The morning after Lyra left quietly with the knights, the palace was more alive than usual. A different kind of storm brewed within its old walls, filled with pride, whispered complaints and lingering memories. Isolde, wearing a shimmering emerald silk gown that seemed to taunt the palace's faded beauty, strode into Valerius's private chambers.
She was a striking figure, just fifteen years old but already displaying the poise and sharp tongue that came from being a Grand Duke's daughter set for a royal marriage. Her face, usually hidden behind a mask of boredom was now flushed with anger while her cold blue eyes flashing with real fury. "Your Highness!" she snapped, her voice cutting through the quiet.
Valerius, still in the loose shirt he wore the night before, looked up lazily from his seat by the window. And a half-filled goblet of wine hung from his fingers, untouched. He studied her, her pale face was flushed, her lips were tight and her blue eyes blazed like flame. "My lady," he drawled with slow annoyance, "must you always arrive with such... fervor?"
Isolde ignored the taunt and then her fingers clenched the fabric of her dress tightly. "Fervor? I have just faced an outrage! An insult of the highest level!" She began pacing the room while her voice getting louder with every step. "That insufferable girl, Lyra, had the nerve to defy me! In front of the servants! She looked at me like I was a common street beggar!"
Valerius set his goblet down with a sigh after hearing her complains. "What has she done now?"
"Done?" Isolde turned to face him while her voice was rising. "She spoke back to me, Your Highness! She dared to defy me! Me! The daughter of a Grand Duke, your fiancée!" Her voice trembled with disbelief and anger. "I saw her yesterday, wandering the grounds like a common stable girl and I simply reminded her of her place!"
Valerius raised an eyebrow. "She said that?" Then he recalled his own unsettling encounter with Lyra, her cold, formal tone and her steady glare.
It had been disturbing.
"Yes! And she didn't even bow properly! She called me 'My lady' with such distance as if I were just some passing acquaintance, not your future wife! It was completely disrespectful! She is a servant's child, Your Highness! And she treats me as if I am beneath her!" Isolde's voice broke with frustration.
Valerius leaned back, speaking dryly. "Well, technically... even a half-princess outranks a duke's daughter, does she not?"
"What? Are you actually acknowledging her? You, Your Highness?"
Valerius's brow rose.
He remembered Lyra's recent behavior and her unsettling calm was not like her at all. "She certainly... changed," he mumbled, recalling her formal manner.
"Changed?" Isolde scoffed, pulling him from his thoughts. "Your Highness, she's become unbearable! Arrogant! She needs to be put back in her place before she truly shames us all!" She stomped her foot, her youthful anger contrasting sharply with Valerius's more detached demeanor. "You must talk to His Majesty! She should be sent away! To a convent! To the farthest corners of the kingdom! Anywhere but here where she can continue to mock and insult me!"
"Are you giving me orders now, my lady? Is that how this works?"
Isolde then hesitated while her voice dropping. "N-no. Of course not, Your Highness. I'm just thinking of our future."
"She embarrasses herself more than anyone else," Valerius said coolly, though his mind was already wandering, considering the whispers from the knights, the revised training drills and the presence of tactical scrolls in Lyra's chambers.
A quiet revolution was happening right under their noses.
"You think this is funny," Isolde accused. "You think I'm overreacting."
"I think," Valerius said slowly, standing from his chair, "that you've underestimated her."
The words lingered heavily between them then Isolde blinked. "You're actually defending her now, Your Highness?"
"No," he replied flatly. "I'm watching her and aren't you doing the same?"
Her face twisted with confusion and anger upon hearing that. "She is beneath us!"
"Perhaps," Valerius said, eyes narrowing, "but she's still a princess, is she not?"
"Just calm yourself, my lady," Valerius said firmly, though he showed little concern for her feelings. "I will... address this issue. Perhaps a private word is needed." He offered her a thin smile that didn't quite reach his eyes.
His thoughts were already racing. Lyra was no longer just an annoyance. She was now a factor, an unpredictable piece in the delicate power struggles of the palace. And unpredictable pieces, Valerius understood, needed to be managed or removed where he would have to keep a closer eye on her.
On the other hand, left alone in the still quiet of the palace, Marta moved through Lyra's wing with a heavy heart. The morning light filtered weakly through the dusty window of Lyra's room, highlighting the empty space where the young lady usually sat, studying her maps and texts. The bed was neatly made and her few books were stacked carefully on the small table. Everything was in order, just as Lyra had left it, a sign of her newfound attention to detail.
Marta's gaze then lingered on the empty chair, a deep sadness settling over her, heavy as the dust covering the palace's forgotten treasures. She remembered the Lyra who had first arrived, a timid, hopeful child with wide, searching eyes. That Lyra had been eager to please, quick to smile, even in the face of neglect. She would hum absent songs while playing with a stray cat in the courtyard or carefully draw crude pictures of flowers while her face lit with pure joy. No day passed without seeing her smile, however brief, a small, bright light in the palace's gloom but now, that Lyra was gone.
The child who rode out that morning was a stranger. Her face, once so expressive had become a blank mask. Her eyes, which used to hold a vulnerable longing now looked cold and distant, betraying no emotion. Marta had noticed the shift, feeling it like a chill in the air. The fall had done something, yes, but it wasn't just a physical recovery. The core of the cheerful, bright girl been stripped away, leaving behind a hardened, calculating young woman.
The morning sun streamed gently through the lattice windows, casting pale lines across the bed neatly made and untouched. Everything lay in careful order where maps stacked like a scholar's, ink bottles sealed and a small, cloth-bound journal sitting on the windowsill, spine cracked open to a blank page.
Marta's eyes lingered on it.
She remembered how, months ago, Lyra had filled journals with whimsical scribbles, sketches of gardens, imagined dances and stars beyond the palace roof. Now the pages were empty.
Then her fingertips brushed the spine but she didn't dare to open it.
Marta then turned to the chair by the desk where Lyra once spent hours swinging her legs like a child while humming softly. Her bright voice used to echo gently through the halls where even the guards had paused once or twice to listen.
But now… No footsteps. No laughter.
Marta walked to the window and stared down into the courtyard. The knights were long gone and the trail of hoofprints were already erased by the wind.
"She's strong now," Marta whispered, as if saying it would lessen the ache in her chest.
"Stronger than they ever let her be." but the words offered no comfort. She had watched Lyra grow and she had seen her try so hard to earn a word, a glance and a moment of acknowledgment from the royal family. She had sewn her own handkerchief for Valerius. She had memorized formal greetings for Seraphina and she had inquired about her father's health whenever the emperor passed by, even when he never responded but still, she had smile through it all.
Until the fall.
Marta just closed her eyes, fighting back her tears. The girl who rode out with the knights was not the girl she had cared for. That girl had either died or buried herself so deep that even she could no longer reach her.
"She doesn't even cry anymore," Marta murmured while her voice shaking. "Won't even asked about how the emperor is doing, how about her sister, Her Highness Seraphina and asked about the two princes."
She pressed a hand to the glass as though it could close the distance between them. "I just hope... when she finally wins whatever game she's playing, when she's powerful enough that no one can harm her anymore, she remembers what it felt like to be a child."
With that, Marta turned away and the room fell silent, empty of its occupant but heavy with the shadows she left behind. The palace itself seemed to breathe more slowly in her absence as if even its stones mourned the girl they had never truly seen.