AURELIA POV...
Light. Not the gentle diffusion through silk curtains, but a thousand sharp, brilliant pins of it, stabbing through the small, woven holes of the basket.
I blinked, my eyes gritty and dry. For a disoriented moment, I didn't know where I was.
Then, the scent—overwhelming, citrus-sharp, and clean—flooded my senses. Oranges. And beneath it, the smell of dry wood, horse, and open road.
Morning.
The word formed in my mind, soft and strange. The light was my only witness.
I shifted, and a firm, round shape rolled against my hip. The world was not still.
It was moving. The squeaking rhythm of the wheels played on.
But after all… I'm finally free.
The thought rose, tentative as a prayer. I tested it. I repeated it in the silence of my own skull.
Free. Free. Free.
A hysterical, silent laugh bubbled up in my chest. It felt like a dream, a fragile bubble of madness.
Just yesterday—or was it a lifetime ago?—I had been in a room of stone and sorrow, my heart flayed open by the laughter of guards. I had been nothing. Tenebrarum's discarded item. A stain on the palace floor.
Now, I could change my life. I could choose my own path, without orders.
I curled my fingers, feeling the rough weave of the basket against my skin. This is not a dream. This scratch is real. This orange pressing into my back is real.
All this is real.
But I must not forget.
The memory rose, unbidden and vicious: the ten guards like a wall of polished malice, their mocking laughter, the casual cruelty in their eyes as they spoke of Matrona already within the deepest part of the chamber.
The most painful part wasn't the humiliation. It was the confirmation. The door had been closed long before I ever reached it. I had been loving a ghost, begging entry to a tomb where I knew there was no place for me.
Tenebrarum never cared.
"Oh…"
A jolt of the carriage bounced me, my shoulder knocking hard against the unyielding side, cutting through my thoughts.
The movement was jarring, a constant reminder that this freedom was not soft. It was not a silken bed. It was a rough, jostling, uncertain journey.
I wondered if I would ever be comfortable again. Perhaps comfort was a palace illusion, a velvet trap. This discomfort—the ache in my limbs, the dry thirst in my throat, the fear like a cold stone in my belly—was the truer price. And I would manage.
I had managed worse.
I took a deliberate breath. The air in the basket was thick with the perfume of oranges, but beyond it, slipping through the holes, was something else. Something… green. Damp. Untamed. It was not the air of the palace—stagnant with intrigue and perfume and stone-dust. This air tasted different. It felt different in my lungs. Lighter, yet somehow more substantial.
Is this how freedom actually feels?
It was not a soaring triumph. There was no chorus of angels, no sudden lightness of being. It was a strange, hollowed-out quiet. A numbness at the core, surrounded by a frayed edge of raw, exposed nerve.
The fear was still there, a loyal hound that had followed me out the gates. The grief was there, a heavy shroud I carried within me.
The only thing missing was the immediate, crushing weight of someone else's contempt.
Maybe it wasn't as great as I had dreamed in my most desperate nights. Or maybe… maybe it was because I wasn't yet out of the kingdom.
I was still within the borders of Tenebrarum's power, his memory, his reach. True freedom, if such a thing existed, was still a theory—a destination on a map I did not possess.
For now, I was in between escape and freedom.
No longer a court fixture, not yet a new person. Just a woman in a basket, breathing strange air, carried toward an unknown horizon by a man I barely knew, with a secret growing inside me that was my only compass.
I placed a hand on my stomach, over the linen of the cheap dress, beneath Camilla's gifted hood. Flat. Silent. A secret six days old.
"Why do I feel strange?" I whispered into the fragrant dark, my voice a rustle among the oranges. "Like I'm doing something wrong…"
The carriage creaked on, carrying my fragile, prickly, uncertain self toward whatever came next.
All these thoughts, but I couldn't hide the fact that I still missed him.
A lot.
I sighed.
"Ah!"
The world slammed to a halt. The carriage wheels locked, and the sudden jolt threw me forward. My head cracked against the hard, woven wall of the basket—a stupid, blinding burst of pain that flashed white behind my eyelids.
Outside, voices.
They were guttural, layered with a gravelly resonance that spoke of unnatural throats.
"Let's get the basket down," one growled, its voice like stone grinding against stone.
My breath vanished. My heart seized into a hard, still knot.
No. They will find me.
I heard the heavy thuds of other baskets being unloaded, hitting what sounded like hard-packed earth. Each thump was a countdown. The scent of oranges grew stronger, cloying, as the air around me was disturbed.
Then, hands gripped the sides of my basket. I was lifted, swaying precariously. For one dizzying second, I was in the air—and then the hands fumbled.
"This basket is heavy!" the creature grunted, its ugly voice twisted in strain. "How many oranges did they pack?"
The basket tipped. I bit down on a scream, curling tighter as I plummeted. The impact was brutal. My body was thrown against the unyielding reeds, my bones rattling, oranges thudding around me like loose cannonballs.
"You're a weakling," a different, deeper voice laughed, a cruel, hacking sound. "I just carried two baskets and you can't manage one?"
"I hate this job!"
His hands grasped the basket again, this time with more force. I was hauled upright, my head spinning from the fall. I could hear the creature's labored breathing just on the other side of the thin, woven wall.
He didn't know I was the load making the oranges heavier.
I pressed a hand over my mouth, stifling the whimper that fought to escape. Every sense screamed. The rough fiber against my cheek, the dizzying citrus smell, the muffled sounds of dark creatures moving just inches away.
What if they find me?
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To be continued...