The note arrived folded like a challenge. The seal on the paper was simple — a thin loop of gold with a tiny crown impressed on the wax. The handwriting inside was neat, the script careful:
Lady Elara,
The Crown Prince and the Queen request the honor of tea at the palace this afternoon. Be gracious.
Prince Alaric
A summons from the prince. A polite thing on the surface. A poison dart beneath the silk if the court chose to make it so.
My sisters crowded around the little table where I read the note. Selene's eyes grew sharp. Diana's mouth pulled into a line. Maris simply asked, "Do you want to go?"
I folded the paper, smoothing the crease with my fingertips. "I will go," I said slowly. "With my maids."
Selene's eyebrows lifted. "Your maids? Already?"
"Yes." I set my jaw. "They will learn by being near me. They will learn to move in the world of courts and flattery."
Caelum heard my plan and did not argue. He only added, "Be careful."
I smiled, and it felt like a curve of steel. "Always."
My gown that day was not loud. It was not a shock of color or a scream of jewels. Instead, I chose a fitted dress that read as quiet power. Deep ink-blue silk hugged my waist and fell in a long, controlled sweep to the floor. The shoulders were cut narrow, the sleeves long but not heavy. The collar rose just enough to frame my throat and the small silver pendant I wore — a single black note carved into the metal like a promise.
The back of the dress was cut in a low, elegant curve. Silver chains draped across it like fine, ordered constellations. The slit at the left showed my leg when I walked — a deliberate flash of danger and grace. My hair poured down white and full, all the way to my ankles, catching the light like a pale river. The jewelry I wore was calm: a thin bracelet that chimed only if the arm moved, three rings with small onyx stones, and a pair of earrings that trembled when I turned.
Seraphine, the pale blonde, watched me with bright, hungry eyes, as though noticing every fold and seam and calculating what might please her future employers. The others — shy Liora, quick-footed Aveline, fierce Brenna — looked nervous and excited in turn. One of the six, quiet and watchful, lingered a step behind me like an unread page.
The carriage took us to the palace. The road smelled of pressed flowers and horse sweat. The guards at the gate gave us measured bows. The palace was neat like a machine. Gold and marble and soft carpets. People in gowns like living jewels moved about, formal and bright.
I told the maids to hold themselves straight. "Remember," I said, "the court watches everything. The smallest twitch becomes a story. The smallest smile becomes a rumor. We do not give them mistakes."
They swallowed and straightened. Then we went in.
The tea room for the meeting was small and private, a room the queen favored for delicate matters. Silk curtains softened the sunlight. A low table stood in the middle, set with fine china and a silver teapot. Two cushioned chairs were on one side; a single chair sat opposite them. Fresh flowers were arranged in a small vase that smelled faintly of citrus.
The queen waited with the prince. Queen Selvara looked as if she had been carved by a jeweler — smooth, beautiful, and hard. Her gown was pale gold; her fingers were rings of diamond and thought. Prince Alaric sat beside her, tall and poised, his eyes like steel melted with sun. He stood when we entered.
"Lady Elara," he said with formal ease. "Thank you for coming."
"Your Highness," I replied, and I bowed the barest hint. The court instinct: do not bow too low, do not bow too much. The queen inclined her head like a blade coming down.
Seraphine took the seat beside me I had left empty. Her face was bright with an eager hope that made the corners of her smile hard. I noticed then — as though a chessboard was revealing its pieces — a tiny curl of conversation that passed between the queen and Seraphine, a movement with their hands, fingers flicking, a shade of command that hid like a spider beneath a cloth.
The queen's maid poured tea with practiced patience. Her hand was steady, the small spoon clicking lightly as she stirred. Alaric watched me with that slow, measuring gaze. He knew how to read people; he had been raised to see the width of a smile and all the lies behind it.
"You brought your maids," the queen observed, her voice cool silk. "A useful lesson in loyalty."
"Yes," I said. "They travel with me."
She nodded, and even that tiny gesture felt like a record being put on. "Who among them knows the art of managing a household?" she asked casually.
"Three," I answered. "One learns quickly."
The conversation folded into small talk — linen trade, the sky's lateness — but my ears caught the queen's quiet signals. I caught Seraphine's quick, hidden glance as she leaned toward the teapot, the way she twined the napkin in her fingers. A motion too smooth by accident.
My mouth folded into a small smile. "The tea smells of bergamot," I said, to add a small kindness to my face. The queen's gaze flicked to the cup I would take. She smiled, as if everything was a pleasant thing.
I had not trusted the queen. I had not trusted Seraphine. I sat still.
There are many small ways to fool a court. A smile. A well-chosen word. A borrowed rumor. The queen thought to test me with poison — something old as crowns. She would not kill me publicly, I knew. That was clumsy. She wanted humiliation: a throaty gasp, a dramatic collapse, a crown of whispers around my name. Death would be a rumor; public weakness would become a brand.
