POV: Kaelrin

  By the time Pella told her she could sit, Kaelrin’s legs felt like hollow sticks.

  “Enough,” Pella murmured at last. “The court is done. The hall will empty. You can go with Matron Sere for now.”

  “Yes,” Kaelrin said. Her voice came out low and rough. “Yes, Pella.”

  Pella’s eyes flicked to her face. “You did well,” she said. “You didn’t sway. They notice that.”

  Kaelrin wasn’t sure if that was encouragement or warning. Maybe both.

  Sere appeared in the doorway as if the thought of her had called her up from the stone. “Here,” she said. “With me.”

  Kaelrin followed her out of the great hall. The noise from within—voices, armor, the scrape of benches—muffled as the door swung closed behind them. The quieter corridor felt almost like another world.

  “You stood through all of it?” Sere asked, walking without looking back.

  “Yes,” Kaelrin said.

  “Good.” Sere didn’t slow. “They like their pictures steady. If you must fall apart, do it where the Crown doesn’t have to see.”

  Kaelrin’s mouth twisted before she could stop it. “I’ll keep my falling to myself.”

  Sere glanced over her shoulder, a faint dry thing that might’ve been almost approval in her eyes. “There’s some spine under the fur after all,” she said. “Try not to show too much of it upstairs. It makes nobles twitchy.”

  They passed the narrow stair with the yard window. Kaelrin caught a flash of something through the glass—a dark stain on packed dirt, a shape being half-carried away from a post. The wolffolk from court, maybe. She didn’t slow. Sere would notice.

  In the servants’ hall, the air was thicker, warmer. Other gray-clad bodies moved in and out, some heading to late tasks, others slumping on benches with bowls of stew. Voices rose and fell in low conversation. No one raised them too loud. The stone remembered.

  “Sit,” Sere said, nodding toward an empty spot on a bench. “You have until the bell. Then back to the royal wing. Pella will send for you.”

  Kaelrin sat carefully. Her back protested the change in angle. Her knees didn’t know if they liked bending anymore. She pressed her palms to the bench, grounding herself in the rough wood.

  “Here,” someone said.

  A plain wooden bowl appeared in front of her, steam carrying the smell of broth and grain. A second later, a chunk of bread landed on the bench by her hand.

  Kaelrin looked up.

  Mira stood there, flour on her forearms, spoon stuck behind one ear again. Fira leaned on the wall beside her, tail flicking.

  “Pella sent word,” Mira said. “Said the princess doesn’t want her new handmaiden fainting on the carpets. ‘Send her real food, not scraps,’ she told Tovin.”

  Kaelrin’s ears twitched. “The princess… said that?”

  “So the boy said,” Mira replied. “And he’s terrible at lying.”

  Fira grinned. “He is so bad at it.”

  Kaelrin’s jaw tightened. That warm twist in her chest—that feeling from the bread in the kitchen earlier—threatened again. She didn’t want that. Not tied to the girl in the cream gown.

  “Eat,” Mira said. “Don’t make me waste my breath twice in one day.”

  Kaelrin picked up the bread. It was coarser than the loaf from earlier, darker. It tasted better. Real food. Not parade food.

  “They took a wolf to the yard,” Fira said quietly, watching her. “From Lorik’s granary. Heard the lash all the way down the west hall.”

  Kaelrin swallowed. The stew felt heavy in her throat. “They said ten,” she muttered. She hadn’t seen it, hadn’t wanted to, but the number had stuck.

  “Mmm,” Fira said. “Ten now means twenty days before he can sleep right again. If he’s lucky.”

  “Better than a rope,” Mira said. “Just.” She shook herself, as if flinging off a thought. “You eat. Then you sleep. Your eyes look three days older than your face.”

  Kaelrin kept eating. The stew warmed her belly. The bench under her thighs felt like the only solid thing in the world.

  “Do they… do that to humans?” she asked, before she could stop herself. “Ten lashes?”

