Chapter 2: The Silent Witness
The hunting party was a garish parade of laughter and brightly colored fabrics, trailing through the autumn woods like a wounded animal. Markus rode at its head beside King Rhys, listening with a polite, vacant smile as the man expounded on the exceptional quality of Eltherian hawks. Every so often, a peal of Kathryn’s delighted laughter would ring out from behind them, where she rode surrounded by her ladies, as if the very concept of sweat was beneath her.
Markus’s patience, a thick rope usually woven from steel, was fraying.
William caught his eye from a few horses back, giving an almost imperceptible shake of his head. Stay the course. But the course was leading to a clear, sparkling stream and a pre-arranged picnic glade, not to anything resembling truth.
When a commotion broke out—a hound had treed a creature no bigger than a boot—Markus saw his chance. He murmured an excuse about giving the horses a breather, handed his reins to a surprised squire, and melted into the dense thicket of oaks. The sounds of the party faded swiftly, swallowed by the rustle of leaves and the distant knock of a woodpecker. He didn’t head for the castle. He circled west, toward the low, squat stone building huddled against the outer curtain wall. The old armory.
It was a place forgotten by pageantry. The air inside was several degrees cooler, smelling of damp stone, rancid linseed oil, and the deep, quiet scent of iron. Light bled in from high, narrow windows, cutting dusty shafts through the gloom. It was cluttered with the skeletons of forgotten wars: piles of dented shields, barrels of broken spearheads, breastplates blooming with orange decay.
And in the farthest shaft of light, stood Imoria.
She had her back to him, but he knew her shape instantly—the straight spine, the line of her shoulders, the fall of that white braid. She was bent over a grindstone, her body moving in a steady, practiced rhythm. The shriek of steel on spinning stone was deafening in the quiet, a rhythmic, shrieking whine. Sparks flew in brilliant orange arcs from the edge of the longsword she held, cascading around her boots like angry fireflies.
She didn’t startle when he stepped on a loose piece of mail. She didn’t even pause. She finished the pass, lifted the blade to inspect the edge, the grey light running along the freshly exposed metal. Then she spoke, her voice barely louder than the fading spin of the wheel.
“The hunt bored you.”
It wasn’t a question.
“It did,” Markus said, walking closer. He kept his movements audible, giving her the chance to turn. She didn’t. “I prefer my pursuits to have a point beyond noise and feathers.”
“Hunting has a point. Food. Pelts. Culling.” She set the sword on a wooden rack and picked up a honing stone and a cloth. Her hands, those scarred knuckles he’d seen from the throne, worked with brutal efficiency. “This party’s purpose is display. My sister is very good at display.”
“And you’re very good at this.”
She finally glanced at him, a quick cut of her black eyes. “Sharpening a blade is basic maintenance. Any soldier worth his salt can do it.”
“I wasn’t talking about the blade.”
Her hands stilled for half a heartbeat before resuming their smooth, sliding passes along the steel. “What do you want, King Markus?”
“Conversation.”
“You have a courtyard full of people eager to provide it.”
“I don’t want their conversation. I want yours.” He leaned against a crumbling timber support post, crossing his arms. “The northern pass into Eltheria. The one the maps say is guarded by a single watchtower.”
“Crow’s Nest,” she said, not looking up.
“It’s indefensible. A child could see it’s the weak point in your entire border. Any force with half a brain would come through there in winter, when the snows block the other routes.” He paused, watching her. “Why hasn’t it been fortified?”
She dipped the cloth in a pot of oil, began wiping down the blade. The action was almost tender. “The bedrock is shale. It fractures. You can’t build a proper fortification on it. It would collapse under its own weight within a decade.”
“So you leave it open.”
“No.” She set the cloth aside, held the sword up, peering down its length. “You mine the shale. Delicately. Create hidden chambers filled with pitch and loose stone. You station a small, dedicated team in the tower, not to hold the pass, but to trigger the collapse if an enemy column tries to move through. You sacrifice the tower and the pass. You bury the invasion.”
The air went very still. The grindstone had stopped spinning. The only sound was the distant caw of a crow.
Markus stared at her. The plan was brutal, clever, and ruthless. It was exactly the kind of contingency he would have devised. It was not the kind of strategy that would occur to King Rhys, who was currently worrying about falcon plumage.
“That’s not on any map,” he said quietly.
“Of course it isn’t.” She slid the sword into a plain leather scabbard. “Secrets are only secrets if you don’t write them down.”
“Who knows about it?”
“The miners who did the work. The captain of Crow’s Nest. Me.”
