She tasted iron every time she tried to breathe.
Not the sharp, clear metal of a blade—more like the memory of iron left on the tongue after a coin's been bitten.
The cell had a weight. The stone drank light. TheJack ring sat dull and useless beneath the grime of her sleeve.
Velanor watched her like a cat watching a mouse.
Black hair, braided tight as law. Face carved to a single expression: polished, cruel. She carried herself in a way that made rooms thin—every inch of her pulled the light inward. Even Calla's voice bent when Velanor spoke. Even Calla, who had the capital at her fingertips, turned careful around the girl.
Velanor was the sort of royalty that knew the taste of being feared, and liked it.
Pride carved her words. Condescension wrapped like jewelry. She had the air of someone born with a command in her mouth. She let you breathe if it served her vanity. If it didn't—she'd step on your throat for the sound of your silence.
"Come closer," Velanor said now. The word was soft—poison-laced honey.
Calla stood back, the silk around her wrists trembling at the edge of movement. Half of her face bore the map of a burn; scar tissue crisscrossed cheek and jaw like a pale river. The wound had a story. Maria's hand had lit a blast—stone and snow and terrible, pure thinking—and the blast had taken its toll. The marks on Calla's skin were sharp and ugly and impossible to hide. She moved with a slow dignity as if every step apologized to her scars.
Velanor's smile was small. "She looks better in court colors." She swept a sleeve, the fabric whispering. She leaned in as if to inspect the Jack ring through the dirt. "You had something shiny," she murmured—not a question, a command. "Interesting toys for a beggar."
Violet's throat closed. She said nothing. There was slow heat behind her eyes—the heat that was the last piece of defiance left.
Velanor's laugh was quiet and cutting. "She thought she was loved," she said. "How quaint."
Calla's face shifted. Half-scarred, half-composed. Her finger idly traced the seam on the doorjamb. "She was raised," Calla said. The word carried a weight of arrangements, of obligations. "Maria raised her. She kept her. She fed her. She—"
"You make excuses," Velanor said. She turned her face to Violet as if looking at a lesser breed. "No more stories. We don't raise what won't serve the throne."
Velanor loved words the way others loved jewels. She chose them slow, like she meant to wear the sound after. "Tell me," she said, "what do you think you are?"
Violet's mouth opened. The chains bit. The old rope in her chest tightened. Her voice felt like a thin thread. "I'm Violet. I'm—"
"Beautiful," Velanor supplied, voice smooth. "Deliciously pretty. A pity for some people. But names are small. Titles mean more."
Calla stepped forward then, the silk-scented shadow of power. "You want the truth?" she asked. "You deserved to know the truth."
Violet's whole body moved with a lurch of hope and fear. "Tell me," she begged. "Please. Tell me."
Calla's hand brushed the bruise at her throat—the mark of the slap—and she smiled cold. "You were useful," she said. "You still are, until we decide otherwise."
Velanor's face leaned closer. "We don't tolerate mistakes," she said. "We tidy them."
The words fell around Violet like cold rain.
Velanor circled her like a practiced hunter. She had little vices that showed in the way she pinched the hem of her gloves, in the small, conceited tilt she granted her chin. She was proud and rich with the sort of arrogance that muzzled even her mother. When she spoke, Calla softened—hushed. When Calla spoke back, she chose her syllables like coal—hot and kept.
Velanor plucked a thread from Violet's sleeve like she was plucking lint from a tapestry. Her fingernail was red with lacquer. "Do you know what's worse than being hated?" she asked, as if the question were rhetorical. "Being pitied."
Violet's voice was a tiny stone. "You're cruel."
Velanor's smile broadened. "Cruel? Perhaps. Or honest." She tapped the chain that held Violet. It chimed, a hollow, dull noise. "You must be thirsty. Do you want water or words first?"
Calla reached to a flask at her hip and unfurled the cloth she had carried like a prayer. She tipped the rim to Violet's lips even as another smile hovered on Velanor's mouth—amusement, curiosity.
"You'll drink," Calla said. "Because it humbles you."
She forced the water. Not a gentle offering, but a shove: the liquid shoved into Violet's mouth with the same flatness as a decree. Violet choked and swallowed the oil-slick taste. The act was less about thirst than ownership. Calla's knuckles brushed her jaw in a motion that pretended to be tenderness and landed as dominance.
Violet swallowed. The water slid down and left a taste of iron again. She coughed, eyes flaring hot. Her cheeks were wet.
Velanor's gaze hungrily observed the reaction as if measuring tenderness like a commodity. "You see?" she said. "She's fragile. She bleeds like anyone else."
Velanor's cruelty had a ritual: jeering first, then cutting the truth slow. She loved the gaze of spectators. Calla relished in her daughter's enjoyment. Behind them, the guards formed a ring of shadow and obedience. The city's voice echoed like a far drum.
"Why are you doing this?" Violet asked, the words thick like mud. "Why are you—why did you bring me here to mock me?"
