The sun had long since vanished behind the Naerith peaks by the time Serali finished her chores. The evening air in the servants’ hall was a sour stew of spilled gruel, damp wool, and the iron tang of bodies that never got to wash away the day’s work. The girls queued along the benches, each clutching her chipped bowl, eyes flicking up only when the housemistress passed by. The food at the end of a shift was a lottery: sometimes a heel of bread, sometimes a strip of salted meat, most nights a slop of root mash and a ladle of brackish water. Serali always drew last, if she drew at all.
Tonight, Vandra herself handled the rations, her movements crisp and rehearsed. She made a point of weighing each portion in her palm before doling it out, her pale hands never so much as grazed by the filth that stained the rest of them. When she reached Serali, she didn’t bother with the scoop. She plucked a lump of bread from a cracked tin and tossed it underhand across the table.
The bread arced and fell, striking the lip of Serali’s bowl and rolling to the floor. There was a beat, a hush in the scuffle of feet and shifting bodies, before Serali stooped to retrieve it. She did so without drama, though the effort cost her: her back screamed, her knees scraped raw against the stone. She dusted off the worst of the grit and brought the bread to her mouth. It was so hard it nearly broke her teeth.
She chewed and swallowed, slow, forcing it down.
The room did not quite settle. Vandra watched her, the expression on her face less satisfaction than evaluation, like a seamstress checking the warp of a finished thread. The other girls pretended not to see. There was a silence, heavier than before, and Serali felt the attention on her skin, waiting for her to flinch, to spit, to speak. She did none of those things.
Vandra clicked her tongue. “So ungrateful,” she said, the words thrown not at Serali but at the room, for all to hear. “The palace feeds even its mistakes, but it does not forget their place.”
Serali kept chewing, each bite a dull, deliberate motion.
Vandra made a show of considering, then set her ration tin aside. “Up,” she said, voice level and cold. “You’ve earned something extra, little rat.”
The others knew the script. Two of the bigger girls rose from the bench, and each took one of Serali’s arms, pinning them in place behind her back. Serali didn’t fight. She stood, her body compact and wiry as a trap sprung and reset, and let them drag her to the edge of the dining hall, near the door where the guards sometimes came in to collect leftovers. Vandra followed, moving with a slow, deliberate step that made the boards creak in time with her pulse.
She produced the whip from a pocket in her apron, a short-handled, many-tailed thing cut from old harness leather. Serali had counted the lashes before; Vandra was always precise.
“Face the wall,” said Vandra. “And remember: if you scream, there’s no supper tomorrow.”
The girls forced Serali forward, pressing her cheek to the stone. The wall was cold and damp against her skin. There was a crack in the mortar just beside her eye, thin as a black thread, running crookedly between two blocks before disappearing beneath a smear of old lye. Serali fixed on it. Not the girls’ hands on her shoulders. Not Vandra’s soft steps behind her. The crack. The seam. The little place where the wall had failed and held anyway.
She waited for the pain, not because she liked it, but because knowing when it would land was the only control left to her. The first stroke came low, just above the waistband of her skirt. The second, a little higher. Each left a stripe that sizzled and then went numb, only to flare again when the next blow landed. Vandra counted in a soft, even tone, never raising her voice, as though reciting a recipe. Serali followed the crack upward with her eyes and did not look away. At five, she tasted blood; at ten, she felt nothing at all.
She did not make a sound.
When it was done, the girls let go, and Serali sagged for a heartbeat, then straightened. She turned, ignoring the eyes that darted away from hers, and walked back to her place at the end of the table. She finished her bread. She sat with her back to the wall, knees drawn up, and did not look at anyone.
Vandra wiped the whip clean with a rag and hung it on the hook by the door. She left the hall without a word.
No one spoke. The clatter of bowls was muted, the shuffle of feet too soft for the size of the room. After a time, the other servants filed away to their sleeping cots, leaving Serali alone in the dim, flickering dark.
She stayed there until the pain turned to heat, then to cold, then to nothing at all. Only when she was sure no one would see, she let herself shake, just once, just enough to reclaim her body as her own.
Then she stood, washed her bowl, and vanished into the night.
Chapter 4: Lessons in Shadow
There were ways out of the palace, if you were desperate, or stupid, or had the luck to be both. Serali was well-practiced in all three. She waited for the silence after midnight, when the last of the scullions had finished their rounds and the guards on the lower wall were drowsy from cheap wine and boredom. Then she slid through the crawlspace in the laundry, careful not to snag her skirt on the rusted nails, and shimmied along the frost-rimed corridor to the low servants’ door. The key was never left in the lock, but she had fashioned a pick from a broken hairpin, and the mechanism responded to her with a stubborn, familiar click. She eased the door open, gritting her teeth against the scream of the hinges, and darted into the black.
