The castle taught me early what it meant to bleed without wounds.
The lords didn't need whips to cut us open. Their weapons were sharper: hunger, humiliation, silence. A snapped command could strip you down to bone faster than any blade. I learned to bow so low my spine ached, to hold my tongue until it turned to stone.
But at night, when the halls emptied and the echoes softened, I dreamed. My mother's voice haunted those dreams — sometimes gentle, sometimes urgent, sometimes nothing but a scream that tore me awake.
I still remembered her hands. They had been rough from work, but warm when they braided my hair. "Seraphina," she used to whisper, "you are not meant to kneel. One day the world will kneel for you."
And then she died.
No one told me how. They only came in the dark, dragged me from my bed, and when the sun rose, she was gone. They said she was sick, but her face had never looked sick. Her eyes had looked terrified.
That was the night I became the castle's servant. My eighteenth birthday was not a celebration — it was a sentence.
The days blurred together. Scrubbing floors until my fingers split. Carrying trays heavy enough to bow my shoulders. Bowing lower and lower each time the lords passed, praying their eyes slid past me.
But sometimes their eyes did not.
Lord Kaelen, youngest of the king's advisors, had eyes like a viper's — pale, sharp, unblinking. He watched me too often. When he spoke, his voice slid beneath my skin like cold water.
"You're growing," he said once, while I poured his wine. The words were nothing, harmless on the surface — but his smile was not.
That night, I locked myself in the servant's quarters and scrubbed at my skin until it burned.
Still, I endured. I endured because I had no choice. Because breaking would have meant nothing here.
But then… there were the other moments. The cracks in the castle's mask.
Once, when I cut my palm on a shard of glass, the blood spilled bright across the floor. I pressed it to a rag, trembling, but before I could hide it — the torches flickered. The flames bent toward me, stretching unnaturally, as though drawn to the sight of me. And in the corner of my eye, I swore I saw the stone walls tremble.
I told myself it was imagination. That grief and exhaustion had twisted my mind. But a part of me — the part that still remembered my mother's words — whispered otherwise.
Not ordinary. Not ordinary.
And then, always, there was him.
I told myself I wouldn't return to the dungeons. That the first time had been a mistake, a reckless impulse. But the nights grew longer, the silence heavier, and something in me ached. So I went.
Down, down, past the dripping stone steps, past the air that grew colder with every breath. Until I stood before the iron door again, my heart clawing against my ribs.
He was waiting. I didn't know how I knew — but I felt it before I saw him.
His eyes opened in the dark, burning like embers. The chains rattled as he shifted.
"You came back," he said, voice low, almost… amused.
I swallowed, forcing my hands to still. "I shouldn't be here."
"No," he agreed. "But you are."
The silence between us stretched, thick, unbearable. My pulse thundered in my ears. His gaze pinned me where I stood, and I hated how my body betrayed me — the way my breath quickened, the way my skin heated.
"What are you?" I whispered, the words escaping before I could choke them down.
For a moment, I thought he wouldn't answer. Then his lips curved, slow, dangerous.
"What are you?" he asked instead.
The question sliced deeper than any blade. I had no answer — not one I understood. My mouth opened, closed. I felt like a child caught in a lie.
He tilted his head, studying me with that unbearable intensity. "You don't know yet, do you?"
A shiver wracked me. "Know what?"
The chains groaned as he leaned forward, and for one heartbeat I swore the dungeon itself bent toward him. Toward us.
"That you are not theirs to break."
My blood went cold. My knees threatened to buckle. And in that moment — just for a flicker — I saw it. Not with my eyes, but somewhere deeper. A vision that seared across my mind like lightning: flames crawling at my fingertips, walls crumbling, the lords on their knees.
And me, standing above them.
I gasped, stumbling back. But when I blinked, it was gone. The dungeon was only stone again, the chains only iron, and he was still sitting in the shadows with that knowing smile.
I should have run. I should have slammed the iron door and never returned.
Instead, I whispered: "Who are you?"
His smile faded, and his voice dropped, soft as a prayer.
"A king."
The word echoed through the dungeon. Through my bones. Through something deeper, something I didn't have a name for.
And when the torchlight caught the scarred crown burned into his skin, I knew it wasn't a lie.