15. A Cage of Glass
Two days passed in suffocating silence. Fern expected retribution. She expected guards to burst into her room, dragging her down to the dungeons or worse—back to the copper vats. She expected Cassius to storm in, cold and furious, listing the ways she had failed him.
But nothing came.
Lina brought her meals. The maid’s usual chatter was gone, replaced by a nervous, flighty energy. She wouldn’t look Fern in the eye, and her hands trembled as she set down the tray.
“Is… is everything alright, Miss?” Lina whispered on the second evening, lingering by the door. “The guards… they say Lord Cassius ran one of the drivers off the mountain. They say he looked murderous.”
“I’m fine, Lina,” Fern lied.
Lina hesitated, then nodded, slipping back into the hall. “Be careful, Miss. Please.”
The anticipation was a torture all its own.
Fern spent hours pacing the length of her room, Sprout fluttering anxiously from the bedpost to the wardrobe. She tried to read The Structura Sanguis, but the words blurred into meaningless ink. Every creak of the floorboards, every distant toll of the bells, made her jump.
He saved me, she reminded herself, touching the spot on her wrist where Cassius had grabbed her. He burned the letter to save me.
But why?
That was the question that gnawed at her.
Cassius Blackwell—the heir, the monster, the valley’s future Thornwarden—had protected a traitor.
He had lied to his father’s guards. And when she’d thrown his own prescription back at him—a silent, compliant piece.
Like you?—he had said yes, with a bitterness that still rang in her ears.
Like me.
The memory of his face wouldn’t leave her.
The white of his knuckles on the mantle.
The way yes had come out of him like a root dragged from hard soil.
It chipped away at the image she had built of him, the perfect, unfeeling lordling of the Keep.
It made him dangerous in a new way. A monster she could fight.
A man who was trapped… a man who was harder to hate.
On the morning of the third day, the summons finally came.
Fern sat by the window, picking at the skin around her fingernail until it bled. Outside, the crimson fog swirled around the spires, pressing against the glass.
When the knock finally came, it didn’t startle her. It just made the nausea that had been sitting low in her gut rise to her throat.
Sprout hissed, his fur puffing up as he backed toward the safety of the dark.
Fern reached down, scratching him under the chin—his favorite spot—though her own fingers were trembling. “It’s alright, little love,” she whispered. “Stay hidden. Stay safe.”
He leaned into her touch for a fleeting second before scrambling under the bed with a scratch of claws on stone.
Fern stood. Her knees were little more than water, but she forced them to lock. She smoothed the skirts of her grey dress, her palms damp. “Come in.”
The latch clicked, and Fern braced herself for the heavy tread of boots, expecting the Blackwell blue of the High’s guard. Instead, the door swung open to reveal a familiar, stooped silhouette.
Willem.
The valet looked thinner than usual, his face pale and drawn. Deep shadows pooled beneath his green eyes, and the faint lines around his mouth cut deeper than before. He stepped inside, closing the door softly behind him. He didn’t bow.
“Willem?” The name left her lips in a breathless rush. The ice in her veins melted so fast it left her dizzy. It wasn’t a guard. Not the executioner. Just Willem.
She took a hesitant step forward, letting out a shaky breath. “What… what are you doing here?”
He didn’t offer his usual, reassuring smile. He remained rigid, his features locked in a severity that chilled her more than the cold air of the corridor. “The High has requested your presence. Or rather, he has demanded it.”
The floor tilted beneath Fern. Willem’s arrival broke every protocol she’d learned since coming to the Keep. The High didn’t send servants to collect prisoners; he sent soldiers. He sent shackles. Sending Willem was intimate. Informal. And terrifyingly wrong.
“Why didn’t he send the guard?” she whispered, the question slipping out before she could stop it. “Why did he send you?” A colder dread settled in her stomach. The High didn’t send him. “Is Cassius avoiding me?”
Willem’s brow rose, a flicker of surprise cracking his grim facade. “Cassius?”
