LOGINWe stood there in the snow for what felt like hours, though it was probably only minutes, with his hand outstretched and my back against the tree and the frozen wind howling between us like a living thing that wanted to tear us apart.
I did not take his hand, and I did not run either. He did not move, and the snow fell on both of us, soft and silent and endless.
Then he stepped forward.
I flinched, pressing myself harder against the tree trunk, but he did no
The cloak became part of me after that night.I wore it everywhere, even when I was alone in my room, because the weight of it was comforting and the warmth of it was steady and the smell of it reminded me that someone in this castle wanted me alive. I did not know what to do with that knowledge, but I held onto it anyway, like a drowning man holding onto a piece of driftwood in a stormy sea.The first time I walked through the halls wearing the cloak, the nobles stared.They had always stared, of course. Their golden eyes had followed me from the moment I arrived at this frozen castle, watching and waiting and whispering about the human whore who had somehow caught the king's attention. But this time was different. This time, their stares were not just curious or cruel. They were hungry.I pulled the cloak tighter around my shoulders and kept walking, with my head down and my eyes on t
The day after Ramona 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 and dark fur that smelled like pine and snow and something else, something wild. The stitching was perfect, with 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.
The morning after the boots appeared outside my door, I woke to the sound of someone entering my room without knocking.I sat up so fast that my head spun, pressing my back against the headboard and pulling my knees to my chest, ready for whatever new cruelty the day had brought. But the woman who stood in the doorway was not a guard, not a noble, and not anyone I had seen before in the weeks I had been trapped in this frozen castle.She was old.Her hair was silver, pulled back from her face in a braid that hung over one shoulder, and her skin was pale and lined with wrinkles that spoke of centuries rather than decades. Her eyes were grey, like mine, but sharper and brighter, and they looked at me like I was a puzzle she was trying to solve.She did not ask permission to enter. She simply walked inside, closed the door behind her, and stood at the foot of my bed with her arms crossed o
We stood there in the snow for what felt like hours, though it was probably only minutes, with his hand outstretched and my back against the tree and the frozen wind howling between us like a living thing that wanted to tear us apart.I did not take his hand, and I did not run either. He did not move, and the snow fell on both of us, soft and silent and endless.Then he stepped forward.I flinched, pressing myself harder against the tree trunk, but he did not reach for me. He did not grab my arm or wrap his fingers around my throat or do any of the things I expected him to do. He just bent down and scooped me up into his arms like I weighed nothing at all, like I was a child who had fallen asleep during a long journey and needed to be carried the rest of the way.I fought him.I kicked and thrashed and pushed against his chest with hands that were too cold to feel, with arms that were too tired to matter, and with a body that had give
The days after the nightmare blurred together like watercolors left out in the rain. I stopped counting the hours, stopped trying to track the sun through the frost-covered window, and stopped caring about anything except the slow, steady rhythm of survival.The servants came and went with trays of food. The fire burned and died and was relit. The nobles laughed outside my door, and Felipe's name floated through the walls like smoke, and I sat against the headboard and waited.But I was not just waiting anymore.I was watching.The guards changed shifts every six hours. I had counted the intervals, marked the patterns, and memorized the way their boots echoed on the stone floor as they walked past my door. There were two guards in the morning, three at noon, two at dusk, and four at midnight, when the castle was darkest and the cold seeped through the walls like a living thing.The hidden room had a window. It was too small to climb through, yes, but large enough to drop a rope. If I
I fell asleep that night with my back against the headboard and my eyes on the door, the way I always did, the way I had learned to sleep when I was a child and my stepmother roamed the halls looking for someone to hurt.But something was different this time. The room was darker than usual, the shadows were deeper, and the cold seemed to press against my skin like a living thing.I did not dream at first. All I saw was empty, endless, suffocating darkness, like being buried alive in a grave that had no bottom. I floated in that darkness for what felt like hours, weightless and lost, with no sense of where I was or how long I had been there or whether I would ever find my way out.Then I heard her voice."Serena."My mother's voice echoed through the darkness, so soft and warm and so familiar that my heart lurched in my chest."Mama?" I called out into the darkness.But she did not answer. She just kept saying my name, over and over, like a song that had no end. And the closer her voic