The kitchen gardens were dead this time of year, the beds churned mud, and the scarecrow’s rags frozen in a perpetual shrug. Serali kept low, moving between the patches of frost-burned cabbage and brittle bean poles, her breath wisping out ahead of her.
The palace’s outer wall loomed above, so thick it seemed to grow out of the earth rather than sit on it. She found the postern gate by feel; it was never locked, only barred from the inside, and she shifted the plank with a levered bit of stone. Beyond was the hunting preserve; acres of old-growth oak and pine, the ground muffled by centuries of needles and moss, the air bracing and sharp with the scent of resin.
The forest pressed close, ancient and indifferent. There were paths, barely perceptible in the dark, where generations of hounds and mounted lords had worn down the undergrowth. Serali followed one by habit, her feet soft in the sodden mulch, until the lights of the palace were swallowed by the trees and only the breath of the wind kept her company. She counted her paces, one hundred, then two, then three. At the fourth hundred, she veered left, toward the depression in the ground where the stags sometimes bedded down for the night.
Cillian was already there. He stood at the edge of a ring of low stones, a silhouette against the faint, blue shimmer of a conjured globe that hovered just above his palm.
He looked younger in the half-light, the usual creases of responsibility and caution smoothed away by the cold. His cloak was nothing special, plain wool cinched with a leather cord, but his boots were palace issue, and his pitch-black hair, always a little too long for fashion, caught the starlight in silvery threads.
Serali let herself pause, just for a moment, watching him as he watched the trees. There was no affection in it; neither of them had the luxury, but she liked the way he held still, as if expecting the whole world to tilt and was ready to step aside when it did.
He didn’t turn to greet her, only said, “You’re late,” in a voice pitched barely above the breeze.
She shrugged, coming into the ring. “Vandra gave me a send-off. Count yourself lucky I have skin left.”
Cillian’s expression pinched, just a little. “You shouldn’t provoke her. Or Rania. You know what they’ll do if—”
“If they catch me, yes. But being a disappointment is my main job description. Besides, someone has to make you feel like the well-behaved child.”
He didn’t smile, but his posture eased half a degree. “How many?” he asked, still scanning the darkness as if summoned nightmares might break from the pines at any moment.
Serali considered lying, but even in the dark she could sense his gathering dread. “Ten.” She rolled her shoulders, not quite wincing. “It wasn’t terrible. Vandra was in a hurry for the wine hour.”
He reached for her, hesitated, then let his hand fall. “You say that like it’s not a lot.”
She snorted, blowing a strand of hair from her face. “I’m alright Cill. Nothing new.” She moved to the nearest stone and perched on it, crossing her arms hard enough to hide the way her hands trembled. “Spare me the physician’s lecture.”
Cillian crouched down beside the globe of light. The blue illumination painted the hollows of his face in sickly relief. “You don’t have a normal threshold for pain anymore,” he said, as if reading a ledger and finding the arithmetic disappointing. “That’s the problem. You stop noticing when it gets worse.”
She made a sound, equal parts derision and tiredness. “You would prefer I feel more pain?”
He ignored her, digging into the folds of his cloak with a practiced movement. From some interior pocket he withdrew a small glass jar, its lid wrapped in waxed paper. She recognized the blue label, the script too fine for any of the palace’s official suppliers. He’d stolen it from the apothecary on the east wing, the one with the deaf girl who owed him too many favors.
She eyed it, then him, with open suspicion. “Didn’t know I rated the good stuff.”
“It’s not the good stuff. It’s the only stuff.” He set the jar between them, hesitating again before speaking. “You need to let it heal, Ser.”
“Vandra’s not in the business of letting people heal.” Her tone was flat, but beneath it a current of something bitter and sharp. “Next week it’ll be Rania, or her hobby torturer from the city. There’s always something.” Her gaze fixed on the glowing sphere, as if she might draw warmth from its false light. “It’s not like I haven’t survived worse.”
Cillian’s jaw worked, the muscle ticking, but he didn’t argue the point. Instead, he studied her profile, noting the way she guarded her left arm, holding it tighter to her body. “How’s the shoulder?” he asked, softer.
The question landed like a stone in a well. Serali’s mouth snapped shut. Last winter, Vandra had caught her snatching food from the upper pantries and sent her tumbling down the back stairwell. Her left shoulder had popped out, then slammed in again on the landing.
They’d never set it properly, just iced it and waited for her to stop screaming. Now, in the damp cold, it clicked and caught, the tendons shifting like stones under wet cloth.
