The footsteps grew louder, deliberate, measured. Step... step... each one reverberating through the high-ceilinged hallway, brushing against the gilded frames and velvet drapes like an unwelcome chill. The manor was vast—built to swallow sound and feeling—but tonight, it seemed to hold its breath, every echo magnified into something almost human.
I pressed myself further into the shadows, my pulse syncing with that sound. "He's not supposed to be there," I whispered again, almost to myself. "He knows that."
Mr. Frederick's eyes darted toward me, then back to the end of the corridor where the silhouette had just vanished. His jaw tensed. "It doesn't matter whether he knows. The fact that he's going there means something's wrong."
Wrong. The word hung heavily between us.
The Annex loomed at the far edge of the property—a secluded wing separated by a covered bridge, half-swallowed by ivy and time. Unlike the rest of the manor, which gleamed with restored marble and chandeliers, the Annex had been left in its quiet decay. I had fought to keep it that way. That place wasn't just another room—it was a sealed fragment of the past, a sanctuary stitched together with memory and grief.
My hand tightened around the folds of my skirt. "No one enters the Annex," I said under my breath. "No one."
Frederick hesitated. "Shall I stop him, Lady Serena?"
I hesitated too long. The next sound reached us like a strike of thunder in still air—
CREAK.
The first door had opened.
"Damn it," I hissed, stepping forward instinctively. My shoes clicked sharply against the marble, the sound far too loud in the silence. Frederick followed close behind, murmuring, "Be careful, my lady. If he's gone there of his own accord…"
"I don't care." My voice came out low, sharp. "He can't be in there."
The old corridor leading to the Annex stretched endlessly ahead—lined with portraits of my ancestors whose gazes seemed to follow every intruder. The flickering wall sconces painted the air in amber, but beyond the archway, the light dimmed, swallowed by the shadow that always lingered there. The faint smell of dust and lavender oil drifted toward us—the familiar scent of a place untouched by the world.
And then—another CREAK. Closer this time. The sound of his polished shoes pressing on the aged wooden boards of my past.
I could picture it clearly: the way he'd stop at the threshold, pausing to take in the towering arched window that let in a spill of silver light; how the dust motes would shimmer in that glow, drifting lazily like stars suspended in water. The room itself was quiet, solemn—a museum of memories better left undisturbed.
He would see the grand piano covered with a sheet, the vase of dried white lilies by the window, the old armchair draped with my childhood blanket. He would feel, perhaps, the air—still, heavy, almost sacred.
I took a step forward.
He cannot be allowed in.
My mind screamed it, my heart pounded it. The Annex was not just a room. It was a tomb of everything I'd lost—the laughter, the music, the accident that tore the Serenity name apart. I had rebuilt my calm life around that silence, guarding it like a fragile secret.
And now, his intrusion—his arrogance—was about to break it open.
Frederick's voice trembled beside me. "Lady Serena... if he sees what's inside—"
"I know," I cut him off, my tone sharper than intended. "That's why we won't let him."
The air seemed to thicken as we approached the final set of doors. The handle gleamed faintly, cold in the flickering candlelight. Beyond it, I could already sense movement—a disturbance in the stillness I had so carefully preserved.
For years, that place had been mine alone. My refuge. My secret.
And tonight, someone had dared to step into it.
---

The silence stretched on—thick, expectant, and strangely heavy. Even the air here seemed to resist me. The faint ticking of a clock somewhere beyond the wall marked the seconds with deliberate cruelty.
I rested my hand against the doorframe, feeling the grain of the old wood beneath my fingertips. It was smooth from years of use, and yet... cold. Too cold. The kind of chill that seeps into places long untouched by warmth.
"She really hasn't been here in years," I murmured under my breath, though part of me doubted my own words. There was something present about the room—an intimacy that could not belong to a place abandoned.
The faint scent of lavender and aged parchment clung to the air, a subtle signature that felt unmistakably hers. It wasn't overpowering, but it lingered, fragile and haunting—like the trace of someone who had just left moments ago.
I turned slightly, letting my gaze travel over the details that the sunlight revealed. The bookshelves were arranged meticulously—alphabetical order, I realized after a moment of study. The corners of the pages were clean, not yellowed with time. Someone had cared for them recently.
So much for the idea that this place was forgotten.
I exhaled slowly, my breath stirring the dust motes in front of me. "Serena…" I said her name quietly, as if it might draw her out of hiding. "Are you here?"
No reply. Only the hush of the wind brushing faintly against the windowpanes.
I turned back toward the door I'd knocked on. Its brass handle gleamed faintly—untouched, but inviting in a way that felt almost deliberate. The kind of door that guarded something fragile, something deeply personal.
