Her Forge-Won Crown

Allison Fulton gave Nolan Reid everything. She poured her potions and battle plans into his rise, then took a poisoned arrow meant for him, leaving her barren. The day her frost poison flares, she learns the palace guards took every vial of her elixir to protect Hollie Pearson's pregnancy. Nolan tells her Hollie carries the only royal heir, so her safety matters more than Allison's old wound. He strips her of the crown and offers her a place as his mistress. Allison asks for nothing except what she is owed.

She walks out into a storm and collapses in the forest. Crown Prince Simon of the Sacred Empire finds her by a compass that reacts to blood. He tells her she is his lost sister, the empire's only princess, vanished during a rebellion twenty years ago. A blood resonance confirms it. Simon gives her medicine to hold back the frost poison and hands her the golden dragon seal, making every resource in the north hers to command. Allison refuses to go home yet. She wants Nolan and the Pearsons to pay their blood debt first.

Derek Flynn, Nolan's strongest rival, finds her at Fragrance Garden and calls her Sage X, the realm's greatest strategist. Nolan won the throne only because of her strategies and maps. Derek reveals the crash that killed her adoptive parents was no accident. The Pearsons murdered them for her formulas. He offers an alliance and a shared throne. Allison says she doesn't need a man to avenge her.

Nolan tracks her to Fragrance Garden and tries to order her back. Allison shows him the golden dragon seal and tells him every shipment of grain and gold entering the kingdom now answers to her. The golden knights drive him out. Nolan cannot make sense of who she has become and orders his spies to uncover her real identity. Then he withdraws the decree that deposed her.

Simon warns Nolan that if he bothers his sister again, the golden knights will reduce the capital to dust. Allison moves to the imperial embassy, where the barrier is sovereign ground and no soldier dares enter. She is safer there, but she does not intend to stay hidden.

On the day of Nolan's grandfather's memorial, Allison goes to the royal cemetery to pay her respects to Duke Alfonso, the only man who buried her foster parents. The guards try to block her. Hollie and Nolan's mother and sister attack her with insults. Allison fights back, breaking bones, and then she says it plainly before the whole royal family: Nolan never shared her bed in three years because he cannot perform. So whose child is Hollie carrying? Nolan demands she come with him.