  Mira’s mouth flattened. “Sometimes,” she said. “If the crime is big enough and the wrong people are watching. But beasts get the lash faster for smaller things. Easier to say pain teaches us than to admit hunger makes thieves.”

  Kaelrin stared into her bowl. The broth made small ripples as her hand trembled.

  Fira nudged her shoulder with an elbow. “You did well today,” she said. “Didn’t fall. Didn’t cry. Didn’t bite anyone. That’s three things more than some manage their first time in front of the throne.”

  “I thought about biting,” Kaelrin said.

  Mira snorted. “Keep thinking. Don’t do.”

  “Not yet,” Fira added.

  Sere’s voice cut across the room. “Bell soon. Those of you with beds, find them. Those without, find corners. Tomorrow will be no kinder than today.”

  Kaelrin finished her bowl, wiped it clean with the last of the bread, and handed it back. “Thank you,” she said to Mira.

  “Don’t thank me,” Mira replied. “Thank the girl with the sun around her neck.”

  Kaelrin’s jaw clenched again. “She watched them lash the wolf?”

  Mira shrugged. “Don’t know. Doesn’t matter. She made sure you ate. Take the good, spit out the rest. That’s how we live.”

  It didn’t feel that simple. Nothing in this place felt simple.

  But Kaelrin was too tired to argue with someone who fed her.

  Sere led her and a few others down a narrow side hall to a long, low room. Pallets lined the walls, thin mattresses on wooden frames, each with a rough blanket folded at the foot.

  “This side is for those attached to the royal wing,” Sere said. “You lot.” She pointed. “You get up when the bells say, not when your bodies want. Sleep now if you can. Thinking time is a luxury we’re not offering.”

  Kaelrin found an empty pallet in the far corner. It smelled faintly of straw and soap. Someone had scratched a small shape into the nearby wall—a crooked sun. She stared at it for a long moment before lying down.

  The blanket felt scratchy on her fur, but it was warm. Better than earth under open sky, which she hadn’t thought she’d ever call cold.

  Her body tried to relax. Her mind refused.

  She saw the plaza again when she closed her eyes. The priest’s thumb pressing ash into her fur. Solen’s calm face. The noblewomen’s sharp smiles. The crowd’s eyes.

  Then the courtyard window. The princess’s gaze, meeting hers through glass. Gray eyes, not empty, not kind. Just… seeing.

  “Eat,” Mira had said. “Thank the girl with the sun around her neck.”

  Kaelrin turned on her side, tail curled around her knees, collar pressing into her throat.

  She did not thank her. Not even in her thoughts.

  Sleep came anyway, heavy and sudden, as if someone had finally cut a rope.

  A bell pulled her back out.

  Kaelrin jerked upright, fur on the back of her neck bristling. For a heartbeat she didn’t know where she was. No wagon. No plains. Stone above her, not sky.

  Servants moved around the room, pulling on gray dresses, tying belts, yawning through the first light. Sere strode between pallets like a general, tapping shoulders of those too slow to rise.

  “Up,” Sere said as she passed. “The Crown doesn’t wait for sleepy eyes.”

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  Kaelrin swung her legs over the side and stood. Her muscles protested. Her legs ached from the day before. She pushed past it. Pain was familiar. Obedience less so, but it had been beaten into her bones long enough to masquerade as instinct.

  Fira appeared at her elbow, hair braided back, eyes too bright for this hour. “Good, you’re alive,” she said. “Mira would’ve blamed me if you died in the night.”

  “I thought you said she knew all your tricks,” Kaelrin muttered.

  “Exactly,” Fira said. “She’d blame me even if I were innocent.”

  They joined the stream heading toward the baths. This time the cleaning was quicker—no scrubbing to impress a steward, just a fast wash at the basins to knock off sleep and sweat. Hale watched like a hawk anyway.

  “Don’t get lazy,” Hale said when someone tried to skip behinds-of-ears. “They’ll notice muzzles before minds.”

  Back in the kitchen, the heat had already built. Bread baked in neat rows. Porridge bubbled. Mira stood at the center of it all, directing arms and spoons.

