Twenty-Four Paces

  The ancestral gallery of the Sylrendreis suite was a corridor of mirrors. Every face in oil and pigment was some shade of Telemir; his jaw or brow or that particular slant of the eye, reproduced like a flaw in the glass, generation after remorseless generation. Tonight, as always, he measured his own reflection in those ghostly ranks and found it wanting. The lamps had been trimmed to a thin, flickering line.

  Down the corridor, behind the closed doors of the bed chamber, his wife’s screams traced a rising arc, then faded, as if the very stones of the palace had grown tired of her. Telemir paced, bootheels biting the black marble, hands clasped behind his back as though by keeping them there he might keep the rest of himself from flying apart.

  He was not alone. Servants hovered at the thresholds, a nurse here, a steward there, all of them gauging his mood with a precision that bordered on the academic. None of them spoke to him. That was as it should be.

  He took another turn and paused beneath the triple-arched portrait of his father. The old lord was rendered at the moment of triumph, crimson sash stark against a field of vanquished enemies, but even in that pose his mouth seemed set in habitual disappointment. Telemir set his jaw to match. He was not a man to disappoint. Not tonight.

  Behind him, the nursemaid tripped and nearly dropped her tray. He let her fumble. The sound from the birthing room reached a new pitch, either pain or panic, it was impossible to say, but it had the intended effect: the gathered men winced in unison. Telemir merely sighed.

  He glanced at the clock above the gallery: well past two in the morning, but this was not a night to count hours. Only outcomes. He set his collar with two precise tugs, smoothed his hair, the small rituals that kept him from flying apart, and resumed pacing.

  It was never really about the child, or the wife. It was about the race. His brother Tasaka, always the canny one, had married late, favoring pedigree over speed, but then in a stunning turn of luck had caught up. The bastard. Their father’s decree had been simple, cruel, and impossible to appeal. By Clause XIII of Lord Aramil’s testament, the twin whose line first produces a living son inherits the Signet and Seat. No exceptions. He knew it was because his father, secretly, wanted Tasaka to be heir. After all, by rights the heir should be him, he was born five minutes earlier than his genius brother.

  Telemir had thought himself in the clear when Selphia’s belly first quickened, but Tasaka, ever the opportunist, had wasted no time putting his own wife to work on the matter. What followed was months of ritual check-ins, snide questions at court, and a correspondence so laced with threats and traps that to even read it was to court a blood vessel bursting behind the eyes. He drafted three letters promising to crush Tasaka’s skull; none satisfied him; all remained unsent.

  The door at the far end of the hall opened a fraction. A servant emerged: older, bent, the color of his livery almost indistinguishable from the gray of his hair. He approached with the measured steps of one who had spent decades navigating the emotional weather of Sylrendreis men.

  “My lord,” the man murmured, bowing just enough to acknowledge Telemir’s existence without granting him any more dignity than he currently possessed.

  “Well?” Telemir demanded, voice pitched low but edged with impatience.

  The man hesitated. “They say it will be soon. The midwives are skilled.”

  Telemir said nothing for a moment, letting the silence soak in. “Any news from the other suite?” He didn’t need to specify whose.

  “Not yet, my lord. But the errand boy reports that Lady Laira was seen taking water, and the birthing cleric has been summoned.”

  Telemir allowed himself a tight smile. “She was always soft.”

  The servant inclined his head. “Indeed, my lord.”

  A crash sounded from the chamber, something brittle and glass, accompanied by an inarticulate shriek. Telemir closed his eyes, counted to four, and exhaled through his nose. He could imagine Selphia, hair unbound, pale as unfinished porcelain, clawing the bedsheets as if to rip them open and escape. He did not envy her. Nor did he forgive her the three miscarriages that had come before, each one an insult to his efforts and a reminder that even the best-laid plans could come to ruin. There would be no fourth attempt. He had made that clear.

  He resumed pacing, letting his mind drift. The first time, the healers had told him that such things happened, that fate was unpredictable. The second time, he had threatened to cut out the tongue of the next person who uttered the word “unlucky” in his hearing. The third time, he had simply stopped asking. Selphia had not wept openly since.

