The First Crack in the Canon

The Great Hall of the Alcázar smelled like every high-society gathering smells when too many dressed-up people crowd together: stale musk, beeswax burning in three hundred bronze chandeliers, and that cold roasted fat that won't air out even if you fling open every gothic casement.

In the original version of Ribbons of Thorn—the otome game that cost me my life because I was staring at my phone screen crossing the bus lane in Chapinero—Episode Three of the Imperial Route was an unmitigated disaster for the villainess.

The script read, word for word: "Duchess Violante of Cardona, blind with jealousy upon seeing Crown Prince Aurelio open the ball with the maiden Sibila, empties her goblet of spiced claret across the heir's velvet doublet and swears vengeance at the top of her lungs before the entire court." Immediate consequence: high treason flag, insult to the crown, and preventative lockup in the eastern turret.

Not on my watch.

I pressed my gloved fingers flat against the folds of my dark green brocade kirtle. The whalebone stays of the corset reminded me with every pulse that courtly poise is an invention designed to keep women from breathing deep or running for the door if something catches fire.

"My lady," Caterina whispered beside me, trembling like an aspen leaf as she gripped my feather fan, "the prince approaches the dais with Lady Sibila upon his arm."

"Easy, Caterina. Breathe and don't make eye contact with the princess's footmen."

Aurelio strolled forward with that ridiculous swagger of a Japanese otome male lead: golden hair falling in immaculate locks, eyes clear as soapy puddles, and an arrogant smirk that back in Bogotá would have earned him a dressing-down within five minutes of conversation. At his side, Sibila of Moncada practically floated in white chiffon, wearing that virgin-martyr expression that yielded such remarkable results when begging for church tithes and royal pardons.

Aurelio halted two paces before my table, bracing for the scene. I could see it in the way he puffed his chest, waiting for me to leap to my feet foaming at the mouth.

"Duchess Violante," he drawled, rolling his r's with that solemn posturing of men who have never scrubbed a frying pan in their lives. "I presume you have words regarding our granting of the first minuet to the house of Moncada?"

The entire hall caught its breath. At the side tables, three marchionesses masked their mouths behind silk fans, waiting for the claret to fly.

I rose with calculated deliberation, without a single rustle of fabric. I set my untouched goblet upon majordomo Beltrán's silver tray, dipped my chin in a forty-five-degree bow—the immaculate courtesy of Castilian dowagers—and smiled with the serene composure of someone who just finished a hot mug of herbal tea.

"On the contrary, Your Highness," I answered, letting my voice ring clear and honey-smooth from the diaphragm. "I deem it an act of most commendable Christian charity to honor a maiden so virtuous and ill-favored by fortune. Indeed, if your grace permits, I would gladly yield my front-row seat to the elderly Marchioness of Peralta, who has been standing beside the cold columns these past thirty minutes."

Dead, absolute silence.

Aurelio blinked twice. His arrogant smirk froze halfway across his cheeks, curdling into an idiotic grimace of sheer disorientation. His brain, programmed strictly to counter a rabid harpy, had just hit an imperial blue screen of death.

"You... what?" stammered the heir to the throne.

"That courtesy is never superfluous at a prince's table, my lord," I added, folding my hands with pious grace.

If you don't play the beast they assigned you, the hunters are left with empty hands.

I took a theatrical step to the side, leaving the aisle clear. But as I glanced down toward Sibila's retinue, I caught something that was definitely not in the game's walkthrough: the holy maiden wasn't smiling with angelic meekness. Her jaw was clamped so tight the cords of her neck stood out like iron wires, and her eyes bored into mine with a cold, lucid, and murderously real venom.

The adrenaline rush from the banquet lasted precisely until I pushed open the heavy door to my chambers in the western wing.

The wrought-iron lock had been sheared off. The latch hung from a single chewed bolt, with splinters of white oak scattered across the knotted carpet.

"Merciful saints!" Caterina shrieked, nearly dropping her brass lantern against the stone lintel.

Inside, the room was a scene of methodical violence. This was no hurried pilfering by a greedy scullery boy: someone had taken the time to empty the linen chest, rip open the seams of the heavy velvet hangings, and sweep every vial of lavender and rosewater from the dressing table onto the floor.

My Delft porcelain tea set, the only fine heirloom left from Violante's late mother, lay shattered across the cold stones near the dark hearth.

Whoever hunts for evidence where nothing exists ends up forging their own snares.

"Caterina, shut the door and stop squawking," I ordered under my breath, slipping into that crisp older-sister tone I used in Bogotá when trouble flared in the hallway. "Nobody can hear about this."

"B-but my lady... your letters! The silver coffers!"

"The silver is right where I left it, goose. Look at the desk."

The mother-of-pearl casket sat undisturbed, locked tight with its little brass key. What they had pried open with a jeweler's bodkin was the walnut desk where I kept apothecary receipts and official tenant rolls from my summer estate.

I knelt on the floor among shards of blue-glazed earthenware and soot. They were hunting for letters.

In the game's storyline, the pure heroine always 'happened upon' a treasonous correspondence between Violante and the northern frontier rebels. But since I hadn't written to a single rebel—my sole correspondence in three weeks having been two requests for cinnamon bark and clean tallow sent to the convent steward—the intruder had retreated empty-handed and furious.

I ran my fingers along the seam between two terracotta floor tiles beside the prie-dieu.

Something glinted with a sharp silver flash under the candle flame.

I tugged carefully. It was an embossed silver hairpin, capped with three tiny river pearls and delicate filigree shaped like an olive branch.

The blood in my veins turned straight to slush.

That hairpin wasn't peddled in the bazaar stalls, nor was it worn by kitchen drudges. It was the exclusive insignia worn only by the four personal handmaidens of the house of Moncada, gifted by Sibila herself during the feast of Corpus Christi.

"Our little holy maiden wastes no time," I murmured, clenching the silver needle in my palm until the tines dug red crescent marks into my skin.

Sibila wasn't waiting for the plot to play itself out. If I refused to make mistakes, she was fully prepared to manufacture them.

And in this pit of medieval vipers, an accusation of treason penned on sheepskin was worth far more than the head of any duchess fallen from favor.