The room is wrong the moment I step inside.

Too large. Too warm. Too familiar in a way that makes my stomach twist. I stand frozen in the doorway, the torn black gown clinging to my skin, dirt still under my nails, and for a moment I can't breathe.

Because I know this room.

Not from being inside it — I never was — but from the stories. From the way my mother used to describe the years she spent here as a political hostage before she married my father. The way she'd laugh and say the windows were too drafty, the bed too soft, the walls too thin.

And now I'm standing in it.

Her room.

The room she lived in before she became queen. The room she slept in before she ever held me. The room she left behind when she returned home to marry my father, King Ernest the Good.

Her head is on a spike outside these walls.

And he put me here.

I step farther in, my hands shaking. The air smells faintly of lavender and old stone. Someone has placed a folded blanket on the bed, a basin of water, a small loaf of bread. Kindnesses that feel like insults.

I sink onto the edge of the mattress, and the softness makes something inside me break. My throat burns. My eyes sting. I press my palms to my face, but the tears come anyway.

He put me in her room.

King John — the man who killed my parents, who took my brothers, who ordered the spikes raised — looked at me and thought this was mercy.

He did protect me though...I was about to be raped by the cluster of his soldiers...he protected me....offered me a position...but why...

A knock startles me. A girl steps inside, no older than me, maybe younger. Plain dress, hair braided tight, posture stiff with the kind of fear that comes from serving a king who kills queens. She keeps her blue eyes lowered, hands clasped in front of her.

"My lady," she says quietly. "I was sent to assist you."

I don't know her. I have never seen her face in my life. She is not one of ours. Not one of the women who used to help my mother. Not anyone who would know the stories of this room or the weight of its walls.

She is a stranger.

And somehow that makes it worse.

I nod because I don't know what else to do. My throat is too tight for words.

The girl — Groa, she murmurs when I ask her name, barely audible — moves toward the basin with careful, practiced motions. She pours in more warm water from a kettle she must have carried up the stairs. Steam curls into the air, smelling faintly of lavender.

She doesn't look at me until she has wrung out a cloth and approaches with it held gently between her hands.

"May I?" she asks.

Not an order. Not a command. A question.

I swallow hard and nod again.

Groa steps closer, and though she has never met me, she treats me with a kind of reverence that feels almost painful. She begins at my wrists as I wince at every bruise, wiping away the dirt, the dust, the remnants of the courtyard.

Her touch is light, careful, as if she's afraid I'll shatter.

Maybe I will.

The tears come without warning — hot, silent, humiliating. I turn my face away, but Groa doesn't pretend not to see. She simply continues her work, dipping the cloth, wringing it out, brushing it over my skin with a gentleness that feels like a kindness I don't deserve.

When she reaches my face, she pauses.

"My lady," she says softly, "you don't have to hold it in."

I let out a sound — not quite a sob, not quite a breath — and she lifts the cloth to my cheek, wiping away the tear tracks as if this is something she has done a hundred times for a hundred grieving women.

She helps me out of the ruined gown without comment, folding it neatly despite the dirt and torn seams. She dries my skin with a soft towel, her movements steady even when mine tremble.

Then she lifts the nightgown the maid left behind.

"Arms up," she murmurs.

I obey. I don't know why. Maybe because she's the first person today who hasn't looked at me like a threat or a trophy. Maybe because she's the only one who has touched me without cruelty.

The linen settles over my shoulders, cool and clean. Groa smooths it down, making sure it sits right, then steps back.

"You're warm now," she says quietly. "And you're safe for the night. Don't worry. King John made sure of that."

Safe...
In my mother's room...
Under the roof of the man who killed her...

She hesitates, then adds before leaving, "If you need anything... I'll be just outside the door."

I crawl into the bed — her bed — and pull the blanket to my chin. The window is cracked open, letting in a cold breeze that smells of pine and smoke. Somewhere outside, the guards call the hour.

And somewhere above them, my mother's head hangs on a spike.

A sob tears out of me before I can stop it. I curl onto my side, clutching the blanket like it's the only thing keeping me from falling apart.

Why would he do this?

Why give me this room?

Why give me anything at all?

I should hate him. I should fear him. I should wish him dead.

But all I can think of is the way he looked at me — not triumphant, not cruel, but tired. Haunted. As if he recognized something in me he didn't want to see.

I bury my face in the pillow, breathing in lavender and dust and ghosts.

I don't know if I'll ever sleep in this room.

But exhaustion drags me under anyway, and I fall asleep with tears drying on my cheeks, furious and grieving and unbearably alone.

The moment my eyes close I'm back there—back in the smoke, the heat, the screaming.

I'm running.

Bare feet slapping stone. My lungs burning. My brothers shouting my name. My mother's hand slipping from mine as soldiers tear us apart.

"Run, Adele!"

I do. I always do. But the halls twist, the doors vanish, the world folds in on itself until I'm trapped in a room with no windows, no exits, no air.

And then I see them.

My family.

Not alive.
Not whole.
Not as I remember them.

Their heads are mounted on spikes, just like outside the castle walls, but here they turn toward me. Their mouths open. They speak in voices that are not theirs.

"Adele..."

"Adele..."

"Adele..."

I scream.

I scream until my throat tears, until the world cracks open, until the shadows reach for me with hands that look like my grandmother's—Queen Alienor, the woman whispered to have danced with darkness.

Her voice slithers through the dream.

You survived for a reason, child.

"No—no, please—"

And then — faint, distant, high pitch screech —
a dragon's roar rolls through the dream like thunder under the earth.

It vibrates through my bones.
It feels like it knows my name.

Wake up.

The voice calls out again.

I jolt upright with a strangled cry, heart pounding, sweat cold on my skin. The room is dark, too dark, and for a moment I don't know where I am. I claw at the blanket, gasping, shaking, trying to remember how to breathe.

And then suddenly I hear another roar.

Not in the dream.

Outside.

Real.

Low and distant, echoing across the mountains like a call.

My blood goes cold.

"Rubi" I call out into the darkness.

And then—

Footsteps.
Fast. Heavy. Coming straight toward my door.

Before I can move, the door bursts open.