INICIAR SESIÓN*Anastasia*“You must announce your engagement to Sir Pendwick,” Nugen’s words leech out, percise and pleading in the same measure, “or we are going to lose everything altogether.”And as if the words themselves seal us both, Nugen’s mouth closes. He doesn’t reach for my hand again.He simply looks up at me—those pale brown eyes fixed steady, the scar at his brow drawn tight—waiting.Not for my understanding.For an answer. Mine. For a moment, I don’t understand the language. The sentence reaches me, yes, but it doesn’t belong to anything in my body—like sound heard underwater, muffled and distorted. I stare at his closed lips, ringed around the last word, and the world tilts. Shifting under my feet like sand that cannot be physically correct. The fire pops behind him, a small, ordinary sound, and the candle flames shiver as if they’ve been startled, too. Somewhere near the window, winter wind worries the panes with a low howl, the glass faintly rattling in its frame. Snow is hea
*Anastasia*The first thing I notice is the weight. Not soley on my chest—though it does sit there like a hand pressed flat, patient and insistent—but behind my eyes, too: a pulsing ache that blooms with every heartbeat, as if something inside my skull is trying to push outward. My throat feels wrong, scraped dry, each breath a shallow drag over sand.And then there is something else, wrapping around everything more vividly than pain.Silence.It is so quiet that for a moment I think I am displaced, still drifting somewhere. The stillness has shape. It fills the air. It presses against my ears until I can hear my own pulse and the faint, soft rasp of my breath.It’s so quiet. Why is it so quiet? It makes no sense. It makes my skin prickle with unease.Everything should still be chaotic—people shouting, arguing over one another, the court swelling with noise like a storm trapped in stone. The courtroom—The courtroom. That’s right. It is the last thing I remember.The thought hits lik
*Pendwick*Pendwick did not realize he had stopped breathing until his lungs began to burn. The parlor—so recently too large, too curated, too smug in its velvet comfort—seemed to narrow on a hinge, collapsing into only three bodies and the space between them. Even the furnishings felt like they had stepped back: the coffee service cooling on its warmer, the sugared sweets sitting untouched beneath their glass domes, the gilt frames on the walls holding their painted serenity like a lie.And Mykhol… Lord Mykhol took up the most space of all.He stood where the door had admitted him, perfectly erect, as if the room had been built to accommodate his posture, his very presence. The latch clicked softly behind him like an afterthought of a sound—yet it carried the finality of a sealed vault. Winter clung to him in a thin draft that slid across the rug, cold crawling around Pendwick’s ankles, while the hearth’s heat continued to breathe at Pendwick’s back. It felt absurdly like the air it
*Pendwick*“Will you sit down already?” Sir Celbest’s voice boomed, crackling out like lightning across the decadent parlor. The words ricocheted off velvet drapes and gilt-framed landscapes, across the table laid with untouched coffee, across the pale gleam of porcelain that had long since stopped steaming. It was the kind of command far too familiar now, only meant to make him shrink without thinking.And for a split moment, Pendwick almost obeyed. His body flinched on instinct. Moving already before his mind could. His heel began to pivot; his shoulders drew in, making him smaller, less noticeable. Even his lips parted, as if ready to apologize, like many countless times before. Sorry. Yes, sir. Of course. I didn’t mean— The old reflex rose so quickly that it was almost comforting in its predictability to appease. Correct himself. Do better. Do what everyone else wanted.Yet, something sharper cut through it.Not courage—he wouldn’t lie to himself and call it that. Rather, it w
*Mykhol*Ana was…. Illegitimate. The words didn’t echo in the study, but they might as well have. They loomed over him, coating like a heavy smoke, seeping into the very corners of the room, staining the stone walls, slipping between the cracks like the soft rasp between his staggered breath.Mykhol stood at his hearth with one hand braced against the mantle, fingers spread over the cold rock as if it could steady him. Firelight licked along the gold of his rings. Usually, the sight pleased him— a reminder of his position, his power—yet now? The metal only clicked when he shifted. A hollow and flinching murmur. Too small. An involuntary sound that felt too close to shackles than the symbol it should have been. As if even the precious metal could be rendered worthless… given the right push. He tightened his grip.Stone bit back through the pads of his fingers. The chill grounded him for a moment—enough to notice the other things that had become suddenly loud: the faint grit of soo
*Bruno*(Song recommendation for this chapter: Light of the Seven by Ramin Djawadi)Bruno stood alone in the middle of the courtroom, feeling the cold sink into him like a living thing—not merely temperature, but a sentience that seemed to understand exactly what had been stripped from him. The stone beneath his feet absorbed his weight with a ruthless indifference, each vein feeling like a silent witness to his unraveling. His skull was still ringing from the marble's brutal kiss.The sting of drying blood pulling at the corner of his mouth each time he swallowed. And the place his mother had been standing was now an absence so sharp it felt haunted—like a missing limb, like a wound that wouldn't stop reaching for what it had lost.His bangs had slipped back into place, veiling his eyes further, but they didn’t feel like armor anymore. Not after Mykhol easily took even that from him. Exposing him, like a babe ripped from the crib and found wanting.And still, across from him, Mykhol
*Ana*“Are you…sure about this, your Empress?” The servant asks again, shifting a look out the French doors, concern on his face as if uncomfortable by the dark. “I…could get a lantern, or go with you?” “Like I said,” I reassure him. “The carriage ride was long. And a walk in the maze will do me g
*Naska*Why is it so awkward now? Naska could barely keep still, not liking this. Wanting to talk, wanting to hear Mykhol talk. Anything really, to break this strange quiet that seemed to fall over both of them since Ana left.Which was growing a little long. Not that Naska cared, though. She could
*Belinda*To think that the Hildenberg, herself, would show up. Belinda never dreamed the party would be this successful. It was a pure strike of luck. And Belinda felt her chest swell, as she sat on the seat, motioning for the servant to help her undress for the night. Why, it was beyond her very
*Ana*“Please make yourselves comfortable.” Julia stops to open the door revealing a garden-like room, painted with leaves and potted plants hanging from the ceiling. The same soft colors are used in the couches and throw pillows.“You will be notified when the rooms are ready.” Julia curtsies, sayi







