Nathaniel's distraught expression lingered, carved deep into his features like a wound that refused to heal. His amber eyes—usually sharp and steady—were clouded, as if shadows swirled just beneath their surface. The silence between them weighed heavily, a suffocating presence in the dimly lit chamber where the faint scent of burning wax hung in the air. Fatima chose not to speak further, afraid that a single word might tear open a wound she did not fully understand. He had recoiled at the spider's name alone—his reaction so sharp, so visceral—that she could only wonder if an unspoken phobia haunted him.
She turned her head slightly, red eyes flicking toward him, just to reassure herself that he had not unraveled completely. Nathaniel, standing rigid by the tall window, cleared his throat. His voice, low and rough, cut through the quiet. "Continue," he said.
His footsteps echoed hollowly on the polished floor as he drew closer, each measured step drumming against the rapid beat of Fatima's heart. She pressed a trembling hand to her chest, the fabric of her dress bunching beneath her clenched fingers. The storm in her soul mirrored the one etched across his face. A heavy sigh escaped her lips before she stammered, "Y-yes."
Her voice grew steadier as she spoke of the aracnocrobe—a black demon-spider feared across kingdoms. In her words, it took form: not the ordinary hairy vermin of dark cellars, but a sleek, hairless horror, its limbs long and spindly, its body hard as carapace stone. The candlelight in the chamber seemed to flicker darker as she described how they grew to the size of an adult's hand, how their venom, more deadly than any poison, allowed them forty-eight hours to consume their prey whole or die themselves. Her tone faltered when she questioned aloud why such a creature would target Dominique, for the spiders were cunning hunters, not reckless ones. Someone must have guided it. Someone with a hand in shadows, willing to see the duke's blood spilled.
Fatima's brows knitted as worry gnawed at her. If Dominique was a target, then spies already watched him from within his own walls. Even if she healed him, would he ever truly be safe? Her lips parted on a sigh. "Sir Nate?" she called softly, turning back. Nathaniel's head snapped from the window, his gaze slicing into hers with unnerving precision as he approached. "What is it?" His tone was curt, his eyes as cold and unreadable as polished amber glass.
A chill snaked down Fatima's spine, yet she did not look away. The absence of warmth in his stare felt more dangerous than any fury he might have shown. Her breath quivered, and she lowered her gaze to her clasped hands trembling in her lap. "I believe I can cure him," she whispered, her voice barely more than a thread of sound. Nathaniel's reply struck like a whip. "Don't be ridiculous. No one survives the venom of an aracnocrobe."
The harshness of his words rang against the chamber walls, but beneath their edge Fatima sensed something buried—something he concealed with the armor of disdain. She swallowed down her urge to probe further and instead steadied her resolve. "I will save the duke," she declared, raising her eyes to his boots planted firmly before her, "in exchange for a favor."
Nathaniel scoffed, stepping closer, his shadow looming over her like a storm cloud. His hands slipped casually into his pockets, but his expression was anything but casual—his lips twisted with scorn, his gaze burning with unspoken discontent. "Let me guess. You want money. Or freedom. Is that it?" Fatima shook her head, her voice trembling. "No, you misunderstand, Sir Na—"
Her protest was cut short. His hand shot out, fingers closing like a vice around her slender wrist, yanking her forward so suddenly she nearly toppled from her chair. His face hovered above hers, his voice laced with venomous fury. "Don't tell me you intend to ask for Dimitriu's hand in marriage. How desperate can you be? Do you have no respect for yourself? No pride?" His voice thundered, reverberating in the room like a war drum. "How disappointing to find you are no different from the shallow women I despise!"
The chamber fell silent in the wake of his outburst, broken only by their ragged breaths. Fatima's wrist ached in his grasp, yet her spirit did not waver. Their eyes locked, clashing like drawn blades, amber against crimson, each refusing to yield. Finally, with a sharp tug, she freed herself from his hold. Her voice, low but steady, cut through the tension like steel. "Think as you wish, but I will not let you stop me from doing what I must to save his life."
**
The study reeked faintly of old parchment and burnt-out candle wax, the stagnant air carrying the dust of untouched books and stale ink. Duchess Gwendolynn stood amid the chaos she herself had wrought, her chest rising and falling with sharp breaths. She had torn open drawers, rifled through heavy chests, tugged at hidden panels behind bookshelves, and even peeled up the edges of the carpet beneath her husband's imposing desk, but the will was nowhere to be found.