Fern’s cheeks heated. She looked away, stammering. “It… it just sounds better than Lord Blackwell. That’s so stuffy.”
“Right, then.” Willem let the informality slide. “Cassius is busy keeping your head attached to your shoulders, so he sent me.” He stepped closer, his voice barely a breath. “Would you have preferred the guard? Guards don’t knock, Fern. And they certainly don’t wait for you to smooth your skirts.”
“But surely…” Fern’s voice trembled. “Surely he wouldn’t send guards for a simple audience?”
Willem’s gaze held hers. “We both know your situation is anything but simple. Not after what you saw in the dark. The vats.”
Fern’s breath hitched. Willem was the one who showed her the door to the servant’s passages. He had given her the key. Had he known what lay in the dark? Had he guided her to it? Was this simply wishful thinking? False hope in a place that shattered it before it could fully form?
And Lysander… he knew too. Had he betrayed her? Or was his circle of trust wider than she realized?
“How…” She forced the words past the lump in her throat. “How could you possibly know about that?”
“I make it my business to know,” Willem said softly. “Just as I know what burned in the fireplace days ago.”
Fern stilled. She searched his eyes for the servant she knew, but found only the unflinching composure of a man playing a dangerous game. “The letter,” she whispered. “What did he tell you?”
“He told me enough.” Willem’s gaze flicked to the door, then back to her.
“If the High knew, it wouldn’t be me standing here.
It would be Sturgis with a pair of iron cuffs.
” He adjusted his sleeves, a nervous, jerky motion.
“This isn’t about the letter. It’s about the assessment. He wants to see your progress.”
“My progress?” Fern laughed, a brittle, hysterical sound. “I haven’t made any progress. All I’ve been doing is reading history books and trying not to scream.”
“Then you’d better fake it,” Willem said sharply.
He crossed the room, lowering his voice.
“Listen to me, Fern. High Blackwell is not Cassius. He does not have… patience, regardless of how well he may portray that he does. He does not show mercy. When you walk into that room, you are not a person to him. You’re a thing.
A tool meant to consolidate power. Do you understand? ”
Fern hated that she had to bite back tears. “I understand.”
“Good.” Willem reached into his pocket and pulled out a small glass phial. It was empty, but it smelled faintly of lavender. “Cassius sent this. He said to tell you control isn’t suppression. It’s direction.”
Fern took it, turning it over against the wardlight. “Where is he?”
“He’s with the High,” Willem said. “He’ll be there, but he can’t help you, Fern. Not today. If he intervenes, if he shows weakness…” He trailed off, his eyes dark. “Just be careful. And for the Mother’s sake, don’t let him see you bleed.”
Fern nodded, fingers curling around the glass. “I’m ready.”
Willem’s servant facade slipped, and sadness crossed his face. “No one is ever ready for the High.” He gestured to the door.
The Solarium was a cage of glass and gilded iron, perched like a blister on the southern face of the Keep.
Fern had expected a dungeon, or perhaps the cold, echoing expanse of High Seat.
She hadn’t expected this—a lush, suffocating forest of greenery that smelled of damp soil and rot.
Exotic ferns with leaves the size of carriage wheels pressed against the glass.
Vines choked the support pillars, their flowers vivid, bruising purples and blood-reds.
The air was thick, humid, sticking to Fern’s skin the moment Willem opened the door.
“Wait here,” he murmured, stepping back into the corridor. “He will call for you.”
The door clicked shut, leaving Fern alone in the sweltering heat.
She wiped her damp palms on her dress, desperately wanting to calm the anxious buzzing beneath her skin. Control isn’t suppression. It’s direction. She tried to breathe, to push the panic down, but the air was too heavy, too sweet.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?”
The voice came from the center of the room, obscured by a wall of hanging moss.
Fern jumped, spinning around.
High Blackwell emerged from the greenery. He was dressed in a simple, tailored suit of charcoal grey, sleeves rolled up to reveal forearms that were surprisingly muscular for a man of his age. In one hand, he held a pair of silver shears.
