The confinement held through the night and into the morning.
No movement between courtyards.
No tests.
No assemblies.
Just the residence wrapped in its own quiet tension.
Elyndra sat by the window with her embroidery frame in her lap.
She had found the materials in the small drawer at the foot of the bed, thread, a wooden frame, a needle already strung.
She had not thought about them until this morning when the stillness of the confinement had settled around her and she had needed something for her hands to do.
She was working a flower.
Small, five-petalled, the thread a pale ivory against the dark fabric.
Her mother’s favourite flower.
She wasn’t sure when she had decided on that one.
Her hands had simply chosen it.
She looked at it.
And the memory arrived without asking.
—
She had been very small.
The garden had been full of afternoon light, the warm kind, the kind that made everything look slightly golden and slightly unreal.
She was sitting in the grass beside an elderly woman whose hands were slow and careful as she moved through the garden, naming things, explaining things, talking in the patient way so the little her could understand.
”This one,” the woman said, crouching beside a cluster of pale five-petalled flowers growing low along the garden wall.
“Do you know what this is?”
She shook her head.
She was perhaps six.
Perhaps seven.
The woman smiled.
“This is called a moon-petal. Very old. Very particular.” She touched one of the flowers carefully with two fingers, gently, like things deserved to be handled with care.
“It only blooms in certain light. Early morning or late afternoon. Never in full sun.”
”Why?”
”Because some things are not meant for bright places,” the woman said.
“Some things grow best in the in-between.”
She looked at the flower seriously, as though trying to understand everything completely.
The woman smiled.
”That flower is special.”
”Why?”
The woman looked at her for a moment.
Then she said, quietly, “It is your mother’s favourite.”
She looked up immediately.
”My mother’s?”
”Yes.” The woman smiled again.
A different kind of smile this time.
Softer.
“She used to pick them when she was your age. She always said they were the most honest flowers in any garden. Because they didn’t pretend to bloom when they weren’t ready.”
She reached out and touched the flower herself.
It was soft.
Softer than she expected.
”I like them,” she decided.
”I thought you might.”
A sound from behind them.
Sudden, loud and joyful, a scream of pure happiness.
”SURPRISE!”
The flower fell from her fingers.
”Mother!”
She was already running, already across the grass, already caught up in arms that smelled like warm cloth and something floral.
Something like moon-petals.
She heard laughing above her head and felt herself lifted and held, everything was warm and entirely safe.
Her mother’s voice, close and clear: “I told you I’d be back before the moon rose.”
And her aunt’s voice, dry and amused from somewhere behind them: “She didn’t believe me.”
”I did…”
”You didn’t.
You cried for an hour.”
”I did not cry…”
Her mother was laughing.
She pressed her face into her mother’s shoulder and felt the laughter moving through her and did not say anything at all.
—
Elyndra looked down at the half-finished flower in her embroidery frame.
Five petals.
Pale ivory thread.
Still incomplete.
She held it for a moment.
She pressed the memory back down to where it lived.
Folded it.
Set it aside.
She picked up the needle and continued.
The noise came without warning.
Not a voice first.
A sound, movement, a commotion that came before understanding.
Her needle stilled.
Her head came up.
Then the voice broke through.
”I don’t know anything about it…
I swear it…
please, I swear…”
Elyndra was out of her chair and at the courtyard entrance before she knew it.
From across the passage, through the gap between the courtyard walls, she could see them, the officials, two of them, and between them…
Princess Viella Ashcroft of Drisana.
”I don’t know how it got there…I swear I have never seen those items before in my life…
I don’t know what they are…please….
please, I didn’t do anything….”
Her voice broke on the last word.
The officials did not slow down.
Elyndra stood in her courtyard gateway and watched them move down the corridor.
She watched Viella’s face.
The genuine terror in it, the confusion, the particular desperation.
She was telling the truth and she knew nobody was going to believe them.
She was not going quietly.
She was pulling against the grip on her arms.
Her voice high and breaking, her face turned back toward her own chamber as though she could reverse what had already been found there simply by looking at it.
”There has been a mistake…
those are not mine…
I don’t understand how they came to be there…
please, someone, I don’t…”
The officials did not slow.
The corridor emptied.
The sound of Viella’s voice faded with distance.
Elyndra stood very still.
Her jaw tightened.
Her fingers curled into fists.
Around her the residence had come quietly alive, maidservants appearing at doorways, voices low and urgent, the hum of gossip moving through the whole place.
An incomplete information reached her without her trying to catch them.
”…found in her chamber, apparently, the same kind as…”
”…during the search, one of the officials discovered…”
”…she was screaming, did you hear her, she kept saying she didn’t…”
”…well what else would she say…”
Elyndra turned away from the gate.
Without saying any word, she strode back into her chambers.
The moment the doors shut behind her, she grabbed a nearby cup from the table.
Her arm lifted.
For one dangerous second she considered throwing it against the wall.
The image of shattered glass flashed through her mind.
She stopped herself.
Slowly.
Then she set it down.
Carefully without a sound.
She breathed out once through her nose, she turned and stood with her hand still resting on it for a moment, her jaw tight, her eyes fixed on the far wall.
Then she heard the footstep behind her and turned.
Lyel was standing just inside the room.
She looked at him.
”What,” she said, “is happening out there.”
Her voice was even.
Mostly.
Lyel frowned.
”I don’t know.”
”You don’t know?”
”I placed the evidence exactly where you instructed.”
Elyndra stared at him.
”Then how did it end up in Viella’s chambers?”
For the first time uncertainty crossed his face.
”I don’t know.”
Silence stretched between them.
Then Lyel spoke again.
”But there is one thing I do know.”
Elyndra waited.
”My lady.
I don’t believe Princess Lythia is working alone.”
Something cold settled in her stomach.
”What do you mean?”