The maid, I learned during our initial conversation, was twenty years old. I was genuinely surprised when she told me this. She looked considerably younger—much, much younger than her stated age. Her features still carried that soft, unfinished quality typically associated with adolescence, and her small stature only reinforced the impression of youth.
"You weren't lying about your age, were you?" I asked, unable to completely hide my concern. I wanted to make absolutely certain she was being truthful, that she hadn't misrepresented herself to secure the position. "I need you to be honest with me. If you're younger than you've claimed, it won't necessarily disqualify you, but I need to know the truth."
She immediately shook her head with vigor, her short hair swaying with the motion. "I'm not lying, Your Majesty," she said earnestly while continuing to comb through my hair with gentle, practiced strokes, preparing it for the night. "I truly am twenty years old. I know I look younger than that—people have commented on it my entire life. But I was born twenty years ago. I promise you that's the truth."
Her sincerity was evident, so I accepted her word and let the matter drop. But my curiosity about her circumstances had been piqued.
"Tell me about yourself, Rora," I said, wanting to understand more about the person who would now be such a constant presence in my life. "How did you come to be seeking employment as a maid?"
"I'm the eldest of seventeen siblings, Your Majesty," she explained, her voice taking on a quality of patient acceptance, as though she had long ago made peace with the difficult circumstances of her life. "My father is a carpenter—he does good work, and people respect his craftsmanship. My mother makes clothes, sewing and mending for families in our neighborhood. But even working as hard as they both do, from dawn until well past dark most days, what they manage to earn is barely enough to feed twenty mouths. There's my parents, myself, and my sixteen younger brothers and sisters. With that many people depending on their income, there's never quite enough, no matter how hard they work or how carefully we budget."
She paused in her combing for a moment, gathering her thoughts.
"So I've been working in various noble houses since I was fourteen years old," she continued. "Sending most of my wages home to help support my family. It's been six years now of moving from household to household, taking whatever positions became available. This opportunity to serve you... it's actually the best position I've ever been offered, Your Majesty. I'm genuinely grateful for it."
Understanding dawned on me. Oh. There were serious circumstances behind her decision to accept my unusual offer so quickly, to drink dragon blood without hesitation despite the risks I had outlined. When you were trying to support seventeen siblings, when your family was perpetually on the edge of not having enough to eat, the benefits I had described must have seemed worth almost any price. I felt a surge of pity for this young woman who had shouldered such responsibility from such a young age.
"And your hair?" I asked gently, though I knew the question was potentially insensitive. But I was genuinely curious about why she wore it so unusually short when cultural norms clearly favored long hair for women.
"I sold it when our youngest sibling got sick," she said quietly, her voice becoming almost meek with embarrassment. "The physician required payment upfront before he would treat her, and we didn't have the money. But my hair was long then—nearly to my waist. A wigmaker in the market district paid good money for it, enough to cover the physician's fee and buy the medicine my sister needed."
She touched her short locks self-consciously.
"I know it's unsightly by southern standards, and I apologize if my appearance reflects poorly on you, Your Majesty," she added quickly. "But it will grow back relatively quickly. Hair always does, given time."
"I don't think it's unsightly at all," I said firmly, wanting to correct that misconception immediately. "You don't need to be embarrassed about it in the slightest. I think it's actually quite practical and suits your face nicely. I was merely curious about the reasoning behind it, not judging your appearance negatively."
I turned slightly to examine the hairstyle she had created for me in the mirror. She had braided my hair all the way to the ends with impressive skill, and then secured the tip tightly with a ribbon to keep the braid from unraveling during sleep.
"Why did you choose to braid it?" I asked, genuinely interested in her styling choices.
"It's said in the South that braiding hair before sleep will help it grow faster, Your Majesty," she explained. "The braiding is supposed to strengthen the hair strands and encourage healthy growth. I thought you might appreciate that, since maintaining beautiful long hair is important for someone in your position."
This approach was notably different from what Katherine would have done. We Northerners typically let our hair simply be without putting it in any tight arrangements at night before sleeping. In the cold northern climate, our loose hair actually worked like an additional layer of warmth, like an extra blanket providing insulation against the chill. But I supposed that in warmer climates, that consideration didn't apply.
"Thank you, Rora," I told her sincerely. "You've done an excellent job. You may leave now and get some rest yourself."
Rora executed a perfect, respectful bow and departed from the room, pulling the door closed behind her. It clicked shut with a soft, final sound that seemed to emphasize how alone I suddenly was.
I missed Katherine terribly in that moment. The absence felt physical, like something vital had been removed from my immediate environment. I hoped desperately that she was safe, that her journey home was proceeding without incident, that she would arrive in Draga and find some peace and happiness there.
I slowly began undoing the braid that Rora had so carefully constructed, unweaving the strands with methodical movements. I would try to get used to southern customs and southern styling tomorrow, I promised myself. But not tonight. Tonight I needed the familiar comfort of my hair loose and free the way I had always worn it.