My fingers hovered over the handle. I knew I shouldn't. Every instinct warned me to step back. The staff's nervous whispers echoed in my mind—The Annex is off-limits. Lady Serena will be upset. She never allows anyone inside.
But curiosity was a quiet, patient poison. And now that I'd crossed the threshold, there was no turning back.
With a slow inhale, I pressed down on the handle. The faintest creak responded, the sound slicing through the silence like a blade.
The room beyond revealed itself in fragments as the door opened—first the edge of a curtain fluttering in the sunlight, then a glimpse of a writing desk, neatly arranged, and finally… the faint outline of a woman's silhouette near the window.
My breath caught.
She was standing there, half-turned, her figure framed by the wash of light pouring through the glass. The soft glow blurred her outline, but I recognized her instantly—her stillness, her poise, the quiet weight she carried like a second skin.
Lady Serena.
And in that moment, I realized the truth: this wasn't a forgotten place. It was a sanctuary. And I had just trespassed into her heart's last untouched corner.
---
Each step I took softened into the carpeted floor, but even the slightest sound felt intrusive—an uninvited echo in her fragile world. The sunlight spilling through the window painted her in pale gold, tracing the soft curve of her cheek, the faint movement of her breath. Her lashes trembled slightly as she slept, long and delicate against her skin.
For a moment, I simply stood there, unmoving. The air in the room felt… different. It wasn't like the rest of the manor—no trace of grandeur, no cold reminders of power or wealth. It was warm, lived-in, filled with the kind of quiet humanity that the rest of Serenity had long since buried under marble and gold.
She looked nothing like the proud, sharp-tongued woman I'd met in the hallways. The formidable Lady Serena—the one who spoke with precision, who guarded every inch of herself—was nowhere to be seen. In her place lay a girl still caught somewhere between her past and her present, sleeping among relics of a happier time.
My gaze lingered on the ballet shoes hanging by their ribbons. I could almost picture her then—years younger, spinning clumsily across this very floor, laughing without restraint. Before the accident. Before the debts. Before me.
I drew in a quiet breath and exhaled through my nose, steadying the flicker of something I couldn't quite name. "So this is what you've been hiding," I murmured under my breath. "Not secrets. Not defiance. Just… memories."
The doctor shifted behind me, her voice low and cautious. "She doesn't allow anyone in here. Not even her personal maid. If she wakes up and finds you—"
"She won't," I cut in gently, eyes still fixed on the sleeping woman. "She's exhausted."
Another pause. The doctor hesitated, but finally inclined her head and stepped back. I took another step closer, close enough to see the faint smudge of ink on Serena's fingertips where she must have fallen asleep while reading. The book in her lap was open to a half-turned page, her thumb resting on a line as though she meant to continue reading after just a moment's rest.
My gaze fell to her bandaged ankle. The sight pulled at something deep and reluctant in me. I remembered the way she limped down the corridor last week, pretending she wasn't in pain. I'd thought it was an act, another way to keep her distance. But now…
"She's been struggling more than she lets on," the doctor said softly, almost defensively—as if afraid I'd scold her for failing in her duties.
I didn't respond immediately. I crouched slightly, careful not to startle her, and brushed a stray lock of hair away from Serena's face. The movement was instinctive, thoughtless—and yet my chest tightened at the gesture. She stirred faintly, a soft murmur escaping her lips, then stilled again.
"She's far too fragile for the world she lives in," I said quietly. "And yet she keeps fighting it anyway."
The doctor nodded, but her eyes watched me warily. "You… seem to care for her."
I gave a faint, humorless smile. "Care?" I repeated, glancing back at the peaceful figure by the window. "That's not the word I'd use."
But even as I said it, I wasn't sure if I believed it.
For a long moment, I simply watched her—the girl who had been thrust into my life by circumstance, the one I'd thought of as cold and calculating. And yet, in this quiet, sleeping form, she was disarmingly human.
Her breathing rose and fell in gentle rhythm. The light shifted across the room, brushing over the curve of her shoulder, the faint shimmer of her hair. I straightened slowly, turning to the doctor.
"Keep this between us," I said, my tone soft but absolute. "No one needs to know I was here."
"Yes, sir."
I lingered for one last heartbeat. Then, without another word, I turned and stepped back toward the door, the sound of my footsteps melting once more into silence.
But as I left, I couldn't shake the thought—
That for the first time since I'd come to Serenity Manor…
I had begun to understand the woman I had married.
As I turned toward the door, the hush of the Annex pressed against me like a tangible thing—dense, fragile, alive. The faint rustle of the silk blanket was the only sound that followed my movement, mingling softly with the rhythm of her breathing.
