I nodded and moved past her, aware of the way her gaze lingered on me a beat too long.
“Don’t get too comfortable,” she said, almost as an afterthought, her voice lower now. “This is not home. It’s the waiting room before we decide what to do with you.”
She turned away before I could answer, already calling the next name.
Well, she was interesting … and terrifying. Kind of like Calismae, actually.
I peeled my gaze off her departing back, my footsteps echoing off the walls as I moved toward my room. Just beside it, another door stood flush with the wall—smaller, unmarked. A thin draft whispered out from beneath it, brushing cold air against my ankles like a warning. Or an invitation.
I didn’t linger.
My door swung open, and I stepped inside, immediately blinking at all the red. It wasn’t the faded, blood-rubbed red of the manor’s crumbling halls, but a rich, even color, like the inside of a pomegranate just split open. The walls here hadn’t been scrubbed raw to keep the rot at bay. They hadn’t needed to be. Everything was intact and whole. Cared for.
The bed stood straight and polished, its dark wooden frame gleaming in the torchlight. The mattress looked firm, and the linens plain but pressed. A small arched window displayed the night, barred but decorated with a curtain. Even that—just a piece of cloth—was clean. Unfrayed.
A low table held a slender-necked pitcher and a clay cup, the pitcher already full. A stone bath was tucked into the far corner, large enough to stretch out in, and a rug lay across the center of the floor.
And there, at the foot of the bed, was my trunk.
Calismae’s hands had folded the tunics, smoothed the edges … chosen which sandals, which comb, which little wooden carving from beside my bed would come along. Her way of saying everything she couldn’t with words.
A pang hit suddenly, hollowing out my chest. I pictured her back in the manor, alone now. The thought of her staring out at the broken landscape from the kitchen window, humming to herself as she washed her dinner plate, made my throat tighten. No one to fuss over. No one to scold for tracking in dust.
She had packed this for me, hoping we wouldn’t speak again there. Hoping I wouldn’t be sent back.
She had believed in me. I couldn’t let her down.
I didn’t go to the basin, or the bed, or the trunk Calismae had packed with such care. I sank to the stone floor instead, knees folding beneath me, palms braced as if the ground were the only thing steady enough to hold me.
Because I was still here … and I shouldn’t have been.
If the girl hadn’t collapsed. If I hadn’t been unveiled and the king’s gaze hadn’t lingered. If fate had so much as blinked differently … I would’ve been sent back. Passed over. Forgotten.
My chest clenched mid-inhale, the air locking behind my tongue.
I pressed my hands harder to the floor, grounding myself in the roughness of it, the reality. The silence around me felt cloying. Like even the walls knew how close I’d come to losing this.
Another breath, slow and shaky.
Then again.
And again.
Every breath felt like a vow. A fragile thing, remade with each inhale, sharpened with each exhale.
I was here.
And I wouldn’t waste it.
Squeak.
A small gray blur darted from beneath the wardrobe, paused at the edge of the rug, and blinked up at me with its strange, pale eyes.
“You,” I whispered, too startled to move.
The red-tipped tail. The ghostly sheen to its fur, like moonlight caught in motion. Those eyes, too intelligent for any ordinary thing. It was my creature. My tiny, impossible companion.
An absurd urge to cry caught me off guard, like the sight of it cracked open something I’d been holding shut. Loneliness, maybe. Something you don’t notice until something fills it.
