Chapter 13: The Gift

The day after Elara visited me, a servant came to my room carrying something draped over her arms like it was made of glass instead of fabric. She did not speak, she just laid the bundle on the foot of my bed and left, closing the door behind her without a sound.

I stared at it for a long time.

The fabric was black, so dark that it seemed to swallow the light from the fire, and when I reached out to touch it, my fingers sank into wool so soft that I had never felt anything like it. I pulled the cloak toward me, and the weight of it was heavy in my hands, even heavier than anything I had owned in my entire life.

It was lined with fur. Thick, dark fur that smelled like pine and snow and something else, something wild. The stitching was perfect, each seam straight and tight, and the clasp at the neck was made of silver, cool and smooth against my fingers.

I did not understand.

Why would the king send me this? Why would anyone send me this? I was a sacrifice, a prisoner, a thing to be used and broken and thrown away. I was not someone who received gifts. I was not someone who wore cloaks that cost more than the cottage where I had grown up.

I held the cloak in my hands and tried to find the trick, the trap, or the hidden cruelty that would explain why this beautiful thing had been left on my bed. But there was nothing. Just fabric and fur and the faint smell of the king, lingering in the fibers like a ghost.

I did not know what it meant.

The hours passed, and the fire burned low, the shadows grew long, and I sat against the headboard with the cloak in my lap and tried to make sense of something that made no sense at all. The king had kissed me and stopped. He had also touched me and pulled away. He had carried me back to the castle when I tried to run, and he had left boots outside my door so my feet would not freeze.

And now this.

Why would he send a cloak that worth more than anything I had ever owned.

In my town, a cloak like this could feed a family for a year. A cloak like this could buy a cottage, or a horse, or enough medicine to save someone who was dying. And the king had given it to me like it was nothing, or like it was just another thing he had lying around his castle.

I thought about my mother, who had died in a bed with thin blankets and no fire. I thought about all the winters I had spent shivering in my father's house, wearing clothes that were too small and too thin. And now here I was, holding a cloak that could have kept her warm, and that could have kept her alive, but she was gone.

I did not understand him, and I did not understand any of this.

I sat there, and none of it made any sense.

Leticia came that night, slipping through the door without knocking the way she always did, and she stopped when she saw the cloak spread across my lap. Her grey eyes widened, and something flickered across her face that I could not read.

"Where did you get that?" she asked.

"The king sent it," I said. "I do not know why."

She walked closer, her hand reaching out to touch the fur, and I saw the way her fingers trembled, and the way her breath caught in her throat. She had been in this castle for ten years, and she had survived by becoming nothing, by being invisible, and by never drawing attention to herself. And all through these years, she had never been given anything like this.

"It means he is trying," she said softly. "He does not know how to say it, so he gives things."

I looked down at the cloak. "Say what?"

Leticia looked at me, and her grey eyes were sad, the kind of sad that came from years of watching bad things happen and being unable to stop them. "That he wants you, but he does not know what to do with that wanting. And that also shows that he is afraid."

I wanted to laugh again, but the sound would not come. Did she say WANTING. The king wanted me. Not as a sacrifice, not as a thing to be used and thrown away, but as something else, something I did not have a word for.

I thought about the way his hands had shaken when he touched me, the way he had looked at me like I was something precious, and I thought about what Elara had said, that he had never loved anything, and that he did not know how. Wanting was not the same as loving. But maybe it was the first step, and maybe that was what scared him most.

"He is the king," I said. "He is not afraid of anything."

"He is afraid of you," she said. "He is afraid of what you make him feel. And he is trying to be good, Sergio. He just does not know how."

I wanted to tell her that she was wrong, that the king was a monster and monsters did not try to be good, that everything he did was probably part of some larger plan to hurt me in ways I had not yet imagined. But the cloak was warm in my hands, and the boots on my feet were warm, and the honey on my tray had been sweet, and I could not make the pieces fit together.

"Why are you helping me?" I asked. "You said you are no one. You said no one cannot save anyone. So why do you keep coming here?"

Leticia was quiet for a long moment as the fire crackled, and the wind howled. I just sat there with the cloak in my lap and waited.

"Because you remind me of who I was before I became no one," she said finally. "Because I want to believe that someone can survive this place without losing themselves completely. And because I want to believe that the king can be different, that the bond can change him, and that there is still hope for something better than surviving."

She stood up and walked to the door, and her hand rested on the handle, but she did not look back at me.

"Wear the cloak," she said. "It will keep you warm, and it will remind the nobles that you belong to him. That is the only protection you have in this place."

She left before I could say anything else.

I sat there for a long time, holding the cloak in my hands, feeling the softness of the wool and the warmth of the fur and the weight of everything I did not understand.

Then I stood up.

I put the cloak around my shoulders, and the weight of it settled over me like armor, like a shield, and like something that said I belonged to someone, even if I did not know what that meant. The fur was soft against my neck, the wool was warm against my arms, and the cloak smelled like him, like snow and smoke and something wild, something that should not be caged.

I walked to the small mirror that hung on the wall, the one I had avoided looking into since I arrived at this castle, and I looked at myself for the first time in weeks.

The cloak made me look different and stronger. I looked like someone who mattered, and someone who was worth protecting.

I did not recognize the person staring back at me, but I did not hate what I saw either.

The person in the mirror had shoulders that did not slump. His chin was lifted, just slightly, and his grey eyes looked back at me with something that might have been defiance. The cloak made him look like he belonged here, like he had a right to be in this castle, like he was not just a sacrifice waiting to die. I touched the silver clasp at my neck, and the metal was cool against my fingers, and I wondered if this was who I could have been all along, if someone had just given me a chance.

I turned away from the mirror and sat back against the headboard, but I did not take the cloak off. I kept it wrapped around my shoulders, warm and heavy and smelling of the king, and I closed my eyes and tried to remember the last time someone had given me something without wanting something in return.

But i could not remember.

I had spent my whole life taking scraps, accepting the smallest portions, and making myself so small that I barely took up any space at all. And now here was a king, a monster, a man who should have been my enemy, giving me things I had never dared to dream of. It did not erase the past, nor did it make up for the years of hunger and cold and fear. But it meant something. I did not know what. But it meant something.

The cloak and the boots were warm against my skin, and somewhere in the darkness of the castle, the king was watching, and I did not want to admit how much I liked the way his gifts made me feel.