I paused at the threshold, my hand resting on the brass handle. A sliver of late sunlight slipped past the curtains, casting a golden stripe across her sleeping form. She looked impossibly still, almost translucent against the pale bedding—like a figure painted in delicate watercolors.
For someone who had spent her days defying me, her world, and even herself, she seemed heartbreakingly small now.
My eyes flicked back to the books, their worn spines lined in careful order, her handwriting marking nearly every margin. I could still see the faint impressions of her pen where she must have pressed too hard in concentration. It was… obsessive, but earnest. The work of someone who refused to be idle, even in isolation.
Dalincour Academy. The name stirred something faintly nostalgic in my mind. It was a place reserved for the brightest of the upper houses, those born into intellect and tradition. To have been top of her class there—well, that said more about her than any title ever could.
"She's stubborn," I murmured quietly to myself, almost amused. "Too proud to rest. Too proud to eat. Too proud to ask for help."
Yet here she was—sleeping with the faintest frown still etched between her brows, even in her dreams.
The tray of untouched food caught my eye again. I found myself frowning slightly, the same way one might at an unsolvable riddle. There was discipline in her restraint, but also a kind of recklessness. Perhaps that was her nature—to endure everything in silence, even hunger.
I let out a slow breath, the faintest sigh slipping past my lips. "Foolish woman," I muttered softly. But there was no venom in it this time. Only something that felt too close to understanding.
The doctor stood quietly by the door, her head bowed, waiting for my word. I didn't speak to her as I passed. I only gave the room one last look—at the faint light on her hair, the forgotten meal, the open book still marked with her place.
I knew I should leave, return to the main house, resume my role as the rational overseer, the pragmatic husband. But as the door shut quietly behind me, I found myself lingering for a moment in the dim corridor outside, my pulse still oddly uneven.
For all the distance she kept, for all her frost and formality—Serena Serenity was not what I thought she was.
Not cold. Not cunning. Just… unbearably human.
And as I walked away, the thought came unbidden—
that I had no right to pity her,
and yet I could not stop myself.

The realization struck like ice.
My breath caught in my throat as I stared at the faint indentation on the pillow beside me—the subtle trace of a presence that wasn't mine. The air felt heavier, disturbed, carrying a scent that didn't belong here. Not lavender or parchment, not the familiar quiet of solitude… but something faintly foreign, faintly him.
I sat up slowly, my pulse quickening beneath the calm I tried to maintain. The blanket had been adjusted neatly around me—too neatly. Whoever had moved me had done so carefully, gently even. That knowledge only made it worse.
My sanctuary—the one place left untouched—had been breached.
I swung my legs over the side of the bed, wincing as the bandaged ankle brushed against the edge. The pain grounded me, pulling me back from the swirl of disbelief and fury building in my chest. My gaze swept the room again. Nothing seemed out of place at first… but the smallest details betrayed the intrusion.
The curtain by the window was slightly drawn, though I always left it open. The books I'd stacked precisely after sorting them were now uneven—shifted just enough that I could tell someone else had touched them. The faint trace of a hand on the cover's dust, the soft movement of air that no longer smelled quite the same.
I pressed a trembling hand to my forehead. "No…" I whispered, the word barely audible.
It wasn't just anyone. It had to be him.
Mr. Frederick wouldn't have dared. The maids wouldn't even step past the corridor without my permission. Only one person in this house had both the audacity and the authority to enter this room uninvited.
My husband.
A mix of humiliation and anger coursed through me—cold and sharp, like glass splinters beneath the skin. I clenched the sheets in my fists, struggling to steady my breathing. The thought of him standing here, seeing this—my books, my meals, my sleep, my weakness—was unbearable.
What had he seen? How long had he watched?
My eyes flicked to the food tray. He must have noticed. That untouched dinner, the evidence of my fatigue, the reminder that I'd been careless enough to fall asleep where anyone could find me.
I exhaled shakily, trying to reassemble my composure. There was no one here now, but the quiet was different—it no longer comforted me. It pressed in like an accusation.
I reached for the fallen books on the table, setting them back in order one by one. My hands moved automatically, but my mind spun restlessly.
He'd come to see my progress, no doubt—to measure my usefulness, to verify that I wasn't wasting the time he so graciously allotted. But to move me? To touch me while I slept?
My throat tightened.
It wasn't merely intrusion—it was violation.
I stood, slowly, the hem of my nightgown brushing the carpet as I crossed to the window. The glass reflected my faint, pale outline against the encroaching dusk. For the first time since I'd returned to this house, the Annex felt smaller.
Trapped.
I pressed a hand against the cold glass, staring out toward the main manor—the place where he'd likely gone back to, satisfied with whatever conclusions he'd drawn.
