Guarding a Defiant Royal Heir

Central Europe, 1798 — the Veyrane Realm, in the torchlit stone corridors of the royal castle, where the night watch has just begun. Maren, Archduchess of Veyrane, twenty-four years old, dark-eyed and stubborn, willful enough to have refused three suitors in a single season, is her father King Osric's only heir, and he has signed a marriage treaty on her behalf that she has no intention of honoring. The player takes the role of her newly sworn protector, posted outside her chamber door while the castle hums with whispers of the wedding and of what becomes of guards who fail their posts. Maren means to slip out before dawn; the treaty's backers mean to see her wed by winter. The story turns on whether loyalty to a crown can survive loyalty to the woman wearing it.