ログイン*Belinda*Rethink the arrangement? Belinda was rendered dumb and useless. Her mouth stood slightly open. Her grey eyes had gone wide and blinking, fixed on Bratha as though looking hard enough at her oldest friend's face might somehow bridge the gap. Pull back the distance now drawn between what she had just heard and what could possibly be made from it. What Bratha had meant in saying such a thing. A thing Belinda would never, in a million moons, have imagined leaving that mouth.Rethink the arrangement! That was…it was–It was absurd. ABSURD! Yes, it was, quite plainly, absurd — and the absurdity of it was precisely what kept her, for several long seconds, without a single word to offer. She could not locate the correct response, not because none existed, but because too many arrived at once, colliding in her throat before any single one could take proper shape.How can she even suggest this? Now?! Here. After everything.As though nine years could be folded up and set aside lik
*Belinda*"Nicoli is not going anywhere."The words came out with such a force that it surprised even Belinda herself. The very sound of her own voice, usually so polished and gentle towards her dearest friend, now cut clean through whatever Bratha had been about to say next, leaving them both, in its wake, oddly listless. Stranded.But she did not retreat from it. Would not.Not with my Nicoli in question. Instead of retracting back into her old mask, Belinda found, to her own surprise, she did not entirely regret being seen. Rather, an old and fiercely maternal woman had risen up beneath the practiced grey calm of her, stripping away, in a single stroke, decades of careful, crafted, well-tended friendship. She was to bury her husband this week. She had spent the handful of days since quietly, privately rehearsing the shape of a future in which her son remained the last whole thing she still had to hold — the last piece of her family not yet claimed by death, or distance, or some si
*Belinda*Bratha lowered herself into the waiting chair with the slow, deliberate care of someone long accustomed to furniture fearing her. The reinforced frame held firm beneath her weight — not even the faintest groan escaping the hidden iron braces. Belinda allowed herself a small, private measure of satisfaction to that. Every measurement had been her own. Every joint checked twice.She wouldn’t have to replace the head of carpentry any time soon."Forgive me, my dear friend." Bratha settled back against the deep green velvet, the fabric absorbing her bulk without complaint. "I did not mean to keep you waiting."Belinda returned to her own seat, carefully sliding the bulk of her dress to one armrest in a fluid motion that matched her voice. "You hardly did." Bratha did not answer immediately after. Rather, she settled fully into the chair — the rest of her weight easing into the reinforced frame, as though testing that the promise held before trusting it entirely — and for a mom
*Belinda*Belinda had pulled out all the stops for their tea. The table gleamed beneath the tall windows, each piece placed meticulously, enough so, that even the servants seemed reluctant to dare even breathe near it. White porcelain edged in gold caught the fleeting afternoon light, thin and gold-shot where it fell through the glass. Three pots waited over their silver warmers — black tea, a softer pear blend, and the bitter mountain infusion Bratha had once declared the only thing in all of Dawny with any courage in it. Belinda had made a particular point of bringing out that one.She could already picture the smile it would draw — the widening of those blunt white teeth, the peridot eyes lighting with pleasant surprise that Belinda had bothered to remember so small a thing.But it was exactly why Belinda remembered. It was exactly how two women such as themselves had remained friends across so many years.Anything for my dearest friend, after all.The thought settled warm and eas
*Hildenberg*Hidi choked on her own tongue.It suddenly sat too thick between her teeth. Like swallowing honey gone stiff with wax. It clung to every crevice of that warm cavern, filling the space where words should form. All the more making it a struggle of the simplest things. To speak. Think. Even utter a single clean syllable.She staggered to blink a moment, as if slow to restart, as though the very suggestion had knocked something loose in the machinery of her. Her mother. Mama. Would she really—No. No, she would never. That certainty alone restored her confidence enough to melt the waxy blockades from her mouth. Revive her comatose tongue. And suck in enough air to revive her from the shadows of doubt. Leaving her only with firm conviction. “You wouldn’t dare.” Her voice found its footing and began to build, momentum gathering behind it like a great boulder loosed on a snowy slope. "You have no right—"“I have every right to refuse work that is no longer mine.” Hidi’s fa
*Hildenberg*No.The refusal rose in Hidi before her mother had even finished settling the weight of the word between them. No, not this. Not now.She did not want to think about Almony. She did not want to begin to think about the stupid grain houses or the villages or the petitions stacked on a table two winter passes away — not tonight, not with wine souring in her stomach and Nicoli's silence still scraping the inside of her skull and her own reflection hovering ghostlike in the dark glass. There was no room in her for it. She was full to the brim already with the one problem she couldn’t even inch out, let alone slove. And yet, here was an ambush set up in her very room, and her mother wasn’t looking like she was amused or rattling at her. Hidi understood that in the pit of her stomach.No, this was not like any of the other times. Her mother was not sparring anymore. Was not delivering the familiar, worn jabs that had passed between them for years, the ones Hidi knew how to ca
-Three years later-*Ana*“I can’t take it anymore.” The maid screams and throws down the brush. Her face almost as red as her hair. She’s still huffing and puffing through her fangs as I reach down to pick it back up. “But my hair-” I see the wild mess in the mirror. I can’t remember how long sinc
-Prelude-*Ana*“I don’t wanna go,” I look up. “Please, I’ll be good for Stepmother, ” But the nursemaid only smiles down at me.“You’ll be happy in Nochten, Princess Anastasia." She tries to smile. But it gets ruined between the tears. “You will be back with your kind.”My kind? I keep hearing tha
“Have you ever considered taking a pen pal, Ana?” Maddie uses the nickname. It’s a habit of hers when we are alone. “Pen pal?” I repeat. What is she going on about this time? It’s been a month since Maddie started. But it doesn’t feel like much time has passed. Maybe because she makes everything
"You do know the Empress is mixed? ” Lady Funda cut straight to the point. It had not been a good round of interviews, and by the last interview, high noon was almost upon them.So, needlessly to say, Funda wasn't in the mood to sugarcoat things. “She’s half and half.” Funda tapped her fingers. “Hu