  A soft footfall: the old servant again, this time closer. “My lord, a message from the other suite.” He held out a folded note, the edges still wet from the wax seal.

  Telemir snatched it, broke the seal, and read. Two sentences, in Tasaka’s hand:

  “Laira delivers as we speak. The gods will decide.”

  No flourish, no gloating. The absence of mockery was itself a weapon.

  He crushed the paper in his fist and tossed it to the floor, where the nursemaid scuttled to retrieve it. “Bring me word the instant there is news,” he snapped.

  “Yes, my lord.”

  He resumed his march, this time measuring the distance in steps rather than time. Twenty-four paces from the gallery to the door, and back. The sound of his own footsteps became a metronome, marking out the possibilities: son, or not-son; victory, or the exquisite, slow death of a second place he had been born to hate.

  The next hour passed in fragments. More screams, more reports from the corridors, more insipid updates about the state of Selphia’s progress. Telemir drank them all in, letting the anxiety ferment into something hard and metallic. At one point he found himself standing beneath the portrait of his own mother. She had been dead since his childhood, yet here she was, painted with the sly smile of someone who understood too well the cost of games like this. Telemir averted his eyes.

  Then: a new sound, different from before. A child’s cry, thin but persistent, a living thing that could not be mistaken for anything else. It bounced down the corridor, chased by the hush of stunned adults. He froze, counting two heartbeats, then three, then broke into a near-run.

  The nursemaid met him at the door, her face a palette of conflicting emotions. “My lord, the child—”

  He brushed her aside. Inside, the air was heavy with blood and the wet-salt tang of birth. The midwife stood at the bedside, the bundle in her arms shuddering with the effort of its own existence. Selphia lay propped against the pillows, her eyes open but unfocused, her lips parted as if she were about to speak but could not remember the words.

  Telemir strode to the bed. “Well?” he demanded.

  The midwife flinched, then held up the bundle. “A girl, my lord. Born eight minutes past the hour. She…she is strong, and has your silver hair.”

  The noise that escaped him was not a word, he scowled and turned to leave.

  When he was at the threshold the midwife raised a hand with the deference of someone who had practiced it her whole life. “Forgive me, my lord—the clerk waits in the hall. By Sylrendreis practice, the name is set to vellum before the lamps are raised.”

  “I don’t care,” Telemir said. “Raise the lamps. Raise the city. It’s a girl.” He turned on his heel, the heels of his boots gouging a pair of black lines into the marble, and stalked out.

  In the corridor, the nursemaid cowered against the wall. He ignored her, his vision tunneling to a single, all-consuming point: this was not the end. Not yet.

  Down the corridor, another servant waited with a sealed slip from the other suite. This time, the message was clear:

  “Daughter. Born at three minutes past the hour. She will live.”

  No heir, then. Not tonight. Not for Tasaka, not for himself.

  He exhaled, the sound somewhere between a sigh and a growl, and looked up at the faces in the gallery. They stared back, implacable, unimpressed. Telemir straightened his collar, smoothed his hair, and resumed pacing, already plotting the next move.

  Spoils of Survival

  After the violence of birth, the room settled into a kind of uneasy silence, broken only by the ritual clinking of glassware and the low drone of the infant’s wailing. The air was thick with the residue of effort; blood and sweat and the sharp, medicinal stink of crushed herbs, layered over with the more delicate perfumes brought in by the attending nurses to disguise the truth of what had transpired here.

  Selphia Sylrendreis lay in the half-light, her body a ruined cathedral beneath the weight of linen and fever. Her midnight black hair clung to her face in sticky, tangled ribbons, and her breath came in shallow puffs, as though each inhalation might shatter something important inside her. She had not looked at the child. Not at first.

  The midwife’s gaze returned to the bed. “Lady Selphia? Shall I tell the clerk a name?”

  Selphia tasted iron. Later, he would care; later, he would make the name do work. “Tell him the mother will speak at dawn,” she said. “And that dawn has not yet come.”