"So you've finally stepped into my world…" I murmured bitterly. "I hope you found what you came for."
The words dissolved into silence, swallowed by the dusk, as I stood there—alone again, but no longer untouched.
---
The words hit me like a physical blow—cold, deliberate, final. For a long, suspended second the room held its breath with me, the tidy stacks of books and the pale ballet shoes on the wall somehow absurd and obscene beside the plan that had been voiced so casually in the doorway.
My throat went dry. My pulse thudded in my ears so loud I could barely hear him speak. He stood there—tall, carved from severity—every bit the man the staff had warned me about. His voice had that slow, clinical cruelty that made decisions sound like facts of nature. "I'll make use of her… kill her… cover it up as an accident…" The sentence folded over itself and landed in the room like a dropped glass.
I could have screamed. I could have leapt from the bed, bandaged ankle and all, tore down the corridor and exposed him. But my body betrayed me: the disorder had left me weak and dizzy; the ankle burned even thinking of standing. So I did the only sensible thing in that moment—I made my body obey a different command. I froze.
I pulled the sheet tighter beneath my chin, forcing every muscle into stillness, training my face to the slack, sleepy mask it had worn moments before. My hands, though, were clenched inside the linen until the knuckles whitened. I kept my eyes half-lidded, convincing myself of the deep, drugged sleep I had been in. If he noticed the breath that quickened, he did not betray it.
He continued, as if outlining the steps of a tedious operation. The cadence of his voice was clinical—picking apart my usefulness like a ledger entry. "...If she becomes useless… we'll arrange something subtle. An accident here, a misstep there. People will call it fate; people will forget." The final words were said with the light, certain cruelty of someone who believed himself invincible.
My stomach turned. The Annex—my refuge, the place where my grief and memory lived—had been reduced in his mind to a stage for a disposable body. The little stuffed bear on the cabinet, the ballet shoes, the open book with my thumb at the half-turned page: all of it suddenly looked like evidence in an account he would never bother to understand. I had left this room untouched to keep a piece of myself intact; he had not only crossed that boundary—he had measured it, appraised it, decided its fate.
He paced once, the polished leather of his shoes whispering on the floor. A shadow fell across the desk where his phone lay; his hand hovered over it, tapping. I heard the faintest crackle of a call connecting, a low voice answering in the distance. Names—places—dates—snippets that might have been meaningless on their own, but strung together painted a picture of planning. My bruised mind latched on to the edges: "cover," "timing," "bridge." The fragments were like splinters—small, sharp, and suddenly very close to my skin.
I did not dare move to peek. Instead I listened: every intake of breath, the crease of his suit as he shifted, the tiny sigh the doctor beside him made. He spoke of logistics with a politeness that made the words monstrous. When he finally laughed—low and certain—it sounded like a verdict.
He turned then, looking directly toward where I lay. For a suspended second his face softened—not in mercy, but in assessment. "She is… fragile. Useful. Temporary." The categorization chilled me more than the threat. To him, I was an asset class, a problem to be managed.
He left the room as quietly as he'd entered, footsteps measured, confidence like a cloak. I forced myself to wait still until the sound of his boots receded down the corridor and the door clicked into place. Only when the house settled—only when the soft tick of the clock resumed its ownership of time—did I allow myself to breathe.
My first instinct was a hot, animal urge for immediate retribution: leave now, tell someone, run. My second, colder thought was of survival—strategic, patient, and practical. He had said the word accident as if it were an inevitability. The only way to make inevitability bend is to create witnesses, records, leverage. He underestimated knowledge. He underestimated the one thing I had that couldn't be broken by a gleaming office and a practiced smile: the truth I'd been studying for weeks, tucked into these very tomes.
I swung my legs over the bed. Pain flashed through the bandaged ankle, sharp enough to remind me how vulnerable I was—but also precise enough to remind me why I must be careful. I rose slowly on the good leg, steadying myself against the bedside table. The room wavered; the rack of stuffed animals seemed to tilt. I steadied my breath until the room stopped spinning.
The fallen books lay where they had been dropped; I set them right, pretending for the staff that nothing at all had occurred. My fingers smoothed pages, closed covers, arranged the notes I had made with the meticulous care of someone burying a seed. Then I did something he would not have expected: I took one of the smaller volumes—the one with margins full of my handwriting—and slid it beneath the mattress, wedging it into a narrow gap where the wood met the frame. Not gone, but hidden. Evidence, preserved for when I could use it.