---
The following morning arrived with a flurry of hectic activity as final preparations were made for our departure from the Kima Kingdom. I selected a black gown to wear for the journey—a practical choice that wouldn't show road dust as readily as lighter colors. All of my heavy fur coats, which had been essential in the North and even in Gorei, were now completely useless given the considerably warmer climate we were entering. They had been carefully packed away as extra luggage, items I wasn't even certain I would ever have occasion to use again. The thought was slightly melancholy—those coats represented home, represented a climate and culture I was leaving further behind with each mile we traveled south.
Rora had braided my hair again and arranged it in an elaborate updo that was both elegant and practical for travel. She worked with quiet efficiency, her fingers moving with the skill born of years of experience attending to other people's needs.
After all of my luggage had been loaded onto the carriage that would transport it, I walked toward the carriage that Arvid and I would occupy during the journey. Rora accompanied me, maintaining a position several respectful steps behind—another southern custom I was still adjusting to.
The Southern approach to the relationship between servants and their employers was markedly different from what I had known in the North. Here, the maids themselves drew a hard, clear line between their position and that of their masters. They never raised their eyes to look directly at nobility unless explicitly instructed to do so. They never spoke unless they were first asked a direct question. They maintained proper physical distance at all times, never approaching too closely or initiating any kind of casual physical contact.
In the North, by contrast, all my maids had been very dear to me, very close in ways that transcended the formal employer-servant relationship. They hadn't been afraid to engage in gentle banter with me, to express their own opinions on matters both trivial and important, to offer unsolicited advice when they thought I needed it. The relationships had felt more like friendships with some power imbalance rather than purely transactional employment arrangements.
I let out a quiet sigh. This was simply another adjustment I would need to make, another aspect of southern culture I would need to accept and adapt to if I was going to function effectively as Arvid's empress. I just had to get used to it, even if it felt cold and isolating compared to what I had known.
Arvid was waiting for me beside the carriage, already prepared to travel and looking characteristically composed and ready. He smiled when he saw me approaching, genuine warmth in his expression.
"Let's depart then," he said, reaching out to take my hand and assist me up into the carriage. His touch was warm and reassuring, grounding me in the present moment.
I gathered my skirts and placed one foot on the step, preparing to climb up into the vehicle.
"Your Majesty!" someone suddenly yelled from behind us, the voice urgent and strained with some strong emotion.
I immediately stopped in my tracks and looked back, searching for the source of the shout. Arvid also turned, his expression shifting to confusion about who might be calling out so desperately.
A man was approaching us rapidly, practically running despite being clearly out of breath. He wasn't even wearing proper attire for appearing before nobility—his clothes were rumpled and disheveled, suggesting he had dressed hastily or had been traveling hard. He was middle-aged, with brown hair liberally streaked with white that showed his advancing years. He bent over, hands on his knees, gasping desperately for air as though he had been running for quite some distance.
He looked vaguely familiar, though I couldn't immediately place where I had seen him before.
I stepped back down from the carriage, my heart beginning to beat faster with a premonition I couldn't name. Something about his desperation, about the way he had shouted, suggested this wasn't a casual matter.
The man finally managed to catch enough breath to speak, straightening up and opening his mouth with obvious effort.
"Lady Katherine—" he gasped out, still struggling somewhat to form complete sentences.
Recognition suddenly flooded through me. I remembered exactly where I had seen this man before. He was the carriage driver I had hired to transport Katherine safely back to Draga. But why was he here? He should have been into that journey by now, well on his way north. What could possibly have brought him back?
"Lady Katherine was—" he tried again, still breathing heavily.
And then he said the words that would shatter my world completely.
"Lady Katherine is dead."
The statement fell on my ears like a physical thunderclap, like being struck by lightning. For a moment, my brain simply refused to process the information, rejected it as impossible, as something that couldn't be true and therefore must not have been what he actually said.
Everything that happened after those words became a jumbled, disconnected blur. I have fragmented memories of grabbing the driver and shaking him, demanding to know where she was, screaming questions at him that I can't now remember. I recall him agreeing to show us the location. I remember mounting a horse—when had someone brought me a horse?—and riding after the driver with desperate speed, pushing the animal to go faster, faster, racing with the wind.
*No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No.*
The denial repeated in my mind like a broken record, an endless loop of refusal to accept what I had been told. I kept telling myself, trying to convince myself, that this wasn't real. Katherine was just angry with me for sending her away, hurt by my rejection of her confession, and so now she was playing some kind of elaborate prank to punish me or make me feel guilty. When I finally met her again, I would scold her severely for doing something so cruel, for scaring me so badly. I just had to get there and see her, and then this nightmare would end.