  The midwife nodded once and turned back to her task. She pressed the bundle into her arms, the woman’s hands both gentle and implacable, as if she had spent a lifetime convincing the defeated to accept their spoils. “She is strong,” the midwife whispered, for Selphia’s ears alone. “Like you.”

  Selphia cradled the bundle, its heat a shock to her numbed skin. The baby was impossibly small, nothing but a tangle of pale limbs and a wet, angry mouth, but her voice had filled the entire suite. Even now, as she squalled into the cloth, her fists clenched with an energy that seemed at odds with her size.

  Selphia studied her, counting the features: the high, slanted cheekbones, the minuscule point of the chin, and above all, the wisps of hair that already showed silver, like spun frost. A daughter. A Sylrendreis daughter, which meant—

  “Hello, little one,” she said, her own voice barely a rasp. “I am your mother. And I am sorry.”

  The words were so soft the midwife leaned in, as if to catch them. Selphia did not repeat herself.

  She watched the infant for a long while, letting her mind wander the ridges and hollows of that new face, cataloguing each pretext for error. She had been trained for this: to look for fault, to name it, and to prepare for the consequences. A birthmark on the left hip; a twist to the right little finger. All else perfect. All else, an accusation.

  The door creaked; a nurse appeared, arms loaded with fresh linens and a pail of clean water. She did not meet Selphia’s gaze. None of them did. In the world outside this room, word would be spreading already: a girl, another disappointment. In the morning, the kitchen staff would retell the story of Selphia’s failures, adding embellishments as the hours passed, until even her daughter’s cries became just another cautionary tale.

  The baby’s eyes opened, two chips of blue ice, and stared up at Selphia with a ferocity that was both alien and uncomfortably familiar. She felt a jolt of something then, not pride, or even love, but a kind of bleak kinship. They were both trapped in the same game, and neither would ever be allowed to forget it.

  A fresh wave of pain rolled through her abdomen, and for a moment, Selphia clutched the child tighter, as if to anchor herself against the coming tide. She could already feel the bruises blossoming along her ribs, a constellation of purple and yellow that would not fade before the next ordeal began. Pregnancy had been a reprieve; now, she supposed, the detente had ended. Telemir would wait only until the healers gave their blessing. Then, he would start the cycle anew.

  The midwife hovered at the bedside, dabbing at Selphia’s brow with a cool cloth. “You have done well, Lady,” she murmured, her tone hushed but urgent. “She is healthy.”

  Selphia turned her face away, eyes fixed on the cracked plaster of the ceiling. “It will not matter,” she said, and the midwife, to her credit, did not argue.

  The servants continued their quiet ballet around the room, clearing away the soiled towels and exchanging the basin for another. They worked with the silent efficiency of people who understood the value of invisibility. Only the midwife, in her plain brown apron, dared meet Selphia’s gaze again.

  When the last of the blood was scrubbed from her skin, Selphia closed her eyes and drew the infant closer, tucking her against the hollow of her chest. The baby’s cries subsided, replaced by the soft, animal grunts of a creature not yet convinced of its own reality. Selphia stroked the girl’s head, feeling the shape of her skull through the thin velvet of hair, and tried to imagine a future in which either of them would be safe.

  She could not.

  For a while, she listened to the child’s breathing, and to the gentle clatter of cleaning, and to the sound of her own heart beating a stubborn tattoo beneath the pain. Then, when she was certain no one was watching, she whispered into the darkness the only promise she could make:

  “I will do what I can. I will do what I must.”

  The midwife, standing at the foot of the bed, heard nothing. Or if she did, she pretended not to. She simply bowed, collected her kit, and left Selphia alone with her daughter, the two of them suspended together in the hush that followed defeat.

  The Paper Family

  Iliyria learned early that the nursery was a kingdom unto itself, a bright refuge at the farthest edge of her father’s empire. The floors were wide planks, waxed to a gloss, and the windowpanes cast shifting patterns of color over the shelves of hand-carved animals and towers of painted blocks. She liked to sit cross-legged in the sunbeam by the far window, where the heat soaked through her nightgown and made her feel less like a ghost.

