Chapter 3: The Shard and the Shadow
Hannah looked at the maid. In any cheap story, the heroine would beat her villainous maid into submission, or bribe her to switch sides, but Hannah did not care for any of that.
Maybe it was the fever, still burning hot behind her eyes. Maybe she had truly gone insane.
She was scrawny, small, stunted—so many words for the thing they called Hannah Bennington. At fourteen, she stood barely a hundred and forty centimeters tall, her bones sharp beneath skin stretched thin by constant hunger.
The maid was a full-grown woman, twenty years old, a solid hundred and sixty-five centimeters of bitter, brute muscle.
She should have been married years earlier, had it not been for her family's debt; she had been stuck choosing between wedding a filthy old man for a dowry, or working herself to the bone in this godforsaken county.
Hannah stepped closer.
The maid's eyes widened.
"What are you doing?" she snapped, taking a step back. "Are you crazy? Have you really lost your mind?"
The questions spilled out in a panic, her left arm tensing at her side, ready to strike, ready to put the little rat back in her place.
Hannah's head throbbed, her neck feeling as though it might snap with every step, but she did not stop.
"You are too tall," she breathed.
The words were quiet, almost delirious, out before she could think.
The maid reared back her hand—and Hannah drove her boot hard into the soft spot just above the woman's ankle.
It was not strength that brought her down.
It was shock: the tiny, meek girl she had tormented for years suddenly baring her teeth, eyes cold and empty, with none of the usual fear.
A yelp tore from the maid's throat. Her balance shattered. She crashed to her knees, the impact jolting through the floorboards, dust puffing up around them.
Hannah did not hesitate. Her left hand fisted in the maid's dirty, moss-colored hair, yanking her head back so hard her neck arched, her face tilted upward. Her right hand drew back, and she slapped the maid—once, hard, the crack echoing in the tiny room, stinging her own palm.
She did it again. And again. And again. And again. Five blows in total, each fast and furious, each leaving a blooming red mark across the woman's freckled cheek.
The maid's struggles grew weaker, her whimpers fading into gasps, until she slumped weakly, trembling.
Hannah let go of her hair only long enough to snatch a sharp shard from the broken vase on the floor, its edge glinting, sharp enough to slice through skin like butter.
She curled her fingers around it, the glass digging into her palm, then leaned down, her voice a low, lethal snarl that cut through the woman's sobs.
"Tell me," Hannah said, "what is my name?"
A wild, dizzy thought flickered through her fever-addled mind: Am I going to die? It no longer felt like a question of whether the fever would take her.
It felt like a question of whether she would take someone with her first.
The maid's eyes went wide as saucers, fixed on the glass in Hannah's hand. All her bravado, all her cruelty, drained away in an instant.
She crumpled, tears streaming down her swollen cheeks, her voice a high, trembling whimper.
"I'm sorry, I beg you, sorry—Hannah! I won't do it again! I swear it!"
Hannah pressed the shard harder against the maid's jaw, cold and sharp against her skin.
"What did you do?" Her voice was ice, with no trace of the girl who used to cower in the stables. "Tell me what you have done."
"Everything the countess told me!" the maid wailed, her words rushing out in a broken, gasping flood.
"She said to starve you, to leave you in the snow, to let that quack do what he wanted—she said no one would care if you disappeared! I'm sorry, Hannah, I'm sorry, I had no choice, my family's debt—"
Hannah did not listen to the rest.
She did not care for the maid's excuses, her debt, her fear. All she cared about was the fire burning in her chest, the feral, unnameable urge to make them all see her, to make them all remember her.
She did not stop to question where the will had come from, where this sudden, brutal surge of power had surfaced.
She was small and weak, half-starved and feverish, but in that moment, something raw and unyielding had taken hold—amplified by the maid's own cowardice, her terror at Hannah's sudden, unrecognizable change.
Hannah tightened her grip in the woman's hair and forced her upright, not dragging her limp, but pulling hard enough to make her stumble forward, half-crouched, just as one might drag someone by the ear.
The shard of glass remained pressed lightly but threateningly to the maid's jaw, a silent warning.
She did not need great strength; she only needed to make the woman too afraid to resist.
The maid's boots scraped against the stone corridors, her sobs echoing through the quiet castle, but Hannah did not slow.
She pulled her past the tapestries, past the closed doors of the servants' quarters, past the staircase where Kael had tripped her only a few days earlier.
Time had blurred in fevered sleep; Hannah could not be certain how many days she had been unconscious, only that it had been long enough for the chill to sink deep into her bones.
She pulled the maid straight toward the heart of the mansion: the great hall's dining chamber, the room where the Bennington family gathered each morning for breakfast.
The room where crystal chandeliers hung, where silver platters were piled high with food, the room where she had never once been allowed to sit.
