The invitation arrived on a Tuesday.
Sheila found it on the breakfast tray, propped against the teapot, the envelope heavy with gold embossing. The paper was thick, expensive, the kind of paper that cost more than most people earned in a week. The seal was pressed with the Aurelian crest—a flame rising from an anvil, the symbol of the royal house.
Prince Lumian Aurelian requests the pleasure of Lady Sheila Karmis's company at a viewing of his private collection. On Thursday. Carriage will be sent at four.
She read it twice, then set it down beside her plate. Her hands were shaking slightly. She didn't know why.
Duke Karmis appeared in the doorway, his hands clasped behind his back, his face unreadable.
"You received the invitation."
"Yes."
"Will you go?"
Sheila looked at the seal. The flame. The anvil. The weight of the Crown pressing down on everything.
"I don't have a choice."
Karmis nodded slowly. "No. You don't."
The carriage arrived at four o'clock on Thursday.
It was black lacquer, polished to a mirror shine, the Aurelian crest painted on the door. Two outriders flanked it, their uniforms dark, their faces blank. The horses were grey, their manes braided with black ribbons.
Sheila climbed inside, her dress catching on the step. She had chosen it carefully—not too formal, not too plain. Pale blue, with a high collar and long sleeves. The seamstresses had said it made her look older. She wasn't sure if that was a compliment.
The interior of the carriage was velvet, dark red, soft as skin. The windows were curtained, blocking out the fog. She sat alone in the velvet dark, her hands folded in her lap, her back straight.
She had practiced her curtsy. She had practiced her smile. She had practiced the words she would say—the polite phrases, the careful compliments, the questions that showed interest without revealing too much.
This is not a marriage, she thought. It's a transaction.
The carriage stopped.
The Prince's residence was smaller than she expected.
It was a townhouse in the merchant district, three stories tall, its windows dark. The iron gate was old, the garden overgrown, the path cracked with age. This was not the palace. This was somewhere else. Somewhere private.
The outriders helped her down. The door opened before she could knock.
A servant stood in the doorway—old, thin, his face a mask of wrinkles. He wore a black suit, frayed at the cuffs, and his hands trembled as he gestured for her to enter.
"The Prince awaits," he said.
Sheila stepped inside.
The interior was dark, the curtains drawn, the gas lamps turned low. The air smelled of dust and old paper and something else—something sweet, cloying, like flowers left too long in water.
The servant led her through a narrow corridor, past closed doors and empty rooms, to a staircase at the back of the house. The stairs were steep, the wood worn smooth by years of feet. They descended into a basement.
Sheila's heart beat faster.
The servant stopped before a door at the bottom of the stairs. He knocked twice, waited, then opened the door.
"Lady Sheila Karmis," he announced.
She stepped inside.
The room was larger than she expected—a gallery, really, with high ceilings and white walls and gas lamps that burned bright and steady. The floor was marble, black and white, polished to a mirror shine. And along the walls, in glass cases, were things she couldn't name.
The Prince stood in the center of the room, his hands clasped behind his back, his face turned toward the far wall. He was wearing a dark suit, his hair combed back, his posture perfect. He looked older than twelve in the gaslight. Sharper. Colder.
"Lady Karmis," he said, turning. "Thank you for coming."
Sheila curtsied. "Thank you for inviting me, Your Highness."
"Lumian," he said. "We're to be married. Formality is unnecessary."
He gestured to the cases.
"My collection," he said. "Would you like to see it?"
The first case held a stone.
It was grey, rough, unremarkable—the kind of stone you might find in any riverbed, on any hillside, in any corner of the capital. But it floated. Hovering in the center of the glass case, suspended by nothing, turning slowly on an invisible axis.
Sheila stared at it. Her mouth opened, but no words came out.
"It's beautiful, isn't it?" Lumian said. "I acquired it from a dealer in the old quarter. He said it came from the northern wars. A soldier's trophy, or something like that."
Sheila forced herself to speak. "What... what is it?"
"A curiosity. A relic." Lumian shrugged. "No one knows exactly what it is. Some say it's a piece of a meteor. Others say it's a fossil. I just like the way it floats."
Sheila looked at the stone. The way it turned. The way it seemed to pulse with a light that wasn't there.
Mother wrote about stones that answered to thought, she remembered. She wrote about people who could make them move.
But that was just a story. Wasn't it?
The second case held a candle.
It was white, tapered, the wax smooth and unmarked. But the flame—the flame burned without smoke, without melting, without consuming. It flickered in the still air, casting shadows that seemed to move on their own.
"This one came from the Church of the Eternal Flames," Lumian said. "They use them in their ceremonies. Ever-burning candles, they call them. They say the flame has been lit for three hundred years."
Sheila leaned closer. The flame didn't warm her. It didn't even flicker when she breathed.
"Does it ever go out?"
"No. That's the point." Lumian smiled. "It's a miracle, the priests say. A sign of Ignis's favor."
Sheila didn't know how this signified Ignis' favor and she didn't ask.
The third case held an urn.
It was clay, unglazed, the surface rough and porous. A soft whisper came from within—not words, not quite, but sounds. Breath. Wind. The echo of something that had once been alive.
Sheila felt the hair on her arms stand up.
"This one is my favorite," Lumian said. "It came from the Church of The Perfect Sky, Saint Ellen's Church. They say it contains the breath of the saint—someone who could hear the voices of the air itself."
"What does it whisper?"
"No one knows. The language is dead. But I like the sound. It's calming, don't you think?"
Sheila listened. The whisper was soft, wordless, like wind through bare branches.
Mother wrote about people who could move the air, she thought. She wrote about the wind answering to them.
She didn't know if she believed it. But the whisper made her shiver.
The fourth case held a vial.
It was glass, clear, no larger than her thumb. Inside, a liquid moved—dark, thick, slow. It didn't settle. It didn't separate. It simply moved, as if it were alive.
Sheila stepped back without meaning to.
"This one is from the Church of The Endless Sea, Saint Ann's Church," Lumian said. "They call it a Memory-Tear. They say it came from a drowned woman—that her tears were collected before she died, and that they still remember her."
"That's horrible."
Lumian tilted his head. "Is it? I think it's beautiful. A piece of someone, preserved forever."
Sheila looked at the vial. The liquid moved. Dark. Thick. Slow.
Mother wrote about people who could remember things that weren't theirs, she thought. She wrote about the water holding memories.
She didn't know what to believe anymore.
The tour ended.
The servant led her back up the stairs, through the narrow corridors, to the front door. The carriage was waiting, the outriders standing at attention, the horses stamping in the cold.
Sheila climbed inside.
The velvet was dark. The curtains were drawn. The fog pressed against the windows, thick and grey.
She sat alone in the dark, her hands trembling, her heart pounding.
What was that place? she thought. What were those things?
She thought of her mother's journals. The descriptions of "men who dance with fire" and "women who speak to stone." The warnings about the King's Design, the catalyst, the lamb.
She had thought her mother was a dreamer. A romantic. Someone who saw the world through a lens of metaphor.
Now she wasn't so sure.
That night, she wrote in her journal.
The Prince showed me his collection. Stones that float. Candles that never go out. Urns that whisper. Vials that move.
He called them curiosities. Art. Trophies.
Mother wrote about things like this. She wrote about people who could make them work.
I don't know what to believe.
But I'm going to find out.
She closed the journal and blew out the candle.
The walls watched. The air listened.
Sheila lay in the dark and thought of all that she saw and what she should choose to believe.