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Section 1
### Chapter 1: Chapter 1
CHAPTER 1: NO HOLDS BARRED They brought the princess to the mountain at dusk. The sky over the Grey Marches burned in strips of red and gold, but the mountain itself was already dark, a black tooth jutting out of the fog. The tower crowned it. Hammered into the earth from above: narrow, impossibly tall, a spear driven into the very bedrock of the world. The Princess Irena Vaudrin sat hunched in her saddle and tried not to look at it. Maille rattled, and leather creaked as the column of riders wound its way up the broken road in a clatter of hooves and iron. Banners of the Third Host, the Marchwardens, snapped in the wind, their white-and-green pennants catching the dying light. Hard men in dull plate and drab cloaks rode with their shields slung and their spears tipped up, too tense to relax even so close to their destination as this. If anything, they grew even more tense as they climbed higher. “Eyes up, lads,” barked the captain at the head of the column. “We’re in the dragon’s shadow now.” The word dragon scraped its cold fingers down Irena’s spine. She lifted her head, pretending she was merely adjusting her hood and that chance alone had let her glance sideways across to that far peak. That far peak was little more than a silhouette shape in the dark. Jagged and steep, the summit’s upper half was lost in a smear of low cloud. There was no sign of anything living there save the wind that whipped that fog into flurries over blackened mountain stone. Then the mountain moved. At first glance, that movement seemed but a shifting of shadow, a trick of the failing light. Then the earth heaved; a long curve of black stone uncoiled with ponderous, awful grace. Two ridges opened into wings vast enough to blot out the stars, stretched once, twice, shaking off a deep slumber. A line of orange lit up along the rock face, a slit in the world as rocks and boulders tumbled from their place on the mountainside. An eye. It opened, lazy and lid-heavy, and turned towards the road. Irena couldn’t breathe. A sound rumbled across the valley, low enough to be felt more than heard. Hooves stumbled. A few horses shied; one nearly unseated his rider as he panicked outright. The mountain’s body rose. And then the air itself caught aflame. That flame poured from the heights above in a long, contemptuous sweep, spilling down a bare slope far from the road, painting everything in its wake a wash of roaring orange. Trees vanished. Stone glowed. Heat rolled back up the valley, over the column of soldiers and their ward. “Steady!” the captain shouted. “It’s a warning, that’s all.” Only a warning. Irena could still taste the smoke, acrid and sharp at the back of her throat. Her mare danced sideways, snorting, until a gloved hand reached over and took the reins from her grip. “Steady, Highness,” said Baron Caldar Brennec, voice smooth as old oil. His horse was close enough now that she could have leaned over and shoved him off the narrow path. The sudden impulse tempted her, indeed. “He’s only reminding us who’s in charge out here,” Caldar said as Irena jerked her hand away from his and stared straight ahead, jaw clenched. The tower loomed larger with every turn of the road. There were no banners adorning it, and no light in its narrow windows; its stone was darker than the black mountain beneath it, stained with centuries of smoke and weather and, if the stories were true, far stranger things. Once, it had belonged to the Archmage Thalen, who had claimed this high vantage overlooking the Grey Marches, the mad wizard who’d tried to build a stairway to the Sun and destroyed himself instead. Now the tower, like the rest of the Grey Marches, belonged to House Brennec, and Baron Caldar Brennec had graciously placed the tower “at the Crown’s disposal” for the princess’ “safekeeping.” At its base, waiting on the steps, stood a tiny figure all but swallowed up by cloak and shadow. She was no guard. She stood alone, caught in the wind. Irena’s stomach sank at how lost she looked. Hands balling into fists, her nails dug into her gloves until the leather creaked. “I do not see why I have to be brought all the way out here,” Irena said, desperate and unsure whether she had even meant to say it aloud. Baron Caldar Brennec heard anyway. He always heard what he wasn’t meant to hear. “Your father judged this tower to be the most secure place in the realm, Highness, and the Concord agreed,” he said. “The Third Host guards the approach. A dragon watches the sky. You are beyond the purview of Highcourt. No one can touch you here.” “I never asked to be kept ‘secure’,” she hissed. He smiled. He had that courtier’s smile, thin and careful. “You refused a marriage your father and the High Prelate spent four years arranging. You publicly shamed ‘Prince’ Jorren of House Caravel. You gave the people… ideas.” His gaze slid across her in appraisal and then flicked back to the far ridge, where that orange slit of an eye was slowly closing. “And then there were the rumours.” “There was nothing, ” Irena snapped. “Elene and I— we never—” Her throat seized. Despite her best intentions for Elene, even just hearing her name hurt like an admission. He didn’t bother to pretend he hadn’t noticed that either. “Of course, of course,” Caldar murmured. “Just girls. Just friends. Just holding hands in the rose courtyard at night. Just slipping away from the feast to lie on each other’s laps under the colonnade. Young hearts are so dramatic.” Heat flushed her cheeks, shame and fury tangled so tightly she couldn’t tell them apart. “We were talking,” she said. “You spied on us.” “Talking,” he repeated, as if tasting the word. “The word the priest used was ‘indecent.’ ‘Impure.’ The word His Majesty used was ‘embarrassing.’ Fortunately, the Holy Concord was very merciful. There are worse fates than a little seclusion, Highness. For a princess rumoured to be a lover of women.” “I am not—” she choked on it. “They are lies. I would never—” You would, something in her chest said. You wanted to. You thought about it every time she held your hand. You thought— Irena pushed that thought away so suddenly that she felt dizzy. “She was my friend,” she said hoarsely. “She is my friend. That’s all. And you took her away.” Caldar’s smile thinned further. “The girl is in a cloister now,” he said. “Where she will have time to pray for both your souls. You should be grateful they showed such restraint. The King’s temper is not… what it once was. Nor the High Prelate’s patience.” Grateful. She almost laughed. Her father hadn’t even come to see her off. Neither had her mother. Nor had any of her siblings. Crown Prince Edric would have been in council, no doubt nodding gravely while men twice his age explained how necessary all this was. Seren would have been at her harp lesson, pretending not to hear the servant’s gossip. Even little Tomas, still in his schoolroom, hadn’t been allowed to slip away and wave as she left. House Vaudrin had simply… looked away from her, all at once, as if she were something shameful on the floor. They’d sent for the baron, the Marchwardens, and a Sun-priest instead. The column wound around the final bend. The tower reared up in front of Irena now, vast and unyielding. Up close, it somehow looked all the more terrible. The stone was pitted and scorched, clawed at by the mountain weather. Old iron rings studded its flanks where scaffolds had once hung. The lower doors were thick oak bound in black iron, shut fast; a ring of pale stones was set into the earth around the foundation like a circle of bones, each one carved with faint sigils that made the skin between Irena’s shoulder blades itch. I don’t want to go in there. It struck her stupidly late, something a child would say. She gripped the saddle’s pommels with both hands, fingers numb inside her gloves, and wrestled with the fact that no one cared what she wanted. A barked order, and the Marchwardens dismounted as one. Shields thudded against thighs. Spears grounded. The Marchwardens moved with the crisp, practised efficiency of men who would very much like to be finished with whatever accursed business this was, to be back on the roads far from here, where the mountains did not breathe fire. Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. Still, that figure stood at the base of the tower steps, now beside the Sun-priest. Small. Cloaked. A flash of brown hair and, for a heartbeat, Irena thought, stupidly, Elene— But no. She was much too small. The figure shifted, and Irena saw the ears. Halfling. The cloak was too big for her, hem muddied from the courtyard. Hands folded so tightly together that the knuckles were white. “Your handmaiden,” Caldar said, following her gaze. They didn’t send a guard. Only a girl, alone in the wind. It landed in Irena’s chest like a cruelty and a mercy in the same breath. “Lira of the Low Market,” he continued. “Dedicated to your service by decree of the Concord, to tend to your needs.” His tone made ‘needs’ sound faintly indecent. “Consider it proof of our good faith.” “Your good faith took Elene away,” Irena said under her breath. “You persist in using the girl’s name,” he said mildly. “Some would call that impropriety.” “And some would call it basic human decency,” she snapped. He looked faintly amused. “You are still young, Highness. Perhaps the tower will teach you the difference between the two.” The Sun-priest raised his staff; the golden disc at its top caught the last rays of the Sun and flared. His voice carried with unnatural clarity across the stone. The tower itself seemed to listen. “By decree of King Halvar Vaudrin, second of his name,” he intoned, “and with the consent of the Holy Concord of the Unsetting Sun, we commit Princess Irena Vaudrin into seclusion at this, the Tower of Thalen, that she may reflect upon obedience, purity, and duty.” The words washed over Irena as frosty water. She glared at the priest, at the circle of carved stones, at the tower itself. “I have done nothing wrong,” she said, loud enough that soldiers shifted and glanced at one another. The priest’s mouth tightened. “You refused your father’s will in the matter of your betrothal—” “I refused to be sold,” she shot back. “To a man I do not know, to bind a deal I never agreed to. That is not a sin!” “A princess does not choose,” he said. “A princess obeys. The Sun watches over those who accept His order.” “The Sun watches over the King when he puts his daughter on a mountain and throws away the key?” Her voice cracked. “Does He watch over my friend rotting in your cloister too?” Gasps. Someone muttered, “Blasphemy,” under their breath. The priest’s face went a shade paler. Baron Caldar stepped smoothly between them, his smile all teeth now. “Enough Highness,” he said softly. “Every word you speak only serves to dig this pit deeper. You are being offered mercy. Take it gracefully.” His gaze flicked to the tower, then back to her. “Besides, perhaps