Another click of the lock was subtle, not the decisive turn of Gaius's key, but a furtive, scraping release.
Aurelia flinched, pressing herself harder against the wall as the door swung inward.
She wondered why she had so many visitors today?
A silhouette slipped inside, backlit by the torchlight of the hall.
It was Amora. She closed the door swiftly and leaned against it, her chest rising and falling with quiet haste. In her hands were two simple wooden bowls, steam curling faintly in the cool, pink-tinged air.
"Aurelia?" she whispered, her eyes adjusting to the gloom. "I… I am sorry for what he is doing to you. Here. Take this."
She crossed the room and thrust the bowls into Aurelia's limp hands. One held a thick, plain broth. The other, a mash of oats and dried fruit. The smell, humble and real, made Aurelia's stomach clench with a need that shamed her.
She didn't move, just stared at the food, then at Amora's anxious face.
Seeing her hesitation, Amora's expression tightened. She snatched the spoon from the broth, brought it to her own lips, and took a deliberate swallow.
"It's not poisoned. See?" She handed the spoon back, her movements sharp with impatience. "You must eat. You must stay… alive in here."
"Why?" Aurelia breathed, the word barely audible.
"Because I do not want to be flayed alive by King Tenebrarum," Amora hissed, her gaze darting to the door as if it might hear her. "Helping you is a risk, but letting you perish is a death sentence for me. So I will help you. Quietly."
The title hit Aurelia like a physical blow. "Tenebrarum… is king?"
The world seemed to lurch. The old king dead, the throne seized—it had happened in the blink of an eye, while she was trapped in this pastel hell. Her mind spun with the implications, but a sharper, more immediate question cut through the spiral.
"Why are you giving me this?" Aurelia insisted, her voice gaining a thread of strength. "You serve Gaius or should I say Calvus."
Amora's face hardened, the mask of reluctant charity slipping.
She leaned in close, her voice dropping to a venomous whisper. "You are not important. You are a vessel. A pretty, troublesome wraith I would happily help him break if it were only you."
Her eyes flicked down to Aurelia's belly with a look of cold calculation. "But the child you carry is. That baby is a symbol. A claim. A future piece on the board. That is what must be preserved. Not you."
She straightened up, her message delivered. "Do not waste the food. Do not make me regret this."
Without another word, she turned and slipped back out the door. The lock turned again, a soft, definitive click.
Aurelia stood frozen, the warm weight of the bowls in her hands feeling suddenly grotesque. She was not being fed. The child within her was being provisioned. She was merely the jar, cracked and weakening, meant to carry a precious, political cargo to term.
Slowly, she sank to the floor. The aroma of the broth, once tempting, now churned her stomach. She set the bowls down, untouched, and wrapped her arms around the life inside her—a life that was no longer just hers, but a commodity in a war she did not understand.
Fine.
She would not touch his pie.
This, at least, was her choice, however bitter
She ate. Slowly. Each spoonful was a submission to a new, degrading logic.
A hollow, aching question began to pulse behind her eyes, growing louder with every chew.
Why did I ever escape the palace?
Tenebrarum atleast cared a little, it was better than this princess cage.
Her mind cried remembering everything she faced in that palace, the insult, the regret everything good and bad.
There, she had been a possession, but a prized one.
She could choose which silks to wear, which sunlit gallery to pace, which book to pull from a shelf. She could refuse a dish, and a dozen others would take its place. She had the ghost of choice, the architecture of a life.
She had a monster who, in his terrifying way, cherished her.
Here, she was the true meaning of nothing. A vessel in a pastel cell. A container for a future bargaining chip. Gaius didn't cherish the child; he calculated its value.
Her little freedom there had been a beautiful, terrible illusion. Here, there was no illusion. Only the raw, splintering truth of the trap.
She had traded a dragon's hoard for a rat's hole. She had fled a gilded, possessive love for a bare, consumptive hate.
A dry, heaving sob wracked her frame. No tears came. She was parched of everything but regret.
She lay down on the cold floor, curling around the only warmth she had left, her back to the perfumed horror of the room.
You fool.
The silence hissed, echoing in the hollow of her chest. You proud, reckless fool. And now your child will pay the price.
She closed her eyes, seeking refuge in a shallow, fitful sleep. It was a brief escape, a small death of consciousness. When she opened her eyes again, it was still morning again.
The thin, gray light had not brightened. It did not so much illuminate as it did expose. It seeped from the high vent with a relentless sameness, a dusty, joyless glow that stripped the room of any lingering pretense of softness. The pink walls looked faded and tired, their cheerfulness now a hollow mockery.
A deep, weary frustration settled in her chest. She wondered why, when you desperately needed a day to pass, time seemed to thicken and slow. When you prayed for the sun to hurry its arc into merciful night, the minutes stretched into an endless, taunting crawl.
Will I be ever free from here? Or is this the home the heavens have planned for me?
I'm sure even the heavens have forsaken me, I'm I to pay for my parents sin...
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To be continued...