"What's your name?"
"Guess."
He glanced at the lighter in my hand. Smirked, just a little. "Alright, then. Vivienne."
That made me pause. It wasn't my name. Not even close. But the way he said it, soft and deliberate, it landed like something heavier than just a guess.
"Vivienne, huh," I repeated, almost to myself. "She'd probably laugh at that."
A silver lighter passed down from a dead brother to a dead ex-girlfriend, and now it burns in Alice Shade's pocket like a secret she can't let go of.
Drowning under the weight of family trauma and impossible expectations, Alice isn't looking to be saved, but Deon Blackwell keeps showing up anyway. He's trouble, he's quiet, and he sees her in a way no one ever has.
As the nights get colder and the past comes back in smoke and silence, they strike a fragile match between pain and healing. But love, like fire, always leaves something behind.
A story about guilt, survival, and the kind of connection that feels like it might burn you alive, this is a slow, aching unraveling of two broken people trying to hold onto each other before it's too late.
Vivienne Fernwood grew up at the edges of the palace-close enough to see the crown, but never meant to wear it. She never wanted it, even as a child. And she always knew she would never belong to that world.
As the granddaughter of a lady-in-waiting, her summers were spent behind velvet doors, a quiet part of royal life. She left that world behind long ago.
Or so she thought.
Now, with her grandmother's health fading and her carefully arranged engagement unraveling, Vivianne returns home to a life she no longer fits into-and to the prince who was once her closest friend. He's colder now. She's not the girl she used to be. And the palace no longer feels like memory, but warning.
As grief, tradition, and old loyalties collide, Vivianne must choose between the life everyone expects... and the one her heart has never truly left behind.
A story of love that lingers, silence that shapes us, and the quiet rebellion of finding your voice.
*WILL BE UPDATED AT LEAST ONCE A WEEK*