in time you’ll come to enjoy the solitude. They say Thalen found great enlightenment here for many years. Before he blew himself to pieces, of course.” He thought he was funny. She hated that about him most of all. A roar rocked the mountainside. Unlike the earlier rumbling, which was lazy and distant, this was close. The furious sound punched through stone and bone; the tower and the ground around it seemed to vibrate. Irena’s teeth clacked together. She whipped her head around in time to see a black shape sweep across the gulf between the mountain peaks. The dragon’s silhouette burned fire-bright at the edges, veins glowing beneath its scales. Wings spread. Serpentine neck craned. It banked once, twice, slow and unstoppable as a drifting storm, then settled again along that far ridge, folding itself into the rock with casual finality. Everyone on the road had frozen. Even the priest had fallen silent. For a moment, there was nothing but the hiss of cooling stone where the last plume of flame had scoured the mountain. “Think of it this way,” Baron Caldar murmured, almost kindly. “No assassin can reach you here. No Caravel bravos. No outraged zealots. No one. Not while that’s up there watching.” He gave her a small, cold smile. “The mad wizard’s tower, the dragon’s guard, the King’s will, the Sun’s blessing. You are, in all ways, untouchable.” Untouchable. Irena stared at the tower doors. At the halfling girl waiting there, so frightful and still, she might have been a part of the stonework. At the dragon’s now resting bulk. At the narrow, guarded faces of the Marchwardens surrounding her. Elene would have mocked the pomp of all this, she thought suddenly, wildly. She would whisper some joke about dragons with indigestion and priests who liked the sound of their own voices too much, and I would have bitten my lip to keep from laughing. Where are you? Her chest hurt. Not only from the smoke. Not only from the climb. From the not knowing. Did they send you to the city cloister? To the cold one in the north? Did you cry? Did you call for me? Tears pricked hot at the corners of her eyes. She blinked them back furiously. She would not cry in front of damned Baron Caldar Brennec. Small steps on stone. The halfling handmaiden descended and now stood, head bowed, hands clenched in front of her apron, for Irena’s attention. Up close, Irena could see how young she was. How small. Dark curls escaped her braid and clung damply to her forehead; her cheeks were pink with cold and nerves both. “Your Highness,” she said, voice barely above a whisper. “As they say. I– I am Lira. Of the Low Market. I have been assigned as your handmaiden. I—” Her gaze flicked up for the barest instant and then dropped again. “I am here to serve.” Her voice shook, but she didn’t step back. That, at least, was something. Still, she looked like she wanted to let the ground swallow her up. So do I, Irena thought. “You don’t want to be here,” Irena said, more sharply than she intended. Lira flinched. “I— I wish to perform my duties,” she said quickly. “The Concord decreed— that is, I was… honoured to be chosen.” The lie was so flimsy it barely held together. “Honoured,” Irena repeated flatly. “To be locked away here with a stranger.” Lira’s fingers twisted tighter together. “It is a noble charge for us,” she whispered. Then, as if catching herself, she added, smaller: “Your Highness.” There was desperation in the way that she said it. A raw, frightened need for approval. Irena realised, with a little jolt, that this girl’s life hung from the same fraying threads as her own. Obey and live. Step out of line and die. She wanted to say I’m sorry. It stuck in her throat with everything else. “Princess Irena Vaudrin,” the Sun-priest said, staff thumping against the carved stones, making the sigils flare briefly with sickly light. “Will you accept this seclusion in the spirit of repentance and reflection?” “No,” Irena said. The word dropped like a stone into a well. Caldar’s hand tightened on her bridle. “Highness,” he said warningly. She lifted her chin. Petulant, spoilt, stupid, she could hear Elene’s fond voice chiding in her ear, but she clung to the scraps of dignity like armour. “I will endure this because I am being forced to,” she said. “But I will not pretend for your ill benefit that it is just. Or holy. Or my choice.” The priest’s mouth thinned to a bloodless line. “Then may the Sun’s light bring you repentance in time,” he said. “Open the way.” The carved stones flashed around their feet. The iron-banded doors shuddered. Something heavy and invisible grumbled through the air; the hair on Irena’s arms stood on end. With a horror somewhere beneath her anger, she realised that the ring of stones wasn’t just decoration. It was a line. A boundary. A lock. Lira stepped back, careful not to cross it. A Marchwarden came to take Irena’s mare’s reins. Another reached up a hand to help her dismount. She ignored it and slid down herself, boots hitting the cold ground harder than she intended. Her legs wobbled. She straightened again, lifted her chin, and walked towards the tower. Past the priest. Past Baron Caldar Brennec, who watched her with that little curdled smile. “What a waste,” he said softly, as she drew level. “All that beauty. All that spirit. When you might have borne Caravel such fine heirs. Instead, the King’s eldest daughter chooses to pine for girls. One almost feels sorry for him.” Her hand twitched. For one dizzying moment, she imagined turning