“Not your father?”
Her expression didn’t change. “My father believes the pass is protected by the terrain and the grace of the gods. It is a comforting thought.”
A cold fury began to burn in Markus’s chest. This woman, with a mind like a strategist’s manual and the hands of a blacksmith, was relegated to sharpening swords in a ruin while her father clung to comforting thoughts. The waste of it was staggering. It was criminal.
“The eastern grain stores,” he pushed, his voice hardening. “The ones that flooded two years ago. The official report said it was bad luck. An unusually high water table.”
Imoria turned fully to face him now. A smudge of oil darkened her cheekbone. Her grey dress was flecked with metal filings that caught the light like tiny stars. Her eyes were flat, wary. “The water table was known. The storehouse was built on a known seep line. I advised against the location. I was told my concerns were an overreach of my station.” She paused. “They rebuilt it in the same spot. It will flood again next spring.”
“And you’ll be the one organizing the salvage, won’t you? While Kathryn hosts a poetry reading.”
Something flickered in the depths of her black eyes. A flash of pure, unguarded pain, so sharp it was like a physical blow. Then it was gone, sealed away behind that impenetrable glass. “I serve the crown,” she said, the words toneless, rote.
“You serve a lie.” He pushed off the post, taking a step toward her. The space between them crackled. “You know you do. You stand in this freezing tomb and hone the kingdom’s steel while they dress your sister in silk and tell her she’s in charge. How does that feel, Imoria? Day after day. Year after year.”
She didn’t back away. Her fingers tightened around the sheathed sword in her hand. “Feelings are irrelevant. Duty is concrete.”
“Duty to what? To a father who erased you? To a sister who uses you as a silent crutch? To a crown that doesn’t even let you wear a clean dress?” He took another step. They were close enough now that he could see the fine, pale lashes around her eyes, the quick pulse at the base of her throat. “What about your duty to yourself? To the kingdom you clearly understand better than any of them?”
“Stop.” The word was a knife-edge.
“Why? Because no one is allowed to say it?” His voice dropped, low and intense. “I’ve seen the servants, Imoria. The ones who can’t speak properly. I know the price for talking. What’s the price for thinking? They’ve tried to carve that out of you too, haven’t they? But they couldn’t. It’s still in there. I can see it.”
Her composure was fracturing. A faint tremor touched her hand. The mask of quiet duty was slipping, and beneath it was a raw, bewildering fury. “You see nothing. You are a visitor. A king playing a game. You will leave. And everything will remain as it is.”
“Will it?” He closed the last of the distance. He didn’t touch her. The space between them was a charged field. “What if I don’t want to play their game? What if I want to play my own?”
Her breath hitched. She was looking up at him, her defiance a tangible force. “I am not a piece to be moved.”
“Aren’t you?” He held her gaze, relentless. “You’ve let them move you your whole life. Into corners. Into shadows. Into this armory. You’re the most powerful person in this castle and you’ve agreed to be a ghost.”
For a second, he thought she might strike him. The urge was there, vibrating in the air. Instead, in one swift, fluid motion, she drew the sword she had just sharpened.
The shriek of metal leaving leather was final. She didn’t point it at him. She held it vertically between them, a gleaming bar of polished steel that caught the light from the window and threw a bright line across both their faces.
It was a warning. A boundary. A symbol.
“This is what I am,” she said, her voice trembling now, not with fear, but with a lifetime of suppressed rage. “A tool. Sharp. Useful. Quiet. Put me back in the dark when you’re done. That is my function.”
Markus looked from the blade to her eyes, which were blazing with a fire that could have lit the damp room. He didn’t flinch. Slowly, deliberately, he raised his hand. He didn’t reach for the sword. He reached past it, his fingers stopping just short of the line of her jaw, his thumb hovering near the smudge of oil on her cheek.
“No,” he said, the word absolute. “This is a pretense. And I am done with pretense.”
He let his hand fall. He didn’t break her gaze.
“You can stay here, sharpening tools for people too stupid to use them. Or you can step out of the shadows and take what’s yours.” He nodded toward the sword. “But that blade isn’t a symbol of your prison, Imoria. It’s a key. And you’re the only one who can turn it.”
He turned and walked away, leaving her standing in the shaft of light, the freshly honed sword shaking in her hands.
He didn’t look back. He didn’t need to. The echo of his words hung in the oily air, more disruptive than the scream of the grindstone had ever been.
Outside, the cold autumn air felt like a slap. He breathed it in deeply, his own heart hammering against his ribs. It was a gamble. A dangerous, possibly catastrophic gamble.
