The heavy door swung open before Lucifer could finish arranging whatever quiet plan he had been forging in the shadowed corner of Isabel's room. A slice of daylight cut across the floorboards and a young, insolent figure filled the doorway — Princess Joan, same age as Isabel, flanked by two maids who moved like predatory shadows at her command.
"You didn't tell me you now house a man in your room," Joan sneered, voice high and sour with mockery. "It's not the evil snake anymore — now you keep a man."
Isabel's chest tightened. The room, which minutes before had felt like the only shelter she owned, seemed suddenly too small. She looked from Joan to the maids and back again, throat dry. "What do you want?" she asked. "Why are you doing this?"
Joan's lips twisted. She stepped forward with all the practiced cruelty of a child who has learned to use power like a toy. "I already have everything you had — your life, your father, your kingdom. What else could I possibly want?" Her voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper as she leaned close and let the words curl into Isabel's ear: "I want you to disappear."
A hand snapped out. "You —" Isabel started, but the maid at Joan's side had already seized her, pushing her to her knees. Panic flared hot and bright across Isabel's face; she struggled, but small hands and silk bound her attempts at escape.
"Drag her out," Joan commanded, and the maids obeyed, their faces blank with obedience.
"Stop." The single word cut through the room like a blade. Lucifer's voice — low, controlled, and full of an authority that did not belong to the place — stopped them in their tracks.
Joan's head snapped up. For the first time she looked beyond her own fury to the figure standing beside the window: tall, composed, and somehow luminous in the cold noon light. Her eyes narrowed, interest and defiance warring across her young face. "And who are you to stop me?" she demanded, arrogance bright on her tongue.
"I—" Lucifer began, but another maid slipped in behind Joan and whispered urgently in her ear. The color drained from Joan's cheeks; she paused, calculating. Then, with a flick of her wrist, she dismissed her maids. They melted back into the corridor like wet shadows.
Lucifer reached for Isabel and helped her to her feet. His touch was firm but gentle, as if testing whether she might break. Isabel's breath came in small, rattling bursts; her eyes reflected fear, but beneath it, a stubborn ember of something else — desperate hope.
"What will you do?" she whispered once they were alone again. "If Joan runs to the king, if they find us together… we'll be killed."
Lucifer's face softened for the smallest of moments. The hardness in him — the thing that had kept him watchful in the dark — eased, revealing something older and wearier. "You don't have to be afraid. I will protect you," he said, and in his voice there was a promise that felt like both danger and sanctuary.
Isabel looked at him, the question trembling on her lips. "Will you run away with me? Tonight?"
He paused, considering the small, fierce creature before him, and the world they both would have to leave behind. Moonlight would mean exposure; daylight would mean no escape at all. "Anywhere but here," she added before he could answer. The words were small and clear. "Anywhere not here."
That night, the palace slept — or pretended to. The halls drank the moonlight and the torches guttered as if exhausted. At the stroke of midnight, when candles burned low and even the guards' boots seemed to whisper softer on cold stone, the alarm was raised.
Guards surged through the princess' harem like a tide. Torches bobbed, voices barked orders, and the clatter of armor ricocheted off marble. They searched every chamber, every hidden nook in the queen's apartments. They rifled cushions and overturned rugs until dust rose like memory itself.
But they did not find the princess. She was gone.
All that remained in Isabel's room was a small handkerchief — folded and placed on the windowsill as if it were a signal, as if someone had deliberately left the faintest impression that a choice had been made. The handkerchief smelled faintly of jasmine and smoke.
Outside, beyond the palace walls, the night swallowed two figures as they hurried toward a carriage waiting in the servants' lane: Isabel, breathless and pale, clutching a small bundle to her chest; and Lucifer, every inch the shadow-born guardian, his eyes scanning the black for threats, his jaw set like iron.
Inside the palace, panic would bloom by morning. A lost princess, whispers of treachery, a king's rage — and somewhere in that storm, two fugitives running toward a future they could not yet name.