The Northern Citadel had not seen its princess sleep in nineteen days.
The healers had been dismissed. The sommeliers had been dismissed. The entire wing of night servants had been reassigned to the lower floors after the third time Lybia was found standing at the shattered scrying basin in the dark, barefoot on frozen stone, staring into broken water.
The basin had broken itself. That was the impossible part. Old work, deep work, a bowl of prophecy that had held the Northern line's fortunes for nine generations, and on the night of the first fracture it had shown her something in the south, a man walking untouched through lightning with his shirt open, and then it had cracked from rim to rim like an egg struck from the inside.
The princess had not told anyone what she saw. The princess had not needed to. Her body told the court instead, in the language it had never spoken before.
Her hands trembled now.