William found him near the stables, examining a hoof with a farrier. His brother took one look at his face and went still. “What did you do?”
“I poked the dragon,” Markus said, straightening up.
“And?”
“And it looked back.” Markus finally met William’s worried gaze. “We’re not marrying the princess, William. We’re marrying the kingdom. And the kingdom has a different name.”
Back in the armory, Imoria stood frozen. The warmth from the grindstone had bled away. The cold of the stone was seeping through her thin boots.
The sword in her hand felt alien. His words ricocheted inside her skull, tearing through the careful, silent architecture of her resignation. Take what’s yours.
What was hers? A birthright she’d surrendered at four years old? A room in the west wing? A lifetime of silent compliance?
Her eyes fell on the grindstone. On the rag, dark with oil. On the countless nicks and scars on her knuckles, each one a memory of a task done, a problem solved, a fire put out—all while Kathryn drank tea in the sun.
A violent, shuddering breath escaped her. It sounded like a sob, but no tears came. Her face felt like stone.
Slowly, she lowered the sword. She brought the edge close to her face, looking at her distorted reflection in the flawless, deadly steel. The eyes that looked back were not soulless. They were full of a storm.
You can stay here.
She had. For twenty-six years.
Or you can step out of the shadows.
Her fingers tightened on the leather-wrapped hilt. She reversed her grip suddenly, raised the blade, and with a cry that was torn from a place deeper than pain, she brought the pommel down hard on the edge of the grindstone.
A loud, metallic clang shattered the silence, reverberating through the armory, sending a shock up her arm.
It wasn’t a decision. Not yet. It was a fracture. A single, solid noise to mark the moment the silence ended. She stood there, breathing hard, the echo of the blow still ringing in the iron-filled air, waiting to see what would happen next.
The echo died into a silence that felt thicker than before. Imoria’s knuckles were white around the hilt. She listened for running footsteps, for the alarm her act might have triggered. Nothing came but the distant, ordinary sounds of the castle—a bucket clanging, a door swinging shut. The world had not cracked open. Not yet.
She sheathed the sword, her movements mechanical. The oil-smell clung to her hands, to her clothes. It was the smell of her place. Markus’s words, however, were a different kind of stain, one she couldn’t scrub out. Take what’s yours. A dizzying, terrifying thought. She knew the rules. The cost for ambition, for even the appearance of it, was measured in flesh and tongue.
She left the armory by the rear entrance, a narrow door half-eaten by rot. The cool outside air did nothing to clear her head. For three days, she mapped her movements through the castle with tactical precision, avoiding the guest wings, the sunlit courtyards, the formal galleries where the Kings of Thayne might stroll. She took her meals in the kitchen’s scullery nook, delivered reports to her father’s steward at dawn when the halls were empty, and trained only in the pre-dawn dark where the guards were too sleepy to notice. She became a ghost again, but now the haunting was inside her own skin.
Kathryn, meanwhile, bloomed in the attention. She commanded the solar, her laughter tinkling like over-watered crystal as she presided over embroidery circles that Imoria was expected to organize but never join.
“It’s settled then!” Kathryn’s voice carried down the vaulted hall as Imoria passed by, hidden in an alcove. “A full tourney for my namesday. Jousts, melees, the works. Father says nothing is too grand.”
Imoria pressed her back against cold stone, eavesdropping without shame. It was a survival skill.
“A fine idea,” came King Rhys’s booming, jovial lie. He was better at performance than governance. “Shows our strength. Our joy.”
“King Markus,” Kathryn said, her tone sweetening into a syrup. “You will ride in the lists, won’t you? Everyone speaks of your skill. It would be the highest honor if you carried my token.”
Imoria closed her eyes. She could picture it—Kathryn’s hopeful, flawless smile, the way she’d tilt her head just so.
Markus’s response was a beat too slow. “A tourney is a lively way to celebrate. My brother and I would be pleased to compete.” His voice was smooth, diplomatic, devoid of the heat from the armory.
William’s lighter tone chimed in. “Just don’t expect me to joust. I’ll happily judge the poetry contest or the drinking competition. Priorities, you understand.”
Polite laughter filled the room. The performance was flawless. They were all playing their parts on a stage Imoria had built and maintained. The ache in her chest was a familiar old bruise.
“Then you’ll wear my colors?” Kathryn pressed, a hint of a pout in her voice. “A ribbon from my sleeve? For luck?”
