When Serali next surfaced, she did not recognize the room.
She came up slow, pulled on the undertow of her own heartbeat, expecting the cold and the stink of old stone, maybe the scream of torn muscle or the postmortem clarity that sometimes came with enough pain.
Instead: silence, white and plush, so thick it felt padded. She could not say how long she’d slept, if sleep was what this was, if this wasn’t the between-state that preceded death.
There had been a cell. There had been the Queen’s hand, the exposure of her back, the moment of non-strangulation, then cold, then oblivion.
Her first impression was of warmth. A second, still shallow breath drew the unmistakable scent of lemon oil, linen, and the faint astringency of medical spirits. She was not on the floor, but on her side, cocooned in something, sheets? blankets?—that, when she squeezed her hand into it, gave way with a yielding luxury so alien it took a few seconds to name. A bed.
The realization was so improbable she opened her eyes, expecting the world to collapse into the true shape of torture: a rack, an iron maiden, some new chamber of horrors conjured by a Sun Fae with a point to prove.
No. The ceiling overhead was painted, or perhaps plastered in cream, not white, with a single hairline fissure tracing the line from corner to corner like a vein. Sunlight, real and unfiltered, cut across her vision from a high window.
She tried to move and discovered she could not, not all at once, at least. Her wrists were bound, but not with iron manacles: a pair of soft leather straps, padded on the inside, affixed her hands to the carved bedframe with just enough play to let her roll to her back, to the side, but not to rise.
She flexed her fingers and felt the whisper of gauze beneath the straps, a thick bandage running from palm to mid-forearm on both arms. It was so well-wrapped she did not immediately feel the wounds underneath. She tried her left leg: no chain, only a dull ache at the knee. The sensation of safety was so complete it scared her more than the bindings.
She lay there for a while, cataloguing the room. The walls were smooth, banded in a faint pattern of blue and gold. There was a table to her left, bearing a basin, a pitcher of water, a stack of folded towels so white they hurt her eyes. The bed itself was a thing of art, four posts carved to look like the trunks of slender birches, the sheets so fine she felt them less as fabric than as a pressure gradient, a gentling of the air.
A thin throw, green and featherweight, draped her body to the waist, and beneath it she wore a shift so soft it might have been silk, or the spun-down of some animal bred for no other reason than to comfort those who’d never known a single day of comfort. Someone had dressed her.
Her stomach clenched.
Someone had undressed her first.
She knew that had been necessary. Her old tunic had been torn. Filthy. Blood-stiff. It would have had to come off.
Knowing did not help.
Her mind, unmoored from torture or hunger or the need to plot her next movement, stuttered in the face of this new, unwinnable luxury.
Serali pressed her free hand flat against the mattress and forced herself to breathe through her nose. One breath. Two. The room was warm. The lamps were lit. No one was touching her now.
She drifted, suspended in the between-state. She catalogued the injuries under the bandages, noted the bruises at her jaw, the angry soreness at her throat, the strange numbness at her shoulder. None of it was new. She flexed her feet, felt the pull in her calves, the pulse at her ankle, no break, no sprain, just the slow reclaiming of the body by the spirit.
The only pain that truly registered was a low, humming ache in her chest, a mixture of disappointment and confusion and the bone-deep shame that came from having failed, not to escape or survive, but simply to die on her own terms.
The door opened.
Serali went still.
Not by choice. Her body simply became stone.
A woman entered carrying a tray.
Sun Fae, with warm brown skin, dark gold hair braided neatly back, and a round face arranged into professional calm. She wore a palace attendant’s dress in green and cream, finer than a scullery maid’s, plainer than a lady’s. Not a nurse. Not a guard.
One of Allandra’s people, then.
The woman paused just inside, as if she had expected Serali to be asleep and found a knife awake instead.
Then she recovered.
“Good morning,” she said softly.
Serali did not answer.
“I brought broth,” she said. “And water. Tea as well, if your stomach can manage it.”
The woman crossed to the bedside table and set the tray down. Broth in a small covered bowl. A cup of water. A second cup of pale amber tea. A folded cloth. A little pot of honey. As if this were breakfast and not continuation by gentler means.
Serali watched every movement.
The woman noticed.
Good.
Let her notice.
“The healer said you should drink first,” the attendant said. “Small sips.”
Serali let the silence hold. Eventually, the maid moved closer, perched on the very edge of the mattress, and reached for the bowl. She ladled a little broth into a wooden spoon, tested it on her wrist, then, after a beat, held it out.
