"You go ahead," Prince Adrian said, smiling at the crimson‑clad girl in his arms; "I have already chosen." The smile was a blade. It slid through the High Hall and left a cold cut where warmth should have been. Banners hung in the rafters—Vale lions on gold, Hartwell leopards on green—caught the light from the braziers and made the dais look like a stage where someone had practiced humiliation until it shone. Riley Hartwell stood in the center of that stage. She could have stepped back. Tradition expected it. Court expectation hung heavier than the velvet of her gown: she should dissolve into pale grief, should accept a quiet, private disgrace and nurse it into political advantage later—if she could. Instead she lifted her chin. "Stop," she said, and the word landed like a command, not a plea. A ripple ran through the hall. Torches fluttered as if at a sudden wind. Courtiers who had been arranged into tidy groups of gossip froze mid‑smirk. Prince Adrian set Elena Otto down by the dais like a prize being arranged on its cushion. Elena blinked at Riley with an expression rehearsed to look startled and heartbroken; it was a face made for the theater and for surviving it. "Your Highness—" the archbishop began, hands raised in the ritual cadence. "Save it," Riley cut in. "There will be no vows, no procession. I call for a formal separation. Now." For a breath the hall did not breathe. Then