The second bell did not sound like the first.
It carried no grandeur, no ceremony—just an iron clang that scraped along the bones of the palace. The sound made me flinch, though no one else seemed to hear it. The senior maid's voice in the corridor, the shuffle of boots on stone, the faint whisper of silks—they all went on untouched, as though the bell had tolled only inside my skull.
When I opened my eyes, I was still in the narrow bed. The gray dress lay where I had folded it, but the corners were wrong, the fabric too coarse, the sleeves too long for my arms. Someone had changed it. Again.
The palace was not merely shifting. It was rewriting.
At breakfast, the servants did not speak unless spoken to. Their faces were carved into stillness, as if they had been told long ago that words wasted breath, and breath wasted time. I tried to swallow porridge that tasted of ash. Every spoonful insisted I had eaten it before, in another body, in another life.
"Faster," snapped the steward, his eyes flicking over us like a whip. "His Highness rises earlier now. You'll be late if you dawdle."
Earlier now. As though even the prince obeyed a different clock than the one I remembered.
I carried linens down the north wing. My feet knew the rhythm, but each step uncovered a wrongness—the stairwell bent wider than yesterday, the lanterns burned with a colder flame. The palace was alive, and it enjoyed watching me lose my way.
The other maids avoided me. Not with cruelty, but with the sharp politeness of those who sense a sickness they cannot name. Their silence pressed harder than insult. It told me I was not like them, and worse—it told me they knew it.
At midday, I was summoned again. A guard appeared at the laundry and barked, "You. North pavilion."
His voice carried the weight of inevitability, as though no one had the right to refuse.
Kaelith Duskborne was waiting, though not for tea this time. He sat at a long desk littered with scrolls and wax seals. His crown lay discarded on the table, carelessly close to an ink blot, as if he considered it no more valuable than a spoon.
"You again," he said without looking up.
The words were flat, but my chest tightened anyway. As if part of me had been waiting all morning for him to notice.
"I was told to come, Your Highness."
He looked up then. His eyes found mine, steady as the flame of an oil lamp in a sealed room.
"Strange," he murmured, "how quickly the palace puts you in my path."
I bowed, hiding the sudden heat in my face.
"You do not walk like the others," he continued. "They lower their heads. You search the walls. Why?"
The truth slipped before I could catch it. "Because the walls are different."
His hand stilled on the scroll. For a breath, the chamber held its silence like a knife.
"Different," he echoed. "From yesterday?"
"Yes." The word felt like stepping onto ice. "The staircases, the tapestries, the—" I stopped. His expression did not change, but the air around him thickened, as though the fire itself bent to listen.
"You remember."
It was not a question.
I wanted to deny it, to fold myself back into obedience. But the palace had stolen too much already.
"Yes," I whispered. "I remember."
For a long moment, the prince studied me as though I were a riddle carved into stone. His gaze did not waver, and I had the sense that if I flinched, he would see more than I wished him to.
Finally, he leaned back. "Good," he said softly, almost to himself. "Then I am not alone."
The words landed in me like sparks on dry paper. Not alone. He, too, knew. The palace shifted for him as well.
A knock broke the air. A courtier entered, bowing low. "Your Highness, the council awaits."
Kaelith rose, his hand brushing the desk but not the crown. "Leave it," he told the courtier. "I'll come without it."
Then his gaze flicked to me. "Stay. Do not leave this chamber until I return."
The courtier frowned, but said nothing.
When the door shut, the silence returned. Only the fire spoke, cracking like brittle parchment.
I sat by the desk, staring at the crown abandoned in shadow. Its metal gleamed, but faintly—as though it too was uncertain whether it belonged in this world.
The longer I looked, the more the firelight bent. The crown's shadow stretched across the table and curled around my wrist. For a moment, I felt it—a weight that was not mine, a promise that burned even through absence.
I pulled my hand away, breath sharp.
The bell tolled again. Not two. Three. The sound rippled through the walls, through my skin, through the fabric of what I thought was real.
And with it came a memory: laughter, low and private; a hand sliding across mine in the dark; a whisper against my ear— You were never meant to serve me. Only to stand beside me.
The memory shattered like glass, leaving only ache behind.
When the door opened again, Kaelith's gaze found me immediately, as though he had expected the crown's shadow to leave a mark. His lips parted—not in a smile, but in something heavier.
"Good," he said again. "You stayed."
And in his eyes, the embers flared.