I saw what she did then: Seraphine moved with a graceful hand, as if to offer sugar. The little tilt of her wrist nearly invisible to anyone else. The queen's eyes had been on Seraphine and then on me for the briefest moment, and the moment locked into my memory like the click of a latch.
So I did what I had learned from many masks: I let them act.
I let the small cup of tea sit near me. I watched as Seraphine made her move — nimble, practiced. The queen's smile did not change. Alaric's brow did not twitch.
When the cup came too close, I pretended not to notice. I raised the cup and drank. Sip by sip. My maids watched from the doorway, faces pale. They could not know all the tricks of courts. They could not know how a laugh could be a blade. But they watched me in quiet fear, like small birds sitting against a gale.
Then I dropped the cup.
It fell from my hand and hit the saucer. Tea sloshed, warm and scattered. For a long breath, time stretched thin as a wire.
I felt the burn in my throat, sudden and sharp. My lungs seized. I coughed. Then blood — a bright, shameful bloom — filled my mouth. I spat it onto the table with a wet sound.
Gasps shattered the polite room. Servants outside cried. The queen's face was perfect porcelain, and her eyes were small coins of steel. Alaric sprang up, an immediate expression of alarm carved across his face. Seraphine's triumphant smile split like a crack of ice.
"Oh!" Seraphine gave a small hand movement. "I told you, Your Majesty. I did exactly what you asked." She laughed then, thin and brittle, and the sound was meant to be cruel. "She is weak. She collapses at the slightest thing."
The queen's mouth opened into a small, deadly smile. "What a pity," she said softly. "How careless."
For a moment I lay like a thing that had been punched. My breath tore and came in shallow strips. The world swam and the ceiling leaned forward. I had done this before — in a hundred other lies in a hundred other rooms — and it still felt like an edge.
My maids moved like a single thing to me. The three nearest were on their knees in an instant, hands searching for my pulse, fingers at my throat. Aveline pressed a cloth to my lips. Liora put two fingers on my wrist. Brenna's voice trembled as she called for water.
The prince's face mixed worry and triumph — as if he hoped to stand between me and whatever humiliation the queen wanted, while also thanking fate that the drama made the night more interesting.
The queen laughed quietly with a soft, cruel melody. She leaned back in her seat as though watching a play unfold. Seraphine's eyes danced with malicious victory, bright and pleased.
I coughed more blood, the sound wet and violent. The room spun. The maids sobbed.
And then I laughed.
It started small — a dry, thin sound like a bird cutting through air. Then it grew cold and steady. I sat up slowly as everyone watched, fingers leaving damp marks on my dress. They expected weakness and ruin. They expected my face to fall, my voice to break. They wanted to paint me with a brand of shame.
So I took the brand back.
I laughed at them. A long, soft, terrible laugh that made the queen's shoulders tighten for the first time. People in the room stepped back as if a sudden wind had risen. Alaric stared. Seraphine's smile faltered.
My maids did not laugh.
I reached one hand to the small table and touched the teacup left there. The china trembled like a leaf. My other fingers closed on something hidden inside my sleeve — a cold weight, a compact metal cylinder I had brought from another life.
I had not told Caelum how I kept another weapon. I had not allowed my family to know where all my secrets came from. That silence protected them and me. The gun fit my palm like a secret promise.
I rose. My laugh faded into a low, thin sound. I looked first at Seraphine. Her face was bright with victory; her eyes shone with malice. I walked toward her as if I were crossing a garden square, my steps slow and measured.
People gasped. The prince's hands went to his hips as if he might draw a guard. The queen's face did not move. She only watched. The room tightened as if bound by a cord.
No one reached for me. No one moved to stop the simple arithmetic of what I intended to do. Perhaps they believed me broken and too shallow a thing to rise.
When I stood beside Seraphine, I did not speak.
I reached out, without haste, and took the teacup from her hand and set it on the table. My fingers brushed her wrist. For a breath her eyes widened — not with fear, but with a small, sharp satisfaction. She had thought herself clever. She had thought herself safe.
And then I pulled the gun from inside my gown.
I saw the slight intake from the queen — the blade of surprise. I saw Alaric's flash of shock. Seraphine's mouth formed a small, involuntary sound, like a bird's last note.
I raised the weapon and looked the queen in the eye. I wanted her to feel the clean, terrible truth in my face: that I would not bend where they wished; that I could cut their theater short.
The barrel was small, silent, its metal black as a night without stars. It had a kind of terrible neatness to it. I leveled it.
There was no shout, no frantic clutch at my arm. The room held its breath.
I fired.
The shot was small, almost nothing. No echo. No shout. Only the cold click and a soft movement, and Seraphine was on the floor.
