008

Valentina's POV

Silence said everything, filled every corner of the Grandhall, stretching like oil across a fire. No one laughed nor gasped. No one defended me. The insult floated above the table, suspended and heavy, waiting to fall.

I didn’t lift my head because I couldn’t. My hands stayed on my lap, my fingers coiled into one another like knots I couldn’t untangle. My eyes fixed on the silver fork beside my plate, on the delicate way the light glimmered along its polished edge. A single bite of food sat untouched on a dish I hadn’t chosen.

They served duck. I hated duck.

The voice that spoke, that woman she hadn’t raised it. She didn’t need to, her tone had been conversational, like she was noting the weather or remarking on a poorly chosen necklace. I didn’t know her name, but I didn’t have to. I already knew what she was: dangerous.

Every woman at this table was.

I felt them watching me, still. Weighing me, deciding.

My cheeks burned hot, and yet I felt cold all over. Not shivering but frozen. Like something left too long in the snow. I’d been here only a few hours and already I was unraveling under their judgment, slowly, strand by strand.

I hadn’t spoken since Ryker left me.

His presence still lingered in the air like smoke, or maybe like a storm that had passed through and left the wreckage behind. I hadn’t seen him sit. Hadn’t heard his voice again.

But I knew he was still here.

Somewhere behind me, probably watching. Always watching. Like a predator giving his prey just enough space to wonder whether it was free right before the claws returned.

Another voice spoke. Softer. But not kinder. “I heard she was a ward. A charity case after her parents died. That can’t be true, can it?”

A short laugh followed. Dry. Airless. “What else would she be? There’s no record of her bloodline. None. It’s almost admirable, really—how far beneath him she is.”

My throat constricted. I couldn’t swallow.

Each word sliced. But not the way knives did. No, these were smaller cuts, meaner ones. Like paper across skin shallow, but endless. I wished they would just yell. Just say what they meant without hiding it behind velvet words.

But that wasn’t how people like them fought. No—they bled you with smiles. They stripped you quietly while the music played on.

I tried to remember my mother’s face but It blurred.

The sound of a glass being set down was too loud, and I jumped slightly in my seat. No one noticed. Or if they did, they enjoyed it.

“Do you think she knows what’s expected of her?” the first voice said again. “Or is she just here to look wide-eyed and tragic?”

The laughter this time wasn’t dry. It was sweet, like honey laced with poison.

My hand tightened around the napkin in my lap. They didn’t know me.

They thought I was fragile because I was quiet. Because I wore a dress that didn’t fit. Because I flinch when touched. But I wasn’t fragile.

I was surviving.

And surviving sometimes looked like silence. Like obedience. Like fear. But survival was not the same as weakness.

They didn’t know the difference. I wasn’t sure Ryker did either.

A bell chimed somewhere overhead—low and musical. A signal. The servants began moving through the hall like ghosts, lifting trays, refilling goblets. A man behind me asked a question about trade routes, and someone answered in clipped tones. The conversation returned to normal, as if nothing had happened.

As if I hadn’t been publicly gutted and left to sit in the blood of it.

I kept still, breathing shallow. The woman who had spoken first—her voice was older, but not aged. Mature. Refined. It belonged to someone used to being heard. Probably born into power, fed on it. She hadn’t said another word. She didn’t need to. She had said what she came to say.

I was beneath them. Beneath him. A mistake. And Ryker? He had let it happen. He knew exactly what he was doing.

He wanted them to intimidate me like I was nothing.

Something dark curled in my stomach. Not quite anger. But something close.

I had been many things in my life, an orphan, a ward, a guest in other people’s homes, a girl who knew how to disappear in plain sight. But I had never been nothing.

I closed my eyes.

I counted to ten in my mind, the way mommy used to teach me when I was small and overwhelmed. “Breathe in, little flower,” she’d say, her fingers brushing my forehead. “Let the wind carry the heat away.”

She used to call me her little flower. I wondered if Ryker would laugh at that.

My eyes opened again.

I looked around the table. Not at the women—never directly but at the things between us. The goblets. light. The arrangements of gold-rimmed plates and linen napkins folded like origami. Everything here was too pristine. Too polished. It wasn’t meant for living people.

And maybe that was why I didn’t belong because I was still raw, still real.

Still trying to hold the edges of myself together when everyone else had learned how to wear their pieces like jewelry.

A shadow moved.

It passed along the edge of the long table, quiet and decisive. My breath caught again, it was him. Ryker didn’t walk so much as prowl. He never announced himself. The room adjusted around him without being asked.

He didn’t sit. He didn’t eat. He simply stood at the head of the table now, his hands clasped behind his back, his gaze like cold smoke drifting across the hall.

“Leave,” he said. Just that. One word.

Every person in the room went still. Not from confusion instead from recognition.

The command wasn’t loud. But it didn’t need to be. His tone left no room for questions.

Chairs scraped back slowly. The rustle of fabric. The soft shuffle of obedient footsteps.

The women rose. The guards near the exits straightened. Servants paused mid-motion. One by one, they began filing out. No one said anything. No one looked directly at me.

I could feel what they were thinking anyway.

What does he see in her? Why is she still breathing? What kind of sick game is this?

In less than a minute, the Grandhall was nearly empty.

Only Ryker and I remained.

I didn’t dare turn not until he barked “Stand,” he said.

And I stood instantly. My legs trembled slightly, but I held myself up. I kept my chin level even though my hands were still clenched beneath the tablecloth.

He walked toward me slowly. Each step was easured. Like a blade being drawn.

He stopped just beside my chair, then leaned slightly forward, one hand resting on the table. His voice came close to my ear.

“What did she say?”

My mouth opened. Then closed. I wasn’t sure if it was a test. If the wrong answer would mean punishment. If the truth was too small, or too bold, or—

“She said,” I replied softly, “that I was a pathetic thing.”

A pause. I felt him watching me again. Not like before. This time it was colder and sharper.

“Do you believe her?” he asked.

I turned my head. Just slightly. Just enough to meet his eyes.

For a moment, there was nothing in them. Just frost and silence.

Then, something sparked in his eyes barely there. Like the twitch of a flame in the dark.

And I realized, he wanted me to say yes. He wanted to see me fold. He wanted proof that I was breakable.

But I wasn’t.“No,” I replied, my voice steadier than I felt.

Another silence. Then Ryker straightened, stepped back, and regarded me with a face carved of stone.

“Good,” he said simply. “Then I won’t have to bury her.”

My breath caught. But before I could speak before I could even react—he turned and walked away again, his steps echoing softly down the hall.

I stood alone for a long moment. And then, because it was all I had left, I said to the empty air beside me:

“ Did the Moon Goddess really fate him to ruin me?”