en

llness settled over the bedchamber. The lingering scent

a terrified hen, clutching her bruised neck while her maids scrambled behind her. My hands were

bitter memories of the p

realm, gifted with an unparalleled understanding of biological chemistry and medicinal flo

a latent, crippling bloodline disease. It was my mother who spent sleepless nights formulating rare tinct

He married Eleanor for her pure dragon lineage, banishing my mother to a dilapidated pa

had been: "Aspen, ne

into Prince Krishna in a desperate search for love and bel

thal and status to Deena and submit to being sold off to the ruined, paralyzed Boyce Carlisle, the final pillar of my san

it was a sheer miracle that I o

rkness, my soul had crossed the dimensional void into a para

ting at the absolute top of the nation's premier medical academy. I devoted that entire lifetime to clinical surgery, neurotrauma, and advanced phar

yes on my deathbed-only to wake up in a sudden gasp back in

ed for Prince Krishna's scraps

med with centuries of cutting-edge clinical mastery that this

of sorrow was gone, replaced

m I had taken from Deena. From the hidden compartment in my mother's wooden ch

earl extract used exclusively in royal court cosmetics and activated by body

unbearable agony and itching. It mimicked a disgusting, incurable pestilence, yet after twelve hours, the c

recise pinch of the powder into Deena's c

days away, she would order her servants to sneak back and retr

t bride's veil on their wedding night, only to recoil in shee

s. Consider this the first instal

jar in a visible sh

nal handmaiden, slipped into the room carrying a bowl

ring. They say... they say the Elder is exiling you to the frozen wasteland

face. Penny had been with me since childhood, the only

"I leave for Blackwood Keep at dawn. It is a dangerous

nd tightly. "Wherever you go, my lady, Penny will go. Even if B

and every medical ledger in this room, Penny. We aren't

r trunks, I looked out toward

moves we

Krishna an unforgettab

absolute control o

al Boyce

o the greatest surgeon of two worlds, he was the ultimate clinical c