The king’s obsession

On the night her family was slaughtered, Princess Sable of Merveil watched as Kaspar—a man who had served her father for twenty years—murdered the King and seized the throne. She was promptly cast off to the enemy kingdom of Kovas, used as a mere bargaining chip. All she possessed was a blood-stained blade, pressed into her palm by her father in his final moments; hidden within its hilt lay a list of those he had bribed, alongside a record of his own transgressions. Within the palace of the "tyrant" King Alaric, she navigated a gauntlet of nooses, poisoned wine, and perjured witnesses, eventually uncovering the truth: her own uncle, Malo, had opened the gates to the enemy, while her father had ordered the execution of an innocent gatekeeper to cover his own tracks. After faking her death and returning home, she rallied her father’s former loyalists, carved a path through the ranks of the traitors, and stormed the royal hall. There, she laid bare the evidence of their treachery and dispatched Kaspar with her own hands. As the court knelt, awaiting a new sovereign, she simply placed the crown amidst the ashes. It was never the throne she sought—it was justice, and the man who had waited ten years for her return.