and clawing at his face. “I do not—” she started, and stopped. There was no point. He’d already decided what she was. The whole court had. No amount of denial would scrape the stain away. She swallowed it. Filed the words away somewhere hard and tight and cold. Remember this. She walked on. As they passed into the tower’s shadow, the noise of the outside world dimmed. The mutter of soldiers, the creak of maille and equipment, all that was left was the thud of her own heartbeat and the soft, quick patter of Lira’s footsteps beside her. At the threshold, she hesitated. Up close, the tower smelled of old smoke, stale stone and dust, and something else she couldn’t name. Like hot metal and thunder. The open hall beyond the doors was dim. Lira hovered at her side, looking smaller than ever. A figure cut from a painting and placed in the wrong scene. Irena looked back only once. Behind them, in the courtyard, the Marchwardens waited in stiff, uneasy ranks. The priest clutched his staff. Baron Caldar’s horse stamped. Above them all, the dragon settled its massive head more comfortably on its forelegs, half-lidded eyes turned in their direction, as if mildly curious how much longer this little piece of theatre would take before it could go back to sleep. Down the long winding road, the valley darkened to blue. Somewhere beyond it, beyond the haze and the hills and the gleaming threads of the Riverlands, lay the Vale, concealing the capital. The palace of Highcourt that crested it. The rose courtyard where she’d held Elene’s hand and pretended not to hear her own heart hammering. The temple bells. The chattering of court. The life she’d been told was hers. “Don’t cry,” Elene had whispered in that last, heaving moment as the guards had dragged them apart. “Don’t give them that.” She blinked hard. “I am innocent,” she said again, mostly to herself this time. The tower did not answer. Lira swallowed audibly. “Your Highness?” she whispered. “We should go in. Before they… lose patience. And before it gets too dark.” We. Irena latched onto that word like driftwood. It stopped her from drowning. “Yes,” she said. Her voice surprised her by not shaking. “We should.” Irena stepped inside. The air changed. It carried a charge, a pressure, which she felt against her skin, cool and faintly buzzing, like the calm before a storm. Lira shut the doors behind them. Slid bolts into place—a sound of finality. A sentence passed. Somewhere far below, in rooms no one had entered since Archmage Thalen burned himself into dust, scattered on the wind, old sigils faintly glowed, coming to life, curiously regarding the new presence disturbing their wards. Ignorant of that, in the dim hall, Lira risked one more brief, frightened glance at her princess. “We’ll be all right,” she said, as if saying the words might make them true. Irena lifted her chin into the dark. Her eyes stung. Her heart ached. “I will get out of here,” she said, quietly and firmly. “And when I do, they will be sorry.” The tower hummed very faintly around her, unseen energies charging, reacting to their arrival as if in agreement. Or amusement. Or both.
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### Chapter 2: Chapter 2
CHAPTER 2: FIRST NIGHT IN THE TOWER The sound of the bolts shot up Irena’s spine. One, two, three, driven home in the thick oak behind her. The world outside the tower was sealed away. The shouts of the Third Host, the clatter of hooves turning in mud and gravel, the priest’s last muttered prayers, all reduced to a dull, distant commotion. Inside, the entrance hall was larger than she expected. The chamber soared above them into shadow, a central core of the towershaft ringed by a spiralling stairway, with its many balconies and landings. A vastness of cold air and echoing space. Their footsteps rang out on the flagstones. Torches in their brackets spat and hissed, resenting the very act of being lit. Lira hurried a careful half-step ahead of Irena, hands clenched together in front of her apron, shoulders hunched as if she expected to receive a blow at any moment. “If you’ll follow me, Your Highness,” she said very softly. “I’ve— I’ve prepared chambers upstairs. As best I could.” Her voice bounced off the walls and came back thin. Irena tipped her head back, taking in the hall properly now that there was no audience to see her react. Hooks marked the walls at regular intervals, empty and rust-ringed where iron had bitten stone. She could still see the faint, lighter outlines where tapestries had once hung, adorning the walls. The floor had darker swathes, ghostly remnants of furniture long since dragged away. High on the far wall, a narrow gallery ran across the gloom above, its balustrade broken in one place, the splintered stone crudely patched with mismatched blocks. Baron Caldar Brennec’s graciously offered tower appeared to be a carcass that had long ago been picked clean. Of course it does, she thought. Wouldn’t want the shameful princess surrounded by anything too fine. Her boots left little puffs of dust as she walked. Someone, probably Lira, had tried to sweep recently, but had clearly lost the battle. That strange smell, charged and potent, made the back of her tongue prickle. Lira kept forcing herself to speak in quick, hurried bursts, as if the very act of addressing Irena was a challenge in itself. “There’s a cistern in the north passage for water, Your Highness. The— the baron’s men filled it before they left. I’ll keep it fresh. The storerooms have had