  Today, she held a brush in her tiny fist, dabbing at a page with the concentration of an astronomer plotting a star chart. She was alone, her mother was resting. She rested a lot.

  Her palette was a child’s chaos, reds and blues smeared together, with the occasional streak of yellow for punctuation, but her project was deliberate: a family, three figures joined by a wobbly line of hands. She took great care in painting her own hair silver, just like Father’s, and her mother’s eyes an impossible green. She tried to make the hands hold the way Mirella’s paper family had at supper three nights ago, when Uncle Tasaka’s praise warmed the whole table.

  When the portrait was finished, Iliyria placed it on the floor and stared at it, searching for any errors. She added a dot of black to her father’s eyes, then held the page at arm’s length, nodding in approval. The figures looked almost real, she thought. She was proud of them.

  She let the paint dry, then gathered the page and padded down the corridor, feet silent on the cold stone. She knew where to find her father; he was always in his study in the hour before supper, reading documents with a frown so deep it seemed carved from stone. She knocked once, more out of habit than permission, and slipped inside.

  He sat at his desk, hunched over a ledger, the lamplight catching on the threads of his hair and the narrow plane of his nose. He did not look up.

  She had seen this work before. Three nights ago at supper, Mirella slid a crayon-family across to Uncle Tasaka and he laughed, lifted her onto his knee, and sent a footman to pin it over the hearth. The rule had seemed simple then: bring a father a picture and he will love you.

  Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

  Iliyria cleared her throat. “Father?”

  A flicker of annoyance crossed his face. He marked his place in the ledger but did not close it. “What is it?”

  She held up the drawing, the page trembling a little in her grip. “I made this. For us.”

  Telemir took the page, holding it by one edge as if the paint might stain his skin. His eyes flicked over the figures, his own, tall and dark-browed; Selphia’s, ethereal and green-eyed; Iliyria’s, squat and all angles, but with the unmistakable streak of silver hair. For a moment, Iliyria thought she saw a spark of something; interest, maybe, or even pride. But it was gone as quickly as it came.

  He set the page on the desk, considered it for a second, then tore it in half. Then again. And again, until the paper was nothing but a handful of colored scraps. He brushed the confetti into the waste basket and returned to his ledger.

  Iliyria stared at the remains, her mouth an “o” of confusion. She waited for an explanation, a word of correction or encouragement, but none came.

  “Out,” Telemir said, not looking at her.

  She backed to the door, the air suddenly too cold, and let herself out into the corridor. She pressed her hand to her mouth to keep the sound in, but the tears came anyway, warm and stinging.

  She did not understand what she had done wrong. Only that, whatever it was, it would never be right enough.

  The Etiquette of Invisibility

  At five, Iliyria had already learned the intricate etiquette of invisibility, but today she would have none of it. She stormed down the corridor in a pair of trousers filched from a servant boy, her hair erupting in every direction, her feet slapping the flagstones with the confidence of someone who believed the world was waiting to applaud her. She reached her father’s study and flung open the door without knocking.

  Inside, Lord Telemir sat in conversation with another man, an old noble with a long, saturnine face. His hands folded like spiders over a cane. At Iliyria’s entrance, the conversation stuttered to a halt. The visitor arched an eyebrow, but his eyes gleamed with something like amusement.

  Iliyria planted herself in front of the desk, fists on her hips. “Father! I will be your son instead!”

  The silence that followed was a living thing. Telemir’s face went from pale to a mottled flush, and his mouth drew in a line so thin it threatened to disappear altogether.

  The visitor snorted, a single involuntary laugh, and then covered it with a cough. “She has your determination, Telemir.”

  Telemir did not respond. He stood, slow and deliberate, and fixed his daughter with a gaze that could have shattered crystal.

  “You are not a son,” he said, voice glacial. “And you never will be.”

  Iliyria blinked, the words clearly not registering.

  “Go,” he said, flicking his eyes to the door.

  She did not move.