Serali considered refusing, but her hunger was both genuine and cruel. She opened her mouth, let the maid spoon the broth in. It was warm, salty, but not too rich, food for the dying, or the recently dead.
They repeated this, slow, the only sound the faint click of the spoon against her teeth, the soft exhale of the maid’s breath when she managed not to spill. After half a dozen spoonfuls, the bowl was empty, and the maid tore off a piece of bread, soaked it in the remaining broth, and held it up.
“Do you want more?” she asked.
Serali nodded, then said, “Thank you.” The words felt foreign, but not unwelcome.
The maid’s face flickered—relief?—and she said, “You’re welcome.” She paused, looked down at Serali’s hands. “Does it hurt?”
“Not today,” Serali said. “Not in a way that matters.”
The woman reached for the water, and poured a glass.
“I can hold it,” the attendant said. “Or try to set it where you can manage, though—”
She glanced at the restrained wrists and stopped.
“Yes,” Serali said dryly. “Though.”
The woman’s mouth tightened.
Humiliation was sometimes very quiet.
“Hold it,” Serali said.
The woman stepped closer.
Serali’s body tensed so hard her back screamed.
The attendant saw that too. She moved slowly, not with the exaggerated gentleness of someone performing kindness, but with the practical care of a woman carrying something full to the brim. She slid one hand beneath Serali’s shoulders and helped her lift just enough to drink.
Pain flared.
Serali bit it down.
The cup touched her lips.
She drank.
Water moved over her tongue, cool and clean, and for a moment her entire body narrowed to that: water, swallowing, the ache of her throat, the shame of needing another person’s hand to keep from spilling it down herself.
“Enough,” Serali said.
The cup withdrew at once.
The attendant lowered her carefully back onto the pillow.
Serali closed her eyes before the ceiling could blur.
When she opened them again, the woman was watching her with an expression too controlled to be pity.
Good.
“You have a name?” Serali asked.
The woman’s eyebrows lifted.
That had not been expected.
“Yes.”
Serali waited.
The attendant did not offer it. Names mattered. Perhaps she knew that.
“Are you going to tell me?”
“No.”
Serali stared at her.
For the first time, the woman’s mouth twitched.
“I was told not to tell you anything unnecessary.”
“Your name is unnecessary?”
“For your recovery, yes.”
“That is bleak.”
“It is also practical.”
Serali studied her.
This one was not stupid. That was inconvenient.
The woman stood, wiped her hands on her apron, and retreated a step. “The healer will come later, if you’re well enough. They’ll—” She glanced at the bandages, then away. “They’ll check your wrists, and see if you need more medicine.”
Serali nodded. She felt the world pull away from her, the tiredness so vast she could not remember why she’d ever wanted to stay awake. She closed her eyes, felt the warmth of the bed, the distant hum of the palace, the way the sunlight moved in increments along the ceiling as the hours passed.
She was still a prisoner, yes, but the rules had changed. There were still guards at the door, she heard their boots, the scrape of armor, the low pulse of conversation in the corridor, but she was no longer a thing to be broken. She was being kept for a reason, and it was not to die.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
That made her uneasy. It also made her hopeful, in a way that felt dangerous.
She rolled to her side, brought her knees up to her chest, and tucked her bandaged hands under her cheek. She tried to imagine the Queen’s face, the line of her jaw, the hollowed look that had preceded the whip, the way she had pressed her hand to Serali’s back as if to catalogue the pain, not to add to it. The memory was almost tender.
Serali let herself drift, promising nothing, expecting nothing, but savoring the reprieve. She slept, and in the dream, there were no beds, no chains, no queens, only the bright, unbroken sky, and the certainty that, somewhere, she would find a way out.
Chapter 29: The Silent Treatment
The formal dining hall was unnecessary when there were only three of them. It swallowed conversation and encouraged courtiers to pretend private meals were public theater. Allandra preferred the western room for family dinners: green curtains, low fire, a painted ceiling of sunbirds and orange blossoms, a table small enough that Everly could kick Hagen under it when he deserved it.
Hagen had arrived first, as was his habit, and claimed the head of the table. He poured himself a glass of the orchard white, ignored the place settings entirely, and set about deconstructing a roast quail with the patience of a sculptor. By the time Allandra entered, he had already devoured half the bird, fingers slicked with citrus glaze, napkin untouched.
She paused in the doorway, surveying the scene: Hagen, artful in his staged indifference; two plates unclaimed; the stillness that comes before a detonation.
