Not loudly, not yet. But Eliza felt it in the small sounds between—where the walls breathed, where candle flames guttered without cause, where the wards thrummed like a pulse beneath the floor. The air itself had turned watchful.
She sat at her writing desk with the forged parchment before her, the wax seal dark and firm under her thumb. For days she had done nothing more than trace the edge of it, memorising its texture, its lie. To act too soon was to die. To wait too long was to lose him.
When Brenna entered that morning, she came with her head bowed and her mouth tight. She set the breakfast tray down, checked the curtains, then moved to the corner where the wardrobe stood. “My lady,” she whispered, “the guards—Rorrick and the young one—they’ve been taking extra watches. They’re tired.”
Eliza looked up. “Tired men drink whatever is handed to them.”
Brenna hesitated. “I know how to help them sleep.”
Eliza turned fully in her chair. “So do I.”
She rose and crossed the room to the dressing table. From beneath folded linens she drew out a narrow silver box, its surface tarnished to dull grey. When she opened it, the scent of dried leaves and bitter resin filled the air.
“Dreambane,” Eliza said softly. “From the siege of Maroth.”
Brenna’s eyes widened. “That’s… powerful stuff.”
“In small doses it keeps nightmares from following you into waking,” Eliza said, sifting the crushed leaves with her fingers. “In larger ones—” she met Brenna’s gaze “—it silences the body too. For hours, sometimes more.”
She remembered the siege clearly: the nights when the screams of the dying had followed her into sleep, when she had drunk a draught so strong that the dead finally fell silent in her mind. She hadn’t touched it since.
Brenna reached out, touching the rim of the box. “I’ve used it in tincture form. For soldiers who couldn’t rest.”
“Then you know the right measure.” Eliza closed the lid. “We’ll steep it into tea. Enough to fell two men for half a night.”
The maid’s throat bobbed. “It will work?”
“It must.”
They planned carefully. Brenna would begin her part first—slowly, quietly. A smile here, a few harmless words through the door. She would feign shyness, fear, and then gratitude when the guards treated her kindly.
Over the next days, the rhythm of the hall began to change. Eliza marked it in small ways: the muffled sound of laughter outside the door, a snatch of low conversation, a pause before the lock turned. Brenna’s cheeks grew flushed from forced laughter; her hands shook when she brought in the tray.
“They like me now,” she murmured one evening, closing the door behind her. “The young one—Taren—says I remind him of his sister. Rorrick calls me ‘girl’ instead of ‘servant.’”
Eliza gave a thin smile. “Good. Men are predictable creatures. Play their decency against them.”
Brenna winced at that, but she nodded.
The following morning, Eliza set herself to another task. She took a clean sheet of parchment and practiced her voice—not aloud, but in ink. Words of command. The tone she would use when she stood before the dungeon guards, when she needed them to believe she still held authority.By the Queen’s order. I am to witness the ritual.
Her hand trembled as she wrote. Power was a habit easily lost; she had not worn it in too long. By the third attempt her lines were steady. By the sixth, the script was hers again—controlled, deliberate, absolute.
When night fell, she sealed the document with Thalorin’s mark, pressing the wax until it cooled beneath her palm. The echo of that act—its audacity—thrummed through her veins long after the candles had burned low.
Outside, Maidan was restless. She could feel it in the air that seeped through the cracks in the window frame: a cold that carried the scent of smoke from the camps beyond the plains. The orcs were gathering. The war was coming closer. And below her feet, in the dark belly of the castle, something older than war had begun to wake.
By the sixth night, Brenna had nearly finished her preparations. “They’re used to me now,” she said while arranging the evening tray. “Rorrick complains about the cold. Taren says the nights are too long. Tomorrow, they’ll drink the tea.”
Eliza nodded. “You’ve done well.”
She moved to the mirror, brushing out her hair. Her reflection looked pale, foreign. Behind her, the shadows of the curtains swayed though the air was still. She imagined Rakhal somewhere beneath her—chained, bloodied, his breath foggingthe cold air of the dungeon.Hold on,she thought, though she did not speak it.I’m coming.
One more thing she did before the night closed in: she slid a hand beneath the band at her waist and drew out the dagger she had kept hidden since the day they took her arms away. It was a sleek, lean thing—too small to be a proper sword but the sort of blade made to find seams and breathe quietly. It had belonged to no one she could readily name; it was the sort of weaponhemight have carried—light, merciless, designed for close work. She pressed it to her palm, felt the cool metal at her fingertips, and slid it into the secret fold in the inside of her cloak where the fabric had been stitched long before for a child’s game and later used to hide tokens. Her swords lay under lock in the royal weapons room; she had no access to them. The dagger was all she would have in the dark, and she knew how to use it.
That knowledge steadied her.
That night she rehearsed again—how she would walk, how her voice would sound when she faced the guards below. She could still summon the poise of a queen if she needed to. She would wear it like armour until she no longer needed to bluff.
