POV: Astrid
My knees ached against the stone floor, and I still had four more rooms to scrub before I could sleep.
I dunked the rag in the bucket, wrung it out, and kept going. The candlelight flickered against the hallway walls, and somewhere down the corridor a man laughed too loud, the way men always laughed when they’d had too much wine and thought they were clever.
The door beside me creaked open.
A noble stumbled out, his shirt half untucked, his face flushed red. He didn’t even look at me, just tossed a small leather pouch into the air and caught it, grinning like he’d won something.
"Gods, that woman is expensive," he muttered, laughing to himself as he staggered toward the stairs. "Worth every coin, though."
I rolled my eyes and kept scrubbing.
Mother had robbed another fool.
It wasn’t the first time, and it wouldn’t be the last. She had a gift for making rich men feel like kings while she picked their pockets clean, smiling the whole time. I used to think it was funny.
I finished the last stretch of the hallway and let myself into her room, expecting the usual. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, dumping the contents of a different pouch onto the sheets, counting coins with quick, practiced fingers.
"You should have seen his face," she said without looking up. "He actually believed I’d fall in love with him by morning." She laughed, a real laugh, warm and a little wicked. "Rich men. They practically beg to be cheated."
I leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, smiling despite myself. This was normal. This was us. Her scheming, me scrubbing floors to keep our cover, both of us scraping by in a boarding house that smelled like candle wax and cheap perfume.
Then someone ran past the door outside.
Fast. Frantic footsteps, followed by a whisper so sharp it cut straight through the wall.
"The King is here."
My mother’s smile vanished.
Not slowly. Not like it faded. It was just gone, wiped clean off her face like it had never existed, replaced by something I’d never seen on her before. Pure, naked fear.
She dropped to her knees and shoved her hand under the bed.
"Mother?"
She didn’t answer. I heard fabric tearing, something scraping against stone, and then she pulled out an envelope, worn at the corners like she’d handled it a hundred times when I wasn’t looking.
Moonshade Academy. A scholarship acceptance letter.
"I never applied to Moonshade," I said, staring at it.
She shoved it into my hands anyway. "Your name isn’t Astrid anymore."
"What?"
I tore it open. A different surname stared back at me from the page, printed above a stranger’s life I’d never chosen.
"Why would I need another name?"
She didn’t answer that either. She was already moving, yanking open drawers, stuffing things into a small satchel with hands that wouldn’t stop shaking. Coins. A change of clothes. Bread wrapped in cloth. The admission papers.
Something cold settled in my stomach.
"Mother, talk to me."
"You leave tonight."
"School starts tomorrow, I can’t just—"
"Tonight, Astrid."
We were talking over each other now, her voice climbing, mine climbing to match it, and underneath it all I could feel something building, something I didn’t have a name for yet.
Then I heard it.
Footsteps in the corridor. Heavy in a way that made every hair on my arms stand up.
They stopped outside our door.
My mother froze for half a second, then moved faster than I’d ever seen her move. She grabbed the satchel, shoved it into my arms, and dragged me toward a section of wall beneath the bed I hadn’t even known existed until her fingers found the seam and pried it open.
"Get in."
"What is that, I’m not—"
She slapped me.
I stumbled back, my cheek burning, too stunned to speak. She had never hit me. Not once. Not in seventeen years.
Her eyes were wet when she grabbed my face in both hands. "Don’t make a sound," she whispered. "No matter what you hear. Do you understand me? Not a sound."
She shoved me into the gap and sealed it behind me before I could answer.
The dark pressed in close. I could barely breathe, my knees pulled to my chest, my heart slamming so loud I was sure it would give me away.
Then the door opened.
I heard boots. Several pairs. And beneath them, a stillness that swallowed the whole room, like the air itself had gone quiet out of respect, or terror.
A certain voice spoke.
"Where is my daughter?"
My whole body went rigid.
My mother tried to laugh it off, tried to lie, her voice pitched high and sweet the way it always was with men she was working. It didn’t land. She tried bargaining next, offering him anything, everything. Still nothing. Then I heard her voice drop into something I’d never heard from her, something soft and pleading, and I understood, with a sick twist in my stomach, that she was trying to seduce a king to save my life.
"You should have surrendered her seventeen years ago," he said.
There was no shout. No struggle I could hear. Just a single wet sound, and then the thud of my mother’s body hitting the floor.
Through the crack in the wall, I saw her eyes find mine in the dark.
She didn’t look afraid anymore. She looked like she’d finally finished the only thing that had ever mattered.
Then her eyes went still.
I bit down on my own hand to keep from screaming.
Boots moved through the room. Drawers opened and closed. A chair scraped. He was searching, and finding nothing, because she’d made sure of that before he ever walked through the door.
Then his footsteps stopped.
I watched through the crack as he bent down and picked something small off the floor. My hair clip. The one I’d lost that morning and never found.
A guard’s voice, low. "She couldn’t have gone far."
I heard the clip crack in his fist.
"Seal the city," the king said, and something about the stillness in his voice was worse than any shout could have been.
Then, quieter, colder than anything before it.
"Find the bastard."