The harpsichord was older than the estate.
Sheila had heard this from the servants—the ones who had been with House Karmis since before her mother ran. The instrument had belonged to her great-grandmother, who had brought it from the northern provinces when she married into the family. The wood was dark, polished to a mirror shine, and the keys were ivory, yellowed with age.
Sheila hated it.
She sat on the bench, her back straight, her fingers hovering over the keys. The music was spread before her—a piece her mother had played at her first banquet, according to Duke Karmis. The notes were small, the tempo marked allegro ma non troppo. Fast, but not too fast.
The tempo was first played by the emperor of the Heptford Empire on the day of his coronation. It is said that after his performance he was approached by many asking why he played the piece only for him to answer that it was lively but its liveliness was not exaggerative, thus naming it the allegro ma non troppo.
She played the first measure. The notes came out wrong—too sharp, the rhythm stumbling.
She played it again. Wrong again.
She slammed her hands on the keys. The sound was discordant, ugly, the kind of noise that made the servants wince.
"I hate this song!"
Duke Karmis appeared in the doorway. He was sixty-three, broad-shouldered even now, his face weathered by years she couldn't imagine. He moved slowly, deliberately, the way old men moved when they had learned that haste was a luxury.
"Your mother played that piece at her first banquet," he said. "She hated it too."
Sheila turned on the bench, her cheeks flushed. "Then why did she play it?"
"Because some things must be endured." Karmis crossed the room, his footsteps muffled by the carpet. He stopped beside the harpsichord, looking down at the sheet music. "The nobles don't care about your feelings. They care about your performance. They want to see that you can suffer in silence."
"That's stupid."
"Yes. It is." He touched the edge of the music stand. "But it's also the way the world works. You can fight it, or you can learn to use it. Your mother chose to fight. She lost."
Sheila looked at her hands. The fingers were small, still childish, still soft. She thought of her mother's hands—she remembered them, vaguely, from before. Long fingers. Calluses on the tips from the harpsichord. A silver ring on the middle finger, the one with the Karmis crest.
"What was she like?" Sheila asked. "Really?"
Karmis was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was softer.
"Headstrong. Too smart for her own good. She saw through people the way others saw through windows." He paused. "She loved your father more than she loved her duty. That was her greatest strength. And her greatest weakness."
"Did the King love her?"
Karmis's face hardened. "The King does not love. He calculates. Your mother was a strategic asset. When she left, she became a liability."
Sheila felt something cold settle in her chest. Not fear—something else. Something that felt like the beginning of understanding.
"Is that what I am? A strategic asset?"
Karmis looked at her. His eyes were tired, older than the rest of him.
"You are a Karmis," he said. "That means you are whatever you need to be to survive. Remember that."
He left the room.
Sheila sat at the harpsichord, her hands in her lap. The sheet music stared up at her, the notes small and patient. She didn't play.
The journals were in a wooden box beneath her mother's portrait.
Sheila had found them by accident—looking for a book in the estate library, knocking over a stack of old newspapers, revealing the box hidden behind the shelf. The box was unlocked, the journals inside arranged by date, the leather covers soft with age.
She had been reading them for weeks.
The entries were dreamlike, poetic. Her mother wrote about "people who move the air like it's solid" and "the weight of stone that answers to thought." She wrote about "the fire that burns without consuming" and "the water that remembers what was lost."
Sheila thought her mother was a romantic. A dreamer. Someone who saw the world through a lens of metaphor.
But sometimes, late at night, she wondered.
Tonight, she sat on her bed, the journals spread around her, reading by candlelight. The flame flickered, casting shadows that seemed to move on their own. She turned a page, found an entry from the year before she was born.
"The King's Design requires a catalyst of pure intent. The banquet is not a celebration. It is an identification. They are choosing the lamb."
Sheila read the words three times. They didn't make sense. Catalyst. Intent. Lamb.
She copied them into her own journal, pressing hard with the pen.
Her room was at the top of the east wing, the windows looking out over the capital. At night, the city was a sprawl of lights—gas lamps in the noble districts, factory fires in the industrial quarter, and beyond them, darkness. The slums, where the poor lived. Where the light didn't reach.
Sheila pressed her forehead against the cold glass.
Somewhere out there, in the darkness, her brother was a ghost.
She didn't know he was alive. The Audit had told her he died in the fire that killed their parents. She had mourned him—cried until her throat was raw, until Duke Karmis had to carry her to bed. She had dreamed of him for months. In the dreams, he was always walking away, always disappearing into fog.
She touched the glass. Her breath fogged the surface.
"Leximus," she whispered.
The name felt strange in her mouth. She hadn't said it aloud in a long time.
The city didn't answer. The lights flickered. The fog rose.
Sheila turned from the window, climbed into bed, and pulled the covers to her chin. The journals were stacked on the nightstand. The candle guttered, the flame shrinking to a blue pinpoint before dying.
In the darkness, she felt something watching her.
Not a person. A presence. The stone walls, attentive. The air, alert.
She closed her eyes.
Mother wrote about a world I've never seen, she thought. But sometimes, when I'm alone, I feel it. Watching. Waiting.
I don't know what it is.
I'm afraid to find out.
But I'm also curious.