The room where they would all see her.
The room where the reckoning would start.
The frayed rag she had curled up with the previous night clung to her shoulders like a second skin.
Her bare feet burned against the cold stone floors, cut raw by splinters and frost.
The bump on her head, left by Kael's little prank a few days prior, throbbed in time with her heartbeat—a dull, relentless ache that matched the fire in her veins.
But she did not flinch. She did not falter. She only kept the maid half-bent, pulling her forward by the hair, the glass still at her jaw.
The scent hit her first: warm bread, honey-glazed fruit, roasted meats, fragrances she had only ever smelled drifting from the kitchen or the stables, when the family dined inside.
Then came the noise: Layla's high, trilling laughter, Kael's lazy chuckle, Stephanie's soft, tinkling voice.
It was the sound of a family—their family—happy, content, oblivious to the girl they had left to rot in a drafty room.
The noise died the second Hannah stepped over the threshold of the dining chamber.
Silence slammed down, thick and heavy. Every head turned. Every fork froze mid-air. Layla's smile dropped from her face like a discarded mask.
Kael's laughter choked off in his throat.
Stephanie's lips parted, her eyes widening as she took Hannah in: her bare feet, her tattered clothes, the bump on her head, the shard of glass in her hand, and the maid, whimpering and half-dragged, her face swollen and streaked with tears.
The quiet stretched on, long enough that Hannah could hear the crackle of the fire in the hearth, long enough that she saw the way Stephanie's nose wrinkled—disgust, pure and simple.
Then Layla giggled, a sharp, cruel sound that cut through the hush.
"What kind of behavior is this?" she trilled, leaning back in her chair and folding her hands beneath her chin.
"Mocking Mother now, are you? How brave."
Stephanie's lips twitched into a crooked, saccharine smile, her eyes glinting with malice as she looked at Hannah.
"My dear," she purred, dabbing at her lips with a linen napkin,
"I think she really is insane now. What a pity."
The count did not look up.
He simply sliced through a piece of meat, his knife scraping against the plate, his jaw set in a hard line.
He did not glance at Hannah, did not glance at the maid. He did not care.
But when Layla snickered again, he finally spoke, his voice gruff and annoyed, as if they were nothing more than flies buzzing at his elbow.
"What is wrong with all of you?" he snapped, stabbing his fork into the meat. "This is a meal, not a spectacle. Sit down, or get out."
Hannah did not move.
She only tightened her grip in the maid's hair, forcing the woman to stand straighter, forcing her to face the family that had ordered her to hurt Hannah.
She looked at the count—at his cold eyes, his stiff posture, his face holding not a single trace of warmth for her—and opened her mouth.
Her voice was rough, scraped raw by fever and earlier screaming, but it was loud enough to fill the room, loud enough to snap every head back toward her.
"Count Bennington," she said.
The name felt like ash on her tongue.
She refused to call him father, refused to taint that word with the dirty, useless, neglectful man who had let his own daughter starve, let her be beaten, let her be left to die in the snow.
The count froze. His knife stilled mid-air. For the first time in her life, he looked up—and his eyes met hers, her sapphire eyes, bright and wild and unbroken. For the briefest instant, she saw a flicker in his gaze.
Not love. Not regret.
Surprise.
Utter, speechless surprise.
"I think she really has lost her mind," Stephanie said, shaking her head.
"What a pity. I heard from Doctor Philips that you attacked him with a vase, and now you drag this poor maid here, half-beaten? What ever possessed you?"
Hannah did not bother with pleasantries, did not soften her words for the sake of decorum.
She laid it out cold, clear, unflinching: how the maid had left her to freeze in the snow, how she had stood by while the quack loomed over her bed, leering and unchallenged.
The words hung in the air, sharp and unignorable—but before the count could speak, the room erupted.
Layla shrieked that Hannah was lying, a madwoman and a liar; Kael jeered that she had probably begged for the quack's attention, that she was only bitter no one wanted her.
The roar of their voices swallowed the room, loud and ugly and familiar.
Hannah let go of the maid's hair then, shoving her hard enough that she stumbled and crashed to the stone floor at Stephanie's feet.
She did not spare the sniveling woman a single glance, did not acknowledge the siblings' taunts or Stephanie's icy sneers. Her eyes remained locked on the count.
His surprise was subtle, nothing more than a flicker in his cold gaze, a fraction of a second where his fork stilled, where his posture tightened.
No gasp, no shout—only a tiny, fleeting crack in the mask of indifference he wore so well.
"Anyway," Hannah said, her voice flat, empty of all emotion—no anger, no fear, no plea.
"I would like to request a private meeting. Count Bennington."
Stephanie scoffed, a sharp, rude sound that cut through the noise.
