POV: Astrid
I stayed frozen behind the wall, my knees pressed to my chest, listening to boots move across the room I’d grown up in.
Furniture scraped against stone. Something shattered, glass by the sound of it, and a guard muttered that they should just burn the whole place to the ground and be done with it.
"Search every room first," the king said, his voice flat and final. "She couldn’t have disappeared."
I clamped a hand over my mouth and held my breath until my chest burned.
They searched for what felt like forever. Drawers opening. The wardrobe door creaking. Boots crossing back and forth over the same stretch of floor, close enough that I could hear the leather flex with every step. I didn’t move. I didn’t breathe more than I had to. I just waited for the crack in the boards to fill with light, for a hand to reach in and drag me out into whatever had just happened to my mother.
It never came.
Eventually the footsteps pulled back. The door shut. And then, finally, silence.
I still didn’t move. Minutes passed, or maybe it only felt that way, my heartbeat stretching every second longer than it should have been.
Then I smelled smoke.
Faint at first, curling through the cracks in the boards, and then thicker, until I heard screaming from somewhere below us. The brothel was burning. I understood, with a kind of numb clarity, that if I stayed hidden any longer, the fire would finish what the king had started.
I pushed the loose board free and crawled out into the room.
It was empty.
My mother’s body was gone. Only a dark stain remained on the floor where she’d fallen, spreading slow across the wood grain. For one insane second I thought maybe I’d imagined all of it, that I’d wake up and she’d be counting coins on the bed like always.
Then I saw the hair clip, crushed flat, lying near the doorway where he’d dropped it.
My legs gave out. I sank to my knees beside the blood that used to be my mother and I cried, silent, shaking, my hands pressed over my mouth so no sound would escape.
I don’t know how long I stayed like that.
Eventually I remembered the satchel. I found it where I’d left it, tucked against the wall, and dug through it with trembling fingers. The scholarship letter. The admission papers with a stranger’s name on them. A small pouch of coins. A change of clothes folded neat. A train ticket to Moonshade Academy.
And a note.
I unfolded it slowly, my mother’s handwriting slanting across the page in a rush, like she’d written it weeks ago and kept it ready for a night she always knew was coming.
Live.
Never tell anyone who your father is.
Trust no one wearing the royal crest.
Forgive me.
—Mother
I clutched the paper until it crumpled in my fist, until the ink smeared under my palm, and I let myself have exactly one more minute of grief before I forced myself to stand.
The smoke was thickening now, curling low along the ceiling. I grabbed the satchel and slipped out through the servants’ passage at the back, the one Mother always used to bring men in and out without the front desk noticing.
Outside, the street was chaos. People running. Someone shouting for water. Royal guards stopped anyone who looked even slightly suspicious, demanding names, demanding papers.
I found an empty bucket abandoned near the back step and picked it up, holding it against my hip like I belonged there, like I was just another maid fleeing the fire with nothing to hide. I kept my head down and my pace steady, not too fast, not too slow, and no one so much as glanced twice at me.
The whole city seemed to be talking about it by the time I reached the market square. The king had come himself, they said, though nobody knew why. A guard near the fountain swore it was an assassination attempt. A woman selling bread insisted the king was hunting a criminal who’d fled north. Nobody guessed the truth. Nobody ever would.
I kept walking, the station only a few streets away now, my heart hammering harder with every guard I passed.
Then one of them stepped directly into my path.
"Where are you headed?"
My pulse spiked, but I remembered something my mother used to say, back when she was teaching me how to lie to men twice my age. People believe confidence more than excuses. So I straightened my spine, bowed my head just enough to be respectful, and pulled out the scholarship papers with a hand that only shook a little.
"Moonshade Academy," I said, letting a note of irritation creep into my voice. "I’m already late for registration, and if I miss the morning train I don’t know what I’ll do."
He glanced over the papers, unimpressed, already halfway to handing them back when another soldier shouted from across the square that they’d found fresh tracks near the river.
The guard’s head snapped toward the sound. He shoved the papers back at me without another look and waved me on.
I didn’t start breathing properly again until I was halfway across the platform.
The train whistle cut through the noise just as I reached the doors, and I climbed aboard seconds before they slid shut behind me. I found a seat by the window and sank into it, the satchel clutched against my chest like it was the only solid thing left in the world.
The train lurched forward.
Through the glass, I watched the city fall away, smoke still rising black against the pale edge of morning, rising from the only home I’d ever known.
"I’ll survive," I whispered, so quiet even I barely heard it.
I looked down at the admission letter in my lap, at the crest stamped across the top. Moonshade Academy.
I had no idea I was riding straight toward the sons of the man who killed my mother.