Page 38 of Revert
Her voice cracked on the last word, barely a whisper, her lashes trembling with the weight of unshed tears. The ache in her voice snagged on something raw inside me—the memory of my father’s frail hands, of the man I was betrothed to and could never fully hold, of the girl I used to be before the mission and duty hollowed me out.
Her gaze darted again, reminding me it wasn’t only me she feared, but the throne I was tethered to. I softened my voice, aching to reach her. “I am not the crown.” Not tonight, at least. Not here, with her trembling hand beneath mine.
A faint, shuddering breath escaped her lips, and when she finally met my gaze, her resolve for silence fractured. “It’s mybrother,” she whispered, so low I scarcely heard, which meant it carried little risk of reaching the guards beyond the door. “Two weeks ago, he was taken. For questioning.”
Her fingers twisted the edge of her apron, knuckles white.
“But no one returns from questioning. And if they do…” Her voice faltered on the last word, raw and small. “They’re never the same.”
My breath hitched, the weight of her words pressing against my chest.Oh no.
Despite my position at court as the future queen, so much about the world beyond these gilded walls had been hidden from me, carefully shrouded in the veil of darkness and secrecy. But I knew the king, and could fill in the missing details easily enough.
Five years of gathering fragments—rumors overheard in passing, coded scraps tucked between letters, glances traded like contraband across shadowed halls. Whispers of corruption and fear, confirmed by the pattern of disappearances, of voices gone silent, of neighbors who stared too long at their doors and stopped answering altogether.
I had pieced them together like shards of shattered glass, fitting them into a picture sharp enough to cut. What took me awhile to realize was that each cut had carved away the girl I had once been, so that I wasn’t just piecing together a kingdom’s darkness but learning the cost of knowing.
For the first time, the weight of the kingdom settled on my shoulders in a way I couldn’t shrug off, heavy and inescapable.Just what am I forced to be a part of?
I opened my mouth to offer a comforting word, but nothing came. No courtly platitude could soften the ache she carried—the helplessness, the gnawing dread. The same weight that tightened in my own chest whenever I thought of my ailing father, one of many who depended on the success of the mission I was meant to carry to its end.
Liora shook her head quickly, blinking hard. “I’m sorry, Princess. I shouldn’t—I shouldn’t burden you. You already bear enough.”
It was the first she had ever hinted at her concerns about my place here, the first flicker of empathy she’d allowed past years of distance. Another thread woven, quiet and unseen, between two lives pressed apart by circumstance. In that quiet, grief-stricken space, I felt the fragile, aching reminder: I, too, was caught in this kingdom’s web—both prisoner and complicit.
As much as I yearned to offer comfort, however empty, for one faltering moment, terror held me back. Was this a trap? Cynicism and survival hissed reminders that testing loyalty was the court’s cruelest game. The thought coiled sharp and cold. Court had taught me to read every word, every tremble, as either truth or weapon. But I saw no guile in Liora’s eyes. Only a breaking.
Yet while I had mastered the art of suppression and masks, she couldn’t have feigned the tremor in her hands, the bloodshot exhaustion in her eyes, the haunted hollow of her expression.
I could do so little against the dark maneuverings of the court, but I could at least offer this. Resolved, I clasped her shaking hands firmly in mine. “You are not a burden, Liora.”
For a moment, she only trembled—and then her shoulders sagged, as if the weight of all she carried had finally broken her apart. For a heartbeat, I felt it—the forbidden sweetness of shared grief, as dangerous as treason. And still, I didn’t let go.
I thought she’d pull away and retreat back behind her mask of duty and polite smiles…just as I so often did. But then she bowed her head and the words slipped free in a soft, shaking rush.
“He was a miller’s apprentice,” she whispered. “Hardworking. Sweet. He never wanted trouble. But there wasa dispute—a neighbor accused the mill of hoarding grain, of cheating the tithe. It wasn’t true…but they didn’t listen.”
Questions come after the judgement. I pressed a hand to the scar over my heart, where Castiel’s sword had once executed the justice he’d seen fit to enforce the night of my own death.
Liora swallowed hard, eyes glinting with barely suppressed tears. “They dragged him from his bed in the middle of the night. My mother screamed, and I—” Her voice cracked. “I hid under the table.”
A sharp breath caught in my throat, slicing through me like a blade.
“I thought it was just him. But it’s everywhere, Princess. My cousin was fined so heavily for speaking against the taxes she lost her home. The blacksmith’s son disappeared last winter—they say he was overheard complaining about conscription quotas. Another was executed for trying to evade the forced drafting for the king’s army. And my neighbor’s daughter…” Her voice broke again, raw and small. “They took her to serve at court when she was fourteen. She never came back.”
I had known it was bad, but hearing the whispers I’d collected snippets of echoed now in my handmaiden’s heartache made it personal in a way I hadn’t let myself feel.
The walls of my chamber pressed closer, the silk hangings crowding in, the sweet scent of rose oil clinging to the air until I felt I might suffocate.
How much had I never seen…or worse, hadchosennot to see?
My mind reeled back over the five long years I’d spent in Thorndale’s gilded cage—the curated news, the grand events, the court’s petty dramas, the smiling reassurances that the kingdom was thriving, united and strong under its crown.
UnderCastiel’scrown.
A sharp, unexpected pang lanced through me, fierce and aching, reminding me of the truth I would do anything to forget—Castiel—son of the king, heir to the throne—was part of this, one of the very hands of the system Liora now wept over. It might not have been his hands arresting Liora’s brother, but he was surely responsible for her suffering.
And yet, behind the cold calculation, I had glimpsed soft betrayals—flickers of hesitation, shadowed looks, half-voiced warnings, rare aching cracks in his mask. I hated myself for noticing, and even more for caring. Yet still, I seized each one like a lifeline, desperate to keep it from slipping away.
