OPHELIA
Blood is harder to wash off marble than people think.
It seeps into the tiny cracks, darkening the white stone until the palace servants spend hours on their hands and knees pretending they don't know whose blood it is.I learned that when I was nine.
The man lunged first.
The metal flashed beneath the moonlight, its shine piercing the silence of the ruined courtyard. I ducked instinctively, the blade singing just above my head as strands of silver-blonde hair slipped free from my braid.
He was fast.
Good.
Most weren't.
I twisted on my heel, catching his wrist before he could recover. His momentum became mine. A sharp pull. One step forward. My elbow crashed into his ribs. A crack. He staggered, but he didn't fall. Interesting.
The masked man smiled beneath the black cloth covering the lower half of his face.
"Again," he ordered.
I rolled my eyes.
"You said that six times already."
"Then stop disappointing me."
"Oh, I plan to."
He attacked harder this time.
No hesitation.
No warning.
Exactly how Father insisted every real fight would begin.
The assassin's twin daggers blurred toward me. Left. Right. High.
I blocked one with my forearm guard, ducked beneath the second, then slid across the rain-slick stone. My own dagger found the gap beneath his arm before he could pivot.
The point stopped against leather.
His heart.
Silence settled over the courtyard.
Neither of us moved.
Finally, he laughed.
"Better."
I lowered the blade.
"You almost stabbed me."
"I did stab you." I looked down.
A thin red line stretched across my sleeve.
"...You nicked me."
His grin widened.
I sighed dramatically.
"I liked this shirt."
He snorted.
"If your biggest concern after dying is your wardrobe, then perhaps you're ready."
Ready.
That word again.
Everyone in the kingdom thought Princess Ophelia Valmont spent her nights reading poetry beneath candlelight.
They imagined I embroidered flowers.
Played the harp. Practiced graceful dances for future royal banquets. The court adored that version of me. She didn't exist.
Instead, every night after the palace bells rang midnight, I climbed through a hidden passage behind my bedchamber fireplace, descended beneath Castle Valmont, and trained until dawn with the kingdom's deadliest killers.
No one knew.
Not the nobles.
Not the servants.
Not even my older brother.
VOUS LISEZ
The Assassin's Crown
FantasyPrincess Ophelia Valmont has spent her entire life playing two roles. By day, she is the perfect royal heir-graceful, obedient, and admired by every noble in the Kingdom of Valmont. By night, she trains in the shadows as her family's greatest secret...