some grain, and salt, and oil, and some modest provisions delivered. I’ve laid in firewood in the side hall for now. I— I’ll move it to the upper hearths if you prefer—” “You?” Irena cut in. “On your own?” Lira flinched, almost stumbling a step. “Yes, Your Highness. There’s just— just me.” “There were a dozen servants in my apartments at home,” Irena said. Her tongue tripped up over those last two words. She had nearly said in the palace , as if it were no longer her family home. “Yes, Your Highness,” Lira said again, which felt like acquiescence to something she had no power to change. Her ears had gone pink. “So where are the others?” Irena demanded. “The maids. The stewards. The tower staff.” Lira hesitated in the middle of the hall. For an instant, she looked almost lost. Then she pointed, quickly, towards the door on the right. “That used to be the steward’s room, I think,” she said. “The baron’s men used it as a store when they came to… take things. There isn’t a steward now.” Her hands jerked to another door. “The kitchens, larder, and old servant’s quarters are that way. They’re… empty, though. No one else arrived with me. His lordship said the tower is small enough for one girl to manage, and the Sun will strengthen my arm.” The last part sounded like something she had memorised in the presence of a priest. The tower is small enough. Irena looked around the great, echoing hall again. A laugh caught in her throat and turned itself into something sour. “Of course he did,” she muttered. They crossed the hall together. Their footfalls were the only sound in the tower, a strange thing for the princess, who was used to the hustle of palace life and the clamour of maids and men underfoot. Now, it was just her and the halfling girl she’d never seen before today, moving through the bones of an old wizard’s home. The main stair was cut into the inner curve of the tower’s core, steep and slightly uneven, worn by centuries of footfall. Torchlight painted the steps in stripes. Lira lifted her skirts and began the climb first. Upon those first few steps, upon a raised dais, Irena’s gaze settled upon a door set into the stone. It was thicker than the others and forged of solid iron, blackened at the edges as if it had been scorched in the distant past. A ring of pale stones had been sunk into the wall around it, their carved faces worn and cracked but still vaguely legible. Her eyes couldn’t make sense of the sigils. Something about them made her skin itch all the same. She tried the handle. It didn’t move at all. It felt cold in a way that not even bare metal should, reminiscent of dipping her fingers into old, still water. “Your Highness,” Lira’s voice had gone high-pitched and thin. “Please don’t touch it. The baron said— he said some of the lower chambers were never… properly cleared. He said they were dangerous.” “I thought this place was safe.” Irena kept her hand on the handle out of sheer spite. “That is what everyone kept telling me. Safest place in the realm. Dragon and all.” “It is safe,” Lira said quickly. “For you. Erm… for us. As long as we don’t— don’t trouble what’s supposed to be sealed away.” We. That little word again. Irena let go of the handle. The door revealed nothing. There was no sense of anything on the other side. Just cold iron and that ceaseless humming… “Fine,” she said. “Show me where I am supposed to sleep.” Lira exhaled with relief and hurried up the stairway. The princess’s new bedchamber turned out to be one of the larger rooms in the tower, but that was damning with faint praise. The ceiling was low. The curve of the tower wall cut into one wall. The air, at least, was slightly less biting. Someone had made an effort and dragged in a bedstead, an old thing with blunt posts and a sagging rope base. A single thin mattress lay on it, so recently beaten that a film of dust still floated above it, picked out by the light from the narrow window. Two mismatched chairs sat by a roughly scrubbed table. A chipped ceramic basin perched on a crate. In the corner, an empty hearth glowered, its soot-blackened brick cold and bare, and a copper tub stood abandoned. Against the foot of the bed, a plain wooden chest sat open. Inside, Irena saw dull, coarsely folded wool. No silks. No embroideries. Not a glimpse of the familiar bright blue of the great House Vaudrin. On the wall above the bed, someone had hung a small brass disc engraved with the rays of the Unsetting Sun. It caught their torchlight and threw it back weakly, as much an accusation as a relief. Irena stared. “This is it?” The words slipped out. Lira hovered by the door, fingers twisting into her apron. “There was… very little left for us, Your Highness,” she said. “The baron’s men took most of the furniture and tapestries, and really anything that could be sold. The clothes in the chest were what I could find in the storage trunks. Some were… eaten, or moulded, but I mended what I could. They’re not— not court quality, but I made sure they were clean for you.” Irena stepped over to the chest and lifted a folded dress between finger and thumb. It was grey. Of course it was grey. The fabric was thick, sturdy, and hideously scratchy by the look of it. Someone had let out the seams hastily to fit a taller frame; the stitching puckered along the sides where small, neat repairs were picked out against the old thread. She thought about the gowns in her wardrobe at the palace: sea-blue velvets, pale golds, soft creams. Dresses that were fit exactly to her