She blinked at the question, then looked away, out to where the trees broke to deeper shadow. “Functional.”
“Serali,” he said, drawing out the syllables like a warning. He did not try to reach for her again. Learned helplessness, she thought, was the ruling virtue of all good siblings.
She risked a sidelong glance, gauging the set of his mouth. “I appreciate the reminder, Cill. You’re so attentive. The palace’s most considerate big brother.”
He snorted, but there was relief in the sound, the kind she could taste, like ash after an argument. “Here,” he said, nudging the jar across the narrow ring of dirt toward her.
She palmed the jar, turning it over to test the seal.he dug her thumbnail into the seam and twisted until it gave with a brittle pop. The scent was immediate, clean and medicinal, wintergreen over something bitter, like crushed stems.
Cillian watched her in silence. He knew better than to offer help, not while she was still pretending at full use of her arm. She scooped a fat smear onto her fingers and reached awkwardly behind her, dragging the salve over the torn skin in a motion that was more determination than dexterity. The angle was all wrong, and after a few passes her breath started coming short, more from the humiliation of struggle than the pain itself.
After a minute, she let her hand drop, knuckles slicked with the pale blue ointment. “Fuck’s sake,” she said, not quite under her breath.
Cillian held her gaze for a beat, then asked,“You want to keep at it yourself, or are you ready to stop making a martyr of your left shoulder?”
The moonlight glazed her profile, hollow cheeks, a bruise already pooling purple at the jaw. It would have been easy to spit something cruel, but Serali’s breath whistled through her teeth, and the jar in her lap trembled, betraying her refusal. She stared at the shifting light in his palm, jaw clamped tight, a child’s stubbornness calcified by years.
Cillian waited, silent and immovable, as if he could out-stubborn the mountain itself. His patience was never for show; he simply understood that people yielded at their own faltering pace, and sometimes the only kindness was to wait.
“Go ahead, make yourself useful,” she bit out, pushing the jar toward him with a motion so sharp she nearly lost her grip.
Cillian rose and knelt behind her, movements careful as a priest’s. His hands were cold at first, but the warmth of his palms chased some of the numbness from her skin as he spread the salve over the raw, crosshatched welts. The pain receded under the pressure of his fingers, replaced by something dull and manageable. She kept her eyes on the trees, refusing to give him the satisfaction of a flinch or sigh.
She could feel the tension in him, even now. The way he avoided the worst of her back, the way he stopped shy of the uppermost lash, the one that gaped and oozed under even gentle touch. He worked around it, careful not to draw her attention to the place where flesh had split, though he catalogued it for later. Cillian possessed a registrar’s memory, tallying every injury, every degradation, even if he never spoke of them after. He finished with methodical grace, thumb brushing the last of the ointment across her shoulder blade.
Serali pulled her tunic straight. “So,” she said, flexing her good shoulder, “are we going to do some magic, or would you rather keep playing nursemaid?”
Cillian did not smile, but the corner of his mouth twitched. “Sit. We don’t have much time.”
Serali crouched on a stone, the cold biting straight through her skirt. She hugged her knees and watched as Cillian extinguished the globe and drew a line in the earth with his boot. The air hummed for a second, barely perceptible, but it made the hair on Serali’s arms stand up.
He spoke without looking at her. “We’re starting with the basic binding. Can you hold it for more than five seconds?”
Serali rolled her eyes, but when Cillian nodded, she focused. She cupped her hands and imagined the line of energy, just as he’d taught her: gather, shape, release. A filament of shadow curled between her palms, grew to a sphere, then pulsed steady as a heartbeat. It held, unshuddering, for a count of ten before she let it dissipate.
Cillian grunted. “Longer. And steadier.”
“Be more condescending,” Serali said. “Maybe I’ll try harder.”
He gave her a look that would have flattened most people, but Serali only smiled. It was one of the things she liked best about these meetings: she could say whatever she wanted, and Cillian would never punish her for it.
“Next,” he said, “I want you to shield.”
Serali drew a breath, steadied herself, and raised a wall of energy in front of her, just like in practice. It shimmered, faintly blue, and buzzed at the edges. Cillian reached out with his own force, testing it. She braced, expecting the usual collapse, but this time the wall not only held, it rebounded. The energy bucked and surged, pressing Cillian’s probe back at him so sharply that he flinched.
He masked it fast, but Serali saw.
Cillian withdrew his hand, voice very quiet. “You’ve been practicing.”
She shrugged, but she was watching him now, not with her usual indifference but with a growing, gnawing curiosity. “You asked me to.”
He shook his head. “Not like that. I’ve never—”
He didn’t finish the thought. He looked at her, really looked, as if seeing something for the first time and not sure whether to be afraid of it.