“Amorphophallus titanum,” he said, gesturing to the massive, bulbous flower that rose from a bed of black soil. It smelled faintly of carrion. “It blooms only once every seven years. We’re quite lucky.”
His smile was perfectly polite, creating crinkles around his cobalt eyes, but completely devoid of warmth.
“Lord—no—High Blackwell,” Fern stammered, dropping into a shaky curtsy.
“None of that,” he said dismissively, the shears glinting in the diffused wardlight. “We are family now, are we not? In a manner of speaking.”
He turned back to the plant, snipping a withered leaf.
“Come closer, child. Let me look at you.”
Fern forced her legs to move. She walked toward him, conscious of every step, every breath. She stopped a few feet away, keeping the massive flower between them.
Up close, the High looked even more like Cassius—the same sharp jaw, the same pale skin. But where Cassius was like ice, sharp and brittle, the High was like the stone beneath the mountain. Ancient. Immovable. Crushing.
“My son tells me you’re adjusting well,” the High said, examining a petal. “He said you are… quiet. Obedient.”
“I… I try to be, High Blackwell.”
“Do you?” He looked up, his gaze pinning her in place. “Because I hear other things. I hear of a woman who asks questions. Who explores where she shouldn’t. Who has a mind that races like a frightened hare.”
He knows.
“Curiosity is a natural trait,” the High continued, turning back to his work. “But in a Stemblood, it is a flaw. Leave the thinking to us, Miss Silverbell. We need you to be.” He reached for a particularly thick, thorny vine. “Hold this for me, would you?”
It wasn’t a request.
Fern stepped forward, reaching out. She grasped the vine where he indicated. The thorns were long and sharp, pressing against the tender skin of her palm.
“Steady now,” the High murmured. He brought the shears to the base of the vine. “This species is leeching. It requires a specific… touch. If you shake, the thorns will release a toxin. Quite painful, I’m told. Causes paralysis.”
Fern held her breath. The thorn dug into her skin. And she could feel it—a single drop of blood welling up, ruby red against the green.
Don’t let him see you bleed.
“Cassius!” the High called out, not looking away from the plant.
Fern flinched, the movement driving the thorn deeper. She stifled a gasp.
Cassius stepped out from the shadows of a large tree in the corner. He had been there the whole time. He was dressed in all black, his face impassive, but his eyes were locked on Fern’s hand.
“Father,” Cassius said.
“Our guest is nervous.” The High positioned the shears. “Help her.”
Cassius moved to Fern’s side. He didn’t touch her. He didn’t speak. But she felt his resonance. It washed over her like a bucket of cold water, shocking and sudden. It didn’t take away the fear; it pressed down on her lungs until her heart slowed and her panic dulled to grey.
The trembling in her hand stopped.
“Better,” said High Blackwell.
Snip.
The vine fell away. The High caught it perfectly between thorns, placing it gently in a basket.
“You see?” He wiped the shears on a cloth, turning to face them. “Control. It’s all that separates us from the savages in the valley. You have raw power, Miss Silverbell. We all saw your Count.” He chuckled. “But power without control is just a wildfire waiting to burn itself out.”
He stepped closer, invading her space. He smelled like vellum and blood.
“I’m going to make you great, Fern Silverbell. You will be refined into something useful. But first…” He reached out and brushed a stray lock of hair from her forehead with cold fingers, “…we must prune the wild parts.”
Fern stood paralyzed, trapped in Cassius’ artificial calm, unable to flinch, unable to scream.
“Take her back, Cassius,” the High said, turning away. “She begins the next phase tomorrow.”
He paused, glancing at the shadowy alcove at the far end of the Solarium.
“My wife is eager to meet you, Miss Silverbell. She has been waiting a long time for a new student.”
Fern froze, her gaze drifting past High Blackwell.
In the shadows of the alcove stood a figure, tall, pale, and draped in white lace that looked like cobwebs.
Her honey-brown eyes found Fern’s across the greenery and held.
She did not smile. She did not move at all.
She simply watched, the way a needle watches cloth.