Chapter 5 Familiar paintings

The old woman's words hung in the air long after she said them.

"The Bride of the Ninth Life has returned."

Nobody moved.

Not Kai, Not Draven, Not even the servant. The whole courtyard had turned to stone around me, and I stood in the middle of it, shaking, with no idea why a stranger kneeling on cold marble made me feel like the ground had opened under my feet.

Ninth life??

What did that even mean?

I looked at Kai. His jaw was tight enough to crack. I looked at Draven. For the first time since I'd met him, he wasn't smiling.

That scared me more than anything else that had happened tonight.

"That's enough," Kai said. Quiet. Final.

The old woman's head snapped up like she'd been slapped. "Forgive me, my lord. I only..." She didn't finish. She just bowed lower and scrambled back, disappearing into the castle like she couldn't get away fast enough.

I was still shaking. I didn't even realize it until Draven noticed.

He didn't laugh this time. He didn't make it a joke. He just stepped up beside me and rested a hand lightly against the small of my back, steering me toward the doors like it was the most normal thing in the world.

"Come on, Little Bridey."

I jerked away from him so fast I nearly stumbled. "Don't touch me."

That got the smile back, at least a little. "I liked you better when you were trying to bite Kai."

"Stop provoking her," Kai said, without even turning around.

And Draven stopped.

Just like that. Mid sentence,he dropped it and fell into steps behind Kai without another word.

It didn't make sense. Draven laughed at everything. Draven made jokes standing over broken glass and terrified maids. But when Kai spoke, Draven listened.

I didn't know what that meant yet. I just knew it mattered and it's suspicious too.

Kai led me down a hallway lined with portraits, and the deeper we went, the older they looked. Knights in black armor. Queens with crowns made of what might have been bone. Men and women with the same pale, unnatural stillness Kai and Draven had, staring out of their frames like they were still waiting for something.

Then I stopped walking.

A little girl. Maybe six years old, painted in a high collared white dress, standing alone in a field of black flowers.

"...She looks like me."

Same eyes, Same crooked smile, like she was trying not to laugh at whoever was painting her. And just below her collarbone, half-hidden by the collar of her dress a small, star-shaped birthmark.

I have that exact birthmark. In that exact spot.

Draven moved so fast I almost missed it, stepping directly in front of the painting, blocking it with his whole body.

"Wrong hallway," he said lightly.

Too lightly.

Kai didn't say anything at all. But I saw his shoulders go rigid, just for a second, before he kept walking like nothing had happened.

They were hiding something. Again. I was getting tired of counting how many times.

Kai stopped in front of a set of double doors carved with the same silver vine pattern I'd seen woven through half the castle. He pushed them open without a word.

"This will be your room."

I stepped inside and forgot, for a second, to be afraid.

Moonlight fell in long silver strips through windows draped in deep burgundy velvet. A fire was already going in the hearth, low and soft, throwing warm light across shelves stacked two rows deep with books. The whole room smelled like fresh lilies. There was a grand piano tucked into the corner like an afterthought, and a bed big enough to get lost in, black wood carved with the same silver vines, climbing up the headboard like they were still growing.

It didn't feel like a prison.

It felt like someone had been getting it ready for me.

Waiting.

A maid slipped in a moment later, arms full of folded fabric. "Lady Maya, I prepared your evening clothes."

I frowned. "...How do you know my size?"

She blinked at me like I'd asked something strange. "I've always known your size my lady"

The room went quiet in a way that made my skin crawl.

"Leave," Kai said.

The maid's face drained of color. "I...forgive me" She was gone before she finished the sentence, the door clicking shut behind her.

I turned on Kai. "What did she mean by that?"

He looked at me the way he always looked at me when I asked a real question.

He didn't answer. she just turned and left me there confused.

Nothing made sense, I needed proof, I wanted a sign. Proof that this whole thing the clothes, the room, the way everyone looked at me like I was something they'd lost and found again was some elaborate setup. Some trick.

I threw open the wardrobe expecting a stranger's clothes. Expensive, expected, wrong.

Instead I found mine.

Cream sweaters folded exactly the way I fold them. Oversized hoodies. Worn-soft jeans. A pair of white sneakers identical to the ones I owned, down to the scuff on the left toe.

My hands found a gray hoodie before my brain caught up. I lifted it without thinking, and that's when I saw it stitched into the inside collar in small silver thread.

M.H.

Maya Hart.

I dropped it like it burned me.

"No," I whispered, to no one. "No, no, no."

"what's going on here" I held my head so tight like it's going to fall off.

I needed air. I needed to not be looking at a closet that already knew who I was.

I crossed to the balcony doors, and that's when I saw them thin lines scratched into the wall by the window frame, barely visible under a fresh coat of paint. Careful. Deliberate. Not damage. Words.

I dug my thumbnail into the paint and scraped.

One line appeared. Then another. Then more than I could count.

MAYA. MAYA. MAYA.

Over and over, the same name, scratched into the wood in dozens of different hands, like it had been written by dozens of different people across dozens of different years. And beneath the last one, half a sentence, painted over before it could finish.

"DON'T TRUST ANYONE"

My heart slammed against my ribs. I kept scraping, faster now, my nails splitting against the wood. The paint underneath was old. Not old like last year. Old like decades. Some of the scratches looked centuries old, the wood gone soft and gray around the letters, like the same warning had been carved, painted over, and carved again.

Again.

And again.

And again.

Someone had been trying to tell me something in this room for a very long time.

I stumbled back from the wall, breathing too fast, and hit the bedside table hard enough that a drawer slid open on its own.

Inside sat a small black leather journal.

No dust. No dulled corners. It looked like someone had set it there that morning.

My hands were shaking so badly it took two tries to open the cover. The handwriting inside was elegant, looping, achingly familiar close enough to my own that for one dizzy second I thought I was looking at something I'd written and forgotten.

If you're reading this... we've already failed eight times.

And if Kai is still alive... then Draven hasn't betrayed him yet.

The floor seemed to tilt under me. I turned the page anyway, because some part of me had to know, even as every other part of me was screaming to stop.

My name is Maya.

I wrote this for my next life.

The journal slipped out of my hands and hit the floor.