  The visitor looked from father to daughter, then gathered his papers with exaggerated care. “We will continue another time,” he said, with a perfunctory bow. Telemir inclined his head but did not take his eyes off Iliyria.

  When the door clicked shut, Telemir walked around the desk and knelt until they were eye to eye.

  “Listen to me,” he said. “You are a disappointment as a daughter. Do not compound it by being an embarrassment.”

  He gripped her by the shoulders, hard enough that she winced. “No more of this. You will behave as you are told. Or there will be consequences.”

  Iliyria stared back at him, her lower lip trembling but refusing to give way. She did not understand what she had done wrong. She understood only that, here, being wrong and being seen were the same thing. She nodded, because that was what was expected.

  He released her and pointed down the hall. She turned and left, walking not with the swagger she had arrived with, but with careful, measured steps.

  She returned to the nursery and sat cross-legged in the sunbeam, the warmth now a thing she could not touch. On the table was a small hand-mirror, trimmed in silver filigree. She picked it up, studied her reflection: hair wild, eyes too wide, mouth set in a stubborn line.

  She tried to imagine what it would be like to be different; softer, quieter, a girl like the ones she had seen at the garden parties, their hands folded and voices like feathers. She could not picture it.

  She set the mirror down in front of her and practiced softening her face. It wouldn’t. The glass returned the same stubborn line. So she waited, hoping the next time she would know what to say to make her father proud. Or at least, to make him look at her with something other than disappointment.

  Effortless or Else

  The art of comportment, as practiced in the high halls of Isrannore, was equal parts discipline and bloodsport. Lady Mirella Sylrendreis, at age six and three-quarters, understood this instinctively; she flourished in it the way certain breeds of night-blooming flower turn their faces only to the moon, reserving all their fragrance for the dark.

  The morning’s lesson was posture and diction. Mirella perched atop the damask cushion with her knees at the regulation angle, her lips parted just enough to admit the faintest whistle of breath, anything more and she would be accused, rightly, of attempting to outshine her teacher. Mistress Vellana, herself a relic of a fallen court, observed with a satisfaction that teetered on the edge of religious ecstasy. “Flawless, my dear,” she crooned, running one parchment-dry finger along Mirella’s upright spine. “A model for the others. If you would please recite the opening stanza?”

  Mirella’s eyes flicked to her cousin, sitting two places down. Iliyria watched with the morbid fascination of a mouse tracking the serpent’s tongue; half dread, half longing for the same fatal grace. Mirella held the glance a moment, then turned back to her script, voice as bright and slicing as the morning sun through glass. “In all things, the Lady must be as the river; yielding, yet indomitable; swift, yet serene; reflecting the world, but never tarnished by it.”

  The delivery was perfect. Even the ornamental pause at “serene,” a tick of silence so precise it could only be deliberate. The room, a hush of velvet and gold, waited for the echo to die before Mistress Vellana nodded once, deep and grave. “Very good. Ten points.”

  The other girls fidgeted, some biting at the insides of their cheeks, others scratching at the embroidery on their sleeves. Iliyria sat rigid, back unyielding and jaw tight, her script damp where her palms had pressed into it. She knew her turn was next, had known since the seating assignments were posted, and the morning’s anxiety had built accordingly, layer by viscous layer.

  “Iliyrianwe,” the mistress called. “When you’re ready.”

  She swallowed, tasting the copper and starch of panic, and stood. The script was nothing, she had memorized every word before the rest of them could even say “conjugate.” It was the voice, always the voice: too sharp at the edges, too quick to betray a thought not properly seasoned with politesse. She took a breath, then another, then recited, “In all things, the Lady must be—” Her tongue snagged on the next word and she forced the line onward. The words fell out in a flat chain, without the little curlicue of accent or the calibrated hush that made Mirella’s so devastating.

  When she finished, the silence was different: not full, but expectant, as if waiting for a more entertaining failure. Mistress Vellana pursed her lips. “You have the letter, not the spirit, Iliyrianwe. Try again, with attention to your cadence. And do mind your hands.”

