The Duke Should Divorce Me, So Why Is He Stalling My Death? novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: The Wine
She wakes mid-throw at the Midwinter Court as the duke's doomed wife, refuses to sign his divorce in front of the Empire, and watches him burn the paper without surprise.
The wine was already leaving the glass.
Lysandra felt it go, a heavy red arc over the polished floor of the Court hall, and her arm was still swinging.
She stopped the swing at the top.
Two hundred nobles stood in a ring around her, and every one of them had turned to stare.
In front of her stood a small blond woman in a white gown, with her hands pressed to her chest and her eyes already wet.
The woman had been about to be splashed.
She looked disappointed that she wasn't.
Lysandra looked down at her own hand.
It was a narrow hand with long fingers and a gold ring too heavy for it.
It was not the hand she had gone to sleep with on the train.
[Scripted scene: The Wine. The Duchess throws a drink at the Saintess.]
[Fixed outcome: the Duke divorces her in front of the Court. Wreck it for plot points.]
The words hung in the air in front of her.
Nobody else was reading them.
Lysandra read them twice.
She had skimmed this book on the commute.
It was called "The Saint of the Winter Court," and it was the kind of romance where the heroine glowed and the villainess screamed.
She had skipped to chapter 3 because a review said the Duke finally tore his wife to pieces in public.
Then she had skipped to chapter 20.
Chapter 20 was a hanging.
"Duchess," said a voice across the hall.
It was a man's voice, low and level, with no heat in it at all.
The ring of nobles opened.
Alaric Veyrath walked through it in a black coat with silver at the collar.
He was tall, and his hair was cut short, and his eyes were the grey of a frozen river.
In the book he was the villain.
In the book he would burn a Temple, raise the whole north against the throne and die on the Prince's sword in a snowfield.
In his left hand he carried a folded paper with a red wax seal.
She knew what was in it.
Lysandra took a slow breath through her nose.
She was twenty-four years old, apparently, the most hated woman in the Empire, and running out of time.
She did the only thing she could think of.
She turned, held out the glass, and offered it to the Duke of Veyrath, her husband, handle first.
"Your Grace," she said. "I believe this is yours."
The hall went very still.
The red wine in the glass rocked once and settled.
Alaric looked at it.
He didn't take it.
"I am told," said Lysandra, loud enough for the back of the room, "that you have a paper for me."
Nobody moved.
On the dais, a very old man in gold lifted his head.
She realized it was the Emperor, and that he was listening.
Alaric's hand tightened on the paper.
"The Court has been waiting a year for you to be sorry," he said.
It was a line from the book, nearly word for word, and the way he said it made it worse.
In the book she was supposed to scream here.
She was supposed to say "How dare you humiliate me for that nobody," and fling the wine at the Saintess, and be dragged out.
"You'll want me to sign it," Lysandra said.
"Yes."
"I won't."
The silence got a layer thicker.
"The law says a duke can't put his wife out without her signature," Lysandra went on.
"Or a crime proven against her. I have committed no crime tonight. I haven't even spilled the wine."
She lifted the glass and drank half of it, because her hand was shaking and it was something to do.
It tasted like warm cherries and stone.
"So you can keep your paper, Your Grace, or you can read it to the hall. But I won't put my name under it."
Somewhere in the crowd, a woman gasped, quite sincerely.
The small blond woman in white took a step forward.
"Duchess," she said, in a soft, sweet voice. "Nobody wants this. If you'd only let the Duke explain..."
"Saintess," Lysandra said, "I'm sure you're very kind. I'm talking to my husband."
[Scripted scene wrecked: The Wine. Plot points +10. Total: 10/100.]
[Exit unlocks at 100 points. Chapter 20 begins in 96 days.]
Lysandra read that second line and her knees went soft, and she locked them.
Ninety-six days.
She turned back to the Duke with her chin up, waiting for the cold to fall on her.
It didn't.
Alaric was staring at her.
His face was composed and his eyes were not.
They were fixed on her mouth, and then her eyes, and then her mouth again.
He said nothing for a long time.
Then he turned the folded paper over once in his fingers.
He stepped to the nearest candle stand and set the corner of it in the flame.
The wax seal ran.
The Court watched the paper burn down to his glove.
He dropped the last of it on the floor and put his boot on it.
"The matter is closed," he said to the hall.
It was not what he was supposed to say.
Lysandra waited for the surprise on his face, the flicker you'd get from any man whose wife had just wrecked his plan.
There wasn't any.
He looked at her the way you look at something you buried, standing up in daylight.
"Come, wife," Alaric said, quietly, so only she could hear. "You'll want your coat."
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