body by the many seamstresses kept on retainer by House Vaudrin. Jewelled girdles. Fine linen shifts… She looked at the sad, grey dress in her hands. “Did they raid the cast-offs for these?” she said. “We used to give better cloth than this to the stableboys.” Colour flushed Lira’s cheeks. “It was what was left,” she said, a little more firmly than before. “I washed them. I picked out all the moth eggs. I did my best, Your Highness.” There was something to those words. It wasn’t defiance, not quite. No. It was the brittle edge of someone who had been working since dawn and was now very close to the end of her tether. Irena heard it. She heard it, and then, because she didn’t know what to do with it, she cut it. “Your best,” she repeated, letting her voice go cold. “Well. Perhaps we differ on what your best should look like.” Lira flinched as if struck. Her fingers twisted tighter. For a moment, she looked like she might say something, but then she pressed her lips together until they went white. “I’ll— bring up supper,” she said instead. “Once the fire’s lit in the kitchen. It may take… a little time. I have to— we don’t have a proper cook’s range, and the chimney smokes, and—” she cut her explanations off suddenly. “I’ll hurry, Your Highness.” Lira bobbed a jerky curtsey and backed out of the room. Her boots made a quick, anxious retreat on the stair as she vanished down towards the lower levels. Silence followed in her wake. Irena let the grey dress slump back into the chest and sat down heavily on the edge of the bed. The ropes creaked under her weight, and the mattress was as lumpy as it looked. Huffing, she bounced once, experimentally, and winced as something hard dug into her hip. “At least they might have sent a carpenter who knows his trade,” she muttered, sulking in the empty room. There was no answer, but for the faint murmur of the wind finding its way through old cracks and, occasionally, the half-imagined rumble of the dragon on its far peak. Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit. Irena pulled off her gloves and flexed her fingers. The skin of her palms was soft and unmarked. She thought of Lira’s hands, flashing quick and deft as she gestured. The rawness around her knuckles. The reddened skin where hot water and hard work had caught her. Irena had noticed. Of course she had. It was what she’d been trained for, at court: appraising people, seeing weakness, seeking leverage. This didn’t feel like leverage. It felt like a hollow ache. It had never occurred to her before to feel so… guilty about it. This is ridiculous, she told herself. It’s not my fault they only sent one girl. It’s not my fault the baron stripped this place. I didn’t ask for any of this. I— The thought became too painful to dwell on, so she pushed it down into her gut. But that much was true. She hadn’t asked for any of this. Not the betrothal that had been thrust upon her, not the rumours that had surrounded her in court, and certainly not the way her father’s face had hardened when she spoke out. Not the way her mother, Queen Maelisse, had clasped her hands so tightly in their last private meeting that it hurt… “You could have agreed,” her mother had said, voice low. “You could have made peace. There are worse men than Jorren Caravel.” “I don’t love him,” Irena had said. “I don’t even know him. I don’t want—” Want. She could hardly believe she even used that word to speak about marriage. Yet, she’d wanted other things instead. Stupid, small things. Late walks through the palace gardens. Shared secrets. Elene’s hand finding hers in the dark of the colonnade. The warmth of Elene’s head in her lap as they lay on a bench they weren’t supposed to be on, watching the sunset and sharing sweet little secrets until the curfew was past and the dead of night surrounded them. “We were only talking,” Irena had protested when Caldar Brennec had them dragged up in front of the King and the priesthood. “That is all. We have not done anything. We are innocent.” No one had believed her. Or perhaps that was the worst of it: perhaps some of them had believed her and, for politics or convenience, determined that it didn’t matter. The bed creaked as she then lay back without bothering to remove her cloak, staring up at the low, smoke-stained ceiling. Her throat hurt. Her eyes burned. The brass Sun over the bed glinted down at her, its stylised rays sharp and smug with their iconic design. Suddenly incensed, Irena hefted herself up, standing on the bed, and snatched that Sun between her hands. “I hate them,” she whispered to the empty room. “I hate all of them.” The words felt thin and childish, even as they stung. She slammed that brass symbol into the chest at the foot of the bed, threw it closed, and collapsed onto the bed once more. Rolling onto her side, Irena pressed the heel of her hand into her eyes. The tears came anyway, relentless, smearing her cheeks, nose, and hair. Her chest heaved. She bit her lip to keep the sounds in, and when that failed, she buried her face in the rough blanket to muffle them. She had held herself together all the way up the mountain. Kept her shoulders square and her chin lifted on the road. Looked Baron Caldar Brennec in the eyes. Wielded words like knives aimed squarely at the priest. Now, in this ridiculously small, ridiculously bare room with its cheap Sun-disc and its ugly grey dresses, there was no one left to perform for. So she cried until the back of her throat tasted of salt and the inside of her