Deep frost gripped the Kingdom of Perinus on the twenty-eighth day of the Deadfrost Moon.
Joanna Nyle plunged her final shift into the seething vat at the Crown Steamworks, the caustic lye etching fresh agony into hands stiff as frozen clay.
A matron's shrill cry shattered the steam-clouded air: "Nyle! Move your bones! Silverwood Manor calls for you!"
She froze.
Silverwood Manor.
Two words that carved a fissure through her soul—a home that was, and never was.
For fifteen years, she'd reigned as the cherished ward of Lord & Lady Vane. Until the day truth ripped through Silverwood's gilded halls: a midwife's dying confession revealed Joanna was a foundling, swapped at birth for the true heiress, Elena Shaw.
She remembered the ice. The raw joy on Viola and Arthur Vane's faces as they clasped Elena. The hollow ache where a daughter's heart used to beat. They'd pledged she'd remain a daughter still. Even Elena offered a hollow "sister."
Promises turned to frost the day Princess Isolde's crystal goblet shattered. Elena's maid pointed. Joanna took the blame. Not a word from the Vanes as the Princess's guards dragged her from the manor. Not a murmur as the Steamworks gates clanged shut behind her for three winters of servitude.
"Joanna Nyle! Keep Lord Cedric waiting at your peril!" The matron's shove jolted her forward.
Beyond the soot-streaked archway, Lord Cedric Vane stood haloed in the thin winter light—her brother-in-name, the architect of her fall. His presence, a blade between her ribs. The boy who'd braved bandit roads to gift her the Star of Myria pearl now served her ruin. He'd shattered more than bones when he'd hurled her from the manor gallery.
Three years of numbness shattered. Pain, sharp and sour, flooded her throat. She locked it away, face smooth as lake ice.
"My Lord Vane." Her curtsy was river stone sinking into mud.
Cedric's breath hitched. He'd envisioned tears, fury—anything but this void. Joanna, his storm-petrel girl, tamed to silence? His gut twisted.
"Grandmother's heart withers without you," he clipped out. "Her Majesty permits your return to Silverwood." Too harsh. He softened his tone like a man coaxing a spooked colt. "It's time, Joanna. Come home."
Home. The word she'd wept for, scraped raw on laundry stones until hope bled dry.
She stepped back, slipping from his offered hand like smoke. "My gratitude to Her Majesty and Dowager Vane." Her voice held velvet courtesy sheathed in thorns.
Cedric flinched as if burned. "You bear the Vane crest in blood and law! You are noble, not this… this servile shadow!"
A phantom smile touched her lips. Crest? Law? What shield had they been against the matron's whip? The lye that ate her skin?
"Spare your belongings," he bit out, impatience cracking through. "We ride for Silverwood. Grandmother waits." He stalked toward the Vane carriage, its oak panels carved with hawks in flight.
She followed. Not at his side as she once would, but paces behind, eyes fixed ahead. Her silence fanned his inexplicable rage. He quickened his stride, forgetting the old injury his own hands inflicted—the ankle fractured when she struck the gallery's base.
Pain screamed up her leg as she limped through the palace's Lion Gate. The carriage loomed. Old Thom, the Vane coachman, bowed.
"M'lady Joanna."
She inclined her head and climbed not within, but onto the driver's bench beside him.
Thom blinked. "M'lady, the cabin—"
"It would not be proper," she murmured.
A spurred boot struck from the cabin window, striking her shoulder like a cudgel. She crashed onto the frozen cobbles, ankle shrieking.
Cedric's face, contorted with fury, filled the window. "First sour looks, now this! Your disdain curdles the air! Rot with the laundry vats if Silverwood's air offends you!"
He loomed over her. "Or perhaps you nurse a grudge? Three winters for Elena's fifteen stolen years? A paltry exchange! Wallow in self-pity then. Walk to the manor. Reflect on what honor your birth truly carries—if any remains! Spare Grandmother the sight of your ghost-faced wretch!"
The carriage clattered away, leaving her in its frost-clouded wake.
No sorrow came. Only winter carved hollow in her chest. She'd died on the gallery stones three winters past. Nothing remained to break.
As she struggled up, a second carriage halted. A gloved hand swept aside the curtain. Cold grey eyes, sharp as winter stars, found hers.
"Miss… Nyle?"
Joanna stiffened, her heart—a relic she thought long frozen—stuttering at the sound of that voice.
She looked up.
Silas Thorne. General of the Northern Legions. Scourge of the White Wolves. The man she'd once pledged to wed.
Instinct honed in the Steamworks dropped her into a flawless curtsy. "My Lord General."
His gaze flickered over her swollen ankle. "Returning to Silverwood, Miss Nyle?"
Joanna fixed her eyes on the grimy cobbles beneath her knees. "Yes."
Silence stretched between them, brittle and cold.
He waited. The Joanna he remembered would have chattered like a magpie—about the cold, the laundry, anything.
He'd endured it then, a duty to familial alliance, his distaste a cold barrier she'd persistently tried to breach.
He'd often silenced her with sugared pastries, bought more for their effect than any sweetness he wished to share. Her childish joy would hold her tongue… for a quarter-hour at best.
Three winters. Now, a single clipped syllable.
Thorne dismounted. He didn't offer a hand. "My carriage serves the palace command," his voice cut through the frost. "It will bear you home." His glacier-grey eyes held no warmth. "Stubbornness dishonors you. The Dowager deserves better than your martyrdom on a frozen road."
Grandmother. The final frayed thread binding Joanna to Silverwood. Resistance crumbled. "My thanks, General Thorne." She rose stiffly.
As she passed him, her breath seized. He'd hardened. His frame, broader now, radiated the brutal aura of recent battlefield triumphs—a palpable force that wrenched the air from her lungs.
