Scarlett guards her wounded heart after witnessing her mother's tragic downfall, yet she slowly allows herself to trust Lord Carlos when he proposes matrimony. Her fragile world shatters when she discovers Carlos orchestrated their courtship purely to transfer a fatal ancestral curse away from his true noble paramour onto Scarlett.
Rather than exposing the conspiracy immediately, Scarlett offers Carlos a quiet seven-day grace period while volunteering to bind herself to an eternal boundary seal. Each day he abandons her to comfort his lover, sealing his own damnation until the gates slam shut forever.