nose burned. Until the worst of it had given way to a dull, sticky ache. Tears soaked the blanket under her cheek. Hair stuck to her face. It occurred to her, somewhere in the middle of it, that Elene would have teased her gently if she could see her now. She would have wiped her nose for her like a governess and called her a baby princess until she laughed. “Where are you?” The question went unanswered. Irena didn’t know how long she had lain there when the knock at the door came. It was soft, as if Lira was afraid of disturbing anyone at all. “Your Highness?” Lira’s voice, muffled through the door. “I’ve— I’ve brought supper.” Irena rubbed at her face with both hands. Sitting up too fast, her head spun, and she wiped the traitorous wetness from her cheeks with her sleeves and tugged at her braids to smooth them. Trying to arrange herself back into something like the frost her mother wore at court, she huffed and straightened herself. “Come in,” she said. It came out hoarse. The door opened a cautious hand's width, then a little further. Lira edged in sideways, carefully balancing a tray that was almost as wide as she was tall. Steam curled up from a chipped bowl of something thick and brown. A hunk of bread sat beside it, along with a plate of cheese that must have seen better days. Two pewter spoons rattled in their little dish. Lira had removed her cloak and rolled up her sleeves. Her forearms were freckled with old burns and fresh redness from what must have been the kitchen fire. Her dark curls had escaped their plait and stuck damply as they framed her expressive face. A smear of soot had assaulted her cheek. Carefully, she set the tray down on the table, as if wary a sudden movement might have sent it all crashing to the floor. “I’m sorry it took so long,” she said quickly. “The— the chimney in the kitchen smokes and the draught kept putting the fire out, and the first pot cracked, and—” She cut herself off, as if suddenly upset that she might have said too much. “It’s hot at least, and there’s enough for seconds, if it pleases Your Highness.” Irena stared at the food, and then at Lira’s hands, particularly at the knuckles where bruises and heat had gotten to them. The little crescents of raw skin. “It is stew,” Irena said, because she had to say something. “What is in it?” “Barley,” Lira said. “And onions. And a little of the dried beef. And… herbs.” She sounded apologetic about the last part, as if what she regarded as herbs might have been a tad presumptuous. “There isn’t much meat. I thought it best to stretch it.” At court, supper had been a parade unto itself: spiced lamb, honeyed roots, glazed fruits. Dishes for the family were carried in and out by a line of servants. She had barely the time to notice most of them. They were there, then gone, the servings refreshed and removed as necessary. Here, there was but one girl with reddened hands and soot on her face and worry in every furtive expression. Irena’s first instinct rose up anyway, all the more sour for how automatic it was. Same venom. Same defences, reached for again and again. “That is all?” Irena said. She felt a reprimand on the tip of her tongue. We used to give better scraps than this to the kennel hounds. Only then did Irena realise how much she sounded like her mother. Her mother, who stood by and watched as she was sent here. Once again, Lira rocked as if struck. Her fingers clenched together so tightly that Irena heard the faint creak of her skin rubbing together. For that awful moment, it seemed like Lira might shrink in on herself, apologise again, and promise to do better with the nothing she had been given. She didn’t. “It’s what we have, Your Highness,” she said instead, looking somewhere over Irena’s left shoulder. Her voice quivered, but she held steady. It seemed that, despite everything, this halfling maid was made of sterner stuff than Irena had thought. The silence that followed was not a comfortable one. Irena’s tongue twisted around three possible answers to that: a cutting remark, another useless complaint, or something about standards, again. None of them felt right anymore. Her eyes flicked, unbidden, to Lira’s hands again. That rawness must have been from hauling wood, scrubbing floors, and working in the kitchen. She had done all the work in this tower today, whilst Irena had ridden up here like precious cargo and then lain in bed feeling sorry for herself. You could have helped, something in Irena said, with the same unwelcome clarity as her earlier anguish. Her shoulders sank. “It smells… decent,” she said, which was as close to an apology as her wounded pride would allow her. “Thank you.” Lira blinked, caught off guard. “You’re… welcome, Your Highness,” she said. Her gaze dropped to the floor, but there was something else now under the fear. Relief, perhaps. Irena rose from her place on the bed and crossed to the table. Legs stiff, she sat down on one of the chairs and picked up a spoon. Steam from the stew curled up into her face. It smelt of onions and salt and something green. She blew on it once and ate a tentative mouthful. It was a little too salty for her palate. Perhaps Lira was unused to having it in abundance. The barley had caught on the bottom of the pot, lending a faint bitterness to the dish. The beef was tough, a heavily preserved cut, no doubt. But the meal was also hot, and filling, and real, and Irena was suddenly deeply aware that she hadn’t eaten since that morning. Her stomach answered ravenously. She