  “Kaelrin,” Mira called when she saw her. “Here.”

  Kaelrin threaded between benches and sacks to reach her.

  “Today,” Mira said, “you carry real food to a real princess. Think you can manage not to throw it at anyone?”

  Kaelrin made herself keep her face neutral. “I’ll hold tight.”

  “Good answer,” Mira said. She nodded toward a small table where a tray sat waiting. “That’s yours. Her Highness wants tea and bread in her chambers. No porridge. Nobles think mush is for other people.”

  On the tray sat a white teapot, two cups, a small pot of honey, and a plate with thin slices of bread arranged like a fan. Everything was white or silver. Everything looked easy to break.

  “Two cups?” Kaelrin asked before she could stop herself.

  Mira shrugged. “She almost never drinks alone. Even in her own rooms, someone’s always watching or whispering. Today you might meet the whisper.”

  Fira slid past, balancing a larger tray loaded with fruit. “I’m taking this to the side board,” she said. “You follow when Mira says, tail tucked, eyes sensible, hands steady.”

  Kaelrin wrapped her fingers around the edge of the silver tray. It felt heavier than yesterday’s practice one. Or maybe her arms were just weaker today.

  “Walk,” Mira said.

  She walked. Out of the kitchen, up the stairs, through the halls that were starting to feel a little less like a maze. Her grip settled. Her steps found a rhythm with the slosh of tea in the pot.

  At the royal wing doors, the same guard from yesterday opened for them. He looked half-bored, half-alert, the way soldiers did when they knew most danger lived in other places.

  “Morning, Cook,” he said to Mira, then eyed the trays. “All that for one princess?”

  Mira snorted. “The food’s for her. The plates are for the people watching her.”

  He let them through.

  In the antechamber, Pella waited, hands folded. She looked as if she hadn’t slept at all, though her hair sat as neat as always.

  “Perfect timing,” she said softly to Mira. “Her Highness is awake. She’ll take breakfast in the inner room.”

  Mira nodded. “Spots here knows how to walk without dropping. You call if she proves me wrong.”

  Kaelrin ignored the heat in her cheeks at the nickname. She focused on the tray.

  Pella opened the inner door. “Enter,” she said to Kaelrin. “Stay close.”

  Alisandre stood by the window when they entered, already dressed in a soft robe over her shift, hair loose down her back. The morning light made her look less like a fresco and more like a person who hadn’t slept well.

  On the low table near the window, an open book lay face-down, pages creased. The little wooden sun sat beside it. Alisandre touched it once, then stepped back as the servants came in.

  “Set it there,” Pella whispered, nodding toward the table.

  Kaelrin knelt, careful with her knees and the tray, and slid the breakfast onto the table. The silver caught the light. The cups clinked softly against the plate.

  “Careful,” Pella murmured.

  It wasn’t criticism. Just reminder.

  Alisandre watched the movement. Her gaze brushed over Kaelrin’s collar, her hands, her face. Kaelrin felt it like a weight on the back of her neck.

  “You may pour,” Pella said.

  Kaelrin reached for the teapot. Her fingers wanted to tremble. She set her jaw and controlled them. She poured tea into the first cup, then the second, the liquid a steady line.

  Only a small drop slid off the spout at the end, landing on the saucer with a soft splash.

  Pella’s hand twitched, but she said nothing. She reached for a cloth and wiped it away before anyone could notice.

  “Thank you,” Alisandre said—to Pella, formally. Then, after a beat, “And you.”

  Kaelrin’s ears flicked. “Yes, Highness,” she said. It was all she could think to answer.

  Mira had already stepped back toward the door. Fira, with her fruit tray, arranged slices in a bowl on a side table, then vanished as quietly as she’d come.

  A light knock sounded at the antechamber door.

  “Enter,” Pella called.

  Lady Seraphine breezed in first without waiting for a proper pause, skirts sweeping the rug. Her pale hair was arranged in curls that looked like they’d taken a small army to produce. Lady Maera and Lady Lysa followed, bright as painted birds.