“Try the containment again,” he said. “Larger this time.”
Serali obeyed. She shaped the energy sphere again, this time letting it expand until it filled the space between them. It made the night feel denser, as if the woods leaned in closer, curious. The sphere held. Cillian walked a slow circle around it, prodding at its boundaries, but it did not distort or fade.
“Now change it,” Cillian said. He had retreated just outside the circle, arms folded, weight balanced over his heels. The cold was eating at him, but that was secondary to the new, careful awe in his voice. “Shape it into something useful.”
Serali hesitated. She’d never managed that part, not really. Last time she’d tried, the sphere had dissolved into a fine mist that lingered on her skin for days, a reminder of her own failure. But something was different tonight: the air, or the silence between her and Cillian, or the pulse of resentment beneath her breastbone. She closed her eyes to the black, felt the shape of the energy, and willed it to split, to sharpen.
The change was slow at first: the sphere contracted, then elongated, fighting her grip. Threads of shadow peeled away, twisting like smoke, and for a moment she nearly lost it, her lungs locked up, the cold so absolute it burned inside her nose and mouth. But she did not let go.
The shadow sphere flattened, then sculpted itself along a blade’s edge. The first knife formed, a crescent curve, dense and cold, hung with a black thirst that caught even the starlight, swallowing it flat.
She smiled, then forced the energy to double back. The filament knotted, split, and in an instant, a second blade hung beside the first, and then a third, smaller, but wicked in its symmetry.
Cillian exhaled, the sound heavy with both relief and something like dread. He stepped closer, his posture careful, as if approaching a wild thing that had not decided whether to flee or strike. “That’s enough, Serali. You can let go now.”
She did not, not at once. There was a possibility in the moment, a path she could walk that had nothing to do with old blood or the binding of her name to the palace walls, and she held it, tension strung tight as a bowstring, until the ache in her chest threatened to rupture.
It was not discipline that made her release. It was the flash of a memory: Rania’s face, lips curled in contempt; Vandra’s laughter, the sound of it trailing her through cold corridors. Anger spiked, sharp and bright, and the shadow-knives exploded from her hands, arcing through the air.
They sheared sideways, a perfect triangulation, and struck the trunk of the nearest pine with a brutal, splintering hiss. All three buried themselves almost to the hilt, dark shivers in pale bark. The tree shuddered; the silence that followed rang like a bell.
When she looked up at Cillian, he was more pale than usual.
He asked her, almost softly: “Where did you learn that?”
Serali dropped her hands, breath suddenly shallow. The knives did not dissipate, not immediately; they clung to the wood as if savoring the wound. She could feel them, each one, a needle of attention tethered to her skin. It took effort to release them, but they faded slowly. “You taught me. Don’t be mad if I’m better at it.”
But Cillian didn’t take the bait. He crouched across from her, hands on his knees, and let the silence fill up with cold and with secrets.
“You can’t show anyone this. Not even, especially not, me.”
Serali frowned. “I thought the whole point was—”
“It was. It is.” Cillian’s voice was urgent now, a hush layered with warning. “But if they realize how strong you are, they’ll take you apart. Or they’ll take you to him.”
Serali stilled. There was only one “him” in the palace that mattered.
“Vulmar doesn’t care,” she said. “Not unless he thinks it’s useful.”
“That’s the problem,” said Cillian. “You’re useful now.”
For a moment, neither of them spoke. The forest made its own sounds: a distant screech, the flap of some night bird’s wings, the sigh of wind through the pine. Serali watched the palace walls, visible as a bruise-colored glow between the branches.
She said, “You’re afraid of me.”
He looked away. “Not of you. For you.”
It was so honest, so unlike the rest of her life, that it almost hurt to hear. She wanted to ask what would happen next, but she knew he wouldn’t answer.
Cillian stood, dusting pine needles from his trousers. “Come. It’s late. If they find you missing—”
“They’ll beat me. They’ll do it anyway.”
He hesitated, and then, very quietly: “I’ll try to get food to you tomorrow. Something better.”
Serali stood, stretching the numbness from her limbs. “If you bring me boiled turnip again, I’ll hex your boots to squeal every step.”
That earned a flicker of a smile. “Get back safe.”
She melted into the trees, retracing her steps. Cillian waited until she was nearly gone before heading back the other way. Neither of them saw the shadow figure hunched in the dark at the clearing’s edge, where the old branches bent so low they nearly touched the ground.
It was a woman, wrapped in the plain wool of the lower staff, face unremarkable in every way. She waited until both Serali and Cillian were out of sight, then turned and moved swiftly, silently, back to the palace. After all, the Queen had eyes everywhere.