blood-born heirs. For those chosen to rule. For daughters of noble lineages and ancient magic.
Not for girls who used to scrub the prince's boots.
I swallowed hard. "I'm not royalty. You can't"
"The throne will decide."
The crowd stirred like wolves catching the scent of blood. This wasn't justice.
This was sport.
Two guards dragged me to the platform. The crown sat in the center, ancient and glowing faintly, as if it were alive. The closer I got, the more it hummed in my skull. Like it was… watching me.
"You must place your hand beneath it," the judge said. "If it rejects you, you'll burn."
"And if it doesn't?" I asked.
He didn't answer.
No one ever survived the crown's judgment by accident.
My legs shook as I stepped onto the dais. I looked back no one watched with pity. No one cared.
I turned to the crown.
It's just metal, I told myself.
But when I knelt and raised my hand beneath it, the air crackled like lightning. My palm hovered beneath the base. The world held its breath.
Then
Pain.
Not in my skin, not in my bones deeper.
My blood screamed. My vision went white-hot. A light exploded from the base of the crown, and voices not voices, memories rushed into me like a flood.
War. Love. Betrayal. Fire.
And then it stopped.
Silence.
The crown… lowered itself onto my head.
Gasps turned to chaos.
Someone shouted, "That's impossible!"
I fell to my knees. The crown burned against my skull, but it didn't kill me. It had chosen me.
And in that moment, I knew…
I wasn't being punished.
I was being crowned.