HER STEPMOTHER BURNED HER WEDDING DRESS — THEN SENT HER OWN DAUGHTER TO MARRY THE PRINCE IN HER PLACE
The dress burned before Amara could save it.
Her stepsister walked toward the palace wearing her name.
But the prince had already seen Amara’s eyes… and he knew the bride behind the veil was a lie.
The flames rose like they had been waiting for her to wake.
For one terrible moment, Amara did not understand what she was seeing. The room was still dark except for the firelight crawling up the corner wall, throwing wild shadows over the clay floor, the sleeping mat, the wooden stool, and the folded cloth that had held her whole future only hours before.
Then her mind caught up with her eyes.
Her wedding dress was burning.
The dress she had sewn for two years.
The dress she had touched more gently than she had ever touched anything in her life.
The dress she had made by lamplight after everyone else in the house had gone to sleep, when her fingers were sore from washing palace linens, when her back ached from carrying water, when her eyes stung so badly she had to blink tears away just to see the next stitch.
It was burning.
White silk curling black at the edges.
Gold thread snapping in the heat.
Bronze beadwork melting and dropping like little dark tears onto the floor.
Amara screamed.
She did not think. She only moved.
She lunged forward, reaching for the cloth as if she could pull time backward with her bare hands. But the heat hit her chest like a wall. Smoke filled her mouth. Her eyes watered. Still, she reached again, catching one scorched panel, one strip of beaded hem, one ruined piece of what had once been beautiful.
Pain flashed across her forearm.
She fell backward hard, gasping, clutching the burned fabric against her chest.
And in the doorway stood Madame Constance.
Her stepmother held a clay lamp in one hand. Her face was calm, almost peaceful, the face of a woman who had finally finished a task she had planned for a long time.
She did not look frightened by the fire.
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