Before anything else, there were the screams—and a boy who survived by learning only to listen. In the Vantess castle, ruled by greedy nobles and a family that called cruelty discipline, resisting was forbidden. You endured, or you broke.
Nujah endured.
Nights in that house didn't begin with silence; they began with screams. He would climb into the wardrobe, stuff rags into every gap the sound could crawl through, and press a pillow hard over his ears. Upstairs, people shouted. In the cellar, bones snapped. Prayers turned to curses. He never once thought of fighting back. Survival meant being the smartest servant, the quietest shadow. It meant never reacting.
By morning he was sweat-soaked and hollow. He washed, steadied his breathing, and went to do what he always did—greet the rulers of the house: Zirelda, Cassar, and their eldest, Vareth. Their rooms were decorated like nobility's rooms; the rot lived in the beams and the people, not the carpets.
He knocked on Zirelda's door, a refined wood that looked more honest than anything inside.
"Enter," came the cold answer.
He bowed. "Is there an important task for me, Madam?"
"Your brother Vareth brought the wedding garments," she said to the mirror. "Bring them to me."
He didn't flinch, didn't question. He went to Vareth's door, gilded and grand, knocked once, and met a strip of laughter sharp as a knife.
"Take these to my mother. Now." The door slammed in his face.
Back in Zirelda's chamber, the air smelled of perfume and pride. Garments lay across the furniture like white flags that had never meant peace. Cassar lounged with wine-stained teeth, and a tailor hummed as if music could bless any of this.
Without looking at Nujah, Cassar said, "That useless brother of yours—Insect Thoren. Get him out of the cellar. Clean him up. Dress him. We've got work to do."
Permission given. Sentence pronounced.
Nujah went down to the basement.
He found blood first. Silence next. And Thoren—still, and finally free.
Relief came like air, awful and honest. He moved gently, as if the dead could ache, and slid Thoren into the old burial box the family kept for secrets. Outside the walls, in the peasant cemetery, he paid a bribe and watched the dirt close. He said nothing. There were only three Vantess children now.
Home felt too quiet when he returned. As he reached the stairs, he heard a muffled sob from behind a locked door—Lyra's room. He knocked softly.
"Lyra? Open the door. I just want to talk."
Silence. Then a whisper, thin and shaking. "Go away…"
"Please, I just—"
"I DON'T WANT YOU! I DON'T WANT ANY OF YOU!"
Words can cut. He let them. His palm rested on the cold wood for a heartbeat, then fell. Something was wrong—more wrong than the usual wrong—and he still didn't know all of it.
The tailor was leaving Zirelda's room, pleased with his skill, when Nujah went in.
"The garments?" Zirelda asked, eyes still in the mirror.
He handed them over. "Thoren is dead," he said.
Everything paused. The tailor stopped humming. Cassar turned his head. Zirelda sighed, almost wistful. "What a pity. He was fun to break."
Nujah's jaw tightened. "Who are these garments for?"
The slap landed quick and practiced. His head snapped to the side.
"Don't concern yourself with what isn't yours," Zirelda said. "Unless you want to end up like your brother."
"She's six," he said, the number leaving his mouth like something he wasn't allowed to own. "Six."
Her fingers closed around a cane, arm lifting—
The door opened.
Vareth entered with the calm of a prince and the eyes of a butcher. "Enough," he said. "Lord Alvaren Deyros will be here soon with his guard. I won't have blood on the rugs."
He grabbed Nujah by the hair and shoved him into the hall. "Go. Do what you do in that little hole you call a room."
"Now there are only three children left," Zirelda murmured as the door closed.
From the courtyard, a voice carried upward: "In celebration of Lady Seren Valinea, sister to King Arthur, a festival shall be held this day. All citizens welcome."
Nujah's breath caught. Seren Valinea. If there was any justice left in this city, it wore her name.
He ran.
In his room he lifted the mattress and checked the wooden decoy he had built for nights exactly like this—his size, his clothes, a bottle tipped on the floor. The lie looked like sleep. Cloak on, out the window, down the wall, into the morning crowd.
