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This… isn't a story of a happily ever after.
This… is not a tale of forgiveness.
No.
This is a tale of vengeance—yes, vengeance—but also of regret… of remorse… of redemption…
But let me make it crystal clear once more—this is not a story of forgiveness.
And here I stand—tall, unyielding, triumphant… glorious... I have won.
Yet, beneath this mask of victory, all that pulses through me is… pain.
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Snow fell over Devonshire like a funeral veil—soft, soundless, suffocating.
The great spires of the Northern duchy stood cloaked in white, cold and pristine as the legacy they upheld. But beneath the marble and stone, behind velvet drapes and silent corridors, grief bloomed—slow, secret, and unseen.
Vivian Von Thesse had once been the Eastern Jewel. A vision of grace, with hair like woven starlight and eyes as bright and brittle as winter skies.
But her beauty was her prison. Her laughter, a mask.
Born the daughter of Duke Von Thesse—a man as cruel as he was powerful—Vivian had never known love, only obedience.
He did not raise her. He shaped her.
When the time came, he sold her without hesitation—an elegant pawn to be placed in the North, offered to Damon Devonshire, the stoic Swordmaster Duke who commanded fear and respect like breath.
Damon did not want her.
But he married her.
His vassals opinion was crucial.
Vivian was the perfect match for the Duke of the North.
And he did not harm her.
That, in itself, felt like a miracle.
At least it is to Vivian, who had been raised on a steady diet of silent suffering and scorn.
Damon's cold civility felt almost like kindness. He never raised his voice. He never raised his hand. He treated her like porcelain: not treasured, only untouched.
And so, inevitably, she fell.
Not in passion, nor in hope—Vivian's love for her husband bloomed quietly, like frost on glass. Slow and painful. She gave her heart without expectation, without complaint. Without ever being asked.
But love that is not returned is not love—it is sacrifice.
She endured in silence. Until the day the ghost returned.
Diana.
Damon's childhood friend. The gardener's daughter. The girl with dirt beneath her fingernails and sunshine in her laughter.
She had vanished the moment Damon was forced into marriage, and he had let her go. But when she returned two years later, something in him cracked open.
Vivian saw it.
She saw it in the way his eyes softened, in the way his lips remembered how to smile.
She saw it in the way he forgot her.
Though she wore the Devonshire crest, bore the title of Duchess, and fulfilled every duty, it was Diana who stood at Damon's side. It was Diana who claimed the warmth of his gaze. The tenderness of his touch.
And Vivian—beloved by no one—watched it all from behind her gilded smile.
When he came to her bed, it was not for passion but for posterity. A duchess must provide an heir, after all. And Vivian, with her heart long hollowed by neglect, submitted quietly, as always.
But when she discovered she was pregnant, something in her cracked.
Not because of Damon. Not because of Diana.
Because of the child.
Because she could not bear to raise her daughter in a house where love was a stranger. Where a mother's silence might become her daughter's inheritance.
So Vivian ran.
Somewhere far.
Far away from the empire, far away from the duchy.
One winter's night, with the help of a single loyal maid and no more than the clothes on her back, she slipped into the snow and disappeared.
She crossed kingdoms, traversed rivers and mountains, until she found a place untouched by courts or crowns—a forgotten village called Gardenia.
There, in the shadow of the world, she gave birth alone…
And she named her daughter Vivica.
A child born of duty and heartbreak, yet radiant—possessing her father's raven-black hair, his emerald eyes, and her mother's haunting grace.
For four precious years, they lived as if the past had never happened.
Vivian mended clothes, told bedtime stories, planted herbs in the garden. She held her daughter close each night, as if she could shield her from the cruel truths of bloodlines and titles. She laughed more than she ever had, even as her body withered under the weight of an unknown sickness.
And then, one spring morning, she did not wake.
Her arms still wrapped protectively around Vivica. Her lips still parted from whispering lullabies.
No healer could save her. No priest could explain the ailment. It was as if her heart had simply… given up.
Vivica, only four, sat silently beside her mother's cooling form until the midwife arrived.
She did not cry—not then. Not until later, when the villagers gently took her hand and led her away. They placed her in the village orphanage, where the walls were warm and the food was plain but kind.
She wept for weeks. Then, slowly, the crying dulled. The pain settled into something quieter. Bearable.
She learned to smile again, just a little, when the wind smelled like lavender or when the other children held her hand.
And then, one day… the man came.
He stood at the door like a shadow cast from another life—tall, grim, dressed in the black and silver of the North.
His eyes, the same green as hers, were cold as the snow outside. His voice, when he finally spoke, was low and iron-clad.
"I've come to take you home."
Vivica stared at him.
This man—this stranger with her mother's sadness in his eyes—was her father.
Damon Devonshire.
The Duke of the North.
And just like that, the peace she had clung to shattered like glass beneath her small feet.
**
The man was too tall.
He filled the whole doorway, like a shadow with a face. His coat was black, and his eyes were green like the woods that scared her at night. He didn't smile. Not even a little.
Vivica gripped her blanket tighter. It had a hole in it and smelled like the orphanage soap, but it was hers. It was warm.
The headmistress's hand was soft on her back. "Vivica," she said gently. "This is your father."
Father...?
Vivica blinked. She didn't understand. Her mother never said that word. Not really. Only once, maybe twice, in the dark, when her voice got shaky and sad. She always said, "He's far away. Too far to come."
This man didn't look far away. He looked close. Too close.
Vivica shook her head a little, but the headmistress kept her there. "Say hello," she whispered.
But the man didn't say hello either. He just stared.
Then he said something. Only one thing.
"I've come to take you home."
Home.
Home to Vivica was the little house with the crooked chimney. Home was her mother's arms and the purple flowers hanging in the window and the way her voice sounded when she sang… "Hush, little flame, the stars will keep you safe..."
That was home.
Her home.
But that home was gone. Her mother was gone.
Vivica looked at the man. She waited for something—for a hug, or a smile, or even a "sorry"—but there was nothing.
Only a glove. A hand reaching out.
"You are a Devonshire," he said. "You belong with me."
Devonshire.
She didn't like how that word tasted.
She looked at his hand. It didn't look like her mother's. It didn't look warm. It didn't look safe.
She remembered a word her mother used when she thought Vivica was sleeping. A heavy word. A sad word.
Duty.
Vivica didn't know all the big words grown-ups used. But she knew how duty felt. Like cold. Like doors closing. Like being alone.
She whispered, "I don't want to go..."
For a second—just a second—Damon's face looked different. Like he didn't expect that. But it went away. His face went back to stone.
"This is not a choice," he stated.
And just like that, the world felt smaller. Like the air was too tight to breathe.
The man turned and walked away, not waiting for her to follow.
The headmistress looked sad. But she didn't stop him.
Vivica looked down. Her blanket had fallen on the floor.
She didn't pick it up.
She walked out into the snow, all by herself. Her feet were cold. Her heart was colder.
And as the carriage took her farther and farther from Gardenia, she looked out the window at the white world rushing by.
She didn't cry.
She just whispered a song.
"Little star, little flame... even when I'm gone, I'll come back in your name..."