Chapter 3
Dara made it to her room entirely on momentum and spite.
Not composure. Not elegance. Not even full awareness.
Just enough offended force to keep moving until the door shut behind her and the hallway, the receiving room, the monarchy, and all associated disasters were mercifully placed on the other side of solid wood.
Grace entered behind her. “My lady—”
“I need to be alone.”
The words came out too fast, too tight, but Grace only paused for half a second before bowing her head.
“Of course, my lady.”
Bless her.
No questions. No hovering. No concern sharpened into practical interference. Just a quiet retreat and the soft click of the door closing.
Silence fell.
Dara stood in the middle of her room for one long second.
Then another.
Then she made a noise of pure personal offense, crossed the floor in three quick steps, and flung herself face-first onto the bed.
The mattress received her with criminal softness.
“This is bad,” she said into the coverlet.
Cai appeared on the canopy frame above her. “Yes.”
She rolled over violently onto her back, hair everywhere, one sleeve half twisted, dignity abandoned somewhere in the corridor.
“No,” she said, pointing at him. “For me.”
“Yes,” Cai said again, very pleased. “That is what makes it good.”
Dara made a strangled sound and flopped one arm over her eyes.
The Crown Prince.
Not a lord. Not some suspiciously competent visiting nobleman. Not an overly observant investor with alarming posture and a talent for appearing wherever her life became difficult.
The Crown Prince who had been watching her.
Who had walked through her estate. Who had held her hand at her bedside like he had every right in the world to do so.
Who had filled her home with guards and calm authority and looked at her as if waking up had personally improved the quality of his existence.
Dara turned her face into the pillow and groaned.
When she turned back toward the canopy, the thought had settled fully, cold and precise.
No.
Because this was not merely embarrassing.
This was not even one more dramatic inconvenience in a world that seemed determined to punish her every time she tried to pursue comfort responsibly.
This was a quest problem.
A route problem.
A reward problem.
A one-billion-dollar problem.
Dara stared at the bed curtains as the pieces connected in the only order that mattered.
“I’m trying to get exiled,” she said slowly.
Cai nodded. “Yes.”
“I’m trying to get exiled and go home.”
“Yes.”
“And if I succeed, I get one billion dollars.”
“Yes.”
Dara clutched a pillow to her chest. “One billion.”
“Still yes.”
Not symbolic money. Not abstract wealth. Not “enough to be comfortable if she budgeted.”
A billion.
Money that meant she would never again have to stand in cheap work shoes for fifteen hours while customers treated her like a condiment dispenser with feelings.
Money that meant a fridge full of actual food.
Cold drinks whenever she wanted. Delivery without guilt.
A couch that belonged only to her. Blackout curtains.
The best television money could buy. Asian dramas all day if she felt like it.
Snacks without math. Sleep without alarms. Freedom.
Independence. A private island if she wanted to be dramatic. A jet if she wanted to be ridiculous.
The deeply healing experience of never again having to ask anyone for permission to live comfortably.
That was the dream.
That was the payout.
That was the point.
And now—
Dara went still. “Oh no.”
Cai perked up.
She ignored him. “The Crown Prince.”
“Yes.”
“He can exile people.”
“Yes.”
The words landed with dreadful precision.
He could exile people.
Not in the vague, noble-influence, perhaps-someday-relevant way. In the actual way. Crown power. Royal authority. The ability to do the one thing her entire route was built around.
And from everything he had done over the last three days—the bedside vigil, the hand-holding, the additional guards, the estate takeover, the maddeningly calm insistence on her safety—he very obviously had no intention of exiling her.
Dara sat bolt upright so fast the pillow slipped from her lap. “No.”
Cai, who had the decency not to interrupt that one, only watched.
“He has the authority to exile me,” she said, staring straight ahead. “And he very clearly has no intention of using it.”
A small silence followed.
Then Cai said, “That does appear to be the problem.”
Dara looked at him with open betrayal. “That is not a problem. That is a catastrophe.”
“Yes.”
She grabbed the pillow again and hugged it so hard it nearly folded in half.
That was what made this worse than an ordinary disaster.
If Lord Valerius had merely turned out to be some powerful nobleman, that still would have been bad. Very bad. But potentially survivable.
A nobleman could be avoided. Offended. Outwaited. Outmaneuvered. At minimum, placed at a safe emotional distance through enough strategic coldness.
The Crown Prince?
No.
The Crown Prince was not a man one casually wriggled free of. The Crown Prince had resources, authority, and—most troubling of all—opinions about her.
Dara collapsed sideways against the pillows. “What am I supposed to do now?”
Cai floated down onto the bed, folding his claws with infuriating serenity. “That depends. Are you asking as a villainess, a political actor, or a woman whose path to obscene wealth has become endangered by royal affection?”
