Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Callie woke gasping, her hands already thrown up over her head before her eyes had even opened to see what was happening. It was pure reflex working faster than usual as she braced herself for the hit that never came. For a moment she didn't know where she was. The dark pressed in around her, and her mind screamed at her informing her cell block, stone floor, hands in her hair, until her fingers found the soft edge of a blanket instead of cold stone, and the panic slowly loosened its grip.

She lay still, waiting for her heart to stop slamming against her ribs as she breathed out slowly before exhaling.

The nightmares always came the same way. Fists. Laughter. The  sound of her own blood hitting the floor as she begged for mercy.

Sometimes she dreamed of the matron's voice telling her no one was coming. Sometimes she just dreamed of the dark that they threw her in when she begged that she was scared of the dark.

She sat up before the sun had fully risen, pulling on a plain dress from the small bag of clothes someone had left in her room, and reminded herself that the day would be different this time around.

There was a routine that she stuck to, refusing to die despite what she had been through.

Wake before the house did. Go to her mother's room. Help mix the morning tincture, the one that eased the ache in her joints, and sit with her while she ate her breakfast slowly. It was the one part of her old life Callie let herself miss all this while.

She walked the familiar hallway toward her mother's door and for a moment it felt like the old days.

A nurse stood outside the door, adjusting a tray of small glass bottles.

"Excuse me," Callie said quietly. "I'd like to see my mother."

The nurse looked up, polite but firm. "I'm sorry, Madam has just taken her medicine and is resting now. Miss Rowena arranged everything herself this morning and asked that she not be disturbed."

"Rowena arranged it?"

"Yes, miss. She's been managing Madam's care for a while now. She knows exactly what she needs." The nurse offered a small, apologetic smile, the kind given to someone whose request simply couldn't be helped but they offer it in order to lessen the severity of the blow.

 "Perhaps later in the day, you can come back."

Callie glanced past her at the closed door. She could ask again. She could insist, could tell this nurse that she was the one who used to grind these very herbs into paste, who knew which combination these herbs were grounded to the right extent and ratio that would help her mother without causing her stomach ache. 

But the nurse's face held no memory of her at all, no recognition, only the mild patience of someone dealing with an unfamiliar face making an unfamiliar request.

"That's alright," Callie said. "Thank you."

She turned and walked away before the nurse could see anything.

The gardens behind the estate were already busy by the time Callie reached them, servants moving in quick, movements carrying armfuls of white lilies and silver ribbon toward the banquet hall. King's visit had turned the whole household into a hive, every hand needed, every task doubled.

Callie stood at the edge of it for a moment, watching. She didn't want to go back to her room and sit with nothing to do. She didn't want to think about the closed door. She needed to keep her mind occupied with chores so the day could go by a little faster.

So she picked up a basket of cut herbs waiting by the greenhouse steps and began sorting them the way she always had, separating the rosemary from the thyme, setting aside the wilted stems.

"You there," a woman called, bustling past with an armful of linens. "If you're finished with those, we need more mint cut for the centerpieces. Round the back, past the hedge."

Callie hesitated only a second before nodding and moving to do as she was told. No one here knew her face. To them she was simply another pair of hands brought in for the day's work and she found herself being okay with that.

She worked quietly through the morning, cutting mint, arranging stems, carrying trays from one end of the garden to the other, and nobody bothered her.

She didn't see Liam until he was already standing over her.

"Well," he said, "isn't this a sight."

Callie looked up from where she knelt beside a basket of cut flowers, and something in her chest went cold at the sight of him. She hadn't seen Liam since before her arrest, since the version of her life where she was engaged to him and he had sworn that he would already protect her no matter what.

He looked at her now like she was something he'd found stuck to the bottom of his shoe, irritation and disgust that he did not bother to hide.

"Working with the servants," he said, tilting his head like he found it fascinating and amusing as a smirk played on his lips.

"How fitting. I suppose prison does wonders for humility.”