The Church of Calvenhold boiled with people trying to glimpse holiness. He didn't have time for lines. He took the alley, the handholds, the upper stone. His arms burned as he climbed to a high window and slid inside.
The private study was all hush and paper. Seren Valinea wrote at a desk. Two guards stood watch. The floorboard betrayed him with a single creak.
He dropped to his knees before their order finished. Hands behind his head. Forehead to the wood. "I'm not an assassin! Please—this is life or death!"
"DOWN!"
"I am down," he said into the boards. "Please. Just hear me for one minute."
Seren looked up. A black habit stitched with gold. Eyes that had seen too much and still chose to see. She lifted a hand. The guards held.
"My name is Nujah. I was born into the Vantess family, but I am not one of them," he said. "I buried my brother today. They're preparing my little sister for marriage. She's six. To Alvaren Deyros."
Silence drew tight around them.
"Leave us," Seren said.
The doors closed. She crossed the room and knelt—she, a high sister, knelt—and lifted his chin with a steady hand. "Look at me."
He did.
She knew.
"Sit down. You don't have to be afraid in this room."
He took a chair on shaking legs. Her voice wasn't command and it wasn't a cage; it was quiet that let him breathe.
"Do you have proof?" she asked, already reaching for a fresh sheet of parchment.
"I saw the dress. They didn't bother to hide it," he said. "Vareth said Alvaren's men are already on the way. An hour. Maybe two. Five at most if the roads snarl."
The quill pressed harder. "That alone violates the law," she said, and began to write the kingdom into motion. She called for wax and a seal, then drafted what needed saying in words that would carry: a six-year-old prepared for a forced marriage to Lord Alvaren Deyros; a dead boy hidden; a house of repeated abuse. She named a witness: Nujah Vantess, sixteen. She asked—no, required—immediate investigation and royal intervention.
When it was done, she tied the scroll to the leg of a black raven with a red ribbon and whispered, "Castle Arthur." The bird launched like a stone from a sling and was gone.
"How long until Alvaren's men can force the issue?" she asked.
"One to two hours. Five if the roads bless us," Nujah said.
"I have a hundred sworn soldiers," Seren said. "Enough to hold, not to conquer. If this breaks before the Crown moves, we could lose Lyra—and more." She considered, decided. "Can you return unseen?"
"I left a puppet in my bed. If no one has checked, yes."
"Good. I'll come openly. You'll stay hidden until you must act," she said. "I'll need a signal—silent and quick. When they near your house, send a single flash of light into the sky. Once. That will be enough."
She spread a map on the desk. He marked the Vantess estate like a wound. "Exit the way you came," she said. "If Alvaren learns you left, one of his men will make an example of someone."
He knew how that sentence ended. "No amount of thanks would be enough, my lady."
"I haven't done anything yet," Seren said, with a small, fierce smile. "Save it for when we succeed."
He slipped out the window and into the city's stone and noise.
Back in his room, the paper he had wedged behind the door fell exactly as he'd left it. No one had entered. From the balcony the road looked normal, but the animals sounded wrong—ten times louder, as if they, too, were warning him.
Firewood would be noisy; he took his own clothes instead, a lighter, a small dagger, and a vial he had once stolen from his mother and filled with harmless water. He went over the balcony to a tree, dropped to the ground, and blended into the crowd.
Nine minutes later, a black carriage rolled up the main road with too many riders for a visit and just enough for theft. He slipped behind a house and lit the bundle of clothes. Smoke clawed the sky—a narrow column, the kind of signal you choose when there is only time for one.
Seren Valinea was already there, hidden in a cloak among the people, her plain-clothed soldiers scattered like seeds. When the smoke rose, she breathed out, stood, and the men and women sworn to her rose with her.
The carriage came on.
Seren stepped into the street and made a line with her body, her soldiers flanking her in silence. The driver reached for his whip. Steel whispered. Somewhere beyond those shutters, a child's wedding dress waited in a room that called itself noble.
Nujah watched from shadow, every muscle a wire, as justice and power faced each other in the road and the city finally held its breath.