Another pause. Imoria imagined Markus’s face, the forced calm. “It would be my privilege, Princess,” he said finally. The words tasted like ash in Imoria’s own mouth.
She slipped away from the alcove, her boots silent on the rug. The punishment for distracting a suitor, for even hinting at rivalry, wouldn’t fall on Kathryn. It would fall on the one who sharpened the swords. She’d seen the stable master’s niece, a pretty girl who’d once smiled at a visiting duke, sent to the laundries with a crushed hand. The memory was a cold hand on her spine.
That evening, she found a rolled parchment on the narrow table in her room. It was a detailed schematic of the tourney grounds, with notes on rider ingress, crowd flow, and potential bottlenecks for security. No note accompanied it. The handwriting was unfamiliar, bold and angular. William’s, perhaps. It was a test. A piece of bait. She stared at it for a long time, her finger tracing the line marking the competitor’s tunnel. Then she tossed it into the small fire grate and watched the edges curl and blacken, swallowing the offering whole.
Two days before the tourney, the castle boiled with chaotic preparation. Imoria was in the stable yard, directing the placement of extra feed stores, when she felt a presence behind her. The air changed. She knew it was him without turning.
“You’ve been avoiding us,” Markus said. He stood close enough that his voice was for her alone, but he looked past her at a groom struggling with a stubborn mare.
Imoria kept her eyes on the crates. “There is much to do. My sister’s celebration requires efficiency.”
“Efficiency. Is that what you call it?” He shifted, and she caught the scent of leather and cold air. “I received the updated garrison rotations. The work is impeccable. Someone has a mind for logistics.”
She said nothing. A servant carrying a harness glanced their way, then quickly looked down and scurried past.
“Burning my brother’s sketch was rude,” Markus added, his tone almost conversational. “He worked hard on that.”
“I have no need of it.” Her voice was flat. “The arrangements are already made.”
“By you.”
“By the crown.” The correction was automatic, hollow.
He was silent for a moment. The yard was full of shouts and the clatter of wood, but between them stretched a quiet void. “I’m riding in the joust,” he said.
“I heard.”
“I’ll be wearing her ribbon.”
“As is fitting.” She finally turned to face him, her expression carefully blank. “Enjoy your sport, Your Majesty.”
His eyes searched her face, looking for cracks. She gave him none. The defiance from the armory was locked away, buried under a deeper, more primal instinct: survival. He must have seen it, the deliberate shutters behind her eyes. His own gaze hardened, not with anger, but with a kind of grim understanding.
“Right,” he said, the word clipped. He gave a slight, formal nod and walked away, joining his brother near the tiltyard fence. William shot her a curious, appraising look before turning back to Markus, clapping him on the shoulder.
Imoria let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. Her hands were trembling. She clenched them into fists, pressing the scars into her palms until the feeling passed. From across the yard, Kathryn floated into view, a vision in lavender silk, linking her arm through Markus’s with practiced ease. She laughed at something William said, her head thrown back. Markus smiled down at her. It was a good performance.
Imoria turned back to the crates. The sun was high, but she felt only the deep, familiar cold of the shadow she stood in. The tourney would come. He would ride with Kathryn’s token. The world would see exactly what it expected to see.
She hefted a crate of oats onto her shoulder, the weight solid and real, and carried it into the dark of the stable. The work, at least, was honest.
The work, at least, was honest. The straw dust and the smell of horse sweat didn’t lie to you. Imoria finished stacking the last crate just as a page in Rhys’s livery skidded into the stable doorway, his face pale.
“The king demands your presence,” the boy gasped, out of breath. “The tiltyard. Now.”
Demands. Not requests. She brushed oat dust from her grey wool sleeves and followed, her stomach a knot of cold lead. Demands were never good. The tiltyard was a frantic symphony of hammers and curses. Carpenters swore at listing fences. Pennants snapped in a brisk wind. King Rhys stood at the center of it all, a barrel-chested statue of impatience, watching a crew struggle to shore up the royal viewing box.
He didn’t look at her when she arrived. He gestured vaguely at the structure. “It’s listing to the left. See it? It’s an embarrassment. Fix it.”
She assessed the problem instantly. The foundation on the left side had sunk into the soft earth near the old watering channel. The men were trying to brace the top, which would only exaggerate the lean. “You need to lift the corner and pack the foundation with hardcore first,” she said, her voice flat. “Bracing it from above is a temporary solution. It’ll wobble dangerously with a full load.”
