He Didn't Know Whose Ring I Was Wearing

At the betrothal sit-down, Lorenzo learned that the girl he'd once called his own was being bound in an alliance-marriage to the half-blind Don everyone had written off as finished.

Without hesitation, he tore across the city and swore a private union with her before a bought priest that very night.

By that afternoon, the two had slipped out of every family's territory, hiding away abroad like lovers who answered to no one.

Their childhood romance, so touching and profound, ran wild through the whisper-network of the families, dressed up as devotion by every bought mouthpiece in the city.