  Iliyria glanced down, mortified to see her knuckles white against the script. She forced them apart, took another breath, and repeated the passage. This time, the voice broke on “indomitable,” a burr of sound she could not quite iron out.

  Mistress Vellana sighed, not without sympathy. “Six points. Application excellent, but the effect must be effortless.”

  Mirella’s eyes never left her cousin, and there was a private satisfaction in them, a candle burning behind thick blue glass. Iliyria returned the stare, neither blinking nor flinching, though she felt the heat creep up her ears.

  They continued: elocution, deportment, the semiotics of eyebrow and fan. Mirella excelled at all of it, her every motion laced with the theatricality that made even her mistakes seem intentional. Iliyria doggedly kept pace, but each correction only made her more conscious of her missteps, until the lesson became an exercise in embarrassment management.

  At noon, the girls were dismissed. Mirella glided from the room, trailing two lesser satellites. Iliyria lingered, stacking the practice scripts and aligning the inkpots as if to extract some order from the disorder of the morning.

  Mistress Vellana approached, her footsteps muffled by the rug’s heavy pile. “You’re cleverer than most, Iliyrianwe,” she murmured, voice low so the others would not overhear. “But cleverness is not what the court values in a lady. They value the appearance of effortlessness, the poise that comes from knowing your place in the story.”

  Iliyria bristled, but kept her eyes down. “Is it wrong to want to win?”

  The mistress allowed herself a smile, thin and private. “Not at all. But one must never let them see the strain.”

  After lunch, consommé, wilted endive, a boiled whitefish with eyes intact, Iliyria retreated to the family apartments. Her mother had left a note, written in a looping, distracted hand: “Practice until your legs ache, my little star. Tomorrow will be easier.” The affection was genuine, but the expectation implicit; she recognized both, and hated them in equal measure.

  She spent the afternoon walking the perimeter of her room, a fat, battered compendium balanced on her head, the title rubbed to illegibility by generations of anxious palms. Each time it fell, she made herself pick it up, reset, and begin again. After the fourth circuit she started to count her steps, marking time against the progress of the sun through the window. When her knees buckled, she sat on the floor and whispered the day’s lessons to herself, shaping each word with the obsessive intensity of a blacksmith tempering a flawed blade.

  The dusk bell tolled. Down the corridor, she could hear Mirella’s laughter, thin and brittle, the sound of triumph rehearsed until it was indistinguishable from joy. Iliyria closed her eyes, let the sound wash over her, and promised herself she would learn to love it, or at least to outlast it.

  The next morning was the test. The whole affair had the air of a minor ritual; tutors gathered in the salon, a scatter of nobles as audience. The scores would be copied to the Ladies’ ledger before supper. The two Lords Sylrendreis seated at the head of the room, their expressions carefully neutral. Lord Telemir radiated impatience, his long fingers drumming a code of irritation against the chair’s arm. Lord Tasaka wore his mask of bemused superiority, the faintest curl to his lips as he surveyed the room. Behind them sat the Ladies: Selphia straight-backed, fingers light on an embroidery hoop; Laira with a closed fan across her lap like a measuring stick.

  The examination began: a recitation, a demonstration of the morning greeting, a simulated tea service. Mirella performed first, dazzling in a sapphire silk so deep it made her hair shine like spun gold. Laira’s smile was small and surgical; a single tap of her fan punctuated each well-timed pause. Mirella’s every gesture was exquisite, even the way she faked a moment of nervousness to draw out the sympathy of the crowd. When she finished, Mistress Vellana applauded, and even Lord Telemir nodded in approval.

  She considered feigning a tremor to win their sympathy, then didn’t. She wanted to win without lying. Iliyria took her place. Her dress was plain, the color of old parchment with a sash of Syrendreis red. She kept her eyes fixed on a point above the judges’ heads, refusing to glance at her cousin or the assembled nobles. She bowed, poured, presented, all according to the prescribed order, but her hands trembled slightly as she filled the cup. The menial error did not escape notice. There was a shiver in the gallery, and even Lord Tasaka raised an eyebrow in faint amusement. A small muscle jumped in Selphia’s jaw; she stilled it and let her face go pleasantly blank.

