I shouldn't be up here.
Not because it's forbidden, though technically, yes, it is. The guards turn a blind eye to a lot when you threaten to throw yourself off the balcony often enough. But because the wind this high has claws. Cold, invisible ones that snatch at my skirts like they're trying to pull me off the edge for good.
The roof of the west watchtower isn't built for women in nightdress. Especially not one balancing on cracked tiles in slippers two sizes too thin, with a stolen bottle of ink wedged in the crook of her elbow and a stack of royal family portraits clutched against her chest.
The silk of my gown flaps around my ankles like a live thing. The hem's already ruined. Ash-stained, torn where I stepped wrong near the furnace. I crouch anyway, hissing as the edge of the tile digs into my heel. Balance like a gargoyle. That's what I am now. One of those stone beasts carved by drunk artisans centuries ago to ward off demons, only now I'm the one warding people off. Kiana, the Scourge of the West Wing.
I pin the first portrait to the crumbling outer wall. The High Queen. Her painted eyes gaze past me, unbothered and blank. Regal. Detached. The kind of woman whose silence weighs more than any slap.
Perfect, I think. Too perfect.
I take the brush between my teeth and fight with the cork. My fingers are already stained black from earlier. The smell of the ink is sharp and oily. The bottle sloshes as I manage to get it open with a pop, nearly dropping it. My wrist jerks. A black splash hits my collarbone.
Good. Let it stain.
I dip the brush, press it to the parchment, and draw a fat, bushy moustache right across her highness's face. That would make a courtier faint. Then devil horns — small ones. I'm not without manners. Just honest.
"I warned you," I mutter, bristles between my lips.
Another gust of wind yanks my braid sideways, and I nearly drop the entire bottle. I laugh. Out loud. Because if I don't laugh, I'll scream.
One by one, the portraits go up.
The King. Smirking. As if nothing in the world could ever reach him.
Lord Henrick, that powdered skeleton of a man who tried to pawn me off to his dull-eyed son last spring.
I am tired of being seen as a breeding tool. They look at me and see lineage. A womb with a face. Not the thoughts in my head, not the fire in my chest when they talk about heirs and alliances like I'm not standing right there.
I clench my hands until my nails dig in. Until the sting sharpens me. I stop holding back.
The royal advisors, whose names I never bothered to learn — all men who speak of politics like it's war and of me like I'm a storm they can outwait. Each one gets the same treatment. Ink. Ridicule. A small personal touch. On one, I scrawl coward. On another, parasite. On Lord Henrick's chin, I draw a leech with a monocle.
I work until my fingers cramp, until the ink freezes stiff on the brush, until the wind finally blows like it's offended.
And I step back.
They flap like flags — the royal family and their parasites — strung along the tower like laundry on display. Tomorrow, every foreign dignitary and noble worm attending the summit will see them from the courtyard.
It's petty. It's dangerous. It's most certainly treason.
But it's mine. This one thing. My little scream against the silence.
When I climb down the old servant's ladder, the iron is ice against my palms. One rung slips under my hand, rust-flaked and sharp. Blood beads and trails down my wrist. My heel cracks open on the edge of a stair. Again. Blood slicks my slipper.
A sound slips out—involuntary. Half a breath, half a whimper.
Don't focus on it. That's the rule.
If I let my mind sit with the pain it'll spread. So I don't let it. I force my thoughts forward.
Step. Grip. Step.
By the time I reach the garden gate, my arms are trembling so badly I can barely lift the latch. My lips sting, raw from the cold air, split at the corners like paper. Each breath scrapes.
The guards turn. Their eyes snap to the shape I've become—bloodied, panting, and not where I'm supposed to be. One freezes. The other's mouth opens like he's about to shout, but no sound comes.
clang.
His halberd slips from his grip and crashes against the stone. Then I'm seized. Dragged by the elbows like a common drunk pulled out of a filthy tavern. One of them mutters, "God save us."
Let God try.
If there's any salvation to be found, it's going to come from the fire I'm about to light. And no prayer is going to stop that.
Ten minutes later, I'm standing in the middle of the grand hall, ink-stained and unapologetic. The hall is warm. Blindingly bright. Golden chandeliers drip their cold light down onto polished marble floors that gleam like they've never known a scar.
Everything here is too clean. And I look like a woman dragged from a battlefield.
My father sits on his chair — no, his throne. It didn't used to be one. Back then, it was just the old seat by the fire, the one he'd lean back in while spinning tales that made my eyes go wide. I used to sit beside him, small hands curled around my knees, laughing at his voices and made-up kings and impossible beasts.
Before I grew up. Before I learned to speak truths that didn't flatter him.
Before my opinions turned sharper than his blade.
Now, he doesn't look at me like a daughter.
Now, that chair is just another seat of judgment.
He doesn't say a word at first. His fingers grip the armrests until the veins rise in ridges. There's a twitch in his jaw — the same one that used to flash before he yelled at courtiers. Never me. Not back then.