Katherine wasn't dead. She couldn't possibly be dead. The carriage driver must have seen something wrong, misunderstood the situation, jumped to an incorrect conclusion. This simply couldn't be real. She had been alive just yesterday. Less than a full day ago, she had been living and breathing, standing in front of me with tears in her eyes. People didn't just suddenly die like that, not without warning, not without some kind of sense that something terrible was coming.
"Rhia," I heard Aiona calling to me through our mental connection. Her voice was unusually low and soft, lacking her typical sharp edges and sardonic tone.
"Rhia, she's—" she began.
"Alive, isn't she?" I interrupted her desperately, not wanting to hear whatever Aiona was about to say because I knew it would be something I couldn't bear to hear. "Katherine is fine. She's just angry with me, right? I rejected her confession and drove her away from my service, and now she's playing a prank on me to express how hurt and upset she is. It's cruel, but I understand why she'd do it. I'll scold her properly when I see her, but then I'll bring her back south with me. She clearly didn't actually want to return to her parents after all. That's fine. She can stay by my side if that's what she really wants. I was being impulsive earlier, making decisions too quickly without thinking them through properly. She can stay. If she genuinely wants to remain in my service, she can stay."
I kept talking, the words tumbling out in an increasingly desperate stream of denial and bargaining.
Aiona fell silent, offering no response to my rambling justifications. That silence was somehow more frightening than anything she could have said.
---
We finally stopped near an inn located in a town called Drath, still within the borders of the Kima Kingdom but some distance from the capital. The afternoon sun was bright and warm, creating cheerful golden light that seemed grotesquely inappropriate given the circumstances. I was led upstairs by the carriage driver, his face grave and his movements heavy with reluctance.
There were numerous people gathered upstairs near one particular door, creating a small crowd. They weren't going inside the room, just standing in the corridor and looking through the open doorway with expressions of horror and morbid fascination.
"It's absolutely terrible," one person was saying, their voice hushed but still audible. "Who could possibly be cruel enough to do something like this?"
"Poor woman," another added, shaking their head. "To die in such a way, and so far from home. Does anyone know who she was?"
Arvid suddenly moved in front of me, blocking my path forward. He placed his hands on my arms, his grip gentle but firm, his eyes full of concern and something that looked almost like fear.
"Are you absolutely certain you want to go in there?" he asked carefully, his voice low so only I could hear. "Rhia, you don't have to see this. You could wait out here, and I could go in first, confirm the identification, and—"
"What are you worried about?" I interrupted him, my voice coming out strange and brittle even to my own ears. I shook off his hold with more force than was probably necessary. "She's perfectly fine. I'll go in there and scold her plenty for frightening me like this, for making me ride all this way in a panic. It was a cruel joke, but we'll work through it."
I pushed and pulled at the people blocking the doorway, physically moving them aside with increasing aggression when they didn't move quickly enough on their own. I heard some of them curse at me for my rudeness, heard someone say something sharp about proper manners, but I didn't care about any of that.
I had to see Katherine. I had to get to her. I had to confirm with my own eyes that she was fine, that this was all a terrible misunderstanding or a prank taken too far.
Finally, I managed to force my way through the crowd of onlookers.
And then I was inside the room.
Katherine was there on the bed.
She was completely motionless, her body positioned in a way that no living person would naturally lie. There was a sword embedded in her chest, the blade driven deep enough that only the handle and a few inches of metal were visible. Blood. There was so much blood. Her white nightgown, which she must have been wearing when she went to sleep, was now painted entirely red, soaked through completely. The bed linens beneath her were equally saturated, the fabric dark and wet.
Her eyes were open, staring sightlessly at the ceiling. And in those dead eyes was written such profound horror, such terrible understanding of what was happening to her in her final moments. The expression frozen on her face would haunt me for the rest of my life.
Her legs were apart, positioned in a way that was wrong, that spoke of violation. Her nightgown was torn, ripped deliberately to expose her lower body. And there was more blood seeping from between her legs, pooling on the sheets, telling a story of brutality that went beyond simple murder.
For a long moment, I simply stood there, unable to move, unable to breathe, unable to process what I was seeing. My mind kept trying to reject the evidence of my eyes, kept insisting this couldn't be real.
Then, moving like someone in a dream, I slowly removed my overcoat. I walked forward with measured steps and gently laid the garment over Katherine's lower body, covering her legs, restoring some small measure of dignity to her violated form.
I knelt on the floor beside the bed and carefully, tenderly took her head into my arms, cradling it against my chest the way one might hold a child who needed comforting.
She was cold. Ice cold. Her skin had that particular chill that only death brings, that goes beyond mere temperature into something fundamental and irreversible.
It reminded me, horrifically, of winter in the North. Of snow and ice and the deep cold that penetrated through any amount of clothing and settled into your bones.
And in that moment, holding Katherine's cold, violated, murdered body in my arms, something inside me finally broke completely.