“Eating early, or avoiding the spectacle?” she asked, voice sharp as the cutlery at each place.
Hagen smiled, teeth white and predatory. “Both. But it’s not the meal I’m here for, sister.” He gestured toward the child’s chair, conspicuously empty, then back to the seat Allandra was supposed to occupy. “The real event is the rematch. Will the Queen outlast the Princess, or will the Sunbeam incinerate us all?”
Allandra sat, arranging her hands on the tablecloth like an array of small, manageable problems. “You exaggerate. She’s four.”
He arched an eyebrow. “Four, and already she wields silence like a guillotine. An admirable trait.”
A door creaked on the far side of the room. Everly entered, flanked by two silent nursemaids who melted away as soon as she stepped over the threshold. She wore blue, the fabric creased from having spent the last two hours folded up in a library corner. Her hair was unbrushed and haloed with static, and the mark of a pressed flower was still faintly visible on her left cheek. She took her seat with deliberate slowness, lifted her napkin, and placed it in her lap with the kind of ceremonial precision that made a farce of the gesture.
She did not look at her mother. She did not look at her uncle. She examined the plate in front of her as if it contained a map of the world she meant to conquer by force of will alone.
Hagen leaned forward, voice stage-whispered, “The Sunbeam enters. Round one.”
Everly’s fork hovered over her salad for a full thirty seconds. When she finally stabbed a slice of pear, the gesture was so crisp and final that even Hagen seemed impressed. She chewed, swallowed, and then resumed her silent resistance.
Allandra waited a full minute before attempting speech. “You spent all afternoon in the library,” she said, directing the words to the open air, not to the child. “Lady Edda says you finished your reading before the second bell. Was it too easy?”
No answer.
Everly methodically stripped the walnuts from her salad, arranged them in a ring at the edge of her plate, and did not so much as blink in either adult’s direction.
Hagen, watched with a goblet of watered wine and the expression of a man attending an execution for educational purposes, watched his niece place another walnut beside the others.
“Impressive fortification,” he said.
Everly did not answer.
“It has weak eastern defenses.”
Everly moved one walnut.
Hagen’s brows rose. “Ah. A commander willing to adapt. Promising.”
Allandra tried again, this time more pointed. “The bread is fresh. The cook made your favorite, lemon with poppy seed. I had to negotiate for a second loaf.”
Everly maintained her siege, gaze fixed at the tablecloth’s pattern. Her hands were steady, but her breathing was a hair too quick, as if she was bracing for recoil. She did not touch the bread.
Hagen grinned. “Told you she’s a legend. I give you another five minutes, maximum, before you cave.” He drained his wine and poured a fresh glass, then raised it to Everly in silent toast.
Allandra felt the flush of irritation, old, familiar, and therefore easily quelled. “If you’re so keen to see the showdown, why are you here? I thought you preferred the company of your own little court.”
“I do,” Hagen replied, “but your daughter is better at strategy than any nobleman I know. Besides, the gossip has reached the east wing—‘Princess in mutiny, Queen in retreat.’ You know how the palace loves its dramas.” He leaned in, conspiratorial. “Also, I wanted to see if you’d really killed the Night Fae girl yet, or if you were still negotiating with yourself about it.”
Everly’s jaw twitched at that, and her fork clattered against the plate. She shot Hagen a look that, had it been backed by more mass, could have cracked the decanter.
Allandra ignored her brother and addressed her daughter directly. “Sunbeam,” she said, soft but unwavering, “you can be angry. You can be furious. But you will not go hungry for it.”
Everly did not respond.
“Everly,” she said more softly. “Use your words.”
Everly lifted one pea, placed it at the end of the row, and pressed it flat with her fork.
Hagen made a faint, strangled sound.
Allandra did not look at him.
“Sunbeam.”
That did it.
Everly’s hand stopped.
Her small shoulders rose around her ears.
Then she said, very clearly, “No.”
The word hit harder than it should have.
Allandra set down her fork. “No?”
“You don’t get to call me that.”
Hagen’s amusement vanished.
Allandra went very still.
Everly stared at her plate, lower lip tucked between her teeth as if she were holding in more words and did not trust them not to escape.
“Why not?” Allandra asked.
“Because I am mad at you.”
The room seemed to settle around the sentence.
The fire cracked once.
Hagen looked down into his goblet, suddenly fascinated by wine he had not been drinking.
Allandra folded her hands beneath the table so Everly would not see them tighten.
“I know,” she said.
