Sera wakes up married, alien, and six months behind the rest of her own life. The man beside her is a crown prince, unfailingly polite, and lying about something. She can tell, because the treaty notes in her own handwriting say things about him that he denies saying. What the palace is not telling her: her missing months contain a mineral map worth a war, and the man who married her did it to keep the map-and her-inside his walls. Sera has no memory, no allies, and no intention of being managed. She finishes the treaty by reconstructing her own work, watches the war faction close in, and makes a choice that costs the man she is married to the only leverage he had. Because power is not the same as trust, and she intends to have the second one before she agrees to the first.