"A private meeting? With you? Whatever for—to beg for scraps? To whine about your poor, miserable life?"
She laughed, a cold, tinkling sound, and Layla and Kael joined in, their mocking cackles bouncing off the walls.
Hannah did not look at her.
She kept her eyes on the count, her tone steady as she lifted the tattered edge of her cloak in a clumsy, mocking imitation of a noble curtsy.
"I will find you after your breakfast," she said.
"Please grant me this small wish—one I have never dared to voice since I was three years old."
The words hung in the air, sharp and final. Then Hannah turned on her heel and walked out, her bare feet slapping against the stone.
Behind her, the mockery erupted again—Layla's shrill jeers, Kael's crude jokes, Stephanie's cutting remarks—but she did not hear them.
She only heard the count's silence, the way his gaze had lingered on her a heartbeat too long.
She did not return to her cold, drafty room.
She veered toward the kitchen, the scent of warm bread growing stronger with every step.
Servants and cooks bustled about: kneading dough, stirring pots, polishing silver. But they all froze when they saw her.
Eyes darted to her bare feet, her tattered clothes, the faint smudge of blood on her palm from the vase shard.
They looked at her as if she were something dirty, something to be avoided—but no one dared to approach, not after peeking through the dining chamber doors and seeing her drag the maid inside, wild and unbroken.
Hannah did not care.
She walked straight to the bread basket on the counter, grabbed a crusty baguette still warm from the oven, and snatched a crisp red apple from a bowl of fruit.
The cook opened his mouth as if to protest, but one look at her face—at the cold, empty fire in her eyes—and he clamped his jaw shut.
Hannah turned and left the kitchen, the bread and apple clutched tight in her hand, and walked back to her room to wait.
To plan. To let the fire in her chest burn hotter, brighter, until the reckoning finally came.
The baguette was warm and soft, the crust crumbling between her teeth—the first thing that had not tasted like stale despair or mold in months.
The apple was crisp, sweet juice bursting on her tongue, and she ate slowly, savoring every bite as if it were a feast fit for a queen.
With each mouthful, a spark coiled in her chest: strength, or perhaps just the stubborn refusal to starve any longer.
She sat on the edge of her rickety bed, crumbs scattered at her feet, and let her mind sort through the chaos.
The quack's leering, the maid's sobs, the count's flicker of surprise—all of it whirled together, sharp and bright, and she began to plan.
She had no presentable attire to speak of; all her dresses were tattered, stained, too small, frayed at the cuffs and hem.
But she tugged on the least threadbare one: a faded gray gown that had once belonged to her mother.
She smoothed the wrinkles as best she could.
The fever still burned behind her eyes, a dull throb, but it no longer clouded her thoughts.
She found a scrap of parchment tucked under her desk, yellowed and thin, and a nub of charcoal Stephanie had once thrown at her for "wasting paper."
With shaking hands, she wrote furiously. Her handwriting was messy, slanted from the fever, but it was hers. Every stroke was a declaration that she would not be erased.
When the parchment was full, she rolled it tight and tucked it into her sleeve.
Then she rummaged through the quack's discarded satchel, left behind in his mad scramble to escape, and pulled out a handful of dried herbs.
A faint, distant memory surfaced from her past life: herbs that would lower a fever, dull the pain, steady the hands.
They were bitter, acrid, when she chewed them, the taste clinging to her tongue like iron, but she swallowed hard, letting the rough leaves scrape down her throat.
The bitter taste lingered as she stood, adjusting the gray dress one last time, and walked out of her room.
Her bare feet still ached, the bump on her head still throbbed, but her steps were steady.
She knew where she was going: the count's solar, the small, wood-paneled room at the end of the west corridor, where he spent his mornings poring over ledgers and maps, where no one but his attendants were usually allowed.
The door was closed, a heavy oak thing carved with the Bennington crest.
A young attendant stood guard before it, his back straight, his uniform crisp and clean, nothing like her ragged dress.
He blinked when he saw her, his eyes flicking over her bare feet, her messy hair, the faint smudge of charcoal on her fingers.
He thought it strange that she would call her own father by title alone, his lips twitching with unspoken judgment.
She could see it in his eyes—the same pity, the same dismissal everyone else had always given her.
He likely assumed her wits had been addled by the fall down the stairs a few days prior, his gaze darting briefly to the bump on her head.
He did not speak any of it aloud. He only cleared his throat, turned to the door, and rapped his knuckles against the wood three times—sharp, formal, deferential.
"My Lord," his voice carried through the door, smooth and polished.
"Hannah Bennington has arrived, requesting your audience."
A beat of silence. Then a low, gruff voice—the count's voice—drifted through the wood.
"Let her in."