Mornings in the Celestine Palace unfolded like a play rehearsed by ghosts.
Silent servants laid out gowns that floated on invisible hands. Breakfast appeared on porcelain no one touched. Poets murmured verses into empty air.
Princess Seraphina Valmont was required to smile through every act.
"Shall I braid Your Highness to match the sunrise again?" asked Lin, the youngest maid, combs glinting like captured dawn. "Only if you wish me mistaken for a flaming omelet," Seraphina said, stretching until her spine cracked. "I like omelets," Lin replied, unfazed.
"Court is allergic to flavor." The day marched on lessons in politics ("Never correct an advisor aloud"), sword forms ("Smile when you lose"), elocution ("Princesses do not slouch while mocking hypocrisy").
At lunch she sat beside King Alaric, who read missives instead of looking at her.
"Unrest near the mountain temples," he muttered.
"Yesterday they blamed my hair for a rainstorm," Seraphina said, spearing a fig.
"It wasn't the rain they feared," Queen Eleanor interjected without lifting her eyes. "It was your temper."
Seraphina arched a brow. "We're speaking today. How novel."
The Queen sipped her wine and returned to silence.
Afternoons were for public smiles: waving at children she could not embrace, enduring speeches she could not refute, pretending not to hear the whispers, The second daughter. Sharp, not soft. Not the heir. Not the lost one.
Once, she fled to the kitchens. Cook Laris pressed a stolen spoonful of tart syrup into her palm.
"Don't tell your mother."
"She never asks," Seraphina whispered back.
She was not unloved. She was misplaced polished, prized, preserved under glass.
That night the palace dimmed to candlelight and secrets. Seraphina drifted into the portrait gallery, drawn by a painting she had never noticed before: her mother, young and radiant, cradling a golden-haired infant.
Her fingers brushed the frame.
"Why did no one ever tell me I had a sister?"
Hours later, lantern in hand, she descended forbidden stairs to the Royal Archives. The enchanted seal sighed open at her touch, as though it had been waiting.
She searched until she found it: a scroll sealed with a silver eye, half-closed.
She broke the wax.
"On the sixth night of the Silver Moon, Princess Elysia Valmont, firstborn of House Valmont, was lost to the sea. Her body was never recovered."
The name struck like a bell in her blood.
"Your Highness?"
Lady Evora stood in the doorway, pale as moonlight.
"That name is forbidden," the seamstress breathed.
"Why?"
"Because she was not lost," Evora said, voice cracking. "She was taken. And Her Majesty has never forgave herself."
Seraphina swayed.
"I held her once. She laughed like sunlight on water."
The truth did not crash. It rose slow, golden, and unstoppable.
The candle guttered. Darkness swallowed the chamber.
Sleep dragged Seraphina under. Corridors stretched, breathing. Portraits twisted, eyes tracking her flight. Cold fire licked the tapestries, smelling of salt and ash.
A child's laughter bright, impossible echoed ahead.
Elysia.
She ran toward it, gown snagging on floors that pulsed like a heart. Shadows lengthened her arms until her fingers grasped only smoke.
The flames became voices, chanting both their names.
She burst into a hall of mirrors. In each reflection she saw herself at different ages crowned, broken, fierce, afraid while behind every version hovered a blurred golden child, mouth open in a silent plea.
"Help me."
Seraphina screamed. The mirrors shattered into black water. She fell through storm and brine, lungs burning, until
She jolted awake, soaked in sweat, moonlight slicing across the bed like a blade.
The nightmare lingered, heavy as prophecy.
Seraphina barely had time to breathe before the door flew open again.
Queen Eleanor strode back in, flanked by two silent king's guard. Her face was a mask of winter stone. "Mother" Seraphina started, stepping forward, voice raw. "We have to talk about Elysia. Now. Black sails with the silver eye that can't be coincidence. If she's alive"
"Enough." Eleanor's single word cracked like a whip. The guards stiffened; even the air seemed to obey. Seraphina didn't stop. "You hid her from me my whole life. You let me think I was the only one. And now they're here" "I said enough." The Queen's eyes blazed. "I am your mother and your sovereign. I told you never to enter those archives. You disobeyed. End of discussion."
"That's it?" Seraphina's laugh was sharp and joyless. "Fifteen years of silence, and your answer is 'end of discussion'?" Eleanor's chin lifted the same stubborn tilt Seraphina saw in her own mirror every morning. "Some doors, once opened cannot be shut again. I closed that one to protect you." "Protect me?" Seraphina's voice broke. "You buried my sister like she was already dead!" For a heartbeat, something raw and wounded flickered across Eleanor's face. Then the mask slammed back down. "I buried the only thing that could still hurt," she said quietly. "Do not make me bury you too." She turned to leave. Seraphina lunged forward and caught her mother's sleeve. "If they took Elysia once, they can take me. Or are you willing to lose a second daughter just to keep pretending the first never existed?" Eleanor froze. The kings guard shifted, uncertain. Slowly, the Queen turned back. The storm in her eyes had turned to something colder resolve forged in old fire. "Then we do not lose," she said. "We fight. But we fight on my terms, not in hysterical tears over ghosts." She pried Seraphina's fingers free, gentler than her words.
"Ready yourself for council in one hour. Wear the crimson armor. If the past has come knocking, we will answer with steel, not questions. "The door closed with regal finality. Seraphina stood trembling in the sudden silence, fury and fear braided so tightly she couldn't tell them apart.
Outside, gulls screamed over the harbor, sounding almost like a child laughing.
The council never happened.
An hour came and went. No summons arrived.
Seraphina waited in her chamber, crimson armor half-fastened, sword belt lying untouched on the chair. The palace felt hollow, corridors too quiet, as if the very stones were holding their breath.
At last the door opened not with ceremony, but with defeat.
Queen Eleanor entered alone. No guards. No crown. Only a single candle and the weight of seventeen years in her eyes.
She closed the door softly and leaned against it, as though the wood was the only thing keeping her upright.
"They are gone," she said.
Seraphina's heart stumbled. "The black sails?"
"Vanished with the tide. No trace by moonrise. The watchtowers swear the sea swallowed them whole." Eleanor's voice cracked on the last word. "Just like before."
Seraphina crossed the room in three strides. "Then it was a warning."
"Or a reminder." Eleanor opened her hand.
On her palm lay a single golden hair long, impossibly bright, curled as though it had only just been brushed.
"I found it on my pillow," she whispered. "Still warm."
Seraphina stared. The hair shimmered with its own light, faint but undeniable like sunlight trapped in a strand.
"They were never here for war," Eleanor continued, barely audible. "They were telling us she still lives. And that the hiding is over."
Seraphina took the hair. It pulsed once against her skin, gentle as a heartbeat not her own.
All the anger drained from her, leaving only a vast, aching hollow.
"What do we do now?" she asked child to mother, not princess to queen.
Eleanor looked suddenly old.
"We stop pretending," she said. "Tomorrow I will tell the court the truth. Elysia Valmont was taken, not lost. And if the gods are merciful or cruel, she may still walk this world."
She reached out and tucked the golden strand behind Seraphina's ear, the gesture trembling.
"But tonight," Eleanor said, voice breaking, "tonight let me hold the daughter I still have."
Seraphina stepped into her mother's arms.
For the first time in memory, Queen Eleanor wept openly silent, shaking sobs that tasted of salt and long-buried names.
Outside the window, the harbor lay empty under cold stars.
Far away in Eldermere, Maria woke with tears on her cheeks and an unfamiliar name on her lips.
Elysia. The Tear in her chest burned soft, steady, awake.