I was still his girl. The one he'd lift into his lap, even when I was too big, just to hear me laugh. The one he'd call "stubborn" like it was something to be proud of.
"Kiana," he says finally, voice low and frayed, like he's holding it back with iron chains. "What in the God's name have you done?"
Not why.
Not how.
Just what.
He's already decided the answer is something unforgivable. Something that can't be undone.
And maybe it is.
I meet his eyes. Ink stains my fingers, my gown, my collarbone. My braid's come loose. Blood dots my left slipper. I look like ruin.
I smile. Sweet. Poisonous. "Art, Father." I speak up with confidence. Because destruction, when done right, is nothing short of creation.
And just like that, the silence shatters.
The councilmen behind him shift like startled cattle. One of them coughs into his sleeve, like that'll cover the tension, as if the thick taste of scandal in the air can be swallowed down politely. Another — Lord Alkas, I think — makes a strangled noise in the back of his throat. A whimper? A gag? Could be either. Hard to tell with men who hide behind powdered wigs and scented gloves and can't stomach rebellion unless it's served in gold-leafed parchment.
But I'm not watching them.
I'm watching him. My father doesn't speak. He just stares. And God, what a stare.
His face is carved from old stone — sharp and austere, like the statues lining the war memorial courtyard. Beauty that was never soft. Square jaw, high cheekbones, a scar across his right temple that splits the grey in his hair like a crack through marble. Once, when I was young and stupid, I thought that scar made him look heroic.
Now it just looks like a warning.
His eyes are a colder shade than I remember. Steel grey, pale as the winter river. They used to be warm, once, when I brought him pressed flowers or read too loudly from books I didn't understand just to get his attention. But now, they don't blink. They just bore into me like twin spearpoints trying to carve out whatever part of me still dares to laugh.
His knuckles twitch on the armrests of the throne-like chair. Not clenched. Not raised. But twitch. Like his body wants to react but his title holds it in check.
Those are the same hands that used to brush my hair back when I came to him, scraped-kneed and crying over garden scrapes. I remember the calluses. The leathered strength. Now those hands look older. Bonier. The veins beneath the skin are darker now.
He rises slowly.
The motion is all power, all practiced restraint you only get from decades of command. He wears that velvet-trimmed coat. Deep navy, embroidered with the golden sigil of our house —the Halewynn hawk. His shoulders are still broad, his posture rigid. His boots gleam from being polished by someone else's hands.
I've seen him stand like this before.
At executions.
At declarations of war.
And once, when I called Rose a snake in front of a room full of nobles and refused to take it back.
"I want the room cleared," he says. Not loud. Not angry. Just sharp. Sharper than any blade in the house armory.
No one hesitates to move. Even the oldest councilor who grumbles about stairs and gout and tradition moves as if lit from beneath. They don't bow. They don't look back. They just disappear. They were never really there to begin with.
Just like that, we're alone.
Me.
The Duke of Halewynn.
He steps down from the dais. Measured. Every step screams that this man doesn't rush. He decides. His boots click on the stone like the ticking of a judgment clock, and each footfall tightens something in my spine.
I don't move. I won't. My legs ache from standing too long. My lips sting from the cold. My body is shaking, but I hold my ground.
I am not the child he remembers.
And I am not sorry.
He stops in front of me.
God. He smells like cloves and steel. Like old war rooms, dried ink, polished weapons. Like the stories I used to wrap myself in until I learned he only told the ones where kings never bled, and monsters never looked like men in court robes.
I hate that I still remember the scent.
"Do you know what you've done?" he asks. The voice is different now. Lower. Strained. Almost… tired.
I look him straight in the eye. "Yes," I say. No hesitation. No apology hiding behind my words.
"You've humiliated your house."
I shrug, the smallest gesture I can manage. It's all I have to give. "Better us than the kingdom."
His hand moves before I register it.
I don't flinch.
He doesn't strike me. He wouldn't.
He grips my chin. His fingers press just beneath my jaw. They're colder than I expected. I taste the faint tang of dust and parchment on his skin, the ghost of ink stains from a lifetime spent signing edicts—those ruthless sentences that ended lives with nothing but a stroke of a pen.
His eyes scan my face like he's searching for something buried. The girl I used to be, maybe. Or the part of me that still believes in him, buried somewhere beneath the soot and defiance. He'll find nothing.
But still, he looks.
And I wonder, as his eyes flicker — just barely — whether this hurts him too. Whether somewhere deep beneath that steel-clad expression, he mourns me, the way I once mourned him.
He steps back, just enough to make the space between us feel like a chasm. And I feel colder for it. "I grieved your mother less loudly than you shame this house," he says. Soft. Precise. Clean as a blade across the ribs.
My mouth tightens.
Mother. My mother.
I never saw her. Never really.
All this time, she lived in the stories my father, grandfather and brothers told. And in the big portrait hanging in the hall, the one that leads to Father's office.
She was confident. Graceful. Like a beautiful flower. Something untouchable and perfect, frozen in time.
But they never talked about losing her.
