Blissful Morning

Anna woke in silence — the deep, unhurried kind that only visits you when you  slept without worry.

She yawned so thoroughly it felt as though her body was shaking off weeks of accumulated tension, not merely a single night. What a relief, she  stretched her arms wide, her joints popping softly in a satisfying rhythm, each small sound a little declaration of surrender from muscles that had finally, gratefully, let go.

    "What a night"

 She lay still for a moment longer, staring up at the vaulted ceiling of her chamber — a ceiling adorned with carved ivory rosettes and soft cream plasterwork that caught the pale morning light filtering through the silk drapes.

The room smelled faintly of cedar and something floral, like fresh gardenias resting in a warm space. She hadn't stayed anywhere this exquisite in her entire life, and even in the soft fog of just waking, she could feel the difference. 

The previous night's cold had crept in so gently, so soothingly, that it settled over her like a second blanket, sending her off to sleep as though wrapped in the earth's own arms. She hadn't slept like that in ages.

Slowly, Anna peeled herself from the cloud-like embrace of the king-sized mattress and padded barefoot across the heated marble floors toward the full-length mirror framed in gilded mahogany that stood beside the dressing table. She winced slightly, bracing herself for the usual morning-troll aesthetic — all knotted hair, puffy eyes, and the general chaos her face liked to present.

But she paused, tilted her head, leaned in just slightly.

She didn't look half bad, actually.

Her skin — usually pulled and tired by this hour — had a quiet, golden warmth to it that she hadn't seen in months. She turned her face slowly in the light. There was a softness there, a richness even. Pregnancy, it seemed, had decided to be generous with her this morning. Her cheeks held colour without the aid of blush. Her lips were full, her eyes, dark and wide-set beneath arched brows, were clear in a way that felt almost unfamiliar. She looked nourished, rested. Her skin was a testament to a peaceful, restoring night — and perhaps to whatever quiet this  Mansion seemed to work on its residents while they slept.

"Well," 

she whispered to her reflection, one brow arching in reluctant approval. "I'll take it."

She turned toward the en-suite bathroom — a magnificent sweep of cream travertine, brushed gold fixtures, and a rainfall shower large enough to double as a modest apartment. She was noticing the beauty of it this morning, after the stress of the previous night made her blind to it's alluring beauty. She'd nearly fainted the first time she stepped in there the night before. Now, in the calm of the morning, she let herself simply enjoy it: the warm rush of water, the soap that smelled of bergamot and white amber.

When she padded back into the bedroom, towel-wrapped and still pleasantly warm, a thought struck her with the sudden urgency of a forgotten alarm.

"Oh, my goodness — my phone." 

She said it aloud, pressing a hand to her forehead. "Old habits."

She retrieved it from the nightstand where it had been abandoned the night before, and the screen lit up with the energy of a small catastrophe. Eleven missed calls, thirteen text messages.

Anna stared at it.

"What!"

    she breathed — her toothbrush, which had somehow found its way back to her mouth out of sheer morning routine, slipping clean out and landing on the plush carpet with a soft thud.

She scrolled, she squinted. She read the name twice.

Isabeau.

"Isabeau," she said flatly, then, glancing at the time — 8:39 in the morning — she said it again, with considerably more feeling. "Isabeau."

Their appointment wasn't until ten o'clock. Who, in the name of everything reasonable and decent, flooded someone with eleven calls and thirteen messages before nine in the morning? Anna shook her head slowly, a reluctant smile creeping across her face despite herself. JB had warned her. He'd said it with that particular mixture of fond infuriation and genuine affection that only ever surfaced when someone was describing a person they truly, helplessly adored.

"Isabeau has a persuasive personality," he'd said — which Anna now understood was a polished, diplomatic way of saying the woman simply did not accept the concept of being ignored.

"Oh, Isabeau," 

Anna muttered to the room, bending to retrieve her toothbrush from the carpet and rinsing it under the tap.

She was about to head back to the bathroom when a different thought surfaced — quieter, more pressing, wrapping itself around her chest the way cold air does when a door opens unexpectedly. Her mother, she hadn't called her since all of this began. Hadn't heard her voice , hadn't been able to check whether she was eating, sleeping, or safe.

She picked up her phone and dialed her mother's name, her thumb hovering over the green call button.

Then she stopped.

The hesitation came not from indifference — God, no — but from something sharper, from the memory of Deimon. If he was watching, if he had worked his way into anything or anyone close to her, a single call could betray everything. It could confirm her location, signal that she was alive and conscious and building something, and unravel the careful quiet she had managed to gather around herself here at Mooncrest.