He had been her starless winter sky once, an unattainable peak she'd desperately tried to scale.
She'd offered fire to melt his ice. All she'd achieved was witnessing the thaw come for another: the gentle light Thorne reserved solely for Elena Shaw.
His warning glare, the unspoken shield thrown around Elena the day the goblet shattered, still echoed. Her protests had died then, choked by silence from every corner of her stolen life. Mother. Father. Cedric. Him.
'Three winters for fifteen stolen years. A paltry exchange.' Cedric's cruel words rang true, but the salt in the wound wasn't the labor. It was the blades pointed at her heart by those who'd once promised shelter.
Was it ever mine to lose?
Settled into the carriage's leather embrace, warmth enveloped her. His scent—sandalwood and something metallic, like storm-charged steel—clung to the air.
A familiar blue velvet box rested on the sideboard beside the polished bronze hand-warmer. Lavender Honeycakes. Elena's favorite.
A sharp sting pierced the numbness beneath her ribs. Jealousy? Rancor? Useless. All resolve into ashes. Let it rot.
——
Silverwood's towering oaks appeared faster than the frost could bite deeper. Joanna descended with the coachman's aid, her injured leg trembling upon the ancestral stones.
"Nyle!"
Viola Vane rushed forward, flanked by Cedric and a radiant Elena Shaw. The Dowager's arms opened wide, tears silvering her eyes.
Joanna pivoted and sank into the formal curtsy prescribed for guests, cutting off the embrace mid-flight. "Mistress Vane honors her servant."
Viola froze.
"Servant?!" Cedric snarled. "Is this your gratitude? Mother wept rivers these three winters!"
"Peace, Cedric!" Viola commanded, though her brow furrowed. She touched Joanna's cheek, the gesture heavy with unwanted pity. "So thin. Life stole the roses from your face."
Elena stepped forward, her voice dove-soft, eyes shimmering with practiced remorse. "Oh, Mother… sister is home! That's all that matters now."
Joanna stared past her. The role was too familiar. The guilt in those eyes as false now as the smiles Elena offered alongside the accusation three winters past.
Viola rallied, patting Joanna's hand. "Of course! Home." Her gaze snagged on the Thorne carriage crest, a serpent coiled upon a shield, retreating down the drive.
Understanding dawned, chased by Cedric's sullen glare. Viola clutched Joanna tighter. "Cedric's temper shames us. Never again, child. I vow it."
Joanna withdrew her hand. Gracefully. Absolutely.
"Look at her!" Cedric exploded. "She bites the hand feeding her! Three winters scraping laundry vats and she returns stinging like a wasp! Silverwood owes her nothing! Bear your spite toward me, but stand down before our Mother!"
Viola paled. "Joanna… is this…"
"First Daughter Joanna," she clarified, her voice cool water over stone. "Temper belongs to ladies. I am unburdened by it." She met Viola's widening eyes. "The Dowager awaits. May I beg leave to change?"
Viola's nod was stiff, wounded. She gestured to a waiting handmaid. "Take her… take First Daughter Nyle to the Lilywater Chambers."
Not the Sunspire Suite. Her old sanctuary overlooking the hawk mews. Silenced filled the space where protest might have lain. Joanna's flawless curtsy echoed like the toll of a distant bell as she turned to follow the maid.
Everything remains the same, Viola had promised.
A hollow promise. She'd never set foot in her sunlit rooms again.
The Lilywater Chambers smelled of disuse and river moss. The bed was stiff brocade, the windows narrow slits facing the dank ornamental pond. Her trunk, placed neatly at the foot of the unfamiliar bed, looked as out of place as she felt. Joanna limped to the washstand, the cold porcelain jarring under her lye-roughened palms.
A timid knock sounded. A girl barely older than she was herself slipped in, her eyes downcast. "Milady? Mistress Vane sent me. I'm to be your maid."
Joanna stared at the bowl of steaming water the girl placed on the stand. So they meant to dress her in velvet once more. To pretend. The girl flinched under her silence.
"What's your name?" Joanna asked, her voice rasping unexpectedly.
"Brenna, milady."
"Brenna." The name was like a foreign stone in her mouth. She gestured at the clean linens laid out. "Help me wash. Then fetch my old work clothes from that trunk."
Brenna's eyes widened, flicking to the grey woolen dress folded stiffly atop the others.
"Milady?"
Joanna met her gaze, a flicker of the Steelworks' resilience in her own. "They suit me better."
Brenna swallowed hard, understanding dawning. This lady was not a wilting flower brought in from the cold. This lady had roots deep in frost. "Yes, milady," she whispered, reaching for the soap.
As Brenna's gentle hands worked loose the knots in her hair, Joanna closed her eyes. The carriage ride, Thorne's dispassionate assessment, Cedric's fury, Viola's suffocating guilt, Elena's hollow sweetness – it pressed in. The Dowager alone held kindness untainted. That refuge, at least, remained.
When Brenna finished, Joanna dressed silently in the grey dress, the fabric scratchy but familiar. She moved to the narrow window. Below, Elena stood in the snow-laced rose garden, Viola beside her. Laughter drifted up, light and airy. Viola tucked a stray curl behind Elena's ear, the gesture tender. Natural.
That is the daughter she remembers, Joanna thought, no bitterness, only a strange detachment. Her true jewel restored.
A different knock, firm and authoritative, rattled the latch. Joanna turned as the door opened.
Lord Cedric Vane stood framed in the doorway, Viola hovering just behind him, her expression torn. He strode in, his gaze raking over her grey dress, the damp hair scraped back simply. Disgust warred with something else in his eyes.
"I will not have you parade this… this penance before Grandmother!" he stated, low and furious. "You will change into proper attire. Now."