After making sure no one was watching me slip into the woods, I returned the way I had come. The forest was eerily quiet, the leaves whispering only faintly under the night wind. My steps felt heavier with each stride, not from exhaustion but from the weight of the memories pressing on me.
It was already past two o'clock in the morning when I reached the small hole in the wall, the one passage I had discovered long ago and kept as my only secret. Crawling through it felt like stepping back into a cage, the fleeting taste of freedom vanishing the moment the tower's shadow loomed over me again.
I was back in my prison.
Gaïa lingered in the forest, hidden among the trees. She knew better than to follow me inside. The maids would beat her if they ever caught her, and I could not bear to see her hurt because of me. So she stayed out, her soft eyes glowing faintly in the moonlight as if promising she would wait.
I slipped into my room and lay on my bed, but sleep refused to come. Instead, my thoughts swirled restlessly around a single figure. Arthur.
His voice, his piercing black eyes, the way his smile had startled me, it replayed again and again in my mind. I had never met anyone like him. I had never spoken so freely with anyone but Gaïa. He had treated me like I mattered, even if only for a short while. My chest ached with the impossible wish that things could be different. That I could have friends, laugh at festivals, live like the people I had seen dancing.
But I knew better. It wasn't possible.
I wasn't locked in this tower because of some crime or mistake. No, it was because of what I was. What I carried in my blood. I could escape whenever I wished; with a little magic to change my appearance, I could vanish into the world. But her words stopped me.
My mother's voice. The last memory I had of her.
"The Duke knew I was a witch before he even spoke to me. He wanted something from me. I think that something is you. So flee when you are strong enough to protect yourself… and before it's too late."
She had discovered the truth too late. Witches lose their powers after giving birth, and she could not defend us both. She had been executed the day I was born, her secret revealed the instant everyone saw my mismatched eyes. My entire existence was the reason she had been condemned.
The memory still burned in me, but it also gave me strength.
I loved my mother. I loved her enough to hold on to her final words, even if they chained me to this place. That was why I stayed. Why I kept my head low, practicing my magic in secret: changing my eyes, levitating small objects, summoning faint light in the palm of my hand. Small tricks for now but one day, enough to fight back.
One day, I would avenge her.
One day, I would uncover why the Duke had wanted me alive, hidden away, instead of dead.
The night crept toward dawn, shadows stretching across my floor as the first light seeped in. My body finally grew heavy with fatigue, my eyes closing against my will. And then came the sound I dreaded, the favorite ritual of the maids. Buckets of icy water splashing, cruel laughter echoing through the halls.
Morning had come.
And with it, another day of captivity.