  “Good morning, Your Highness,” Seraphine sang. “We thought we’d catch you before court swallowed you whole.”

  “Ladies,” Alisandre said, spine straightening almost automatically. “You’re early.”

  “We’re eager,” Lysa said. “The day’s gossip is always better over tea.”

  Her gaze fell on Kaelrin. Her brows climbed. “Oh. There she is. Your new shadow.”

  Maera’s eyes sharpened, taking in the collar, the spots, the tray. “Closer than I thought they’d put one.”

  “They said handmaiden,” Seraphine said, moving to pluck up one of the bread slices without waiting to be invited. “They didn’t say how close.” She waved the bread vaguely at Alisandre. “You are a statement, my dear.”

  Alisandre’s jaw moved once. “I am many things,” she said. “This is one.”

  Seraphine smiled and sat without asking. Maera and Lysa did the same, arranging their skirts and smiles together. Pella took up her spot by the wall. Kaelrin stepped back just far enough not to crowd, hands folded, eyes down.

  “And how is your pet?” Seraphine asked lightly, biting into the bread. “Does it fetch things? Has it learned to sit on command?”

  Alisandre’s eyes cooled. “Kaelrin is a servant,” she said. “Not an animal.”

  “A collared servant,” Maera said. “Not the same as the rest.”

  Lysa reached for the honey pot and nearly knocked the spoon off its saucer. Kaelrin moved without thinking, steadying it with two fingers.

  Lysa gasped, then giggled. “Oh! It’s quick.”

  “She,” Alisandre said.

  “What?” Lysa blinked.

  “She,” Alisandre repeated. “Not ‘it.’”

  A small silence settled. Maera arched a brow. Seraphine’s lips quirked.

  “As you say,” Seraphine said. “She is quick.”

  Lysa glanced between them, still half-amused, half-unsure.

  Meric chose that moment to appear in the doorway, as if summoned by the scent of company. He knocked once, perfunctory, then entered at Alisandre’s small nod.

  “Ladies,” he said, bowing just enough to be polite. “Your Highness.”

  “Lord Meric,” Seraphine said, brightening. “Come save us from talk of fabrics and hymnals. Tell us something from the practice yard. Who fell? Who bled?”

  “Only a few egos,” he said easily, moving closer to Alisandre’s side. His eyes slid past Kaelrin with only brief acknowledgement. “The young nobles don’t like being reminded they actually have to sweat for their titles.”

  “Imagine that,” Maera said dryly.

  Pella poured tea into a fresh cup and handed it to Meric. He took it, sipped, and nodded approvingly.

  “You have a good hand with the pot,” he said to the room at large.

  “I poured,” Kaelrin said before she could stop herself.

  Silence hit like a held breath.

  Pella’s eyes widened a fraction. Seraphine’s did too, for a different reason.

  “You spoke out of turn,” Maera said, interest sharpening. “Bold little thing, isn’t she?”

  Kaelrin’s stomach dropped. “Forgive. I… I thought—”

  “You thought you had been addressed,” Meric said. His tone was light, but it cut. “The words were not for you.”

  Kaelrin ducked her head. Heat crawled up her neck, hot under the collar. “Yes, my lord.”

  Seraphine laughed softly. “It has opinions. How charming.”

  Alisandre’s fingers tightened around her cup. “She answered honestly,” she said. “It was not insolence.”

  “No,” Meric agreed, still watching Kaelrin. “Just a reminder she doesn’t know her place yet. That’s fixable.”

  He set his cup down with care. The sound of porcelain on wood was very soft.

  “Come here,” Seraphine said suddenly, voice sharp with interest.

  Kaelrin’s body reacted before her brain could protest. She stepped closer to the table, stopping where she judged a safe distance. Her pulse thudded in her ears.

  “Hold your hand out,” Seraphine said.

  Kaelrin hesitated.

  “That was an order,” Maera added in a low voice. There was no kindness in it. Only curiosity.

  Slowly, Kaelrin lifted her right hand, palm up.

