I had been alone long enough for the light in the window to change.
A pitcher of water sat on the low table within reach of the bed, and beside it the supplies she had left that morning without a word. A covered basket with bread, a little cold meat, dried fruit, and a small wheel of hard cheese. Enough for the day. Practical, plain, and clearly measured. The chains at my wrists were long enough to let me stand, cross to the table, pour water, and return. Not long enough to reach the door. Near the bedframe a covered pot had been placed as well. Impersonal. Complete. The room had been arranged to keep a body alive while still refusing it freedom.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, I let my mind drift back to the academy. Seraphine had been cold then too, but it was a different kind of cold. She answered when spoken to. She sat at the same table during shared lessons. She never went out of her way to be kind, yet she never went out of her way to be cruel either. We existed beside each other in a quiet, manageable distance. The real change had come after graduation. Something in her had hardened, then sharpened. The girl who once ignored me politely had become the woman who locked doors and made rules out of silence.
My parents still believed we were close. Both houses spoke of our long acquaintance with approval. They exchanged letters and invitations under the assumption that Seraphine and I shared a steady, if reserved, friendship. They had no idea how wide the space between us had grown. They had no idea I was sitting in a locked room wearing a dress she had chosen and a necklace that should never have left the royal vaults, eating bread left for me like a kept animal with manners.
The key turned.
Seraphine stepped inside. She looked as composed as ever, dark purple hair neat, expression unreadable. For a moment neither of us spoke. The air in the room felt tighter with her in it. Her gaze moved once over the table, over the half-touched bread and the water pitcher, then away again as if provision were a detail already settled and not worth discussion.
“Sit,” I said. My voice came out quieter than I intended. “On the bed.”
Her eyes narrowed slightly. “You do not give me orders.”
Still, after a short pause, she crossed the room and sat on the opposite end of the mattress. The distance she left between us was deliberate. We sat in silence. The chains at my wrists made a soft sound when I shifted. She did not look at me. I did not look away from her.
I tried first.
“The academy feels far away now,” I said. “You used to at least answer when I spoke to you.” This chapter was taken from g.com without permission.
“That is enough.”
The words were flat and final. I closed my mouth. Disappointment landed harder than I expected. It showed on my face before I could stop it; I felt the way my expression fell, the small drop in my shoulders. Seraphine saw it. Something moved behind her eyes, too quick to name. For a moment she looked as if she might speak. Then she looked away.
“Wait,” she said.
She stood and left the room. The lock clicked behind her. I stayed where I was, staring at the place she had sat, trying to decide whether the disappointment was aimed at her silence or at myself for still reaching toward it.
She returned a few minutes later with a small tray. Two cups. Steam rising. She set it on the low table near the bed, moving the basket of supplies aside with the back of her hand, and sat again, though this time the space she left between us was slightly smaller. She picked up her cup and drank. I watched her over the rim of my own. She finished too quickly. When she lowered the cup, the faint tremor in her fingers was visible for half a second before she steadied it against the saucer.
I said nothing. Mentioning it would only earn another shutdown.
“You have been gone most of the day,” I said after a while. My voice was low. “It gets quiet in here.”
Seraphine’s hand tightened once around her cup. She gave a slight nod, but this time it was slower. She still did not look at me. She reached for the teapot and refilled her cup even though she had only just emptied it. The tremor did not return, but I had already seen it.
We drank in silence after that. The tea was warm and faintly floral. I held the cup between my palms and tried not to feel the weight of the room pressing in again. She was here, close enough to touch, and still somehow further away than she had been at the academy. The loneliness sat in my chest like something solid. I had said it as quietly as I could. She had nodded. That was all.
When she finally stood, she collected the tray without comment. At the door she paused, her back to me.
Then she left. The key turned. The lock settled.
I sat on the bed with the empty space beside me and the fading warmth of the cup in my hands. The disappointment had not gone. Neither had the small, unwilling notice of her trembling fingers. Both stayed with me as the light in the window slowly thinned.
Afternoon drifted into early evening. The stone walls lost their faint warmth. I watched the patch of sky I could see from the bed turn from pale blue to a deeper gray. I told myself she would come. She had said she would return. Seraphine did not waste words. If she said evening, she meant evening.
When hunger returned, I ate more of the bread and a little of the fruit. The food was dry and carefully chosen to keep. I drank water from the pitcher and set it back within the reach the chains allowed. None of it felt like care in the way a person wanted care. It felt like maintenance. Still, it meant the room had not been designed for me to simply fail overnight.
The sky darkened further. No footsteps approached. No key turned in the lock.
I stood and walked the short length the chains allowed, then sat again. The blue dress felt heavier as the air cooled. I wrapped my arms around myself and listened. The building was quiet. Somewhere far off a door closed, but it was not hers. The light outside faded until the room held only the single lamp she had left burning that morning.
Evening passed.
I stopped listening for the key. The disappointment settled deeper this time, no longer sharp but wide and flat. It was not only that she had not come. It was the way hope had sat with me for hours, quiet and stupid, only to thin out and disappear when the dark arrived. I had wanted the sound of the lock. I had wanted her presence even if she said nothing, even if she only sat on the far end of the bed and drank tea too fast with unsteady hands.
She did not return.
I lay down on top of the covers without changing out of the dress. The necklace rested cold against my collarbone. In the dim light I stared at the door and let the disappointment fill the space where expectation had been. Her last words about the chains lingered in the quiet, unclear and unfinished. I did not know whether they were a promise or simply another rule she had not yet explained.
I closed my eyes. Sleep did not come quickly. When it finally did, it carried no comfort, only the dull weight of a day that had ended without her.