Velanor's laugh was a dry leaf. "Mock? we aren't mocking. This is pedagogy." She tilted her head as if pondering a delicate arrangement. "We crown a princess by breaking the thorns from the stem. We discover what endures when everything else is removed."
Calla watched with a patience that had the edge of accusation; sometimes pity moves like a slow leak. "You should know," Calla said. "There are truths that stab when revealed. This was necessary."
Velanor's eyes glittered. "Necessary for what?" she asked softly. "For us, obviously."
She stepped forward, and the guards leaned into her motion. The cell's breath shrunk. "You speak of betrayal," Velanor said. Her voice slid like silk across the stone. "Betrayal requires the right target. You—" She pointed at Violet with the faintest flick of finger. "—were the perfect vehicle."
Violet's hands trembled. "I was raised by mama," she whispered. The old memory—Maria's hands mending a sock; Maria's voice chiding at the hearth; Maria's lullaby with the cracked notes—had been her true bedrock. "She kept me. She loved me."
Velanor's expression shifted to amusement, then deeper malice. "Ah. Maria." She let the syllable sit like a rolled coin. "She was brave. She was foolish. She burned for what she thought noble. Did you know she set a charge?" She smiled at Calla, a private light between them. "Explosions are dramatic. They make stories tidy."
The room narrowed. Violet felt the air jag like broken glass.
Calla's burnt cheek quivered. She lifted her hand as if to stroke a memory and then she spoke, precise and terrible: "Garrett is dead."
Violet's heart stuttered. The sentence had no cadence; it was a fact slammed down like a verdict. The name—Garrett—her father's name—hit like a winter branch against her ribs.
"What do you mean?" Her voice ripped, small and raw.
Calla smiled... "They're dead...."
Violet's knees gave out in a feeling like snow melting from underfoot. The letters of their names—Maria, Garrett—fell into the dark pool of the cell and did not return.
"No," she said. The sound left her like a thrown pebble. "No, no, you lie." Hope is a creature that refuses logic. She reached for it like an animal pawing at glass. "You said you would come. You promised. Mama—papa—" She couldn't fit the rest of the words into her throat.
Velanor sneered. "Promises are for those who want to be deceived." She turned her expression to one of clinical appraisal. "You cry well. Good technique. We should teach you to weep for performance."
Violet felt a cold bucket descend in her chest. She crouched in the shallow hollow of the stone, the chains biting into her wrist until small stars bloomed in her vision. "Why? Why would you—why would you do this to them? To me?"
Calla's scarred face softened in a way that was not sorrow. It was something else—an angle of will. "They were collateral," she said. "Garrett was a man who could have been useful. Maria took a path. She chose to be a martyr to protect what she believed. That ends her book. History is tidy like that."
Velanor stepped forward, crossing the small distance between ruler and ruined thing. She placed one neat, manicured hand on Violet's shoulder, the touch like the last parchment of a will. "We did it because someone must be the right blood. We did it because someone must hold the claim properly. You were… a useful lie. But you were never the truth."
Violet made a sound that was not a cry. It was closer to a tear being wrung from fabric—sound and not a shape. "What do you want?" she rasped. "Money? Title? Why does this ruin everyone?"
Velanor's eyes glinted. "I want the crown to sit on the right forehead. I want the right name to breathe in the palace air. I want—" She paused, dramatized. "—to be certain." Then she leaned in, as if sharing a delicious secret. "And I want you to understand that your existence is a problem I can solve with a flick."
Calla's hand moved slowly away from the flask. Her darkened half-face looked like a cut on a map. "Do you see now?" she said. "We did not hate. We purged. We engineered. We curated. Your life was convenient—until it wasn't."
Violet's world narrowed to a single single small bright thing: the memory of Maria humming by the hearth and the warmth of a hand on her hair. That memory steadied her like an anchor. She said nothing. Her head lifted in a thin, dangerous way. "You say you needed the right blood," she breathed. "Then tell me—who are you, really?"
Velanor's smile was a blade. "I will show you soon." She straightened, regal as a knife. "But not now." She turned on her heel and left with Calla at her shoulder. Her gait was unhurried, the swish of silk impatient and final.
As they went, Velanor glanced back once. "Remember your place," she said.
The door shut. The lock turned. The cell swallowed the light.
Violet pressed her forehead to the stone and howled—not a little girl sound but a tearing thing that knew the pieces were unfixable. The cry echoed, and the only response was the slow drip of water and the faint memory of a lullaby Maria had hummed under the smoke: a spare stitch of melody that said you were loved.
Outside, the palace breathed. Inside, Violet wrapped the Jack ring hidden under her sleeve and felt the small cool stone of it like a pulse. She tasted grief and iron and something that tasted like the beginning of reckoning.
Velanor had promised a lesson. She had named the cost.
Violet swore in the dark, the vow small and bright and terrible: she would learn the truth of the blood, even if it meant tearing the palace from the inside, even if it meant dying in the attempt.