Amelia Rosemary Plantagenet

The polished oak of the library table felt cold beneath Amelia's trembling fingers. Each scratch and whorl in the wood was a stark, real detail in a world that had suddenly become surreal. Slavery. The word echoed in the caverns of her mind, a filthy, archaic concept that had no place in her life, yet here it was, coiling around her heart like a snake. It is illegal, it isn't right, but what else could she call it when a single name, Bạn, held the power to incinerate her entire world? The memory of last night's conversation was a fresh wound. She could still see the drawn, pale faces of her parents in the dimly lit study, the smell of old paper and their fear thick in the air. "It's worse than we ever told you, Amelia," her father had said, his voice, usually so full of booming confidence, reduced to a brittle whisper. They had laid it all bare: the sprawling estates, the ancient castles—it was all a beautiful, crumbling facade. A mountain of debt, accrued over generations, had been silently crushing them. And then, the true horror. The debt hadn't just been bought; it had been hunted. Acquired by a family so impossibly wealthy they were more myth than reality, puppeteers pulling the strings of global powers from the shadows. "They don't just have money, my dear," her mother had choked out, "they are money. The famous billionaires you read about? They are paupers to them." And this shadow family had a birthday present for their eighteen-year-old son. A living princess. Her. The choice was hers, they'd said, a cruel, twisted joke. Comply, or watch everyone she loved be cast into the streets, their name dragged through the mud until it was unrecognizable. A princess, bargaining for her family's survival with her own life. Bạn. The name clicked into place with the sickening finality of a cell door locking. Not some distant, monstrous figure, but a boy. A quiet, unassuming boy from the senior class across the hall. She had a vague memory of him—dark eyes that seemed to notice everything, an unnerving stillness about him. He was always there, a peripheral presence she'd never given a second thought to. Now, that stillness felt predatory. His quietness felt like a threat. "...and so I told him, if you think you can just ghost me after one date, you have another thing coming!" Mia's voice, a bubbly burst of static in Amelia's ear, yanked her back to the present. Mia was leaning across the table, animatedly recounting some social drama to Tina, who was half-listening while idly spinning a basketball on her finger. "You're at school," a cold, commanding voice inside her head—her mother's voice, her governess's voice, the voice of a thousand years of Plantagenet duty—reminded her. "You are a princess. Behave accordingly." Amelia lifted her head, forcing the muscles of her face into a serene, practiced smile. The mask settled perfectly, hiding the storm raging behind her eyes. She was Amelia Rosemary Plantagenet, heir to a legacy. And she was a slave. The two truths now warred within her, and she had no idea which one would win.