Everly looked up sharply, as if this was not the answer she had expected and therefore might be suspicious.
“You do?”
“Yes.”
Everly frowned. “Then why are you doing dinner?”
Allandra blinked. “Because it is dinner.”
“No.” Everly shook her head. “When I am mad, I do not want chicken.”
“That is becoming apparent.”
“I want to be mad.”
“You may be mad and eat.”
“I do not want to do both.”
Hagen murmured, “A philosophical difficulty.”
Allandra’s gaze cut to him.
He became quiet.
Everly’s eyes filled suddenly, which was worse than the silent treatment. The tears did not fall. She would not let them. She had inherited that from Allandra too, and seeing it in such a small face felt like punishment.
“You hurt Serali,” Everly said.
Allandra’s breath stopped.
There it was.
No courtly language. No titles. No discussion of threat or custody or royal security. Just the thing itself, placed on the table between peas and chicken and a cup of watered juice.
“Yes,” Allandra said.
Hagen looked at her then.
So did Everly.
Allandra forced herself to continue. “I did.”
Everly’s mouth trembled. “You said you would not.”
“I said I would keep you safe.”
“You said she would not be hurt.”
Allandra opened her mouth.
Stopped.
Had she said that?
In the corridor outside the playroom, with the Mantle burning beneath her skin and her daughter behind a barricaded door with an escaped prisoner, Allandra had said many things. She remembered Everly’s voice through the wood. She remembered promising safety. She remembered promising calm. She remembered meaning, desperately, that no harm would come to the child.
She did not remember the exact words.
Everly did.
Children always remembered the worst possible details.
“I may have,” Allandra said quietly.
Everly’s face crumpled with outrage. “You did.”
“Then I broke my word.”
Hagen inhaled softly.
Allandra ignored him.
Everly went very still.
Allandra had surprised her again.
Good, perhaps. Or terrible. She no longer knew how to tell the difference.
“I was frightened,” Allandra said.
Everly gripped her fork with both hands. “You are big.”
“That does not mean I cannot be frightened.”
“You are the Queen.”
“That does not mean it either.”
“You have guards.”
“Yes.”
“And magic.”
“Yes.”
“And Uncle Hagen.”
Hagen touched his chest, unexpectedly moved. “Do I count as a weapon or a comfort?”
“Both,” Everly said without looking at him.
“Fair.”
Allandra almost smiled.
Almost.
Everly did not.
“She was scared too,” Everly said.
The almost-smile disappeared.
Allandra saw Serali in the vault, eyes fixed on the crack in the wall.
Fine.
“Yes,” Allandra said. “She was.”
“You scared her.”
“Yes.”
Everly’s eyes narrowed. “On purpose.”
Allandra swallowed.
There were a dozen answers. A hundred. Explanations about royal line, threat assessment, the impossibility of knowing whether Serali had intended harm. About assassinations and dead parents and the way fear for a child could turn any person into a battlefield. All true. All useless.
“Yes,” Allandra said.
Everly’s fork clattered against her plate.
Hagen put his goblet down very carefully.
“You are not supposed to scare hurt people on purpose,” Everly said.
“No,” Allandra said. “I am not.”
“Then why did you?”
Allandra chose her next words with surgical care. “The woman you call your friend is not a guest in this house. She’s dangerous.”
Everly’s hands balled under the tablecloth. “She didn’t hurt me.”
“She could have. That’s the point.”
Everly’s stare was pitiless. “You didn’t have to hurt her either.”
Allandra’s reply caught in her throat. For a moment, she was back in the blue-walled room, hand on Serali’s throat, the girl’s face gone slack with surrender. She blinked the image away.
“She is alive,” Allandra said, keeping her voice even. “I made certain of it myself. She is… resting.”
“Did you hurt her more?” Everly demanded, and now there was an edge, a faint quiver in the second syllable, the anticipation of betrayal. “You promised you wouldn’t.”
Hagen, unable to restrain himself, stage-whispered, “The Princess keeps a ledger of oaths. I hope you’re up to date.”
Allandra ignored him. “No,” she said. “She has lamps, and a blanket, and food better than most in the city have right now. I gave orders.”
Everly considered, then nodded, accepting the terms in a way that was both childlike and unnervingly final. “Thank you,” she said, but did not soften.
A span of silence, broken only by the gentle clatter of cutlery. Then, in a tone Allandra had never heard from her daughter, something almost clinical, Everly asked, “Why do you hate them so much? The Night Fae.”