They never let me feel that loss. I never felt that loss until a certain someone came into our lives and shattered the house of glass we'd built around ourselves.
Now I see it clearly—everyone just acted like it didn't hurt, so maybe it would hurt less.
But pain doesn't disappear because you don't speak its name.
I wonder sometimes if Mother would have supported me in this.
Would she see the fight in me?
I don't know.
But I hold onto that question like a lifeline.
He studies me again. Not like a father. Like a strategist trying to find the crack in an enemy's armor. He's taller than me, always has been, but tonight he feels taller. Like the weight of the duchy has folded itself into his spine and lifted him with it.
"I taught you history," he says. "You know what happens to women who think ink and pride are enough to change the world."
"I know," I say quietly. "They die."
He nods once. "Or worse — they become useful."
That strikes something inside me. The way he says it is not a threat. But I know that look. That subtle lean of the head. The flex in his jaw. That's the tone he uses with generals who disappoint him. That's the warning he gave men before he buried them in politics so deep they forgot they had spines.
He's not angry anymore.
He's planning.
I hate this part more than the yelling. When his voice turns calm. When his mind starts turning faster than mine. When the father becomes the duke and the duke starts calculating just how to weaponize his daughter's scandal.
I speak first. I don't know why — maybe to shatter the look on his face before it becomes something I can't unsee.
"You're not going to ask why I did it?"
He raises an eyebrow. "I already know."
"No. You don't."
"I know you've always loved an audience."
That burns more than I expect. I laugh, bitter. "God, you really think this was a tantrum?"
"Wasn't it?" he snaps. "Defacing royal portraits the night before a summit? Dousing yourself in ink like some mad poet trying to make the evening pamphlet? You think that changes anything?"
"It should," I hiss. "But it won't. Because all of you keep pretending nothing happened. As if clapping your hands for the crown will absolve what they did." I step closer. My head hurts, eyes burn, but tonight I won't stop until I am done saying everything no one dared to say for once. "My grandfather was ruined. Destroyed by a lie. Stripped of his title, his name was dragged through the mud like filth. And no one—not you, not your beloved court, not the royals who dine with you—no one cared. Not even when it took his life."
His jaw clenches. "Kiana—"
"Why are you so calm, father?" My voice cracks. "Why are you not angry? Is it because it's been long enough that you've forgotten what they did? Or is it just easier to smile and shake hands with the men who murdered your father? Tell me, Father. Is it memory that's failing you—or did the royals finally buy the great, unshakable Duke of Halewynn?"
That does it. His hand connects with my cheek before I even realize what's happening. My face whips to the side. The sting doesn't come right away. First, there's just the sound. That awful sound of skin meeting skin. Then the heat floods in. Blooming across my cheek like fire beneath the skin.
He's staring at his hand like it acted on its own. And I… I'm just standing here, stunned and too proud to let my fingers rise to my face. But my throat is tight. My breath is ragged. Not because of the pain, but because—
He's never done that before. My brothers never raised a hand. The servants never dared. Even when I did things truly unforgivable.
The nobles only ever hissed behind fans.
No one dared.
But he did.
He dared.
I straighten slowly, cheek burning, jaw trembling from not just the slap — but everything in it. The grief, the disappointment, the shame he doesn't want to name. It tastes bitter in the back of my throat.
When I look up at him again, I don't see regret or sorrow. Just… weariness.
He speaks again. "Your grandfather was my father. Don't speak to me like I forgot him." I see the memories flicker behind his eyes—faces, long gone but never truly gone. He's a son carrying his own ghosts. But it doesn't soften the edge in his voice. Because even ghosts don't excuse what's been done.
"Then act like it!" I hiss. "You let them erase him from history. You played nice for titles and treaties while the truth rotted in silence." The words taste bitter on my tongue, but I don't care. Someone has to say it.
His jaw clenches. "You don't know everything."
"Neither did he when they came for him."
Another silence.
"I knew they were watching us. I kept us alive. You think I wanted peace? No. I chose it, because war with the crown would've buried more than a name." He leans forward slightly, eyes locked on mine, fierce and tired all at once. "It would've taken you. Your brothers. Everything. You call me a traitor? Then you have no idea what sacrifice is."
I want to spit back something cruel. Something that'll wound as deeply as that slap. He should've at least tried to defend him, to fight for us, for everything. But all I say is— "I'd rather be buried with truth than live above it with shame."
He closes his eyes for a breath.
Then, "Get out."
"Father—"
"I said get out." His voice is quieter this time, but it slices deeper for it. "Before I say something I can't take back."
My breath catches. Not at the words—no, I've heard worse. But at the way he says them. There's still a part of him fighting not to hate me.
I turn.
And when I reach the doors and place my hand on the cold brass handle, I don't look back. Because I know if I do—if I see his face now—I'll break. And I am done breaking for men who taught me how to bleed in silence.
The doors open.
And I leave him there. Alone in his throne room of ghosts.
A father and a daughter on opposite sides of a ruin.