The Betrayed Heir: Reborn To Rule The Star Domain

Chapter 3: I Refuse to Marry You

His father was alone in the study, signing last-minute guest cards with a brush he held like a sword.

Lord Dorian Valerius did not look up when Yulen walked in. “If this is about the seating chart, the Fang family sits where I put them. I don’t care who they’re feuding with.”

“Father.”

Something in the word made the brush stop.

Yulen had rehearsed this on the walk over. A hundred ways to say it. Your life is going to end today. I know because I watched it end. None of them survived contact with the man in front of him: broad-shouldered, grey at the temples, alive. Alive, and annoyed about a seating chart.

“I need one hour,” Yulen said. “One hour of you trusting me without asking why. Keep the Imperial escort outside the gates. Keep every guard you have within shouting distance. And whatever I say in that hall, stand behind me.”

Dorian set the brush down. He studied his son the way he studied a battlefield, slowly, missing nothing. “You have never once asked me to trust you.”

“I know.”

“You were always the boy who asked for permission.”

“I know.”

A long silence. Outside, the bells rang the first call.

Then his father picked up his sword from the stand, buckled it on over his wedding robes, and said, “Then I’ll sit in the front row and look like a fool. Don’t make me regret it.”

Yulen bowed so low his forehead nearly touched the floor, and he did it so his father wouldn’t see his face.

—

The Valerius ancestral hall had seated three hundred for the last treaty of the Seven Seats. Today it held three hundred and twelve, and every one of them was smiling.

Red lanterns. Red silk. Gold phoenix banners hanging from the beams. Envoys from six of the seven guardian clans in the front rows, nobles and ministers behind them, and in a carved seat of honor on the left, easy and relaxed, Crown Prince Lucien, wearing the faintly bored smile of a man attending someone else’s happiness. Minister Harrow sat at his elbow. On Harrow’s lap rested a black lacquer tray.

And at the end of the long red carpet, beneath an arch of white plum blossoms, stood the bride.

Isabella wore crimson and gold, a veil of pearls, and a face so soft and so lovely that three hundred strangers had already decided to love her. She was looking at him with those wide, shining eyes. The eyes of the girl with the noodle bowl.

Yulen walked the carpet slowly. Eleven steps. He had counted them once, years ago, imagining this moment.

He had not imagined this.

“The groom approaches,” the wedding master chanted. “Let the families witness—”

Yulen stopped three steps short of the arch.

Isabella tilted her head, smiling, and lifted her hand toward him.

He did not take it.

The smile held. But a small, tight line appeared between her eyebrows, so faint no one else in the hall would have seen it. He had spent ten years learning this woman’s face. He had spent three more in the dark, studying it from memory.

He knew exactly what that line meant. This is not in the script.

“Before we exchange vows,” Yulen said, and his voice carried through the silent hall, “I have one question.”

“Yulen—” the wedding master began.

“How much did the Crown Prince promise you,” he said gently, “for selling my family’s blood?”

Someone dropped a teacup.

It shattered on the stone in the dead quiet, and three hundred and twelve people stopped breathing together.

Isabella did not flinch. He had to give her that. Her smile faltered, folded, and slid into a wounded, trembling confusion so perfect it might have been taught in a school.

“Husband…” Her voice cracked. “You’re nervous. You’re— Please, not in front of everyone.”

“Answer me.”

Her eyes filled. Tears spilled over, one clean line down each cheek, right on time.

And Yulen watched them fall and felt something he did not expect. Not rage. Not even pain.

Recognition.

Ten years. Ten years he had thought of her tears as proof of her heart. Now he saw how they came: fast, evenly, with no redness around the eyes, no catch in the breath. She did not cry like a woman who was hurt. She cried like a woman turning a tap.

How many times had she done that to him? How many arguments had he lost with a tear?

“I refuse to marry you,” Yulen said.

The hall exploded.

Chairs scraped. Voices overlapped. An old duchess fainted into the arms of her maid with the dedication of a woman who had waited her whole life for this scene. From the front rows, a thin, wheezing voice cut through: “Child? Isabella, child, what is he saying?”

Madam Rowe, the bride’s mother, struggling out of her chair, one hand pressed to her chest, the sick woman whose medicine had cost his clan a fortune.

“He’s unwell, Mother,” Isabella said quickly, “he’s been drinking—”

“My son,” said Lord Dorian Valerius from the front row, in a voice like gravel in a bucket, “does not drink at his own wedding.”

A ripple of nervous laughter. His father had not moved from his seat. One hand rested on his sword. He did not look at Yulen. He looked at the Imperial Guards by the doors, and they looked back, and the air between them thickened.

That was when the Crown Prince stood.

Slowly. Pleasantly. Lucien smoothed his crimson sleeves and walked into the aisle, and the noise died around him like candles going out.

“Lord Valerius’s heir,” he said warmly. “A groom’s cold feet are forgivable. Every man here has felt them.” A few chuckles. “But Madam Rowe and her daughter have been wards of the Imperial Charity Hall for six years. Under my patronage.” He let the sentence settle. “To slander her publicly, in front of the court, is to slander the throne’s own charity.”

He stopped three paces from Yulen. Close enough that Yulen could see the golden threads in his collar. Close enough to see the flicker in his eyes, because the Crown Prince was not a stupid man, and he was already asking himself how Yulen had known.

“Apologize,” Lucien said softly, “to the lady. Kneel, here, now, in front of the guests, and ask her forgiveness. And perhaps we can all agree you were overcome by nerves.”

He smiled.

“Or I will consider it an insult to the Imperial family, and I will petition my father to have the Imperial Court hear this matter. I assure you, Yulen, the court is not as patient as I am.”

Behind him, Minister Harrow’s fingers tightened on the black lacquer tray.

Kneel.

In his first life, he had knelt. For Isabella. For peace. For the sake of everyone smiling in this room. He had knelt so many times that when they finally chained him to the iron ring, his knees already knew the way.

Yulen looked at the Prince. Then he did something nobody in the hall expected.

He smiled back.

“Your Highness,” he said, “I would be honored if the court heard this. In fact, I’d like it to hear all of it. I’ve brought receipts.”