What lies beneath the Snow, HTGMHOMS

- a story of love, loss, and learning to thaw -

Winter was beginning to soften when Ruby arrived in the North. The duchy had once looked at her like a stranger wrapped in southern silk - too warm, too kind, too out of place. But slowly, the snow began to melt. The maids no longer flinched. The guards nodded. The markets whispered her name with something close to fondness.

She told herself that patience would be enough.
That one day, the Duke would look at her and see her. That one day, his heart might thaw too.

Then the carriage came.

And with it - Catherine von Omerta, the Duke's secret daughter. A child who laughs too loud, climbs walls, steals sweets from the kitchen... and carries her mother's fire in her eyes.
Elizabeth's fire. The woman Ruby can never replace.

Now the house of frost is cracking open - with grief, with memory, with the first signs of spring.

This is a story about love after loss, about ghosts that linger in the quiet and the courage it takes to be seen when you were never meant to be.