The Dragon’s Bride

The price of peace is a princess. But the truth of the sacrifice is far darker. In the ancient kingdom of Veridia, the Treaty of Embers demands a brutal tribute: every generation, a beautiful, high-born bride must be delivered to the Obsidian Peaks to appease Kaelen, the terrifying Dragon who rules the northern wilds. For centuries, this ritual has purchased silence, security, and a fragile, humiliating peace. Princess Elara has spent her life buried in forbidden texts, desperately seeking a loophole in the treaty that condemns her. She is a scholar, not a martyr, and the thought of her impending duty—to be devoured, or worse, corrupted—fills her with quiet, burning dread. When she is finally delivered to the mountain's frozen threshold, her life as a princess ends, replaced by a profound, paralyzing terror. Yet, the Dragon's lair is not the fiery den of legend, but an immense, silent prison where Elara finds Kaelen wearing a guise of severe, lonely humanity. He is a creature of cold geometry, more burdened guardian than mindless monster. Forced into an agonizing domesticity, Elara's initial fear slowly gives way to a fierce, dangerous curiosity. She challenges his isolation with her intellect, slowly chipping away at the rigid armor that shields his ancient heart. As a hesitant trust blossoms into a consuming, forbidden longing, the outside world attempts to shatter their precarious peace with a ruthless political ambush, forcing Elara and Kaelen to fight together to protect their shared solitude. But the greatest danger lies not in the approaching armies, but in the final, forgotten clause of the treaty—the Architekton—which reveals the horrifying, non-negotiable choice Elara must make. The sacrifice is not merely her life, but the fate of her entire world. Elara must choose between the survival of her kingdom and her own, immortal redemption.