Asteria followed Lord Valerius through the glass corridors, her boots – caked in the grey, abrasive dust of the mines – leaving ghostly, shameful footprints on the immaculate floor. Every step felt like a desecration.
The air here was too thin, too clean, flavoured with the faint scent of incense and cold mountain air. It lacked the iron tang of blood and the suffocating weight of dust that had become her only way of knowing she was alive.
At the end of a hallway lined with pillars that seemed to breathe with a soft, inner light, Valerius stopped. He didn't turn around.
"Mistress Hestia," he said, his voice carrying effortlessly through the stillness.
A woman emerged from the shadows of a side-arch. She was tall, her spine as rigid as a glass spear, dressed in a gown of charcoal silk. Her face was a mask of professional indifference, though her eyes – sharp, judgmental grey – flickered with immediate distaste as they landed on Asteria.
"My Lord," the woman said, her voice clipped. "You've brought the coal into the parlor."
"I've brought a diamond in the rough, Hestia," Valerius replied, his tone light. "Clean her. Polish the grit from her skin. By morning, I want her to look as though she was born of the light, not the dirt. She is to be my personal attendant."
Hestia's eyebrows twitched. "The personal chambers? But she's a slave. She'll break the porcelain just by looking at it."
"She is exactly what I require," Valerius interrupted. He finally turned, his golden eyes catching Asteria's for a fleeting, burning second. "Do not let the softness of the silk fool you, Asteria."
With that, he walked away, the heavy silver doors sealing with a soft, pressurized thud that felt like a gavel hitting a block.
***
If the mines were a war against the earth, the "cleansing" was a war against Asteria's own skin.
Hestia led her to a bathing chamber that looked more like an alchemist's laboratory. Two younger maids moved forward like shadows. They didn't speak. They didn't even look her in the eye.
"Strip," Hestia commanded.
Asteria hesitated, her hand going instinctively to her waist, searching for the hilt of a blade she hadn't summoned.
"Now," Hestia snapped. "I don't have all night to scrub the failure off you."
Asteria complied, her jaw clenched so tight her teeth throbbed. As the burlap tunic fell away, the younger maids visibly winced. Her body was a map of the last month: the sharp lines of her ribs, the dark bruising from the Taskmaster's rod, and the hundreds of tiny, shimmering scars where shards had bitten into her skin.
She was shoved into a tub of water so hot it made her vision swim. But it wasn't the heat that hurt – it was the salt.
Hestia didn't use a sponge; she used a block of abrasive, mineral-infused salt. She worked with a clinical, punishing efficiency, scouring the grey dust from Asteria's pores. It felt like being sandpapered. Every pass of the salt block lifted layers of filth, old blood, and dead skin until the water turned a murky, sickly silver.
Asteria stared at the ceiling, her fingers gripping the edge of the tub until her knuckles turned white. She didn't make a sound. She wouldn't give them the satisfaction.
"How a creature like you caught his eye, I'll never know," Hestia muttered, pouring a thick, viscous oil over Asteria's raw shoulders. It smelled of crushed lavender and something metallic. "He usually has better taste than to scavenge in the mud."
***
The dress was a mockery of everything she had become.
It was a gown of dull silk, the color of a thundercloud. As Hestia draped it over her, the fabric didn't feel like cloth; it felt like a cold, heavy fluid. Every time Asteria moved, the silk hissed against her scrubbed skin, a constant, irritating reminder that she was being packaged for display.
Hestia led her to a tall, floor-to-ceiling mirror.
Asteria stared. She didn't recognize the woman in the glass. The mud-caked survivor was gone, replaced by a creature of forced, fragile elegance. But the illusion failed at the edges. Her hands were still stained with the silvery tint of the mines, her nails cracked. And her eyes – her [Glass Eyes] –looked wild. She looked like a wolf forced into a silk ribbon.
"Try to look less like you're planning a murder," Hestia advised, her voice dry. "It ruins the drape."
Hestia led her to a small room tucked into the corner of the Master's wing.
"This is your station," the housekeeper said. "You sleep when he sleeps. You wake before he wakes. If I find you wandering, I'll see you back in the pits myself."
The door clicked shut. Asteria was finally alone.
The silence was the first thing that hit her. In the mines, the noise was a shield; the constant clink-clink of labor allowed you to hide your thoughts. Here, the silence was so heavy it made her ears ring.
She paced the small room, her bare feet silent on the quartz floor. Everything was too bright. The bed was covered in furs that felt too soft, like a trap designed to make her forget who she was.
She stopped at the wall shared with Valerius's study. It looked like the same Moonlight in the mines, but when she ran her fingers over it, she felt a microscopic vibration.
Asteria leaned her forehead against the glass. She focused on her vision, not to hunt, but to understand.
The wall flared with a pale lattice. She saw the internal structure – it was honeycombed, designed to capture and amplify the slightest vibration of air.
Her stomach dropped. 'Is he spying on me?'
She stood perfectly still, her breath hitching. Through the wall, she heard it: the slow, deliberate scratch of a quill on parchment. The soft clink of a glass being set on a coaster. The steady, terrifyingly calm rhythm of Valerius's breathing.
It was so clear it felt as though he were standing right behind her, his breath touching the back of her neck. Although the thoughts of that happening weren't as distasteful as she would have liked.
If she could hear his quill, he could hear her pulse. He could hear her if she whispered a prayer or a curse. He hadn't given her a room; he had given her a listening post where she could be observed.
Asteria backed away from the wall, her hands trembling. She didn't lie on the bed. She sat on the floor in the farthest corner, her back against the only wall that didn't share a border with him. She tucked her knees to her chest, the grey silk bunching around her raw legs.
'He didn't buy me for nothing, did he?' she thought, staring at her dark reflection in the window.
She was trapped in a palace of absolute clarity, owned by a man who could hear her thoughts if she breathed them too loud.
Through the wall, the scratching of the quill stopped.
"The furs are more comfortable than the floor, Asteria," Valerius's voice drifted through the glass, as clear as if he were sitting beside her. "And I already know how loud your heart beats when you're afraid. You don't need to hide it."
Asteria's jaw tightened. She didn't move. She didn't answer. She simply stared into the darkness, a silent, flickering spark of her nervousness beginning to burn in the center of her chest.