Yara feared she might get used to the silence.
Not true silence—there was the soft hiss of torches in sconces, the muffled groan of some ancient timber beam behind the walls, the faint clatter of footsteps that never seemed to draw near—but the kind of silence that pressed like velvet around her throat, heavy and suffocating.
It was the silence of being contained.
The silence of not knowing what was happening.
Kellan had left her alone after Aira came to rant a few days ago, and the duo had gone off to who knows where.
The room remained beautiful. That made it worse.
She had paced it so many times that she knew every cruel detail by heart: the velvet curtains that never opened onto anything but a wall of carved stone, the gold-flecked tiles patterned into spirals that mocked her, the carved bedposts draped in silks so soft they burned her skin with their falseness.
A prison wrapped in luxury was still a prison.
Worse, because it whispered: submit. Pretend. Play doll.
