The box was smaller than I expected when Elira’s father opened it.
Inside lay a necklace of fine silver work, the center stone a pale blue that caught the thinning afternoon light. Her mother spoke first, voice still thick from crying.
“We had planned to give this to her on her birthday. It has been in the family for three generations. Since she is… since we cannot place it in her hands, we want you to have it. You were close to her. She would not have minded.”
I looked at the necklace and felt the weight of the lie settle heavier across my shoulders.
“I cannot accept it,” I said. “It belongs to your family.”
“Please.” Her father’s voice was quiet but firm. “We have no other daughter to give it to. Keep it. Wear it if you wish, or simply hold it. We would rather it stay with someone who knew her than lock it away.”
I refused a second time. They pressed again, gently, with the exhausted insistence of people who needed the act of giving in order to survive the day. In the end I closed my fingers around the cool metal and inclined my head.
“I will keep it safe.”
They thanked me with trembling hands. I left the grounds shortly after, the necklace tucked inside my sleeve, and returned to the estate as the sky began to darken. The house felt larger than usual. I dismissed the servants early, changed out of the funeral black, and sat in the quiet of my study with the day’s events arranged in careful order behind my eyes.
The body had been accepted. The prince had mourned a version of Elira that suited him. Joselline Marque had shown her teeth and been pulled away. The parents had pressed a family heirloom into my hands as if I were the nearest remaining piece of their daughter. All of it had gone as I required. Tomorrow I would go back to her. Not this evening. Tomorrow. I needed the night to set the public face aside and become again the woman who kept the key.
Sleep, when it came, was thin.
I left at first light.
The cottage stood as I had left it, quiet under a pale morning sky. I unlocked the outer door, then the inner one, and stepped into the room.
She lay on her side facing the window, the blue dress wrinkled from two days of wear, the necklace I had given her resting against her collarbone. For a long moment I only looked at her. The rise and fall of her breathing. The loose strands of blonde hair across the pillow. The faint crease between her brows that even sleep had not smoothed away. I moved closer and sat on the edge of the bed. My hand lifted without full permission, fingers hovering near her hair. I almost touched her. Then her lashes fluttered.
She woke.
For a second she only stared at me, confusion giving way to recognition. Then the confusion burned off and something sharper took its place.
“You said you would come back that evening.” Her voice was rough from sleep. “That was two days ago.”
“I had matters to attend to.”
“Matters.” She pushed herself upright. “You left me here with nothing but a promise and then vanished. Do you have any idea what it’s like sitting in this room counting hours? I waited. I actually waited.”
Something in her tone scraped against the control I had spent the previous day reinforcing. “Watch how you speak to me.”
“Or what?” Her eyes were bright, too bright. “You’ll lock the door harder? You’ll stay away another two days? You already did that.”
“I do not answer to you.”
“No. You just make rules and break them when it suits you.” She laughed once, short and bitter. “You sat there and drank tea and let me think you might actually come back when you said you would. And then you didn’t.”
The words landed closer to the truth than I liked. I stood, putting distance between us.
“You are alive because of me,” I said, voice dropping. “You eat because of me. You have a bed and a roof and a dress on your back because I decided you would. Do not speak to me as if I owe you an explanation for every hour I am not in this room.”
“I didn’t ask for any of this!” Her voice rose. “I didn’t ask to be taken. I didn’t ask to be dressed up and locked away and told I was safe while you disappeared for two days. You don’t get to act like I’m ungrateful for a cage.”
“No.” She was shaking now. “You don’t get to shut me down every time I say something you don’t like. You left. You promised and you left. And I sat here like a fool thinking the door might open.”
Tears had started down her face. She wiped at them angrily, as if the tears themselves were a betrayal.
I felt the familiar cold settle into place, the one I used when the alternative was something messier.
“You are becoming difficult,” I said. “I have tolerated a certain amount of complaint because you are still adjusting. That patience is not endless. If you cannot control your tongue, I will simply stop answering it.”
“Then stop.” Her voice cracked. “Stop answering. Stop coming. Stop pretending this is anything other than you keeping me here because it suits you.”
“You know nothing of what suits me.”
“I know you couldn’t even keep a single evening promise.” She was crying openly now, the words coming between uneven breaths. “I know I hate how quiet this room gets. I know I hate that I listened for your key like it meant something. And I know you’re standing there looking at me like I’m the problem for saying it out loud.”
Silence fell hard between us.
I stared at her flushed, wet face and felt the argument lock into a shape neither of us could easily step out of. My own breathing had gone shallow. The words I still wanted to use sat behind my teeth, sharper than the ones I had already thrown. I did not let them out. The room held only the sound of her trying to steady herself and the soft shift of the mattress when she drew her knees up.
Neither of us spoke again.
The distance I had put between us felt both necessary and useless. She cried without covering her face. I remained standing, hands at my sides, and let the silence do what further argument would only worsen.
Outside, morning continued as if nothing in the room had cracked.