I retrieved from the bedside drawer a small, inconspicuous thing I had kept since childhood: a locket, the metal of it worn smooth by years of fingers and tears. It had no value but sentiment; it had been a secret I wore into every storm. I wrapped it in a scrap of paper and tucked it into the spine of a book I planned to carry beyond this room. Small tokens, small records, a way to prove I had been here, that this place was mine.
Outside, the manor hummed with the ordinary—soft voices, a distant piano, someone laughing in a corridor blind to plotting. Inside, a different arithmetic had begun: the balance of power sliding with a thought and a whispered plan. He believed he could move me like a piece across his board. He was wrong. I had sunk roots in this house that he could never see, and roots can stump the tallest intruder.
I dressed slowly, dressing not only my body but the posture I would wear in public—the calm, composed countenance that had protected me during negotiations and interrogations at Dalincour. My ankle protested every movement; it would slow me, but it would not stop me. I wrapped it tighter, set my jaw, and gathered the few items I could carry without drawing attention.
Before I left the room I stood in the window's pale spill of light and looked back at the bed, at the place where I had been moved and watched like an exhibit. Anger roared under my ribs, but a clearer flame took its place: resolve.
He had spoken of accidents and forgetfulness. He had not spoken of stubbornness, of the dogged, humiliating survival that had kept me alive through the carriage and the aftermath. He had not met the part of me that could turn study into weaponry and silence into testimony.
I slid the door closed behind me as if closing a book, but the spine remained bent. Outside the Annex the manor waited—brilliant, indifferent. Inside me a plan began to form, brittle and bright: find allies who believed in law more than in power, gather the notes that mapped his intent, expose the ledger of his designs. If he wanted to treat me like an object, he had made the fatal error of underestimating how dangerous an object can be when it decides to fight back.
My footfall on the corridor was careful and measured. Every step was an oath. I would not be his next accident. Not by his hand, not by any hand that wore his kind of confidence.
Tonight, I would pretend sleep a little longer, mend what needed mending, and begin.
Of course. Here's the rewritten and expanded continuation of your scene using Eiser instead of Grayan — preserving all the emotion, danger, and underlying tension between them, while deepening Serena's thoughts and Eiser's subtle reactions:
---
My heart hammered in my chest—BA-BUMP, BA-BUMP, BA-BUMP—a frantic drumbeat against the suffocating silence of the Annex. The words I had overheard still echoed, sharp and poisonous.
> "But when it's time, I will have to be the one to do it. I'm waiting for an opportunity, so be patient."
He said he would train me… protect me even. But this—this was what he meant?
He was waiting for the opportunity to get rid of me.
My breath caught. My hands were trembling violently, but I couldn't stop them. I forced myself to look toward the window, where the fading light of dusk cut a thin golden outline around the tall, still figure standing by the desk.
Eiser.
His broad shoulders were tense, but his movements remained slow, deliberate, unhurried. The sound of his low voice carried in the quiet—cold, factual, detached.
He wasn't even trying to hide it.
> "She's keeping her head down for now," he was saying, "which makes things easier. But if she becomes useless later… I'll have to get rid of her myself. We'll cover it as an accident."
The blood drained from my face. My entire body went cold.
So that's what I am to him. Not a wife. Not even an ally.
Just another variable to be managed—then erased.
A tight, choked sound escaped my throat. My hand shot under the pillow before I even realized what I was doing. My fingers brushed the familiar cold metal.
The revolver.
Before reason could return, I was already moving—throwing off the blanket, standing on trembling legs, my voice cutting through the air like a blade.
CLICK—POINT!
"Why are you here?!" I demanded, my voice breaking. "I'll never trust you, Eiser! Never again!"
The words tore out of me, hoarse and desperate. "I won't hand everything over to you like Grandma did—I won't let you use me!"
He turned slowly at the sound of my voice. His gaze fell on the gun first, then lifted—calm, unreadable, that same haunting composure he always carried like armor.
"A revolver," he murmured softly, as if observing the weather. "So you do keep it near you."
I tightened my grip, my knuckles white. "Don't come closer!"
He didn't flinch. "I gave you a task to finish today," he said instead, stepping forward. "There's still time before midnight, and seeing that you were asleep—"
"Don't you dare take another step!" I snapped, the gun trembling between us. "I heard everything, Eiser! You said you'd kill me when I became useless!"
He stopped—only a breath away from the muzzle. His eyes, cool and gray as steel, flicked to mine. "You shouldn't have been listening," he said evenly. "You always make trouble when you're frightened."
"Because you give me every reason to be!" The words came out half a scream, half a sob. "You think I don't see it? You don't care about me—you don't even see me! You just see something to control, to silence, to discard when it's convenient!"
Something flickered in his eyes then. Briefly. A shadow of emotion—anger? Pain? I couldn't tell.
