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The flint walls of Astor Castle had never weighed so heavily on Ella Hawthorne's shoulders. At nineteen, the princess was the beating heart of every banquet, an explosion of laughter and pastel silk dancing among the courtiers, capable of transforming a somber diplomatic dinner into a festival of light. But that light was extinguished the moment the Duke of Blackwood, a man whose face resembled parchment and whose eyes held the chill of the north, claimed her hand. The age difference wasn't just a number; it was a chasm of cruelty and control that threatened to swallow Ella's vitality forever.
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ANAngel_03