Dara looked at him. “I hate how complete that sentence was.”
He bowed his little head. “I try.”
She flopped face-down again.
Then, in one dramatic motion, rolled onto her back so hard the blanket bunched at her knees.
The evil villainess, conqueror of roads and accidental destroyer of municipal incompetence, huffing on her bed like a teenager denied transport rights.
Honestly, Dara would have laughed at herself if her life had not been under attack from sincerity.
Because yes.
That was another part of the problem.
Not just the title. Not just the power. Not just the route disaster.
The friendship of it all.
Dara went still.
Then sat up more slowly this time, eyes narrowing as a second layer of horror slid into place.
“Oh no.”
Cai blinked. “What now?”
“I shared my popcorn chicken with him.”
“…yes.”
“And my boba.”
A pause.
“Yes.”
Dara stared into nothing.
“I shared my popcorn chicken and my boba drink with the Crown Prince because I thought we were friends.”
The room went quiet.
Even Cai, menace though he was, gave that statement a respectful moment.
Because yes.
That was awful.
Not in the grand tragic way of poets and dying heroines.
In the much more specific, much more Dara way of realizing she had sorted a person into the wrong emotional category and was now suffering the consequences.
She had thought he was just—him.
A little irritating. Too observant. Too calm. Too good at appearing wherever her selfish little projects became suspiciously impressive.
But still him.
Someone she could hand food to. Someone she could talk to without mentally bowing around every word. Someone she could share a drink with because friends shared drinks.
“Hmph,” she said darkly.
Cai tilted his head. “That sounded offended.”
“I am offended.”
“At the monarchy?”
“At the category error.”
He nodded as though that made perfect sense.
And it did.
That was what hurt, in the small sharp way she did not want to examine too closely.
Not that he had hidden it.
Of course he had hidden it. Crown Princes probably did not wander around announcing themselves every time they entered a room.
Political caution made sense. Walking into a troubled region and loudly declaring royal identity would have been idiotic, and Lord Valerius—apparently Prince Valerius—was many things, but not idiotic.
Dara could understand the broad shape of why he might have concealed it.
That did not mean she had to like it.
“I can guess why he hid it,” she muttered.
Cai watched her.
“I still don’t like it.”
“Ah,” Cai said. “That I believe.”
Dara scowled and dropped back against the pillows.
Because now every previous interaction had to be re-sorted.
Every conversation. Every question. Every look. Every moment she had spent thinking she was dealing with a sharp, inconvenient man who was still, at least, operating inside the same emotional frame she was.
And now that frame was gone.
Now it was Crown Prince.
Investigator.
Power.
Distance.
Danger.
Protection.
Complications.
Too many complications.
Then one more thought struck her with the full force of domestic insult.
She sat up again. “The guards.”
“Yes?”
“The estate.”
“Yes?”
“The fact that no one is letting me go anywhere.”
Cai’s whiskers twitched.
Dara stared. “Am I grounded?”
Cai considered this with grave seriousness. “By your father and the Crown Prince, yes.”
Dara made a sound of pure outrage and threw herself back onto the bed. “This is humiliating.”
“It is somewhat funny.”
“It is not funny.”
“You are a grown woman, a noble heiress, and a self-declared villainess being grounded by your father and the heir to the kingdom.”
Dara snatched up the nearest pillow and hurled it at him.
He dodged. Obviously.
The pillow hit the bedpost and slumped sideways in moral failure.
Grounded.
Actually grounded.
She had nearly been kidnapped, slept for two days, woken into a militarized estate, and now discovered she was effectively under house arrest because the Crown Prince had feelings and everyone around her had apparently decided her freedom of movement was an optional luxury.
This was not the soft life.
This was not the path to one billion dollars.
This was not the route to freedom, independence, private island ownership, or the glorious future in which she stocked her own refrigerator with expensive nonsense and watched television in peace while no one tried to politically attach themselves to her existence.
Dara stared at the ceiling.
And slowly, very slowly, her expression changed.
The panic did not leave.
It sharpened.
Because now she could finally see the shape of the thing standing in front of her.
He was not just a problem. Not merely a man with a title, or an emotionally compromising royal catastrophe.
He was the point at which her route became dangerous in a whole new way.
The one person in the kingdom most capable of blocking exile—and most inclined, from every sign she had seen, to do exactly that.
Dara’s eyes widened.
Her mouth parted.
And with the slow, dawning horror of a woman who had finally assembled all the pieces into one unbearable picture, she whispered, “Oh no.”
Cai looked at her.
Dara slowly turned her head toward him. “I finally met the final boss.”
There was one beat of silence.
Then Cai smiled.
And Dara, flat on her back in a bed too soft for this level of suffering, stared up at the canopy and realized with total, mission-threatening clarity that she had absolutely no idea how to beat him.