---
The weeks after the wedding passed in a strange quiet.
The palace halls were gilded and glowing, filled with distant music, laughter, silk-draped politics, and foreign nobles whispering about the "bride who had once been a villainess."
But Salira—no, Iris—had found her own kind of silence.
Every afternoon, she excused herself from tea and tailoring, ducking away from the curious noble ladies who wanted gossip and the ever-watchful eyes of her new attendants. A carriage would be waiting, its crest discreetly covered. The driver never asked questions.
And at the edge of the city, past the cluttered merchant square and behind a crumbling stone wall, was a near-forgotten library choked with dust, paper, and time.
That's where Faer waited.
A man of few words and a mind like wildfire.
They never spoke of who she used to be. Never asked why she knew things she shouldn't—like the pressure needed to convert kinetic heat into magical charge, or how to build a combustion core using only bronze rings and moon-ash powder.
He brought chalk and paper. She brought madness and math.
Together, they dreamed of machines that could shake empires.
---
But today, Salira worked alone.
The sky outside was bruised with dusk, and the study room gifted to her after the wedding was filled with a quiet hum—pages fluttering in the breeze, the low hiss of candle wax melting, and the scratch of her pen.
Designs were sprawled across the floor like scattered thoughts. Her desk was overflowing. She didn't bother with tidiness anymore. Precision mattered more than polish.
This wasn't embroidery. It was war.
And tonight, her mind felt electric.
Equations poured from her fingers faster than she could process them. Weapon schematics, mechanical armor, rotating turret base models…
Half of them, she didn't even understand. And yet they felt familiar. Like echoes in her blood.
Salira… or Iris?
Her vision blurred.
And before she could even realize it, her head dipped forward—arms still resting on the parchment, her breath warm against the half-finished blueprint.
She was asleep.
---
Knock. Knock.
"Salira?"
Adam's voice, muffled behind the door.
When silence answered, he waited a moment, then gently pushed it open.
His eyes immediately widened.
The soft-lit room smelled of ink, metal, and old parchment. Blueprints were taped to the walls, gears sat in velvet boxes beside coils of wire, and notes were scrawled in different languages—some even Adam didn't recognize.
In the middle of it all, she slept. Arms folded on the desk, hair tumbling over diagrams, tools scattered like fallen stars.
He stepped closer.
Then froze.
One of the designs caught his eye.
It was… extraordinary. A mechanical defense unit, easily portable, embedded with magic runes and recoil absorption. It could change the battlefield completely.
Adam reached out, picked it up.
"What are you hiding from me, Salira…?" he whispered.
He didn't sound angry. Only stunned. Intrigued. And perhaps—just a little—awed.
He tucked the design under his arm.
But as he turned to leave, he paused.
She looked cold.
Without hesitation, he unfastened his cloak—the royal white-and-gold lined with fur—and gently draped it over her sleeping form. His hand hovered near her hair but didn't touch. The moment was… too still, too fragile.
He looked at her one last time.
And then left the room as quietly as he came.
---
The door shut.
The candle flickered.
And Salira stirred.
---
But it wasn't her body that moved—it was something else.
In her sleep, Iris gasped softly, her fingers twitching, brow furrowing like a storm passing over her skin.
Then the vision came.
---
Oil. Blood. Screams muffled by gears.
She was back in a cold, black corridor.
A little girl stood alone, her red hair tangled, holding the remains of a broken music box. Her tiny fingers trembled, stained with grease and bruises.
She was muttering to herself, tears running silently.
"Don't stop working… please… if it breaks again, Father will…"
A heavy shadow fell over the girl.
Then a hand struck.
Hard.
The child fell to the ground, metal parts scattering. Her lip split.
> "Stupid child. Girls don't build. Girls smile and bow. You are not my daughter."
The voice was venom. And then it was gone.
But Iris—watching it all—was frozen in place.
She tried to scream. She couldn't.
The scene cracked.
Now the girl was older—fourteen, maybe fifteen. Standing before a council of nobles, her hands shaking as she held up a scroll filled with complex blueprints.
They all laughed.
> "A woman? A Hasrima girl? This is absurd."
> "She's trying to outshine the crown prince."
> "Delusional. Cursed. Villainess."
Their voices stabbed like knives.
The older girl's hands began to bleed as she clutched her blueprint tighter.
> "I'll prove you wrong," she whispered.
Then the dream shattered.
---
Iris jolted awake.
Her heart pounding. Her mouth dry.
The cloak was still around her shoulders—warm, comforting. Adam's scent clung to it faintly.
She blinked, dazed.
But something lingered in her chest—a pain that wasn't hers, a memory that didn't belong to her.
Or maybe it did.
Because deep inside, a thought came unbidden, creeping up her spine like ice.
> "What if Salira never truly died?"