Rhys’s jaw tightened. He finally turned his gaze on her. His eyes, the same blue as Kathryn’s but clouded with perpetual discontent, swept over her work-stained dress. “I didn’t ask for an engineering report. I gave you a task. Make it stand straight. Use whatever men you need.”
“The method matters,” Imoria said, the words leaving her mouth before she could cage them. They tasted of the armory, of Markus’s voice saying you serve a lie. “If the foundation fails during the tourney, the entire box could collapse. With you and the guests inside. It’s not about appearance. It’s about structural integrity.”
A vein pulsed in Rhys’s temple. He took a step closer, his voice dropping into a low, venomous register meant only for her. “Do you think I am a fool? Do you think I don’t see you? Lurking. Correcting. Making your silent judgments.”
The air left the space around them. The hammering faded to a dull throb in her ears.
“I see the problem,” she said, forcing her tone to remain neutral, clinical. “I am telling you the solution. Ignoring the root cause is how the grain stores flooded. It’s how we lose things.”
It was the wrong thing to say. It was the true thing to say. She had invoked a failure, his failure, one she had warned him about. His face darkened, a storm settling into the fleshy lines around his eyes.
“You arrogant girl,” he hissed. The paternal pretense vaporized. “You have always thought yourself wiser. Sneaking around with your lists and your maps. You are a function. A tool. Do you understand? A tool does not lecture the hand that wields it.”
The old hurt, a cold, dense stone in her gut, flared into something white-hot. The mask of duty cracked. “A tool that you rely on to keep your kingdom standing. While you play at being king.”
The silence was absolute. For a heartbeat, there was only the wind and the distant call of a crow.
King Rhys’s hand moved faster than she could blink. It wasn’t a fist. It was an open-palmed strike, a brutal, dismissive arc that connected with the side of her face with a sound like wet leather snapping.
Her head jerked to the side. Lightning bloomed behind her eyes, a supernova of pain that radiated down her neck. The taste of copper flooded her mouth. She staggered, her boot slipping on the churned mud, but she didn’t fall. She straightened, slowly, bringing a hand to her throbbing cheek. Her skin felt on fire. She looked at him, not with tears, but with a perfect, empty clarity.
He was breathing heavily, his own hand now curled at his side. He looked shocked, then furious at his own shock. “You will fix the box,” he said, his voice trembling with rage. “You will do it the way I said. And you will not speak to me again unless I command it. Now get out of my sight.”
From the shadowed entrance of a nearby equipment tent, King William of Thayne stood frozen, a forgotten length of rope coiled in his hands. He had come to inquire about the arrangements for the Thayne retinue. He had seen it all—the tense conversation, the defiant set of Imoria’s shoulders, the brutal, casual violence of the blow.
He watched, stomach lurching, as Imoria lowered her hand from her reddening face. She didn’t look at her father again. She simply turned and walked away, her stride unnervingly steady, disappearing into the chaos of the yard. King Rhys wiped his hand on his thigh, as if cleaning off something foul, and shouted at the carpenters to work faster.
William didn’t move. The image was seared into him: the silver hair whipping with the force of the slap, the utter stillness that followed. This wasn’t a disciplined soldier. This was a king assaulting his own daughter for stating a fact. The rumors of Eltheria’s hidden brutality suddenly had a face, a sound, a taste.
He dropped the rope. He turned and walked, his pace quickening to a jog, then a full run, his boots pounding against the hard-packed earth. He found Markus in their assigned chambers, strapping on a vambrace for the afternoon’s final inspection.
“William?” Markus said, immediately sensing the disturbance.
William slammed the door shut, his breath coming in short gasps. “He hit her.”
Markus went very still. “What?”
“Rhys. In the tiltyard. He slapped her. Hard.” The words tumbled out. “She said something about a foundation, about the grain stores… he called her a tool. She called him out on playing king. And he just… he hit her. Like she was a disobedient servant.”
A muscle feathered in Markus’s jaw. The casual violence of it. The profound humiliation. The image of her in the armory, holding the sword between them, flashed before him. That fierce, contained pride. Now struck down for competence. “Where is she?”
“She walked away. Markus, he didn’t even look ashamed. He wiped his hand off.” William’s voice was thick with disgust. “This is what she lives with. This is the price for thinking.”
Markus stared at the wall, but he didn’t see it. He saw the phantom imprint on a cheek that should have borne a crown. The cold, calculating part of his mind instantly slotted the incident into a new strategy. The emotional part, the part he usually kept chained, roared to life.
“Alright,” Markus said, his voice dangerously quiet. He finished fastening the vambrace with a sharp, final click. “Change of plans.”