Chapter 37
Chapter
Thirty-Seven
They called her ill.
The word went out on soft feet and came back to her in the scrape of trays, the murmurs beyond the door, the way footsteps slowed when they passed her chambers.
Her rooms smelled of beeswax and winter roses; her windows looked down on the hard glitter of Maidan’s spires.
The door never opened unless someone else’s key turned it.
A gilded prison could still be a prison.
The guards outside changed every few hours.
She learned them by their weight on the floorboards: the heavy-heeled veteran who cleared his throat when he was bored, the younger one who hummed under his breath until his partner elbowed him, the woman who walked like a cat and never once shifted her stance.
None of them spoke to her. When they slid the latch to allow a maid through, they stared studiously at the opposite wall.
The veteran she recognised—Captain Rorrick.
Scarred over one eye, his limp distinct even through the thick door.
He had ridden beside her father during the border campaigns, once lifted her onto a horse when she was too small to reach the stirrup.
The sound of his step brought back that memory with every pass.
It pained her, the ease of his loyalty’s turn.
But power was always tentative when one had worn the crown for only a handful of months.
Her meals arrived on silver trays. The soup gleamed like thin gold, the bread steamed when Brenna tore it open. Eliza’s mouth tasted of ash and old grief. She ate enough to live. Not more.
The queen is unwell, the city had been told. A sick queen could not rule. A sick queen could not speak.
The first hours she spent obeying what the room demanded—washing, dressing, standing at the window to watch the flags burn red in the wind.
Above the roofs and chimneys rose Thalorin’s tower, a black thorn against the sky.
Eliza imagined the woman there, ink on her fingers, ink on her tongue, rewriting the kingdom’s truth one neat line at a time. The thought tasted of iron.
Brenna came at dawn and dusk, under escort, with a curtsy too deep for a mistress others had declared a patient.
Her face was pale from lack of sleep, her hands trembling as she poured tea, yet the tray never rattled.
They spoke in riddles—sheets turned back as if for fresh air (news?), a second cup on the sill (danger), the hairbrush laid spine-up (wait).
Domestic language, invisible to the guards.
“How is the broth, my lady?” Brenna asked on the third morning, eyes low.
“Too salty,” Eliza replied, meaning the city’s mood?
“Ah. I’ll tell the cook,” Brenna said. “He has a heavy hand today.” The mages. Everywhere.
By the fifth day the pattern faltered. Brenna’s fear hollowed her eyes. When she folded gowns, her fingers snagged. When she turned back the blankets, she lingered, head bowed, as if listening for something beneath the stones.
Eliza waited until the guard’s step receded down the corridor and the click of the second latch sealed them in. “Tell me,” she said quietly.
Brenna’s mouth trembled. She set the tray down, wiped her hands on her apron, poured a cup she did not offer. She stared into the steam until it stilled.
“They go below,” she whispered. “Every day, the tower mages. They carry cases and knives and stones that hum like—like bees. They say vivisection. They say containment.” Her voice broke. “They laugh when the torches go out by themselves.”
The room tilted. Eliza gripped the back of a chair until the wood dug crescents into her palms. “Who gives the orders?”
Brenna hesitated, as though speaking the name might summon its bearer. “The Lady Thalorin. She comes herself some mornings. She meets with the guard captain. They whisper. And… the wards don’t hold. The castle leaks. The air below turns colder every night.”
Outside, a gust struck the spire and made the windowpane tremble. Eliza felt the shudder in her ribs.
“Leave the tea,” she said. “Pull the curtains.” The signals worked both ways. We are observed.
When the drapes fell, dusk flooded the room in blue shadow. Eliza let it rest on her skin like a veil. Tears would have been a waste; she had none left to give.
Rakhal’s name was not spoken, but it lived between the words. Vivisection. Containment.
She slept because the body will take what it must. The dream came like a tide.
Chains glinted. Shadows bled along the floor.
Rakhal stood half in light, half in darkness, eyes black and wide.
He said her name without moving his mouth.
The sound crossed the space between them like a hand.
When he lifted his palm, she felt it at her throat—heat and cold at once.
She reached for him, and her fingers met smoke that pulsed like breath.
She woke with her heart hammering. The wall was only stone, yet her skin prickled where the dream-hand had touched her.
In the morning Brenna returned, her hair poorly pinned, eyes rimmed red. She set the tray down, lips pressed white. “They say the queen grows weaker,” she recited. “They say your cousin Maeron has taken up the burden. He meets with the generals.”
Eliza stilled. “I see.”
“And—” Brenna’s voice faltered. “My brothers. They’ve moved their camp forward.
Everyone says there will be another push.
” Her fingers twisted in her apron until the skin blanched.
“There were six of them. Two are already gone.” She swallowed.
“From the walls you can see the fires on the plains. They say the orcs are massing again. They say Maeron means to strike first, before they reach us.”
Eliza felt the breath leave her lungs.
Brenna went on, words tumbling now. “There are rumours, too. About you. That you tried to end the fighting—that you were going to marry the orc prince, to make peace—but something went wrong. No one really knows what happened that day at the gates. Only that there was blood, and magic, and…” She hesitated.
“They say the shadow poisoned you. Made you sick.”
Eliza’s nails bit her palm. “Rumours,” she said, though the word carried no weight.
Brenna’s composure broke. “I don’t want more war,” she whispered. “I can’t lose the rest of them.”
Eliza took her hands—cold, trembling—and held them firmly. “Listen to me. What happens below will decide what happens above. If they kill what they’ve taken, the war won’t end—it will devour everything. Maeron, your brothers, all of it. Do you understand?”
Brenna nodded, a small jerking motion, eyes wide and wet.
“Good,” Eliza said softly, releasing her. “Then we have our work.”
When Brenna left and the bolts slid home again, Eliza went to the window.
The pull in her chest was stronger now, a thread tightening down into the stone.
She could feel the heartbeat of the castle, the pulse of something vast and restless beneath it.
It was like the first tug of tide on a grounded ship.
Refuse it, and she would splinter. Yield, and she would move.
Below, Maidan stirred—flags snapping, carts rolling, the ordinary rhythm of a kingdom convinced its queen slept behind curtains and medicine. Visible, but erased. The phrase had become her heartbeat.
The pull deepened. It was not just memory calling her; it was recognition. Something down there knew her name as well as she knew his. She could feel Rakhal—torn, defiant, alive.
That night she did not pray. She lay awake, counting the guards’ steps, the hush of the castle when even fire dared not breathe. Panic never came. Only a slow, measured heat in her chest: fear sharpened into will.
When sleep finally took her, he was closer. The shadows around him shifted like wings. His voice reached her without sound, brushing her skin like a promise.
She woke before dawn, trembling but certain. Morning would bring the same lies, the same silver trays, the same guards pretending not to hear her breath. But morning would also bring Brenna—and with her, the first thread of a plan.
Whatever bound them—the queen above and the captive below—had become more than memory. It was a living tether, pulling her toward the dark.
Eliza sat up, smoothed the coverlet, and placed her bare feet on the cold stone floor. The walls listened. The air held its breath.
She smiled—small, dangerous, desperate—and began to plan.