"You think I wanted this arrangement?" His voice, though quiet, was laced with restrained fury. "You were forced into my life, just as I was forced into yours."
My heart twisted. "Then why touch me? Why move me while I was asleep?"
He froze.
For a long, unbearable moment, there was only silence.
Then he said, low and steady, "You fell asleep by the window. I didn't want you to catch a chill."
I let out a bitter, shaky laugh. "You? Worried about my health? Don't lie to me."
He met my gaze, his expression unreadable. "I didn't say I cared."
The words hit harder than a slap. I blinked fast, my throat tightening. The revolver trembled in my hands. "Then why?" I whispered. "Why didn't you just leave me there, Eiser? If I mean nothing to you, why move me at all?"
He said nothing. His eyes, for a moment, softened—barely. But I saw it.
That faint, reluctant flicker of something that didn't belong in a man who spoke so coldly of murder.
When he finally spoke, his voice was quieter.
"Because… not everything I do makes sense, even to me."
The confession hit me like a tremor, shaking something inside I'd thought was already numb.
I blinked hard, fighting the tears that burned my eyes. "Then start making sense," I whispered, my voice trembling. "Because the next time you stand in this room uninvited, I will pull the trigger."
Eiser held my gaze for what felt like an eternity—his expression calm, but his eyes... unreadable. Deep. Something simmered there, dark and restrained, but I couldn't tell if it was anger—or regret.
Finally, he exhaled and turned toward the door. Each step was measured, deliberate. STEP. STEP. STEP.
He paused at the threshold, his back still to me.
"Keep the gun," he said quietly. "You'll sleep better that way."
And then he was gone—his footsteps fading down the hall, swallowed by the darkness beyond.
The door clicked shut, and I was alone again.
The revolver slipped from my hand, landing softly on the sheets. My shoulders shook as I pressed a trembling palm to my lips, the air thick with the scent of dust, old wood, and fear.
The silence of the Annex returned—but it wasn't peaceful anymore. It was heavy, haunted. A cage I had built for myself.
And now, I knew for certain—Eiser wasn't just my husband.
He was the one thing standing between me and freedom… or death.
---
Relief hit me first—sharp and dizzying—then a hot, angry shame. My shoulders sagged almost imperceptibly as the revolver dipped. The metal felt suddenly like an accusation in my hands: proof I'd been weak enough to reach for it, foolish enough to brandish it in front of him.
Grayan—his face a mask of bored appraisal—didn't take the surrender as compassion. He folded his hands behind his back and studied me like one studies a machine that has finally produced a usable part. "Leave it," he said, voice clipped. "On the table."
I obeyed, the weapon thunking down onto the surface with a sound that seemed too loud for such a small object. My fingers trembled as I let go. He watched me all the while, as if cataloguing my reactions. The corner of his mouth twitched—half a smirk, half a grimace—and for a moment his eyes held something that might have been respect. Dangerous, quiet respect.
He stepped farther into the pale wash of the window light and turned the sheet over once more, tracing the margin notes with the fingertip of a man who could not entirely disguise curiosity. "You made these notes yourself?" he asked. Not a question of credit—of capability.
"Yes." My voice came out brittle, small. I forced myself to meet his gaze. "Everything you need is there."
He nodded slowly, as if weighing whether my answer matched the measure of me. "Good," he said at last. "I'll take them with me."
My chest constricted. Take them? "You can't—" I began, but the sentence died on my lips. Of course he could. He could pluck my work from under me and use it as he pleased. He could claim comprehension, claim credit, fold my labor into whatever scheme he was weaving. I pictured him turning my careful words into leverage, folding my voice into the ledger that might one day justify an 'accident.'
A cold steel settled over me—not the gun, but the realization of how little control I really had. Yet something in his casual appropriation also revealed an opening: if he would take my work, it meant he believed it useful. Useful meant not immediately disposable. Useful meant time. Time could be worked, bent, stolen.
I forced a calm I did not feel. "Leave them," I said instead, surprising myself with the steadiness of my tone. "You can read them here. I won't object."
He considered me for a long beat, then—perhaps because I'd shown him a different kind of stubbornness—he relented. "Fine," he said. "But if you disappoint me, don't be surprised by consequences." The threat was soft, casual; the meaning crystal clear.
He folded the paper with one precise motion and slid it into his jacket pocket as if it were simply the end of a transaction. Then, without another word, he turned and left the room. His footsteps sounded measured as he crossed the corridor—STEP, STEP—then faded into the manor like a clock settling into its ordinary tick.
