Chapter 35 Fluffy Rats
My chamber feels too small.
The walls press in, heavy with velvet and candle smoke, thick with memories that won't let me rest. Dante's absence gnaws at me far more than I care to admit. Every creak of the hall, every distant footstep makes my heart lift then fall again when it isn't him.
So I leave.
The gardens breathe where the palace suffocates.
Moonlight spills across trimmed hedges and marble paths, silvering the fountains and turning shadows long and secretive. The night air cools my skin, and for a moment, just a moment, I can pretend I'm not wearing a crown heavy enough to crush bone.
Voices reach me before I see anyone.
I stop.
Dante.
Instinct has me slipping behind a hedge, careful, quiet, the way survival taught me long before crowns and thrones ever did. I peer through the leaves.
He stands in a clearing, posture tight with irritation, arms crossed like he's holding himself together by force of will alone. Across from him is a man, no, something worse.
A man is floating.
Actually floating.
"How did you lose him?" Dante snaps. "Aren't you magical? Don't you—what—smell up to a hundred miles away or something?"
The floating man scoffs loudly. "I am not a dog."
Dante exhales sharply. "Can't you turn into one? Borrow their nose? I don't care. Figure it out."
"I did not agree to be your personal tracking hound."
"But you look like one," Dante mutters. "So fluffy mutt be useful and find me an idiot."
My hand flies to my mouth.
The floating man gasps, clutching his chest in exaggerated offense. "After everything I've done for you, this is the respect I get?"
Dante turns away. "You tripped over time and dragged me with you."
"Oh, please," the man calls after him. "Do you know how much magic it took to bring you back? I could have left you to drown in your guilt. Let you rot, blaming yourself for her execution."
My breath catches.
Dante stops.
The floating man slowly rises higher, spinning lazily as if gravity itself is amused. Then he adopts the most dramatic posture I've ever seen, one hand pressed to his brow.
"Oh, Lucian," he croons in a falsetto so exaggerated it's almost impressive. "How will I ever live without my poor Isabella? Lucian, my handsome stud-muffin of a magician, please—send me back so I don't perish of heartbreak."
Dante groans, as if the sound physically pains him.
"Ohhh," the man continued, pitching his voice into mockery, "my sweet sexy magic-best-friend. My heart is broken because the love of my life has been executed."
He glares. "I never said those words. And I am not calling you handsome anything. You look like a fluffy rat."
The floating man laughs, actually claps. "Oh, denial. Delicious."
"If you're just going to bully me," Dante snaps, already walking away, "I'm leaving."
Lucian floats after him, still performing. "But you did love her! You still do! Say it with me—"
"Drop dead, Lucian!"
Dante disappears into the darkness, boots crunching gravel as he storms off.
Silence settles.
Then—
The floating man turns slowly toward my hedge, eyes gleaming with far too much amusement.
"Did my impeccable sense of hearing fail me?" he asks cheerfully. "If only I'd known you were watching, Your Majesty, I would've blurted out his secret much louder."
My heart slams against my ribs.
He grins. "But where's the fun in that?"
His form collapses inward, fur blooming where skin was a second ago. In a blink, a sleek white cat lands lightly on the grass, tail flicking.
It looks straight at me.
Smirks.
Then leaps—
I walk back to my chambers like a ghost.
The palace corridors blur around me, arches and torches and familiar tapestries turning unreal, as if I've slipped sideways into a dream I forgot how to wake from. My heart won't slow. My thoughts won't line up. Everything inside me feels tilted, wrong, impossible.
I must be losing my mind.
That is the only explanation.
By the time I reach my door, my hands are shaking. I close it behind me and lean my forehead against the wood, breathing hard. Once. Twice. Three times.
"This isn't real," I whisper to the empty room.
I step away, pacing. I pinch my arm hard—sharp pain blooms, bright and undeniable.
I hiss.
Still awake.
I stop.
I bent to look at the feather I had picked up in the garden. It's warm—warm—and impossibly soft. Not decorative. Not crafted. Real, in a way, my bones recognize even as my mind refuses to.
"No," I whisper. "No, no, no..."
My fingers curl around it.
Feathers do not survive dreams.
I sink onto the edge of my bed, staring at the thing in my hand as if it might suddenly explain itself if I glare hard enough.
Magic exists. I know that. Everyone does. But it's rare, so rare it's almost a myth. Bloodlines that burned out centuries ago. One in a thousand births, if that. Most of them are weak. Fading. Gone.
And yet
Lucian.
The cat.
The bird.
The magician.
And Dante.
My Dante.
The one who didn't appear for another year.
The one who barely spoke to me at first.
The one who took months—months—to even look at me without anger.
The one who kissed me and disappeared for weeks after,
None of that should have changed.
I didn't touch his path early enough to alter him.
Unless—
Unless he already knew.
My breath stutters.
Unless he figured it out first.
Unless he chose to come back earlier.
The thought crashes through me so hard I laugh—a thin, brittle sound that doesn't belong to joy.
"How?" I whisper aloud. "How did you do it?"
When did he decide?
After my execution?
After the cell?
After the tears?
Or had he been planning it longer than I ever knew?
"Okay," I murmur shakily. "I'm dreaming. This is a very elaborate stress-induced hallucination."
I nod to myself, decisive.
"Yes. That's it."
I lift the feather again, squinting at it.
"If you vanish," I tell it sternly, "I will feel very justified."
It does not vanish.
It stubbornly remains a feather.
"...Damn it."
"Well, you could stop insulting reality and accept the truth," a voice says cheerfully.
I scream.
The feather flies out of my hand as I spin around.
Lucian is sprawled across my bed.
Not appearing to be any dramatic smoke or shimmering portals. Just there, lying on his stomach with his feet kicking lazily in the air like an old friend who's overstayed their welcome. One arm props his chin up. He looks entirely too comfortable.
"NOPE," I shout, pointing at him. "Absolutely not."
He winces. "Wow. Rude. I didn't even get to say hello."
"Aren't you supposed to be a cat," I hiss. " or a bird."
"Yes," he agrees. "I'm very talented."
I back away until my calves hit the desk. "I have finally gone insane."
Lucian sighs dramatically and rolls onto his back. "Every queen says that the first time."
He pops upright suddenly and pokes my forehead.
"See?" he says brightly. "Real."
I slap his hand away.
"Don't touch me!"
"Oh, relax," he says. "Im just trying to make new friends."
My vision swims.
"Oh gods," I breathe.
Lucian tilts his head. "—wait."
The room darkens at the edges, as if someone were dimming the world. My knees buckle. The last thing I see is Lucian scrambling upright, panic flashing across his face.
"Oh no," he groans. "Not again."
I vaguely register him catching me before I hit the floor, his voice sounding far away.
"Come on, don't pass out," he mutters.