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AUTHOR'S NOTE:
This is my first time writing, so please don't expect too much from me. I'm still going to try my best, and I hope you like it!
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"Ember, time to get up."
Her voice was a knife wrapped in ribbons. I opened my eyes to the maid's grin—too wide, too bright. She leaned over me as though we were sisters, as though we were friends. Her cheeks shone with forced delight, and her brown hair was pulled into a braid so precise it could only have been tied to please her masters.
She looked happy to see me.I hated her for it.
Not the smile itself—no. It was the smugness beneath it, the quiet certainty that she could walk out of this tower whenever she wished, while I remained here, a trinket locked away in a chest. My life measured out in meals, in inspections, in endless waiting.
I sat up slowly. The sheets smelled faintly of mildew. My hair clung damp to my neck, heavy with the night's sweat. The wall beside me was a skin of crumbling mortar, veined with moss that trailed green threads toward the floor.
A ruined mage's tower, abandoned for a century. They thought it a fitting place for a princess to wither.
The maid clapped her hands, still smiling. "You'll want to look pretty today. Visitors may come."
Visitors. Inspectors, more likely. Old men with ink-stained fingers. Soldiers who studied me the way butchers study meat. They always brought letters from the king—asking after my purity, never my health. I was not a daughter to him. I was a womb, locked away until he could sell me to the highest bidder.
I smiled back at the maid, because she expected it. My smile was sharper than hers. She never noticed.
🔹🔹🔹
She fetched water from a chipped copper jug, poured it into a basin, and handed me a rag. I let her dab at my face and arms. The water was cold. I made her press harder than necessary, just to hear her mutter apologies.
"Your hair is a mess," she said with a soft laugh. "You mustn't frighten them when they come."
I caught her wrist before she could brush my hair. Her skin was warm beneath my fingers, and she tried to pull away. I held her a moment longer than courtesy allowed, watching her eyes widen and her lips twitch. Then I let go.
She turned quickly to her task, combing through my hair while humming a court tune, as if the cracked stones around us were marble halls. I stared past her reflection in the basin's water. Above me, the ceiling was black with old smoke stains, as though fires had once burned there—fires no servant had ever dared scrub clean.
🔹🔹🔹
She brought me bread and broth. The bread was stale, the broth thin, but I ate anyway. The guards outside wanted me alive. That was the limit of their concern.
The maid sat across from me, watching each bite. She chattered about the weather, the village below, the King's generosity in feeding me. I let her talk. I nodded when she paused, so she would think I was listening.
In truth, I was studying her—the pulse in her throat when she lied, the quick flick of her eyes toward the door whenever she spoke of the King, as though afraid someone else might be listening. She was no friend. She was a spy with soft hands and a practiced smile.
Still, she had a weakness. I simply hadn't found it yet.
🔹🔹🔹
After breakfast she let me stand at the window. She pretended it was kindness, but the bars across the stone told the truth. The view was narrow—a slice of forest, the edge of the road that led away from the tower. I could see a wagon pass sometimes, or smoke from a distant chimney.
It was not freedom. It was a painting of freedom.
I pressed my fingers to the cold iron and wondered if the world outside still remembered me. If the palace had scrubbed my name from its marble floors. If my father ever spoke of me at feasts, or if he had already traded me in his mind for gold, for soldiers, for alliances.
The maid cleared her throat. "They'll be here soon," she said softly. "You should be ready."
Ready. For inspection. For marriage. For whatever filthy hands they meant to put on me.
I turned back from the window and smiled at her again. She relaxed, mistaking it for obedience. But I was not thinking of obedience.
I was thinking of the cracks in the tower floor, where the air smelled not of moss but of ash.
Something old was waiting here.
And when I found it, I would make her choke on that smile.