Allandra regarded her child, and found no good answer ready. She tried for the truth. “Because they killed your father. Your grandfather and grandmother too. Because every time I think of peace, I remember what it cost us.”
Everly’s gaze didn’t falter. “But you told me you punished them. That you made them pay, every single one.”
Allandra nodded once, slow. “I did.”
“Then why are you still angry?”
Hagen choked on a mouthful of wine, sprayed it onto his sleeve, then dissolved into coughing laughter. “Point to the princess,” he managed, voice half-drowned in mirth. “Her tutors are doing excellent work.”
Allandra’s cheeks went hot. She forced herself to breathe through it. “Because it doesn’t bring them back. Because every time I see a Night Fae, I see the possibility that one day, one of them will take you from me too.”
Everly let that sink in. Then, precise and merciless, she said, “But it wasn’t her fault. You said you killed everyone who hurt us, so she didn’t do it. She’s just… like me or you, only from the wrong side.”
For a moment, the air left the room.
Allandra had no words, none that would suffice. She considered the girl across from her, so small and so absolute in her logic, and wondered if she had raised a child, or a judge.
Hagen sopped at his sleeve with a napkin, still smiling. “Sun and stone, sister, you’re outflanked.”
Everly finished her salad, then folded her hands in her lap. “Will you let her go, now that you know she isn’t evil?”
Allandra exhaled. “It’s not that simple.”
“Why not?”
Because I need to win, Allandra thought, and the realization hollowed her out. “Because the world doesn’t trust what it can’t control. Because she’s a piece on a board, and people will use her for what she is, not who.”
Everly considered this, then shrugged, as if grown-up madness was a thing to be endured rather than challenged. “Okay. But you promised she wouldn’t be hurt.”
“I remember,” said Allandra, voice rough at the edges.
Hagen refilled his glass, then lifted it in salute. “To promises, then. And the women who keep them, or die trying.”
Allandra gave him a withering look, but there was no venom left in it. Only fatigue, and a trace of something like gratitude.
Everly turned back to her mother. “Did you say sorry to Serali yet?”
Allandra’s throat tightened.
“No.”
“Why not?”
Because I do not know whether apology is mercy or selfishness when spoken to someone still inside a cage I ordered built.
Because if I apologize, I will have to look at what I did without the protection of necessity.
“I have not had the chance,” Allandra said.
Everly considered this with the sternness of a priest evaluating a poor offering.
“When you get the chance, you have to.”
“I know.”
“And not a queen sorry.”
Hagen’s mouth twitched despite himself.
Allandra looked at her daughter. “What is a queen sorry?”
Everly sat up straighter and lowered her voice into a remarkably accurate imitation of Allandra’s council tone. “I regret the unhappy thing that happened.”
Hagen choked.
Allandra closed her eyes.
The worst part was that she had said nearly that exact sentence to an envoy last month after his favorite cousin was trampled during a ceremonial hunt.
“That is not an apology,” Everly said.
“No,” Allandra agreed, opening her eyes again. “It is not.”
“You have to say real sorry.”
“I will try.”
Everly frowned. “No. You say try when you are not sure you want to.”
Allandra looked down.
The child’s moral precision was becoming intolerable.
Hagen, treacherous and quiet, said, “She is not wrong.”
Allandra looked at him.
He should have looked amused. He usually did. Instead he looked thoughtful, almost gentle, which was infinitely worse.
“Not helping,” she said.
“I am, unfortunately, attempting to.”
They ate in near-silence after that, three solitudes circling a table large enough for an army. The sun slipped down the windows and left the plates in shadow, and by the end of the meal, Everly had eaten everything but the walnuts, which she lined up in a perfect ring, a barrier or a keepsake or a code only she understood.
When the girl excused herself, she did so with impeccable manners. Hagen lingered, swirling the last of his wine, and watched his sister for a long, silent minute.
“She’s right, you know,” he said at last. “About the girl. About you.”
Allandra did not reply.
“She wants you to be something impossible,” Hagen continued, soft now. “A queen who kills without mercy, but also a mother who saves lost things just because they’re lost. I don’t envy you.”
Allandra, watching the sunset bleed into the city below, said, “You could help.”
Hagen smiled, soft and almost brotherly. “If you ever decide which one you’d rather be, I’ll be the first to drink to your health.”
He left her with the empty glasses and the ring of walnuts.
She sat a long time, alone, watching the shadows shift, and wondered whether there was a way out that did not end in blood, or in silence.