Ashes of the Valdori

On the day of my Recognition, I wore the late first wife's white dress by mistake.

The husband who had stood beside me for ten years regarded me with flat indifference. "A poor imitation. Unfit for the title."

The ceremony ground to a halt. The princess I had raised for a decade turned on me with open disgust:

"I knew it! You've been trying to take my mother's place all along! I will never let a scheming woman like you get what she wants!"

She hurled the sachet I had spent half a year stitching — lavender and rosemary, every thread placed by hand — into the fireplace, then beat her small…