  The scores were tallied, the two girls standing shoulder to shoulder as Mistress Vellana read them aloud. Mirella: ninety-two out of a possible hundred, “a testament to years of fine breeding and a natural gift for command.” Iliyria: eighty-seven, “impressive for one so young, and remarkable effort, if not quite the poise of her cousin.” There was a smattering of polite applause.

  Lord Tasaka rose first, crossing to Mirella with arms open. She flung herself into the embrace, and he spun her once, making a show of the pride that was half performance, half genuine. “Anything you want, my sunbeam,” he said, “today it’s yours. Sweets, or stories, or a trip to the river market.” Mirella beamed, then, over her father’s shoulder, shot Iliyria a look of exquisite satisfaction, a look that said, I will always win, and you will always be second.

  “Effort is admirable, brother,” Tasaka said lightly, eyes on Telemir while Mirella glittered on his arm. “But effect is inheritance.”

  As Tasaka set Mirella down, Laira added with a mother's chuckle that wasn’t for the child at all: “Victories only count when they are witnessed, darling. Especially by family.”

  Lord Telemir’s hand fell on Iliyria’s shoulder, not gentle. “Let’s go,” he said, steering her away from the room before the applause had finished. His grip was not painful, exactly, but it was absolute; she walked beside him, feet dragging across the carpet, as he guided her down the hall and out of sight.

  Selphia rose at once and followed at a measured distance, her steps noiseless on the carpet, eyes fixed on the set of his hand on Iliyria’s shoulder.

  They did not speak until they reached the far vestibule, where the light was colder and the silence more complete.

  “You are not your cousin,” he said, his voice even and brittle. “But you are still a Sylrendreis, and you will not embarrass this family again. Do you understand?”

  She nodded, not trusting herself to answer.

  He released her, and the warmth of his hand faded immediately, leaving a numb patch on her arm that lingered long after he left.

  Iliyria watched him go. Selphia waited until his steps faded, then touched the place his hand had been, light as breath. “Walk with me, little star.”

  Knots and Loose Threads

  At seven, Iliyria knew more of silence than most adults did of speech. In the hour before supper, she curled herself behind one of the marble columns in the main hall, her favorite post for observation, as it caught the sound from every corridor, every side room, and funneled the world to her in manageable, digestible pieces.

  The hall itself was an exercise in overstatement: rows of columns that never quite matched, every sconce shaped like a flower strangled in gold, the floor so polished that servants walked it with the trepidation of crossing a frozen lake. The echoes in here could carry a whisper for a hundred feet. Today, the echoes belonged to her parents.

  They were fighting in the anteroom. Not the shouting kind, not yet, but the brittle, wheedling volley that always seemed to precede worse. Her mother’s voice, soft and controlled, rarely made it past the heavy doors, but her father’s voice did; a thin, slicing sound, the blade always hidden under the words.

  Iliyria waited, pressing her knees tight to her chest. She counted the seconds between phrases, like keeping time for an invisible orchestra. When the voices crescendoed, she knew a grand finale was coming.

  “…You’re being unreasonable, Tele,” her mother was saying, voice tight as the string on a bow. “Another month will not—”

  “I told you what the court expects,” Lord Telemir snapped. “And what I expect.”

  There was a pause. Iliyria pressed her ear to the column, feeling the words vibrate through the stone.

  “The physicians said—” her mother began, but the sentence never finished. A hard, bright crack split the air, sharper than any bell in the manor. Iliyria’s hand flew to her mouth, but the gasp still escaped, just loud enough to be heard if you were listening.

  She hoped they weren’t.

  Another silence. Her father’s shoes clapped across the stone, measured and deliberate, then faded as he climbed the stairs. She waited a full count of a hundred before she risked emerging.

  The door to the anteroom was ajar, the air inside thick with the ghost of old arguments. Her mother sat at the long table, a handkerchief pressed to her cheek. She dabbed at it, then looked at the faint pink bloom on the fabric and made a face as if she had discovered a stain on her best dress.