Stacks of tomes lay toppled in heaps at her feet, pages fluttering loose like torn feathers, and a scatter of quills and parchment littered the once-orderly room. Her manicured nails dug into her palms as frustration twisted her features. With a growl, she lashed out with her slippered foot, sending a pile of books skidding across the polished floor, the slap of covers echoing off the paneled walls.
"Useless… all of it useless," she hissed under her breath, shoulders sagging. "Instead of finding the will, I've made a colossal mess." Her hazel gaze swept the room in a frantic search, darting to every shadowed corner she had not yet violated. A bitter thought hissed through her mind. Wait until I discover which imbecile dared to tamper with the plan. She spun sharply on her heel, skirts snapping at her ankles, intent on summoning the maids.
"Looking for something, Mother?" The voice—low, calm, and steady—froze her mid-step. A startled gasp tore from her throat, and she whirled to find Dimitriu standing in the doorway. The young man's tall frame leaned against the carved doorframe with disarming ease, but his eyes, cool and sharp as steel, fixed on her. How long has he been standing there? The realization prickled her skin cold. She hadn't even heard the hinges creak.
Composure slipped back into place as quickly as her painted smile. Gliding toward him, she softened her features into maternal warmth, even daring to reach up, her jeweled hand brushing his cheek as though nothing were amiss. "How is your father faring, Dimitriu?" she cooed, her voice lined with feigned concern. Dimitriu's gaze, however, did not waver from the room. His eyes swept over the scatter of toppled volumes and crumpled papers strewn across the rug. His jaw tightened, though his tone remained neutral. "What happened to father's study? Did someone break in?"
Her lips parted on a trembling sigh, and she clutched at her breast as though wounded by grief. "I missed your father so terribly that I came here to… reminisce." Her lashes fluttered; a practiced shiver ran through her shoulders. "But memories overcame me, and I… I lost my temper. Your father gave me the best years of my life, Dimitriu. Five beautiful children, the strength of a man like no other… It pains me beyond words to see him confined to this condition." Her voice cracked as she pressed herself against his chest, her body trembling in feigned despair.
For a heartbeat, the mask nearly slipped—the hunger behind her eyes threatening to surface as her fingers lingered, itching to wander lower. What better time to seduce a man than when he teeters at the brink of despair, desperate for solace? Her lips curled faintly as she buried her face in him, the expression hidden from his sight. "It's alright, Mother." Dimitriu's voice broke the silence after a long pause, his arms rising with measured restraint to circle her shoulders. His warmth was steady, grounding. "Father will return to us. He is the duke Dominique, after all."
Her heart leapt in delight at the realization—her little charade had struck a chord. She had never thought of him as a son, only a sapling yet to grow into the towering oak she desired to shape with her own hands. Against his body, his strength seared into her like live embers. She bit the inside of her cheek to smother the wild impulse to take more, to claim him here in the shadow of his father's illness.
No wonder the princess retracted her annulment despite the scandal, she thought, tongue darting out to wet her upper lip in a slow, predatory sweep. Just the thought of him in bed is enough to set me aflame. "Yes… yes, my dear son," she murmured, her sigh escaping with a tremor that sounded suspiciously like a moan. "Your father will make it back to us… he must." Dimitriu stiffened at the sound but chose not to comment, his silence a wall she could press against, manipulate, and perhaps, one day, breach.
**
The room hummed with a pressure that felt almost physical — a tightness beneath the skin, like the moment before a storm breaks. Fatima sat very still across from Dominique, her silhouette small against the heavy draperies and the duke's ornate bed. Dominique himself looked as if life had been sanded thin: his breaths were paper-light, barely lifting his chest, his face washed of color so that the pale veins at his temples stood out like delicate blue threads. Every shallow intake of air made Fatima's own pulse thud louder against her palm.
She cupped his frail hand with the tenderness of someone handling a moth — afraid that the smallest misstep might crumble it. The skin was cool, surprisingly dry, the faint tremor of a frightened heartbeat just beneath the surface. Fatima closed her eyes and bent inward, shaping the prayer she'd been taught into the small chamber behind her ribs. The words were quiet but precise, syllables she could taste like salt and soot on the tongue, the beginning of a long ritual meant to stitch darkness back into light.
Memories of the temple rose and brushed the edges of her mind: incense smoke that clung to linen, chants that vibrated through the floorboards, a stern admonition repeated until it settled into her bones — a healer must put others before herself, even at the cost of harm. Then came the other memory, sharper and colder: the Crown's doctrine she'd grown up with, that the princess must remain untouchable, preserved at all costs. She thought of those two teachings as two different waters colliding — one poured outward, one cupped inward — and realized she'd been standing on a fragile isthmus between them all her life.