swallowed it down and ate another spoonful, and then another. Lira hovered behind her, uncertainly. “You may go,” Irena began, reflexively, the words well-practised from years of dismissing maids from her living quarters. But… The tower remained. Heavy stone, distant wind worrying at the cracks, and a lonely mountain beyond. It would be the same tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that. There would only be this room and that handmaid and those echoing halls. The idea of eating alone suddenly felt like too much. Another heavy slab of stone burying her, here, in this prison. This exile, so far from home. “Or stay,” she said before she could change her mind. It escaped her more abruptly than she would ever have intended. “If you like. It is… most quiet, here.” Lira froze. “I— I shouldn’t sit with you, Your Highness,” she said. “Servants don’t— it wouldn’t be proper of me to do so.” “Well, there is no one to see us here,” Irena said with a huff. “Unless you fancy that the dragon might tell on us.” Lira’s mouth twitched into something that edged perilously close to a smile, quickly hidden away. “The Sun sees all,” Lira murmured, which might have been a rote recitation of scripture or perhaps a poor attempt at a joke. It was hard to tell. Irena rolled her eyes, all the same. “The Sun has more important things to look down upon than whether you choose to sit with me or not.” Lira hesitated for a moment longer before edging closer to the table. She didn’t dare sit until Irena deliberately nudged the nearby chair back with her toe. Even then, Lira perched on the very edge of the seat, hands in her lap, her gaze fixed on the floor. “Take some,” Irena said, nodding at the tray. “You cooked it after all. That seems most fair.” Lira’s head snapped back up, shock and horror on her face. “I couldn’t, Your Highness!” “And why not?” “It’s— it’s not for me,” Lira said. “I prepared it for you. I’ll eat… later.” Yet despite her protestations, Lira’s stomach made a small, traitorous noise. Irena stared at her for a moment. Something inside her bristled at the insolence of someone refusing her when she was so politely offering her company at dinner. Something else, something more graceful and just a tad more understanding, took that bristling by the scruff and shoved it aside. “I am the King’s daughter,” she said. “If I say I am sharing, then the stew is being shared. Such is proper. Is it not?” Lira looked completely out of her depth. “I— I suppose,” she said. “And I would like to enjoy some pleasant company, if we are to remain in this tower together, for all these days to come. I might at least get to know you a little.” “Yes, Your Highness,” Lira acquiesced. “Then take some,” Irena repeated, more softly this time. Carefully, as if some matron with a stick might assail her at any moment, Lira reached for the second spoon. Her fingers almost brushed Irena’s. Lira flinched and shrank back, embarrassed by her own reaction. She forced herself to take the spoon properly and scooped some of the stew onto the spare dish. They ate in silence, far from companionable, but that wall between them was lessened now, for this shared moment, with the scrape of spoons and the occasional awkward glance as they ate together. Soon, the candle stub on the table guttered as a draught crept in beneath the door. Its small flame shivered and threatened to go out, leaving only a dull glow and the light from the torch on the landing to seep into the room. “Of course,” Irena muttered. “Why would anything in this place simply work as intended?” Before Lira could get up to fix it, the candle sputtered back to life. A tiny thread of smoke curled up from the blackened wick. Then, with a faint, indignant pop, it caught fire again. The flame flared up, brighter than before, before steadying into a small, defiant bulb of light. Both of them froze. Irena stared at the candle that neither of them had touched. “Did you see—” she began. Lira nodded, quickly. Her eyes were a little too wide. “It must be— old magic,” she said superstitiously. “Archmage Thalen’s tricks. The baron’s men said that the tower must have some remnants of old magic left over. They said not to— not to worry about them… still…” Irena’s skin prickled with goosebumps. She wrapped her fingers tightly around her spoon and forced her shoulders to relax, so that she might at least appear unconcerned. “Of course they did,” she said. “If the roof collapses in on us, I suppose they will report to my father that was ‘old magic,’ too.” Lira made a strangled noise, probably an attempt not to laugh. “If the roof falls in on us, Your Highness, I don’t think it will matter much to us what they call it,” she said. It was absurd. A smallfolk maiden making jest of the death of an eminent member of the Vaudrin royal family. It was improper, and impertinent, and also, somehow, far more honest than anything else that had been said to her all day. Some of the tightness in Irena’s chest eased by the smallest of degrees. "I fear you are right," Irena admitted. The tower creaked around them, old wood settling, old stone remembering its place on the mountain. And here, inside this small circle of candlelight, there was a halfling girl with soot on her face and a princess with tear-reddened eyes, and together they ate too-salty stew from the same bowl. Irena huffed the briefest of laughs to herself at this sorry scene, and they finished their small meal in silence.
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