Romans & histoires Gilded Princess

The Billionaire’s Gilded Cage By Golden Tree They dressed her with silk and silence. Beneath the light of Seoul’s finest chandeliers, Chaewon Kim stood like an impossibly shaped statue—flawless, beautiful, untouched. The designer evening gown clung to her body in shining folds of ivory and silver, the off-the-shoulder cut beautiful with china skin. To the observing superior, she was the very picture of poise and privilege. A beautiful heiress claiming her rightful place at the peak of authority. But beneath her composed facade, she was drowning.

Do I need to act like a different woman when I'm in front of him to win him over? I straightened my outfit and adjusted my posture. Even though my clothes weren't as revealing as the uniforms of his staff, I was confident in myself and how I presented myself to him. After all, I am Princess Cassandra, raised with good poise, elegance, and manners. I am confident in myself. I won't be embarrassed.

“I’m not on anyone’s payroll, Jordan. I’m your stepsister idiot. He finally turned, a smirk playing on his lips. “Stepsister. Right. And I’m the King of England.” He took a step closer, his eyes narrowing. “Let’s be honest, shall we? You’re a sugar baby, aren’t you? Pretty face, young enough to still pass for innocent, but with an eye for the finer things. My father has a type. Ella’s hands clenched into fists at her sides. The audacity of him, the sheer, unbridled arrogance, stole her breath. “How dare you?” she managed, her voice trembling with suppressed fury.

"The Grand Princess is not going to return those pieces. And she is not going to pay you ten thousand gold." Vivienne's head came up sharply. "How dare you." "She has the jade. She has the silver. She will keep them, and she will keep the gold she promised, and she will tell you the wager went the other way, or that you misremember the terms, or that the bet was never sealed. That is what she will do." I held her eyes. "Because that is what she has been doing to you all along."

She had already given Petric her heart and her loyalty, and he had returned it to her shattered. An hour later, the cold New York rain stung her face as she stepped out of a cab in Chelsea. She found The Gilded Fang behind an unmarked iron door. Inside, the atmosphere was thick with the scent of expensive cigars and the metallic tang of aged blood. Melchi was easy to spot, draped across a velvet booth in the far corner. "The Princess of the North," Melchi remarked smoothly. "Avin said you were coming. He didn't mention you’d be traveling without a guard. Bold. Or desperate."

A thin cotton dress was layered beneath a thick cloak tied with an emerald ribbon, and golden jewelry adorned her hair and neck. The weight of the opulent adornments made her feel out of place—like a maid masquerading as a queen. After Rhyzar’s revelation, she couldn’t shake the thought that all the gilded surfaces around her might actually be real gold. The statues in the hallways, though suspiciously similar, seemed too fantastical to believe. Still, she eyed them warily as Gelda led her to the large room where she had first reunited with Rhyzar.

I pushed the door open, and the noise inside the room came to an abrupt halt. Seeing my pale face, Claire Musk looked annoyed. "So what if I didn't give you thirty dollars? Who are you trying to scare with that expression, like you're attending a funeral? You're just like those gold-diggers—reeking of greed and utterly vulgar!" Hearing these insults with my own ears, I felt nothing at all. Not anger. Not sorrow. Not even disappointment. When Claire walked toward me, I calmly took a step back—avoiding the nauseating scent clinging to her, a mixture that clearly belonged to another man.

"But I am the one who built it. I am the one who filtered the very air you breathe." She turned to her desk and opened a secure, encrypted file titled Contingency: Sovereign. "If you want to play at being a man who doesn't need his mother, I will show you exactly how small your world becomes when I stop holding it together. I will make you my puppet again, even if I have to break every bone in your body to do it." The tension on the set of The Gilded Cage snapped like a live wire the moment Priscilla Rossi breached the perimeter. She didn't come with a plan; she came with a vendetta against the girl she believed was a social climber mocking the Mordrake name.

Sailors in gold-trimmed livery threw down ropes of braided silk, and a gangplank was lowered. ​Out stepped Prince Lucian of the Gilded Isles. ​He looked exactly as Elara remembered: golden hair perfectly coiffed, a smile that didn't reach his eyes, and the scent of citrus and expensive spices that always made her feel like she was suffocating. In Ashwood, he had been the man who cornered her in the moonlight, whispering that he "pitied" her for being fated to the beast Valerius. He had offered her his hand not to help her up, but to lead her into a different kind of cage. He saw her as a broken girl: a trophy of high pedigree that was too shattered to bite back.

I had my uncle look up her ID info, and as soon as he checked, it turned out that Lillian is a notorious gold digger! Those around us erupted into murmurs, while Clara crossly held up her phone for everyone to see. "I've gone to so much trouble for you, yet you're being completely ungrateful about it, Nicholas!" Nicholas snatched the phone and stared fixedly at the screen, noting the name Lillian Naughton displayed there. Just as Clara claimed, there were only two individuals by that name—one was the prestigious heiress of the Naughton family, and the other was an infamous marriage fraudster and gold digger.