Temperance
The gallery was empty when I returned to it, yet the weight of Selvara's words lingered as though she had carved them into the stone.
The Court does not keep queens. It consumes them.
Her voice followed me back to my chamber, threaded through the sound of my own footsteps. I shut the door, leaned against it, and let my breath shudder free. My words — then they'll remember the day I refused to kneel — had left my lips as though they belonged to someone else, someone braver, someone who believed the Court's memory could be defied.
Now, in the hush of my chamber, courage felt thinner.
I sank onto the edge of the bed, head bowed into my hands. The chamber fire guttered low, the shadows long. My reflection in the mirror above the desk looked unfamiliar: eyes too wide, lips pressed thin, hair falling loose as though I'd fought a storm.
Maybe I had.
The bond refused to leave me in peace.
All evening it pulsed, restless beneath my skin, like heat that could not decide whether it was comfort or threat. Every breath I drew seemed echoed — another chest rising, another heart beating just beyond mine.
I pressed my hand to my sternum, trying to steady the rhythm. It did not help.
And then — for the first time — I felt something else.
Not me. Not my memory. Something cold.
Snow.
Iron.
A weight pressed down, heavy as a crown lowered onto a brow. The hush of a hall that had gone silent not with fear, but with recognition.
The image cut off as suddenly as it came, leaving me gasping.
He had sent it.
Castiel.
I curled forward, hands gripping my knees, breath sharp. He could send through the bond as I had. He had chosen to show me that weight — not mercy, not laughter, not flame. A crown. A silence.
My nails bit into my skin. Why show me that?
The bond answered with nothing but steadiness, as though daring me to wrestle meaning from it myself.
Sleep did not come easily. When it did, it came not as rest, but as shadow.
I dreamed of the Hall of Ash.
The statues ringed me again, their faces carved in proud stillness. One by one, their lips moved — soundless, voiceless, but not lifeless. Their eyes shifted faintly in the firelight, glimmers of silver where there should have been only obsidian.
I spun slowly, trying to catch the words on their mouths. They whispered faster. Louder. I pressed my hands over my ears and still I could not block them.
Then one statue turned its head. Not a trick of light. Not a slip of my mind. The queen's gaze slid toward me, her lips parting.
I stumbled closer, desperate, my breath catching.
"What did they do to you?" I begged.
Her mouth shaped words I could not hear. The bond burned suddenly, hot as flame, dragging me back. I jolted awake, throat raw, lungs aching.
The chamber was dark. The fire had fallen to embers. My sheets clung damp with sweat. I sat upright, heart hammering. The bond thrummed wildly, not steady now but alive, alive, alive. It pulsed in my veins, burned in my throat, echoed in the hollow between my ribs.
I swung my legs to the floor, bare feet meeting the cold. And I felt him.
Not inside the chamber. Not beside me. But close. So close the silence bent around it.
"Castiel," I whispered, my voice ragged.
No answer. But the hush at the door thickened, full, heavy. I felt him there, felt the weight of his attention pressing through the bond.
"You heard me," I whispered again. "You always hear me."
Still no answer. Only the hum of presence, patient and cruel, refusing to release me.
I rose on shaking legs and stepped toward the door. My hand hovered over the latch. I thought of opening it, of seeing him there in shadow and silence.
Instead, I pressed my palm flat against the wood.
"I will not break," I whispered into the grain.
The bond answered violently, heat rushing through me like fire caught in oil. My knees buckled; I clung to the door to keep from collapsing. My lips parted on a gasp. Not words. Not speech. But an answer, undeniable.
My breath shook out of me. My palm slipped down the door until it fell away.
"I am not prey," I said, though my voice trembled.
The bond pulsed again, hot and steady.
And in the silence that followed, I knew he had heard.