After the door clicked shut, the Annex felt both too full and far too empty. I stood frozen for a long moment, staring at the place where his silhouette had disappeared. The revolver on the table seemed to pulse with the memory of our confrontation. I picked it up with hands that no longer shook as badly, turned it over, and then set it into the drawer where I kept the little things I couldn't bear to lose—my locket, a spare key, a scrap of my grandmother's handwriting. Hidden, but ready.
Then I moved to the desk. My fingers hovered over the papers he'd read and then stolen—my words, my work. I smoothed the edges, checking for fingerprints, scanning my margin notes. There were things he'd missed—a reference I'd underlined, a name I'd noted in shorthand. Little seeds I had left scattered through the text like breadcrumbs only I knew how to follow. If he wanted to use my work, fine. I'd left him a map he could't fully read without me.
A plan began, brittle and precise: finish the required work so he couldn't claim negligence; plant evidence where someone else could find it if I vanished; copy the most damning pages and tuck them away in a place only I could reach; find one ally in the house who believed in law more than legacy. Survival would not be a single dramatic shot; it would be slow strategy, patience, and the quiet accumulation of irrefutable facts.
I wrapped the revolver again—not as a first line of defense, but as a last resort—and slid it into the hollow under the mattress where I had hidden the smaller volume earlier. My heart still hammered, but now there was a rhythm under it that felt less like panic and more like purpose.
Outside, the manor carried on in its gilded complacency. Inside the Annex, among stuffed bears and ballet shoes and the books that had kept me company through sleepless nights, I set my face like a blade. I would learn his moves. I would anticipate his next step. And when the moment came that he thought I was useless, he would be wrong.
The night widened around the house. I took one last look at the window where the light would soon die, then turned back to my papers. Midnight had passed without disaster, but the danger had not lifted. It had simply shifted into a new, quieter form—one I was determined to meet on my own terms.
---
The silence was thick enough to choke on, fractured only by the uneven rhythm of my own breathing.
Eiser's words—"This is adequate. It's done."—still lingered in the air, sharp as a blade's edge. Even in that simple verdict, he'd claimed authority over not just my work, but my very existence.
He glanced once at the revolver in my trembling grip. For a fleeting second, his eyes softened—not with pity, but with something far worse: recognition. As if he'd seen this exact moment before, as if my defiance were nothing more than a scene in a play he'd already memorized.
Then he turned away.
STEP. STEP.
The echo of his shoes on the polished floor carried through the room, the sound of inevitability itself.
He stopped by the doorway, casting a faint shadow across the desk lamp's glow.
"You haven't even touched your dinner," he remarked, voice low, almost indifferent.
I blinked, disoriented. That was what he noticed? After everything?
He didn't wait for me to answer. Instead, he picked up the tray, the untouched meal shifting slightly as the silverware clinked.
"You should eat," he said simply. "You have an engagement tomorrow."
The calmness of his tone made me feel insane. He could speak of meals and schedules as if I hadn't just pointed a gun at him. As if I weren't seconds away from collapsing under the weight of my own fear.
He turned toward the hall, the tray balanced easily in his hands. The quiet footsteps echoed again—
STEP. STEP.
At the threshold, he paused.
"Serena," he said at last, his voice soft but final. "From now on, I will be sleeping in the Annex as well."
My blood froze.
No. Not here. Not in the only place that was mine.
"What did you just say?" I whispered, my voice catching on the tremor of disbelief.
He didn't look back. He simply left.
I remained standing there, numb, until the distant sound of his steps faded into silence. Then, as if the strings holding me upright had snapped, I collapsed against the wall. The revolver slipped from my grasp and fell with a muted thud onto the rug.
The Annex… My refuge. My sanctuary. Now poisoned by his presence.
He was closing in. Slowly, deliberately, stripping me of every last inch of safety.
But under the suffocating fear, something colder stirred—a fragile but unyielding resolve.
He said he would kill me when I became useless. Then I would not be useless. Not yet.
My eyes landed on the scattered papers—the records, the notes, the task that had nearly cost me my life. There was something hidden in those documents, something he wanted but didn't fully trust me with.
If I could understand what it was before he did…
Then maybe I'd have a chance.
I took a slow breath, forcing my trembling fingers to reach for the fallen pen. The clock ticked toward midnight, each second a reminder of how little time I had left to outthink him.
If Eiser wanted to use me—then I would learn how to use him first.
---
The blue light in the royal reception hall felt almost surgical—clean, cold, the kind of color that flattens warmth and reveals every edge. It painted Eiser's face in a hard, merciless hue; his features looked as if carved from the same midnight as the sky outside. When I'd tried to bait him with a half-joke, it was only to see whether anything would crack. What I found instead was an animal that knew the rhythm of patience.
