Lowborn etiquette wasn't so much taught as it was beaten into the marrow.
You learned it the way a stray cur learns to avoid a hot stove: through repetition, sharp pain, and the quiet understanding that your successes are expected, but your failures are historic.
I was a prodigy by the age of seven.
Rule One: Do not take up space.
Shoulders tucked. Chin lowered. Hands folded, never fidgeting, never idle. A servant without something to carry is a servant looking for trouble. A servant standing still is a servant practically begging for a lecture on the "sanctity of labor."
I learned to condense myself, to pull my very atoms inward until I was less a girl and more a shadow that occasionally emptied the chamber pots.
Rule Two: Sound is a currency you simply do not possess.
In the Nightshade household, footsteps are meant to be as quiet as the breeze itself, even quieter if you can manage.
Breathing is a luxury that must not announce itself. When spoken to, you answer in monosyllables that disappear before they hit the air. When not spoken to, you vanish into the walls.
I perfected the art of becoming a ghost while still being the one responsible for removing the cobwebs. It's a strange, sadistic talent—becoming invisible while your hands are raw from the scrubbing of precious vases.
Rule Three: Eyes are dangerous.
You may look at the ground. You may look at a pair of boots. You may look at a door, provided your only intent is to open it for someone who matters. But faces? Faces are a privilege.
Especially noble ones. Looking a Nightshade in the eye is apparently equivalent to staring directly into the sun—blinding, arrogant, and likely to get you burned.
Lady Calantha, my "mother" in the most technical and terrifying sense of the word, was deeply invested in my education. She called it "refinement." I called it "systemic erosion."
In this house, pride was a punishable offense, and frankly, I hadn't the stamina for a flogging before lunch.
"You are standing incorrectly," Lady Calantha said, circling me like a hawk assessing a mouse with a particularly annoying personality.
"Too slow."
I adjusted my posture with the speed of a soldier under fire.
"Too loud. I can hear your bones clicking, Ophelia. It's as though you enjoy being a nuisance."
"Yes, My Lady," I replied. It was the safest answer. "Yes" ended the conversation. "Yes" was the verbal equivalent of playing dead so the bear loses interest.
"Your shoulders are far too relaxed."
I adjusted them at once, drawing them back until the muscles began to scream.
A lovely, sharp little reminder of my station. If I pull them back any further, I'll likely sprout wings and fly away—which would be a marvelous trick, though she'd probably just pluck me and serve me with orange glaze.
"Better," she purred. "Lowborns should always look useful. Tension implies readiness."
Does it? I wondered. I thought it implied a desperate, soul-crushing desire to leap across this table and see if your neck makes the same sound as a dry twig.
A maid appeared, draped in the usual funerary shroud of my wardrobe. Black. Always black. It was heavy wool that felt like wearing a damp carpet in the winter, and thin linen that offered the structural integrity of a cobweb in the summer.
It was mourning cloth for a girl who hadn't died yet, but whose funeral was being held every single day.
"No need to measure," Calantha said, dismissing the maid with a flick of her wrist. "She's the same shape as last year. Stunted, I imagine."
The same shape?? I rolled my eyes.
"Your current rags are wearing thin," she noted, her voice dripping with the sort of faux-benevolence that makes one's skin crawl. "These shall replace them."
I took the clothes and gave a bow so deep I could have checked for dust under her heels.
"You are too kind, My Lady," I said, my voice as flat as a dead man's pulse.
The fabric smelled of lavender and the slow, suffocating death of a cedar chest. It would itch by noon and feel like sandpaper by evening. It always did.
As she walked past to leave, I shifted back into the shadows almost becoming one with the wall.
Who am I to share the same air as the Great Lady of Evil.
No matter how much I tried to hide, somehow my eyes met hers, a brief flash of cold, predatory light. "And keep your hair tied back. You're a servant, not a decoration. Though heaven knows you lack the shine for the latter."
I almost smiled. Truly. Being told I lacked "shine" by a woman who spent four hours a day having gold dust brushed into her curls was the highlight of my morning.
By noon, my feet were throbbing, my hands were red from scrubbing the breakfast silver, and I had successfully minimized my existence to the point where I felt like a draft in the hallway.
That was when the summons came. Again.
I found Calantha in the rear hall, standing next to a crate that looked heavy enough to house a small pony. It was overflowing with burlap sacks tied with coarse rope. The smell hit me instantly—earth, bitter roots, and the pungent, medicinal scent of dried bark.
"Take these to the forest edge," she said, her back to me as she consulted a list.
My stomach did a slow, cynical somersault. "The forest, My Lady?"
"The southern stretch. We're low on stock for the apothecary, and the usual gatherers are... busy."
"Busy" was code for "unwilling to risk their lives for three copper bits." Dangerous errands were always remarkably cheaper when assigned to the girl whose death certificate would be an afterthought.
"The path is steep," I said, my voice carefully neutral despite the frantic alarm bells ringing in my head. "And the load is—well, it's not exactly a feather, is it?"
She turned, her eyes bright with a sudden, sharp malice. "Are you offering a critique of my management, Ophelia? Are you refusing?"
"No," I said instantly. The word felt like lead in my mouth. "Never. I live for the thrill of manual labor in treacherous terrain."
She smiled thinly, ignoring the sarcasm—or perhaps enjoying it. "Good. You'll return before dusk. If you're late, don't bother coming back to the main house. You can sleep with the hounds. They're likely more your sort anyway."
The crate was a nightmare. I couldn't lift it, so I had to drag it, the rope biting into my palms like a hungry iron wire. As I hauled it toward the exit, I felt the eyes of the house on me. The portraits of my ancestors seemed to sneer; the maids looked away with a mixture of pity and relief that it wasn't them.