The Devils Redemption

Volume One Part One

The Devil's Redemption
Part One - Always & Forever

Who teaches the sun to bow beneath the horizon each evening? Who bids the heavens fall silent at the end of the day?

Is the world altered by a thousand tiny fractures no one notices until the whole thing collapses beneath their feet? Or does change arrive all at once-swift as a blade to the throat?

I have never known the answer.
Perhaps I was never meant to.

Still, in quiet moments, my mind wanders towards dangerous things. Toward the winding roads that led me here, to this gilded prison dressed as devotion. To this day, heavy with lace and expectation. To the sound of my own heartbeat, drumming like a funeral march,.

"Serena. It is time."

The voice cleaves through my thoughts with practiced sharpness. My father's voice has always had that effect on me-cold enough to still the air itself.

The room rushes back into focus. Women swarm around me like dutiful ghosts, fastening pearls at my throat, smoothing trembling hands over silk, pinning my hair into something regal and lifeless. None of them meet my eyes for long. Perhaps they fear what they might find there.

Or perhaps they already know.

I glance around at the strangers crowding the chamber. Faces painted with admiration, envy, curiosity. Not one of them loves me. Not one of them could be trusted with the fragile, rotting thing inside my chest. Yet they stand waiting all the same, eager to witness the sacrifice dressed as celebration.

Today, I am becoming a wife.

Not for love.
Not for longing.
Not even for a duty noble enough to make the suffering worthwhile.

No-this marriage is merely a transaction. A favor owed between powerful men, paid for with my body and my future. By sundown, my name will no longer belong to me. My freedom will become a memory swallowed whole by another man's hands.

I tried to die last night.

The thought passes through me without emotion, as ordinary as commenting on the weather. The servants found me before dawn, pale and half-conscious on the bathroom floor, and now they watch me carefully, as though despair itself might leap from my skin and stain the expensive carpets.

Death, it seems, did not want me either.

I do not hate my life. Hatred requires passion, and passion is a luxury I buried years ago. What I feel instead is emptiness-a quiet surrender to the understanding that my life was never truly mine to shape. My wants have always been small, fragile things crushed beneath the weight of expectation.

"You will walk down that aisle," my father says from behind me, each word measured and merciless. "You will smile. And you will make him happy. Do you understand?"

For a moment, I stare at my reflection. Ivory silk drapes from my body like freshly fallen snow, untouched and cold. The gown is simple, almost austere, yet impossibly elegant in the way only wealth can achieve. A veil spills down my back in pale waves, soft as surrender.

I feel awful.

I look beautiful.

"Yes," I whisper at last. "I understand."

And I do.

Optimism is a cruel thing, but perhaps cruelty is survivable. So, I gather the remnants of who I am and who I shall be and begin to walk.

The marble floors echo beneath my heels as my gown trails behind me. Every step feels distant, dreamlike, as though I am watching another woman march willingly to her soon-to-be.