"Who?" my father asked.
"Seraphine," I said.
"The Queen's?" my mother asked.
"Mine," I replied. "But she never was."
I told them without noise. Not every word. Enough. The cup. The twitch. The drop. The fall.
My father nodded once and fell silent. He was counting how many doors in our house should be moved two inches to the left to stop what was coming through the cracks.
My mother's eyes grew colder. It made a strange warmth bloom in my chest, the kind children who cannot remember being held sometimes feel when someone puts a blanket on them they did not ask for.
Caelum looked at my face, then at my hands, then at my eyes, and then he laughed without his mouth moving. It was not humor. It was relief. He had worried I would let the room decide who I was. I hadn't.
Lysandra crossed the space between us in three long steps and stopped one breath away, the heat of her body a wall and a shelter. She didn't touch me. She didn't need to.
"Did they see it?" she asked.
"The pistol?" I said. "Yes."
"The way it sings?" Her mouth tilted in that not-quite-smile she gave only when she spoke of things that change wars without raising their voices.
"They heard the wrong song," I said. "That's enough."
My mother made the smallest sound with her tongue. "Clean her," she told Liora.
Liora moved like her body had been waiting for an order in a kind voice all morning. She led me past them all, with Brenna and Aveline close behind. My father's hand brushed the wallpaper where the wall wasn't a wall; I heard the wards hum.
In my chamber, Liora unlaced my cuffs with gentle fingers. Brenna took the dress from my shoulders like she was catching a bird that had flown too hard into a window. Aveline brought warm water that smelled faintly of mint.
They bathed the blood from my skin. The gods' marks glowed through the steam. My hair stretched and then settled, laying itself along the edge of the tub like a tame river that has learned it is still a river even when it is calm.
Liora's hands never shook. Brenna's mouth never loosened. Aveline's tears dried on her cheeks and left salt lines.
When they had finished, I stood and wrapped the towel around my body. I looked at the three of them.
"You didn't run," I said.
"We won't," Brenna answered. "We're yours."
Aveline lifted her chin. "Even if you scare me."
Liora smiled with her eyes and not her mouth; it was the first time I had seen her do it. "Some things are worth fear."
"Good," I said softly. "Then we're agreed."
I dressed in clean linen and a robe of white. My hair fell like a promise down my back.
When I opened the door, Lysandra was waiting against the wall with her hands in her pockets like a man, and the line of her shoulders like a wall, and her mouth like a vow.
I walked to her and hugged her softly, with her hand on my waist. She smelt nice and strong, i felt so small in her arms than when I was standing alone by myself. The maids immediately kept their head down.
We went to my father's study.
The pistol from the palace sat on his desk. The chest that held its brother sat open. The room smelled like oiled wood and iron and the kind of trouble you can swallow and make into strength.
"We leave sooner than we planned," my father said without preface. "You and Lysandra will go to her land with a small guard. Caelum will escort you. We will give the palace nothing to aim at except empty chairs and closed curtains."
"The Queen will send eyes," my mother said, twisting the ring on her finger. "She will paint letters with smiles and ask for tea again. You will say you are ill and send fruit."
"Fruit?" Caelum asked, one brow up.
"Or knives," my mother said. "Whichever seems more polite at the time."
I crossed to the desk and laid my hand over the pistol's narrow mouth. The metal was cool from the room.
"They will come for this," I said.
"They will come for you," Lysandra said.
"Then we will make them walk farther than they wish," I said.
My father slid a map across the desk. Mountains, rivers, a stretch of land drawn with only a thin line that meant old wards and older ownership. Lysandra's mother's hand was in that line. I felt it like a heartbeat under paper.
"Three days," he said. "We can be ready. Is three days too long?"
"It's just right," I said, because there were six girls who had to learn which steps to take when the ground moved like snakes beneath them; because my hair wanted to taste the wind outside our city; because I needed to dream of doors one more night and teach the gods a new song.
The Queen would grieve the girl I killed. Not because Seraphine mattered. Because a piece had moved and the board had changed, and she had not chosen the square. Alaric would sharpen. He would stop smiling like a boy who knew where the knives were and start smiling like a man who knew how to use them.
Good.
I prefer to see a knife coming.
That night, I stood alone at my window. The garden lay black and silver, the pool of the fountain a coin in the moonlight. Somewhere in the hedge, a bird woke and went back to sleep. The black-and-white door in the far corner hummed like a tooth you cannot stop touching.
I pressed my forehead to the glass and breathed until my breath fogged and faded.
My hair slid forward across my shoulders like winter water.
"Tomorrow," I whispered to no one. To gods. To Lysandra in the next room. To the girl I had been, who would have worn a mask to tea and smiled plain and never put a gun on a table with a queen watching.
"Tomorrow," the house answered. It does that, old houses. They talk if you let them.
Behind me, the mirror glimmered once, and in it I saw Liora tighten the knot on her bundle, Brenna sharpen the point on the little knife she thought no one knew about, Aveline fold a scrap of cloth three times and kiss it like a charm. I did not call them spies or saints. I called them mine. That was enough.
When I lay down, the gods came like breath under a door.
You will be asked to drink again, Death murmured.
Bring your own cup, Life said, laughing.
Music did not speak. It hummed a line of melody that curled around the pistol on the desk and made it sound like it had always been made for rooms like this.
I slept.
And somewhere in the palace, a queen made new tea she did not drink, and a prince remeasured the length of his arm, and a hole in a pretty carpet held the shape of a girl who had smiled when it was time to watch someone else die.
In the morning, we would begin to pack.
In three days, we would leave.
We had killed once in a room full of luxury and flowers. We would build in a place with mountains and wind. We would take knives and guns and songs and girls who had secrets, and we would call it a kingdom when it started to breathe.
And when the crown came to take it, they would bring cups.
I would bring smoke.