
The Crown Desire: She’s Mine
The palace gates loomed ahead, their golden dragons coiled in eternal vigilance. Inside, the world was nothing but polished marble floors, silken banners, and eyes always watching eyes.
Kusian Raizer’s boots struck the hall with deliberate rhythm, each step echoing like a drumbeat of authority. At twenty-three, he was the most feared of the royal heirs, not just because he bore the emperor’s blood, but because his reputation was carved from both loyalty and ruthlessness.
Six brothers, one born of his mother and five from other women who bore the imperial surname, watched him from their own gilded shadows. Some envied him, others despised him, but all knew one truth: the crown was already in his grasp.
In the Imperial Council room, whispers swirled. The court was buzzing about a disturbance in the city’s pleasure district, one that had somehow involved the Crown Prince himself. Raizer ignored them. He’d done what he had to do.
That morning, in the rain-slick streets beyond the gilded gates, he had pulled a young woman from the grasp of a brothel keeper. She had been dressed in silks too fine for the mud she stood in, her wrists bound with rope, and defiance blazing in her tear-stained eyes.
Her name, he’d learnt quickly, was Featherington Zanelle. And she didn’t belong in that place.
Now, as he entered his private wing, the image of her lingered like an ember in his mind: the way her voice trembled with rage when she spoke her name, the way she held her chin high despite her ruined dignity.
He hadn’t saved her out of pity. He hated pity. No, it was something else, something that had burnt in his chest the moment he saw her.
Elsewhere, in a modest but well-kept home across the city, Zanelle sat on the edge of her bed, her wet hair clinging to her face. Her stepmother’s voice carried from the next room, sharp, bargaining, and greedy. They were speaking to a royal messenger.
Zanelle’s stomach sank.
She already knew. She had been sold once for flesh; now she was about to be sold again… for politics.
That night, under the crimson glow of the palace lanterns, Raizer stood at his balcony, watching the rain wash the city clean. Somewhere below, Zanelle’s fate was being sealed—and for reasons he could not yet name, he felt the urge to ensure that fate led her… to him.