She stood with the phone in her hand for a long, still moment, her jaw tight, the ache of missing her mother sitting heavy behind her sternum like a stone. She wanted to call, she wanted to hear the warmth and gentle fuss of her mother's voice asking, "Anna, love, are you eating enough?" She wanted to say: Mama, I'm fine. I'm somewhere safe. Something extraordinary is happening, and I am going to be all right.

But she couldn't, not yet. She had to be smart first.

"Soon," 

she whispered to no one. "I'll find a way to reach you soon."

She set the phone down on the nightstand.

It rang immediately.

The abruptness of it startled her so completely that she dropped it again — straight onto the carpet, where it buzzed with an almost indignant energy against the fibres.

She snatched it up. The screen read: ISABEAU— the name pulsing like a heartbeat.

Anna exhaled, smoothed her expression, and answered.

"Morning, Isabeau."

"Morning, Madam Anna!" 

    Isabeau's voice came through the line with the enthusiasm of someone who had already been awake for several hours and had formed strong opinions about it. "I am so, so sorry about the calls — truly terrible habit of mine. Inexcusable. Did you manage to read any of my messages?"

"Which one?"

 Anna asked pleasantly. "The first, or the thirteenth?"

A beat of silence. Then a short, guilty laugh.

 "I deserved that, I completely deserved that. I was running an errand in town at the crack of dawn and I simply wanted to make sure you were informed early — I'll be picking you up at 9:30, not  10. So please, please be at the parking lot before then. You're rather tight on schedule this morning, Madam Anna."

"Tight?" 

Anna repeated, mildly alarmed. She glanced at the bedside clock. 8:42. "Tight how?"

"Just — please be there, Madam Anna." Isabeau's voice softened into something almost tender with its pleading. "I'll explain everything in the car, I promise. Just — parking lot, 9:30,  yes?"

Anna pressed her lips together to suppress the grin forming entirely against her will.

     "Fine, i'll be there."

"Sweet! Brilliant! See you shortly!" 

And then Isabeau was gone, the line cutting off with a cheerfulness that left a pleasant echo in the room.

Anna lowered the phone slowly. "What a girl," she said to the quiet. Then, tucking her toothbrush back into her mouth and heading toward the bathroom with renewed purpose: "Kind to the bone, absolutely relentless. Reminds me of Aurora."

The name stopped her mid-step.

Aurora.

She stood there in the middle of the room, toothbrush dangling from the corner of her mouth, and let the memories roll quietly in. The night of her escape, the chaos, Aurora's face — composed even then, fierce , doing what she had always done, which was place herself between Anna and disaster regardless of the cost to herself. What had happened after? Was she safe? Had there been consequences Anna didn't yet know about? And that anonymous alias who had left the message — who was that, really?

Too many questions. Too many open threads. She filed them away carefully behind her eyes, where they would wait until she had both the safety and the information needed to begin untangling them.

She finished brushing her teeth, dressed quickly, and stepped out into the morning.

---

Anna stepped into the corridor of Mooncrest Mansion at twenty past nine, dressed warmly against the chill that seeped through even the estate's generously insulated walls. She had on a cream winter sweatshirt, soft as cloud-cover, paired with a deep burgundy muffler wound twice around her neck, comfortable wide-cut track trousers, and a cream head warmer sitting snug over her ears. She looked, she thought, like someone who had made peace with being pregnant in winter — which was precisely how she felt.

Her hand drifted, almost of its own accord, to the curve of her belly.

She paused mid-step in the long, sunlit corridor — tall arched windows lining one side, warm light pooling in amber rectangles across the stone floors.

It had grown,she was certain of it now. There was a new solidity to it, a quiet confidence in the way it sat forward. She pressed both palms to the swell of it and stood there, unhurried, in the middle of that grand hallway.

"You're a blessing," 

she said softly, rubbing slow, warm circles against the fabric of her sweatshirt. The words came out steadier than she expected.

     "Do you hear me? You are not a burden,you are not a mistake, you are not rejected." 

She smiled — the expression warm and private and entirely her own. "You are a blessing."

A pair of estate staff passed her in the corridor — a woman in a pressed ivory uniform carrying an arrangement of white peonies, and a young man pushing a trolley stacked with neatly folded linens. Both smiled without intruding, nodding softly as they went, perfectly trained in the art of Mooncrest's quiet, unhurried courtesy.

Anna watched them disappear around the corner and then continued walking, following the directions young Gallowglass had sketched for her the evening before on a small note-card in careful, boyish handwriting. It was kind of weird , but it was understandable, readable, unlike the maps she saw on geography notes. He had detailed the Estate, every  inch , in his own way. He marked the important parts Anna needed to memorize so she won't be lost on the vast castle. 

"Straight ahead , It think " 

     Anna muttered to herself, walking slowly, " only if the world was as simple as Gallowglass's map"