  Iliyria retreated. She tiptoed up the back stairs, careful to avoid the one that squeaked, and ducked into the servants’ corridor. A maid crossed her path carrying arnica and a lie: “Her Ladyship slipped on the back stair.” They both pretended to believe it. She spent the next hour wandering the unused rooms of the upper wing, waiting for the world to go back to its proper axis.

  After sunset, she went to her mother’s dressing room. She knocked, and when no one answered, slipped in quietly.

  Lady Sylrendreis stood before the mirror, her back rigid, neck long as a swan’s. The room was lit only by two tapers, their glow falling unevenly across the vanity. The array of creams and bottles looked like a row of soldiers in white and glass. Her mother dabbed a new, thicker cream onto the darkening bruise on her cheekbone. Each stroke was careful, deliberate, a painter perfecting a miniature. The room smelled of lavender and lemon, and beneath that, a faint copper tang.

  For a while, Iliyria simply watched. There was something hypnotic about the ritual, the way her mother built a new face over the old, layer by layer, until the world saw only what it was supposed to see.

  Then, quietly, “Mother?”

  The brush jerked, smudging a streak of color below the eye. Her mother caught Iliyria’s reflection in the glass, composed herself, and set the brush down.

  “Iliyria. Darling. What are you doing up?” Her voice was gentle, but it sounded rehearsed.

  Iliyria stood in the doorway, unsure whether to come closer. “I couldn’t trance.”

  Her mother smiled, a careful, practiced smile, but a real one. “Sometimes, neither can I.” She patted the cushion on the stool beside her. “Come sit.”

  Iliyria sat, her legs dangling. She could see the bruise more clearly now, a bloom of purple and blue, not yet fully hidden by the makeup. She wanted to say something, but the words wouldn’t form. Instead, she studied her mother’s hands, which trembled ever so slightly as she returned to her task.

  “Mother,” Iliyria finally whispered, “why is Father angry all the time?”

  Lady Sylrendreis stopped, brush hovering in mid-air. The silence stretched. “He isn’t always angry,” she said, but it wasn’t convincing. “He just… has many burdens. The court is not an easy place, darling. There is always someone waiting for us to fail.”

  Iliyria frowned. “But why does he get angry at you?”

  The hand holding the brush started to tremble again. “He’s under a lot of pressure,” her mother repeated. She dabbed at the bruise, more roughly than before.

  Iliyria watched the layers build, watched the careful act of hiding. She thought of Mirella’s performance at the etiquette lesson, the way every gesture was both real and an act, how even a mistake could become a strength if you played it right.

  “Should I be afraid of him?” Iliyria asked.

  This time, her mother didn’t answer right away. When she did, her voice was smaller than Iliyria had ever heard it. “No. But you should always do as he says. It’s easier that way. For both of us.”

  Iliyria nodded, but didn’t believe it.

  She reached out, took her mother’s hand, and was surprised by how cold it was. They sat like that for a long time, neither willing to let go.

  After a while, her mother began to speak again, quietly, as if to herself. “When I was your age, my mother told me that a Lady is like a tapestry: the front is all colors and stories, but the back is knots and loose threads. You only ever show the front.” She smiled but it didn’t reach her eyes. “Do you understand?”

  Iliyria didn’t, but she nodded anyway.

  When the bruise was finally covered, her mother snapped the compact shut and stood, smoothing her gown as if nothing had ever happened. “Come, darling. Let’s get you back to bed.”

  Iliyria followed, but as they walked down the hallway, she noticed the way her mother flinched at every unexpected sound, the way she scanned each room before entering. She noticed, too, that she herself had started doing the same.

  That night, in bed, Iliyria lay awake, listening to the house settle. Every creak and groan was a message, every footstep a threat. She wondered if this was what it meant to be a Lady: to keep walking, to keep your chin up, even when the ground was always shifting beneath you.

  In the morning, the bruise was gone, replaced by a flawless mask. Her mother smiled and poured her tea, and Iliyria smiled back.

  But she didn’t forget.

  She never would.