  Seraphine picked up a small silver knife that had been laid out for spreading honey. Its edge was dull compared to a real blade, but the tip was still sharp enough. She turned it this way and that so the light gleamed along the metal. Silver caught light differently than steel. It gleamed softer, but it still cut.

  “Seraphine,” Alisandre said quietly.

  Seraphine smiled, eyes on the knife. “Relax, Alisandre. I’m not going to maim your new toy. Just… remind it.” She looked up at Kaelrin. “When nobles speak, you listen. You don’t join. Understand?”

  Kaelrin’s throat worked. “Yes,” she said.

  “Yes, my lady,” Maera corrected.

  “Yes, my lady,” Kaelrin repeated.

  “Good,” Seraphine said. “Lesson one.”

  She took Kaelrin’s offered hand and turned it palm down. The grip was firm, fingers cold despite the warm room.

  Kaelrin tensed. Her claws wanted to slide out. She forced them to stay hidden.

  The knife drew a quick line across the back of her hand. Not deep. Not crippling. Just enough to slice skin.

  Pain flared bright and sharp. Kaelrin hissed in a breath through her teeth, more from surprise than the wound itself. Red beaded up in a thin line, then began to spill over, tracking along her fingers.

  “There,” Seraphine said, satisfied. “Now every time you carry a tray, you’ll remember to keep your tongue behind your teeth.”

  Lysa’s mouth hung open. “Seraphine…”

  “It’s a scratch,” Seraphine said, handing the knife back to the table as if she’d just used it to slice fruit. “We brand them and lash them and tie iron around their throats, but a little cut makes you squeamish?”

  Maera’s gaze was on the line of blood. Her expression was hard to read. Not horror. Not pleasure. Something in between.

  Alisandre’s face had gone very still.

  “Lady Seraphine,” she said. “You will not draw blood from my servants in my chambers without asking me first.”

  Seraphine blinked, then smiled. “Then I’ll ask next time,” she said. “May I?”

  “No,” Alisandre said. The word was quiet, but it landed.

  A beat of silence.

  Then Seraphine laughed, lightly, as if it were all a game played too far. “Very well. The lesson stands, at least.”

  Kaelrin stared at the floor. Her hand throbbed. Blood slid warm along her knuckles, down, down, a small tap-tap on the rug.

  Every beat of her heart seemed to say: I am theirs. I am theirs. I am theirs.

  Meric watched, eyes narrowed slightly. “Go rinse and bind it,” he said. “We don’t want you dripping on the king’s floors.”

  Alisandre’s jaw shifted again. “Pella,” she said. “See to her hand.”

  “Yes, Highness,” Pella replied.

  She stepped forward, taking Kaelrin gently by the uninjured wrist. Her touch was careful, not like Seraphine’s sharp grab.

  “Come,” Pella murmured. “We’ll go to the washstand.”

  As they moved toward the inner basin, Kaelrin felt Alisandre’s gaze on her again. It burned more than the cut.

  She wanted to look up, to see if there was anything in that face besides controlled royal calm. Pity or regret or nothing at all. She did not. The first rule in her bones screamed against it.

  At the washstand, Pella turned the tap. Water poured into the bowl, catching the light. Silver handle, clear stream, red drip.

  “Hold over,” Pella said softly.

  Kaelrin did. The water stung when it hit, washing away the blood in thin red clouds.

  “I’m sorry,” Pella whispered, so low Kaelrin almost thought she’d imagined it. “I should have stepped in sooner.”

  “You didn’t cut me,” Kaelrin muttered.

  “I didn’t stop her,” Pella said.

  She pulled a clean cloth from the cupboard, patted the wound dry, then wrapped it with quick, neat fingers. Her hands shook once, then steadied.

  “You’ll need to keep your grip even,” she said, slipping back into practical tone. “If you favor that hand, they’ll notice and think you’re weak. Or milking it.”

  Kaelrin swallowed. “What do I do, then?”

  “You carry the same as before,” Pella said. “And you remember who did this, not just who watched.”