Ophelia woke in the cold, early hours before the house began to stir.
Her lungs hitched as her eyes snapped open to the pitch-black ceiling of the attic. The dream was still washing over her senses. The deafening downpour of freezing rain, the distant, rolling rumble of thunder, the suffocating darkness, and the thick, warm coating of blood covering her from head to toe.
Automatically, her hands flew up to her chest, her arms, her neck. Her fingers scraped against dry wool and cool skin.
Nothing. No blood. Just the damp cling of her own cold sweat.
She lay back down on the thin cot, staring into the dark.
Three times now.
Same freezing rain. Same heavy darkness. Same helpless, unnameable terror.
Her mind immediately began cataloguing:
The first occurrence seemed like a consequence of the mental stress I had gone through. I also thought that for the second. But with today's occurrence, it is safe to assume that it is a pattern.
Ophelia was a prodigy at pattern recognition. But how she hated the shape of this one.
She ran through logical explanations in the dark: severe physical exhaustion, insufficient food, or simply the objective reality that her life was currently terrible. None of those explanations felt entirely correct.
Realizing sleep was now impossible, she swung her legs over the side of the cot and pulled on her boots.
One thing at a time, she told herself firmly in the dark. Today, I'll focus on dealing with my dilemma and gathering information in the palace library. The dreams can wait for later.
By mid-morning, Ophelia was down on her knees in the long ground-floor corridor, a stiff scrub brush in one hand and a bucket of lye water beside her.
Physically, she was performing her standard domestic camouflage. Mentally, her thoughts were miles away, running the nightmare in a slow, continuous loop in the background. She had done a terrible job at keeping it out of her mind.
She had been having it for weeks now. Always the exact same sensory cadence: rain, blood, thunder, darkness. She hadn't told a soul. Who would she tell? Calantha? The head cook? They would either punish her for slacking or call for an apothecary to dock her meagre food rations.
Then there was the other thing.
Ophelia paused her scrubbing, the bristled brush dripping suds onto the dark oak floorboards.
The warmth. The one she felt the day after the first nightmare. And again some days back.
It had started deep behind her sternum. A sudden, blooming heat that spread outward through her limbs, like a long-dormant limb waking up and stretching after years of immobility. It wasn't painful, but it was profoundly wrong.
She pressed the brush back to the floorboards and resumed scrubbing with hard, rhythmic strokes.
You are either developing a very inconvenient medical condition, Ophelia, or something is happening to your body that you do not yet possess the adequate knowledge to understand.Both are equally inconvenient and neither is helpful right now.Scrub the floor.
She scrubbed the floor.
A footman summoned her to the study twenty minutes before she was scheduled to leave for the capital.
Calantha sat behind her heavy mahogany desk, a brass spectacles perch resting on her nose, completely absorbed in her correspondence. She did not look up when the door opened.
"You are representing the Nightshade name in the royal household today," Calantha said, her quill scratching loudly against high-grade parchment. "The princess's household expects absolute decorum, flawless posture, and complete punctuality. You will speak only when addressed, and you will do nothing that reflects poorly on this family."
"Yes, My Lady," Ophelia replied smoothly.
"Dismissed."
What is this? A trial before a judge? Ophelia rolled her eyes.
No carriage was offered. The royal pass granted Ophelia entry to the palace grounds, and Calantha saw no fiscal reason to waste carriage horses on a girl who possessed two functional feet.
Ophelia bowed slightly, turned, and stepped out into the quiet corridor.
Calantha was still furious. Under normal circumstances, she would have sooner locked Ophelia in the cellar than permitted her to walk freely into the capital. But fortunately for Ophelia, this was not Calantha's decision to make.
Three days ago—the morning immediately following Princess Elowen's tea party—the formal royal correspondence had arrived at Bellmarrow. Just as Elowen had promised, the letter bore the golden crest of the royal house. It formally requested Ophelia's attendance at the palace four days a week to "assist Her Highness in botanical cataloguing and domestic service."
It would have made Ophelia laugh—the idea of her as a delicate botanical assistant—if she hadn't spent that morning on her knees, begging for her life.
Calantha hadn't even bothered sending a footman to call her that day. Ophelia had been mending linens in the rear laundry room when her name roared through the corridors of the estate, a sound so violent and raw Ophelia could have sworn she felt the floorboards shudder and seen plaster dust shake loose from the ceiling.
She had dropped her needles and run. It had been years since Calantha had screamed her name like that.
The last time was when Ophelia had first arrived at Bellmarrow as a child. Naive, grieving, and foolishly rebellious, six-year-old Ophelia had believed she was an equal, a daughter of the house, just like Calantha's children.