She did not spatter or scream. She simply slipped, like a shadow washing away, and landed against the carpet with a soft thud. Her eyes were open and bright and uncomprehending for a count of heartbeats. Then — stillness.
People screamed then, sharp and loud. Alaric's face changed in a way that made my chest ache with something like pity. He had not meant for silence; he had meant to hold a court, not this.
The queen sat very straight, her hands folded on her lap. Her mouth was a line of jewels. She looked into the place Seraphine had been and then to the gun in my hand. The metal glowed faintly from the smoke at the muzzle, curling like a thin wisp.
A curl of smoke rose from the muzzle and drew a line between me and the Queen.
"Your Majesty," I said in simple, careful words, "this weapon does not make the kind of sound your guards are trained to hear."
Her eyes were pale winter. They slid to the curl of smoke and back to my face.
"What is it?" she asked.
"A thing I made myself," I said.
I set the gun down on the table with the same slow care with which I had taken a teacup. My hands were steady. My skin did not shake. I picked up the teacup again — the same as before — and took a sip as if nothing had happened. The tea tasted of bergamot and the thin tang of iron.
Alaric's hands trembled. He bent down to see if Seraphine breathed. She did not. She simply lay there and the carpet seemed to hold her like a place where a story ended.
"You thought to humiliate me," I said then, voice low and clear so everyone heard. "You thought to break me in front of my maids and call the court to laugh. You planted your little serpent to sting and thought me a lamb."
The queen's cool eyes did not flinch. "You have killed my servant," she said. Her voice was small but steady. "You have chosen blood today, Lady Elara."
I smiled coldly. "She served the queen. She pretended to be faithful." I tilted my head toward Seraphine's still face. "She paid the price of that loyalty."
There was an instant where the room collapsed into noise — shouts and the clatter of servants. Then a silence that felt like a closing door.
Alaric glanced at my pistol. The smoke had thinned to nothing. He was thinking about how a kingdom could be ruled if such a thing were common. He was thinking about how I said I made it with my hands.
Someone let out a long, keening sound. A guard rushed from the corridor. Alaric rose, his face a storm of conflict and command. He looked at me — really looked, as if for the first time seeing the full ledger of what I might be: not a thing you could put in a box, but a force that might not care for rules.
"You will answer for this," the queen said, finally. "The law will decide."
"Perhaps," I said. I felt nothing but the cool clean stillness that follows a storm. I had set an answer in motion. I had chosen what I would be in this room. I had not chosen this day's end, only its beginning.
I set the empty teacup down and draped my fingers through my maids' hands as they hovered, shock written across their faces. Aveline looked as if she might fall into pieces. Liora held the cloth to her mouth as if to catch something she could not understand. Brenna stood rigid, eyes burning.
I took the pistol from the table. It fit beneath my hair again as if it had been born there.
I walked out of the room with the three maids who remained. The guards tried to step in my way, but Caelum's men had been forewarned — a small, unspoken line. The carriage waited outside in the quiet courtyard.
I climbed in with my three, my dress whispering like a strange bird. The other guests spilled from the palace in a tangle of noise and gossip, and the servants had a new story to feed the city overnight.
From the carriage window, I watched the palace doors close like a mouth sealing shut. The air tasted of iron and rain.
I did not look back. I held my head high. My maids trembled, but their faces were not empty.
When we reached home, my family was waiting like a line drawn in stone. My father's face was a mask of fury and calculation. Caelum's eyes were fierce. My mother's lips were tight, but I could read the interest behind them: the court had shown its hand, and it had bled on the floor.
Lysandra stood near the carriage, her arms crossed. She had been watching from the shadows, as always. I stepped out with the maids, my hair spilling like a curtain around me. The carriage wheels turned and the night swallowed them.
Inside, the house hummed. Servants tried to speak, but only whispers rose like ghosts. My father met me at the hall. He did not shout. He placed his hand on my shoulder, hard enough to make me wince.
"When you said you would not bend," he said in a low voice, "I did not know you meant this."
"I kill those who would use my death as a story," I answered simply.
He looked at me long, as if counting my heartbeats. "The king will not forget."
"Let him not forget," I said. "I will not be walked upon like a rug in a noble's hall."
He drew breath, and then — quietly — he said, "Prepare yourself. They will come with laws and soldiers and lies."
"I am ready," I replied.
My maids clustered behind me, pale and shaking but alive. Brenna gripped my hand like a lifeline. Aveline looked at me with wide eyes, like someone who had seen a lesson the hard way. Liora wept silently, and I felt something in my chest twist — sympathy for them, for being young and learning how the world could use them.
My mother's voice was soft, and when she said my name, there was no anger in it, only a chill of calculation. "You have made your choice."
I nodded. "So have they."
We closed the doors behind us. The night felt small, like a room after a storm.