LOGIN*Naska*The servants' passages ran narrow and low-ceilinged through the heart of the palace, threading between the grand rooms like veins beneath skin — the functional arteries of a body that preferred not to see how it sustained itself. The walls were plain stone, dark with age, smelling of smoke and polish and old linen and stale damp where the cold pressed through from outside. The torches here burned lower than in the main corridors, spaced wider apart, throwing uneven light that made the passages feel longer than they were.Naska had walked them her entire life.She knew every turn, every low beam, every place where the stone swelled with the bitter summer heats. She knew which doors stuck and which swung silent, which paths were used by which households, where to stand to hear conversations from the rooms undisturbed.She had always known this palace better from the inside of its walls than from within its rooms.Tonight, the passages were different.Not quieter — louder, if an
*Naska*Bruno’s gaze stayed on her arm. He didn't move toward her. He didn't reach. Only looked — and the looking itself was its own kind of weight, pressing against the sleeve where Mykhol's grip had been, as if his eyes could see through muslin and into the bruise already forming beneath.And Naska felt it. The questions in that gaze. The assessment. The anger held so carefully behind the surface that only someone who had spent years learning to show nothing could have managed it — and even then, only barely. Because without the curtain of hair to soften him, to give him somewhere to retreat, his face was exposed in a way it had never been before. Every small contraction of muscle visible. The deepening furrow between his brows. The way his jaw held too still, the way his lower lip pressed flat.He was reading her.In a way that was far beyond his years. Something she had never taught him — and the realization of that, of all the things he must have taught himself quietly and alone
For several breaths, Naska did not move. Neither of them did, actually.Both just stood in their places . With the study stinking of blood-wine and cold glass and old paper, more snow drifting past the windows in that soft, relentless way it had been doing all morning, as if the sky had simply decided and would not be argued with. Somewhere beneath the desk, the fallen ledger lay open on its spine, pages bent, accounts exposed to the cold air. And Mykhol stood in the middle of it all, still facing the door his parents had left through. His expression suspended into something unreadable. Something thick and metallic.Naska kept her head bowed. Arm ringing with pain wanting to be soothed. But she did not dare touch it.She just waited until the silence had stretched long enough to become its own kind of instruction. Then she lowered herself carefully to the carpet.Her knees protested when they touched down. The study floor was cold even through her skirts, and the glass had scattered
*Naska*Naska lifted her head once more, looking back to the closed door, as if expecting someone to burst through. Looking for her. Needing her.But then again, she also didn’t expect anyone either. Because she hadn’t been told to wait for her. Actually, she hadn’t been told to do much nowadays. A fact that made her feel even more the fool to stand here now. Waiting here in Lord Charles’s study with her hands folded so tightly her knuckles ached.But orders had become slippery things since that day—passed between servants in whispers, interrupted by bells, rewritten by panic, carried from the throne room to the back corridors in pieces. And now, Her Empress was leaving for Dawny by first light tomorrow. And Lord Mykhol… was to remain behind. Once, there was a time, Naska would have felt happy by the idea. She would have seen it as her chance – have him home. Even pride herself on the fact to have Mykhol all to herself. But that was back then. And this was now.Now snow was fal
*Anastasia*“Ana.”My name pulls me up out of a place with no floor. I blink once , heavy and languidly stupid, only to find myself transported back from wherever I just went. I have been staring out at the tall arched windows of the throne room again. Heavy flakes drift past the glass — unhurried, enormous, each one distinct for a half-second before the next arrives and the next, a steady, relentless fall that has been going on long enough that white is beginning to gather along the outer ledges. Collecting in the grooves of the stonework. Settling on the sills in soft, improbable lines.I do not know how long I have been watching it.Long enough, apparently, for Mykhol to say my name as if it may not have been the first time he did.I blink again and finding the throne room reassembling itself around me back into neat and predictable patterns. Ancient wood beneath me, the pearl-inlaid armrests biting crescents into my palms where my fingers have been clenching without permission.
*Anastasia*For a moment I can do nothing but look on. Her name burrows against the paper like a brand, burning deeper the longer I stare at it, the ink dark and deliberate against pale cream. I cannot look away. Cannot make my eyes move on to whatever waits beyond it.Queen Belinda.There it is. Written so neatly. So deliberately. Every stroke measured, every curl chosen, as if even the front of an envelope were a performance she had rehearsed until it revealed nothing she hadn't decided to give. That poised control reads even here — in the particular elegance of the B, in the precise tail of the d — the way her red lips are always painted to the exact edge of her mouth and no further. No warmth bleeds through. No softness escapes by accident.She would never allow it. Not toward me.But then—Why?My pulse stutters hard enough that I feel it in my throat. A skip, then a surge, then something that settles wrong — too fast, too shallow, as if my body has already understood something
*Nicoli*Nicoli's practiced smile finally wavered as they left, the muscles in his face aching from the strain of maintaining such brilliant artifice. The tension he'd been holding in his shoulders released in a subtle drop, and he exhaled slowly, tasting the lingering scent of pine smoke mixed wit
Naska stared at the cup instead of taking it, more shocked than surprised at the motion. Someone poured her drink? It was indeed a first. No one had ever done anything for her. She was so used to doing everything for herself. And glancing up, the sight of who did, only made her more confused.It w
*Belinda*“The answer is no.” Belinda threw the invitation down on the desk, wishing she could just rip the entire paper to shreds. “You are not to attend.”“But mother,” Nicoli was up from the chair. “Why?” His blue eyes searched her face, a look of confusion clear as day. “I was invited, wasn’t I
*King Alexander*“The horses are getting restless, Sire.” Johan pointed out, but Alexander didn’t need him. He could the beasts neigh and hoove the ground from the platform. It was time to go. But still, Alexander lingered.“Sire,” Johan motioned again, pulling his sleeve. “If you want to postpone til







