It had been twenty-four hours.
The light that leaked through the high, narrow window was too bright for my eyes. I had not slept. Every time I closed them I saw the balcony again, the purple of her dress, the empty look on her face as she pushed me. The chains around my wrists had started to feel heavier than they should. My shoulders ached from sitting too long in the same position. The room itself had begun to smell like me: skin, stale air, and the faint floral scent that never quite faded.
I tried to map the place in my head.
A cottage far from the capital, maybe. Or a hidden room somewhere on one of the D’Arcourt estates. The walls were plain stone. The bed was narrow and serviceable. No crests, no fine furniture, nothing that looked like it belonged to a woman who wore silk the color of her own eyes. It did not feel like a house Seraphine would claim as her own. That thought should have comforted me. It did not.
I had known her since we were children.
We were never truly close, not in the way other girls were, but we were always near each other. The same lessons. The same gardens. The same long afternoons when the tutors left us alone. I remembered one summer when I had fallen from a low garden wall and scraped my knee open. Seraphine had sat beside me on the grass, her small hands careful as she pressed a clean handkerchief to the blood. She had not laughed. She had not told me to stop crying. She had only stayed until the bleeding slowed, quiet and steady, as if that was simply what one did.
There were other days like that.
Once, during a rainstorm that trapped us in the old library, I had been afraid of the thunder. I was ten and still small enough to feel ashamed of it. Seraphine had closed the heavy book she was reading, moved to sit beside me on the window seat, and started naming the books on the highest shelves in a calm, even voice. She did not mock me. She did not tell me thunder was harmless. She simply kept talking until the storm passed and my hands stopped shaking.
Another time, when we were twelve, I lost a thin silver bracelet my mother had given me in the long grass behind the practice yards. I searched until my dress was stained green and my eyes burned. Seraphine found me like that, silent and furious with myself. Without a word she knelt and began searching too. We stayed until the light failed. She was the one who finally held the bracelet up, the chain caught on a root, and placed it back in my palm as if returning something that had always belonged there.
That girl was gone.
The woman who had put a knife between my ribs and locked me in this room shared her face and nothing else. Softness had been replaced by something colder and sharper. Arrogance sat easily on her now. So did the calm certainty with which she had claimed me. I kept searching my memories for the exact moment the change had begun, but all I could find was the announcement of her engagement. After that, the quiet version of her had simply stopped appearing. The new Seraphine spoke less, smiled less, and looked at people as if she were already measuring the distance between herself and whatever she wanted.
I still did not understand why she had locked me away.
Was it the crown prince? He had been attentive at the ball, closer than friendship required. He dropped hints the way other men dropped compliments, light and persistent. I had never encouraged them. I could not picture myself in the life those hints pointed toward. Yet the thought kept returning: had Seraphine locked me away so I could not stand between her and the future she was supposed to have?
The idea felt too small for the violence she had already shown me. The girl who once sat with me through a storm would not have pushed me from a balcony. The woman who had done it felt like a stranger wearing a familiar face.
My body interrupted the spiral.
A slow, insistent pressure low in my abdomen. I shifted on the bed, then shifted again. The chains clinked softly. I ignored it for as long as I could, focusing on the light on the wall, on the memory of her childhood hands, on the way she had once returned my bracelet without ceremony. The pressure grew. Restlessness set into my legs. My muscles, already stiff from a full day of barely moving, protested when I finally stood.
I walked the short length the chains allowed, back and forth, trying to think of something other than the increasing urgency. It did not help. Within minutes the need had become sharp and undeniable. Heat gathered behind my eyes. Embarrassment tangled with something closer to fear.
I went to the door.
My fist struck the wood harder than I intended.
Once. Twice. Ten times, the sound flat and useless in the small room.
“Seraphine!” My voice cracked. “Seraphine, please open the door.”
Silence answered.
I hit the door again, the chains rattling with every movement. “It’s urgent. Please.”
Still nothing.
I pressed my forehead against the wood for a second, breathing hard. The childhood memories felt farther away than the twenty-four hours should have allowed. The girl who had searched the grass with me was not the one deciding whether I was worth answering now.
I struck the door once more.
“Seraphine!”
The word came out closer to a plea than I wanted. My bladder ached. My hands had started to shake. Somewhere beyond this door she existed, calm and deliberate, deciding whether the person she used to be still mattered at all.
I did not know which frightened me more: the possibility that she would come, or the possibility that she would not.