His silence after my words was a small, deliberate thing—longer than politeness, shorter than cruelty. In that pause he read me: not the words, but the measure of my fear and the way I tried to paper it over with humor. The tilt of his mouth was not a smile so much as a benchmark—this is manageable, he seemed to say—and the air between us felt suddenly ancient, like the hush before a storm. I felt it at the base of my skull: the old, undeniable prickle that told me I had stepped too close to a thing that would not be moved.
The hall itself was an audience of blue glass and gilt: musicians under a chandelier, nobles drifting in practiced arcs, servants in the shadows like chessmen repositioned by invisible hands. People clapped and sipped and smiled, and every laugh was a small, wary agreement—not joy, but performance. My own laughter had been an attempt to fit into that choreography and to hide a pulse that had not yet calmed.
When the scene dissolved, I walked away with the image of a small, sleek pistol flashing in my mind like an unwelcome memory. The chapter in the storybook world had closed—an elegant last line, a neat curl on the page. But outside the fiction, the kingdom's rules were blunt and unyielding, a sign posted for anyone distracted enough to look:
⚠️ Tip's
THE POSSESSION OF FIREARMS FOR PERSONAL USE IS ILLEGAL IN THE KINGDOM.
Chapter 12 end
The word illegal should have been a comfort, a clean line between me and the danger. Instead, it felt like theater: laws designed to keep knives out of the hands of the many while leaving the few with keys to hidden cabinets. In a court where favors counted for more than statutes, scarcity functioned as discipline for the weak and a convenience for the cunning.
For a second I toyed with a dangerous little fantasy—what it would mean to hold that blunt, terrible power when the room wanted to rename me and my life a footnote. But it was a selfish, brittle thought; far too easy and far too final. I had no illusion that ending him would be a solution. Even if the deed were done, he had shaped a system that would simply fold around the gap and seal it up. The kingdom doesn't crumble from one removed player; it rebalances. I could not let my life be a single violent punctuation in his ledger.
So I turned the problem over in my head the way one turns a jewel to see which plane will catch the light. If the pistol was the most obvious trump card—brute force—then I needed a quieter one: leverage. The thing men like Eiser respected, secretly feared, and habitually underestimated, was not weapons but information. Documents, names, favors whispered at midnight, the right page folded at the right time—these were currency in a court where bloodline and reputation outranked law. The records I'd been studying, the hash of notes in my margins, the tiny references I'd tucked into my pages—those were not just schoolwork. They were threads. Pull the right one and you could unpick a sleeve.
Ina's art and the story belonged to another hand—deliberate, interior—but the life I lived felt perilously real, and I had to find methods that matched that reality. I would not become an exhibit in Eiser's play; I would learn the script and write my own lines. I would make allies of the small and useful: the bored clerk who likes to trade gossip for coins, the steward who keeps ledgers for pride more than for safety, the doctor who looks at broken things and hates to see them discarded. I would leave signals in the margins: a name, a date, an offhand note that only I would know to follow. I would let him think he'd taken my work when in truth he would only be carrying the map to a place I had already set a trap.
There were practicalities. I could not force a revolution alone. I would move in increments—finishing the report so that his inspection could not be used as an excuse, creating small, incontrovertible redundancies of the information he coveted, and placing copies where they would be noticed if I vanished. I would not traffic in violence; I would traffic in certainty. Certainty is a weapon that does not need powder: it corrodes plans grown in dark offices because it invites the public light.
As the last strains of a string quartet dissolved and the hall began to empty into the night like tidewater, I felt something settle under the panic—a thin, fierce thread of resolve. The pistol in my imagination was only a symbol now: a reminder of what brutality looks like and why it is a poor answer to a long game. The trump card I would cultivate would be subtler: witnesses who could not be bought without exposure, documents cross-stamped in three places, letters whose ink dried with the names of men who had earned the kingdom's favor but not its forgiveness.
Ina's chapter might have ended in glitter and a curt bow, but the pages of my life were still open. I would not pretend the court loved me. It did not. But it was hungry for stories, for scandal, for reasons to shift allegiances. If I could give it a story that made Eiser's moves expensive, risky, and public—then perhaps I could be more than a temporary asset.
Tonight I would go back to the Annex. I would finish the notes he demanded, but not for him. I would polish my margins and leave crumbs only I knew how to follow. And when the time came for him to pull his neat, practiced plans into the open, he would find that the world had already leaned in to look—because I had quietly taught it to care.
The reception's blue light faded from my vision as I stepped into my carriage. The kingdom outside thrummed with life and danger both; I tucked the image of the pistol away like a ward and readied myself for a different kind of duel. Not with a gun, but with patience, intelligence, and a little theatricality—the ivories Eiser could not play.