CHAPTER 5: THE MARCH OF REGRET

Three agonizing years passed like an endless winter.

I become a ghost within the sprawling, frozen corridors of the Northern Castle. True to his word, my husband never once looked beneath my veil. He spent his days away at war or in the company of his mistress, completely oblivious to the fact that his neglected wife was the sole princess of the Eastern Kingdom. He never bothered to learn my lineage. To him, I was just a political pawn handed over by a desperate king.

Until the morning the war horns blew.

"Your Highness! You must flee!" my maid cried out, bursting into my chambers. Her face was stark white, her hands trembling violently. "The Lord... the Lord has launched a surprise siege! His armies have breached the Eastern border! They are marching to slaughter your family!"

The parchment I was holding slipped from my numb fingers. My heart stopped.

My husband was invading my home. He was going to kill my father and brothers, entirely unaware that he was destroying the family of his own bride.

Driven by pure panic, I threw on a dark cloak and ran out of the castle, stealing a horse from the stables. I rode through the blinding snowstorms, pushing the beast to its absolute limited, desperate to reach the Eastern capital before his vanguard did.

But I was too late.

By the time I breached the city gates, the air was thick with the suffocating stench of smoke and iron. The beautiful golden banners of my childhood were burning in the streets. I ran through the palace doors, my boots slipping on blood, until I reached the grand throne room.

There he stood. My husband.

He was wiping his bloodied blade with a silk cloth, standing over the lifeless bodies of my father and brothers. He looked up as I stumbled into the room, his eyes completely indifferent. "Ah. The useless bride. What are you doing here?"

"How could you...?" A broken, ragged scream tore from my throat. I dropped to my knees beside my brother's cold hand. The grief was a physical blade piercing my chest. "How could you kill them?!"

"They stood in the way of my conquest," he replied coldly, sheathing his sword. "Why do you weep for enemy royalty?"

Before I could answer, heavy footsteps echoed from the ruined entrance of the throne room. An elite squad of foreign knights burst through the dust, led by a man in dark silver armor.

When the leader pulled off his helmet, my breath hitched.

It was him. The academy bully. Three years had hardened his features, making him look fierce and commanding, but his eyes were exactly the same. He scanned the bloody room until his gaze landed on me kneeling in the dirt.

He froze. His sword nearly slipped from his grip.

"You..." the bully whispered, his voice trembling with a mixture of horror, profound grief, and realization. "It was you. All this time, you were the princess of the East."

My husband frowned, looking between us. "You know my wife, commander?"

"Your wife?!" The bully's contorted into pure rage. In a flash of terrifying MANA, he lunged forward. SMACK!

His gauntleted hand struck my husband across the face so hard it sent the northern tyrant crashing against the stone steps of the throne.

"You blind, pathetic fool!" the bully screamed, his eyes bloodshot as he pointed a shaking fingers at me. "You ignored her! You abandoned her! The girl you treated like garbage, the family you just slaughtered... she is the one I have been looking for my entire life! She is the girl from the academy!"

My husband sat on the floor, touching his bleeding lip. For the first time in three years, he turned his head and truly looked at me. As his eyes locked onto my face, the pieces finally clicked in his mind. The realization struck him like a death blow. His face drained of all color.

"No..." my husband whispered, his voice cracking with sudden, overwhelming horror. "No, it can't be. You...you are my wife?"

But it was too late. The world had already ended.

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