The Queen's Conditions

THALIA POV

The palace gates came into view just as the sky was turning that pale, bruised gray that isn't quite morning yet, and for a long moment I simply sat there staring at them, unable to make my body want to move any closer.

I had grown up on stories about this place. Not the palace specifically — the land itself, the whole dark shape of it in my childhood imagination, wolves who peeled the skin from witches who wandered too close, bloodlines with tempers too old and too violent to reason with. I used to think I was too clever to actually believe any of it. Sitting outside those gates with my ankle throbbing and my magic still sealed shut inside me, I found I believed every last word.

I had run last night. I had actually tried, properly tried, not the half-hearted rebellion of a girl who expects to fail — and something out there in that forest had still been faster than me, stronger than me, closer to whatever those old stories described than I wanted to admit. I'd been carried back to the carriage shaking, and somewhere between the forest floor and this gate, a quiet, unwelcome certainty had settled into my chest.

I wasn't getting out of this. Not through running. Not through defiance. If escape had ever been a real option, last night had used it up.

Which meant, if I was going to survive whatever waited past those gates, I needed a different plan entirely.

I thought of the last few days — every door I'd tried to force open with sheer will, every moment I'd let my temper announce exactly how dangerous I thought I might be. It hadn't gotten me anywhere except sealed and injured. Perhaps the smarter version of me, the one who'd actually finished an academy blueprint through patience rather than force, needed to try something else now. Something quieter.

If they expected a wild, furious witch clawing at every restriction they placed on her, then perhaps the safest thing I could be, at least for now, was harmless.

I practiced it in my head before we'd even reached the doors — softening my shoulders, arranging my face into something closer to tired politeness than the fury still sitting just beneath my skin. Let them underestimate me. Let them believe the escape attempt had frightened the fight clean out of me. It would be so much easier to learn this place, to find its actual weaknesses if no one thought I was looking for any.

The guards escorting me through the entrance kept their eyes on me the entire way, sharper now than they'd been the day before, clearly under new instructions not to blink. I didn't test them. I let my ankle slow my pace and said nothing at all, playing the part of a girl too broken by her own failure to be worth watching so closely.

A woman met us beneath the main archway, unhurried, plainly dressed. "You'll come with me. The Queen Mother is waiting."

I followed without argument, cataloging the halls only quietly now, not with the sharp, cataloging hunger I'd felt before. Servants who didn't lower their eyes. Children who ran without being scolded. Everything about this place still felt foreign in a way that made my stomach tighten, but I kept my expression carefully unbothered the entire walk.

Queen Selene received me in a study rather than a throne room, seated behind a wide desk, and looked me over once, thoroughly, before speaking.

"You've had an eventful arrival," she said.

"A small misadventure," I said, aiming for something light, something that might make her exhale instead of assess. "I promise I’m usually much less trouble."

She didn't smile. My attempt sat there in the air, unclaimed.

"Sit," she said. "Ophelia. You must be exhausted."

The name didn't register at first. It simply sounded wrong, the way a note sounds wrong in a song you know too well to miss the mistake.

"I'm sorry," I said, careful to keep my voice even, pleasant, "What did you call me?"

"Ophelia," she said again, and this time I watched something flicker behind her composure, a small private recalculation.

"My name is Thalia."

The silence that followed lasted long enough that I had time to understand exactly what it meant before she said another word. I watched her expression shift from confusion to understanding.

They had been expecting my sister.

Something in my chest folded in on itself, quiet and complete. Of course. Of course it had been Ophelia they wanted — powerful, capable, worth an alliance built around her. And somewhere between that expectation and this room, my family had simply swapped one daughter for another, the disposable one for the valuable one, and hadn't thought it worth mentioning to anyone, least of all to me.

I kept my face arranged the way I'd practiced. Although it was getting harder by the minute, the urge to teleport back to Ashen Crown and look my parents in the face, reflecting the disappointment I felt currently.

"There was correspondence," Selene said, carefully, "regarding the eldest Ashwynn daughter."

"An easy mistake," I said, my voice light in a way that cost me more than I wanted to admit. "Families change their minds." Without the content of the daughter.

I had always wondered why me specifically?

I was never one of the children my parents bragged about; Ophelia had always held the title of the family star child while I simply held the title of the child who screams the loudest, which diverts them from my true intelligence.

Selene studied me a moment longer than the comment warranted, as if the calm surprised her more than the correction had. I really wasn't going to crack my mask here, even if I was going to be executed; at least I would be sure I did it with pride.

The door opened without a knock. I flinched at the sudden sound.

"You're finally awake," a voice said, warm in a way nothing in that room had been warm toward me. "I heard the escort had trouble on the road."

The woman in the doorway moved like she already owned every stone of the palace around her, dark hair loose over one shoulder, entirely at home. Selene's posture changed the instant she appeared — something in her loosened, her mouth curving into an expression I hadn't once earned in our entire conversation.

"Isolde," Selene said, warm now, genuinely warm. "Come in, sit with me a moment."

I watched the display of affection of the queen towards someone who is certainly not her daughter and not the new bride. Did these people have no manners?

My hands tightened at the hem of my gown, but my face remained calm.

"This is Thalia," Selene said eventually, gesturing toward me the way you'd gesture toward a piece of furniture that had arrived slightly dented. "Ronan's bride."

Isolde's gaze finally settled on me, unhurried, assessing, like she hadn't noticed I was in the room earlier. "So you're the one," she said, and something about the phrase made my skin prickle; the smile wasn't friendly either.

"I'm sorry," I said, aiming again for lightness I didn't feel, "have we met?"

"Not yet." Her smile didn't reach her eyes. "But I imagine we'll be spending a great deal of your time together."

Selene stood, smoothing her skirts, already turning toward the door as though the meeting had quietly concluded itself without anyone officially ending it. "Isolde will see you settled," she said. "Show her the east wing restrictions. The council functions she'll be expected at. Whatever else she needs to understand before Ronan returns."

"Of course," Isolde said, already moving toward me, already assuming ownership of whatever happened next the way she seemed to assume ownership of everything in this space.

Selene left without another glance in my direction, and I understood, watching her go, that I had just been handed off like an errand completed.

Isolde waited until the door shut fully behind her before she spoke again, and when she did, the warmth she'd worn for Selene's benefit was entirely gone.

"You should know something," she said, conversational, almost gentle, which made it worse, "before you get too comfortable here." She moved closer, studying my face carefully.

"And what's that?"

"Ronan didn't refuse this marriage because he didn't want a bride," she said. I frowned almost immediately; he refused the marriage?

Then what am I doing here?

"He refused it because he already buried the last one. And the one before her. And some more before that."

She said, my heart skipped a beat, my nails digging into my palm as I tried to maintain the expression on my face. But it was almost impossible.

Buried who? His bride? Am I going to add to the number?

I bit my lip gently.

"They'll tell you it's a curse," Isolde went on, tilting her head slightly, watching for a reaction I refused to give her. "That's not entirely a lie. But it isn't the whole truth either." She smiled, small and sharp. "And I'd be very careful, if I were you, about which parts of it you go looking for."

She turned toward the door before I could ask what she meant, pausing only once, her hand resting on the frame.

"Welcome to Duskmere, Thalia," she said, without looking back. "I do hope you leave faster than the others did."