Now, far from courtly rules and royal handlers, the choice belonged to her alone. Fatima inhaled, slow and deep, feeling the air fill the bottom of her lungs like a bellows. She tasted metal at the back of her throat — fear, adrenaline, the tang of determination. When she released the breath it was deliberate, a letting-go that prepared her for the next motion. She placed her free hand gently over Dominique's sternum, fingertips feathering the fine hairs at his collarbone, and shut her eyes.
The change was immediate. Light spilled into the room — not from any candle or lamp but as if a star had opened directly above her. It pooled around Fatima in a clean, blinding sheet, warm and clinical, and a soft current of air moved through the chamber, tugging at her braid and sweeping at the curtains. The fabric shuddered and rose, then fell in frantic waves; glass in the tall windows chimed with a tiny, anxious rattle. Nathaniel, who had been standing by the doorway, went rigid, his breath caught in his throat. He watched, transfixed, as the room's very atmosphere thickened and then thinned, the furniture's carved edges seeming to blur at the corners as if the world itself were being redrawn.
Inside that halo of radiance, Fatima's consciousness was plucked like a thread and pulled into a place that was the opposite of light — a vast, unbreathable dark where nothing held form for long. It felt like walking through wet ink. Every sound was muffled and thick, and a rank, cloying odor clung to the air: old rot and damp cloth, the sour, unmistakable putrefaction of dead things. Fatima's nose wrinkled; she pressed two fingers against her lips to keep from retching. The smell crawled into her mouth like rust.
"Who are you? And why are you interfering?" A man's voice rolled through the void — gravel and shave-scarred leather — and it occupied the darkness like a territory marker. It was brusque, sharp-edged, demanding. Fatima turned her head slowly, trying to map the space, to find a point of reference, but the darkness conspired against her, thick as wool.
Panic started like a dry tickle at the back of her throat, but Fatima steadied it with a tiny, inward grin. The training that had been hidden in the temple's margins flickered into place — the techniques that let a healer navigate other realms, bind a foreign presence, and extract what ailed a body from within. The scent, the humidity, the way the air hugged her skin — all clues. She breathed through it, counting in her head, listening with an intensity that made the hairs on her forearms stand up.
"You summoned me here. Shouldn't you be the one to explain?" she called back, letting her voice slide out cool and even. She kept her posture loose, nonchalant, though inside her palms were bright with the effort of holding foreign shadows at bay.
In the dim expanse, knowledge shaped her fear into strategy. There were two kinds of summoners who could trap a human consciousness like a bird in a bell jar: warlocks, the terrifying masters of dark doors, and sorcerers, the warlocks' more limited but still dangerous acolytes. Warlocks could fling the gates of hell open; sorcerers made cages. The thought sharpened Fatima's vigilance. If this opponent were a novice sorcerer, there might be a time-bound weakness she could exploit.
The voice answered with thin contempt. "It is none of your business, little girl. Give up now, and you might wake in the real world." Fatima's lips curved in a flash of amusement. Threats were wind to her — loud but empty if unbacked by action. "You're the one who dragged me into this unpleasant closet of yours," she said. "If you wanted to talk, you should have brought tea."
There was the sound of teeth grinding, low and animal. Fatima listened to it as if decoding a drumbeat, noting the cadence of anger and the little staccato of movement beyond the voice. The enemy wasn't a warlock; their presence had the brittle, uncertain flavor of a sorcerer's craft. That was both relief and risk — faster, perhaps, but trickier and prone to desperation.
She felt the pressure of time like a weight on her sternum. A large, luminescent clock hovered somewhere in the darkness, each sweep of its hand hammering urgency into her bones. The rules of this place were clear: in a sorcerer's realm, to win you either kill the summoner before the timer runs out — or die when the timer disappears. Fatima's jaw tightened as adrenaline and a different, calmer flame of purpose braided together.
"We could sit here and throw words at each other…" she said, letting the challenge ripple through her words, "…or we could skip the insults and dance." Her grin widened in the dark. She recalled, with a flash of schoolroom certainty, that physical weapons meant nothing here — it would be hand to hand, spirit against spirit. That gave her a rare confidence; in a realm where nothing could cut or puncture, her hands, her training, and her will were enough.
She drew herself into fighting posture, shoulders loose, breath a metronome. The smell pressed at her like a living thing, but she folded it under, a small, controllable nuisance. The darkness leaned in to meet her, and Fatima met it back with a steady heart and a single, unflinching thought: she would not let Dominique's light be snuffed out on her watch.