After eight straight hours of cleaning the entire ground floor, her small back aching and her hands raw and bleeding from harsh lye soap, Ophelia had walked into the drawing room to find Calantha and her daughters reclining on velvet chaises, laughing and discussing the merits of various eligible young men, while maidservants manicured their nails. Enraged by the injustice, young Ophelia had confronted Calantha directly, shouting at her for treating her like a slave while everyone else lazed about.
Calantha had feigned absolute shock at the "disrespect." Within ten minutes, Ophelia was kneeling on the cold floor of her father's study while Alaric listened to his wife's complaints. Ophelia had held out her raw, bleeding palms, crying, begging her father to see the truth.
It was in that exact moment that Ophelia had learned her place in the world.
Alaric hadn't even looked at her hands. He had looked at her with disgust and told her straight to her face: If you ever raise your voice to my wife again, or fail to show her total obedience, I will cast you out of this house to starve in the streets.
Ophelia had bowed her head, hot tears streaking down her face, and whispered her apologies.
She had waited until Alaric left the estate on business three days later. Then, she had taken Calantha's favourite pearl necklace and ruby ear studs from her jewellery box, dug a deep hole in the rose garden, and buried them in the dirt. When Calantha discovered them missing, and found them in the rose garden, she had yelled Ophelia's name just the same. Ophelia had looked her dead in the eye and said she had "planted" them so new jewels would grow, because if new jewels grew, maybe Calantha wouldn't make her scrub the house anymore.
She had been beaten for it, of course. But the memory of Calantha's panicked face in the dirt had sustained Ophelia for years.
When Ophelia had reached the study three days ago, the memory of that day hung heavy in the air.
Calantha, and her daughters were already waiting. Calantha's face was transformed by an icy rage.
"Kneel down," Calantha had commanded softly.
Ophelia hadn't hesitated. Kneeling in the Nightshade household was as routine as breakfast in the morning or dinner at night—an everyday ritual of subjugation. But as her knees hit the dark wood, Ophelia knew this was different. It was serious.
Then she saw the parchment with the royal seal clutched in Calantha's hand, and the pieces clicked into place.
"You lied to me," Calantha said, her voice dropping into a deadly whisper.
A shocker, Ophelia had thought dryly behind her blank mask. I also lie when I tell you how breath-taking your daughters look in their gowns, yet I don't see you handing out awards for my charity.
"You told me you had no personal interaction with the Princess," Calantha continued, stepping around the desk. "Then explain to me why Her Highness is personally demanding your presence at the palace?"
Ophelia had kept her gaze fixed on the floor. Because someone finally saw something in me that this house refuses to acknowledge. That I possess intellect. That I am useful
Ophelia watched Calantha's expensive leather slippers glide across the rug until they stopped inches from her knees. Calantha's shadow fell over her, cold and heavy.
"You know I despise deceit above all else," Calantha murmured. She turned slightly. "Ruby. Fetch the cane."
Ruby's face had split into a cruel, triumphant grin. "Yes, Mother."
When Ruby returned and placed the polished rattan cane into Calantha's hand, Ophelia didn't wait to be asked. She extended both palms flat, holding them steady in the air.
"I cannot defy a direct royal order," Calantha said, raising the cane. "The Princess demands your presence, so you will go. But I can, and will, punish your pathetic attempt to deceive me."
The strike came down hard.
Snap.
The house was dead silent. The only sound in the grand study was the sharp, rhythmic crack of wood biting into bare skin.
Ophelia didn't cry out. She didn't flinch. She kept her hands level, holding her breath through her teeth as heat exploded across her palms, though silent tears spilled over her lashes and tracked down her pale cheeks.
Ten strikes. Eleven. Twelve.
When it was over, Calantha lowered the cane, her own breathing slightly elevated. "You will represent this family at the palace starting Sunday. You are dismissed."
Ophelia's voice had cracked, thick with suppressed pain, but she forced the words through her throat: "Yes, My Lady."
She had stood up, her palms throbbing with a dull, white-hot fire, and walked out of the room. Servants and footmen had lined the hall, staring at her in uncomfortable silence as she passed. She knew her place in this house. She was the "Nightshade mistake," the unwanted ghost of Alaric's past, but the humiliation still bit deep. Even the indentured servants in the kitchen were spared the cane.
She was lower than a slave in her own father's home.
Ophelia stepped out through the heavy front doors of Bellmarrow into the crisp, cold autumn air.
She looked down at her hands. Three days later, her palms were still tender, marked by faint, yellowish bruises beneath the skin, but they were healed enough to function.
She pulled the heavy silver royal pass from her pocket, its cool metal resting against her scarred palm.
She preferred it this way. Walking meant she was entirely in control of her own momentum.
Yes! Feet are better compared to hoofs. Wouldn't want to soil the horses' pedicured hoofs.
She turned her face towards the northern highway and began to walk.