Cessalie sat in the garden with nothing in her hands in fredsh air, the stretch of grass beneath her, and that stubborn patch of sunlight between the trees. She stared at it like it owed her something.
Birds chirped overhead like the world was not decaying, like gods were not rotting behind temple walls and men were not still kneeling for scraps. A week had passed eince she met Davian. She was missing him.
Then as if she manifested his presence Davian appeared.
His boots scraped against the stone path, but lacking their usual confidence and calm. His steps sounded heavier today.
He stopped near the bench but did not sit. He did not greet her.
"They wouldn't let me in," Davian said, his voice hard at the edges.
Cessalie turned her gaze toward him, blinking slowly. "The High Lunarch?" she asked.
Davian nodded. His jaw was clenched, eyes sharp but distant. "I waited outside his chambers for three hours. I even sent a letter through the steward. All I got was some boy, barely old enough to shave, telling me the Lunarch was 'unavailable for suggestions from common advisors.'"
His words landed with more bitterness than volume. It was not loud, but it stung sharper than a shout.
Cessalie raised an eyebrow. "So that is it? You are giving up?"
Davian's head snapped toward her, eyes narrowing slightly. "What exactly would you prefer I do?" he asked, voice low but tight and cruel. "Force my way past the guards? Drag the man out of his meditations and scream in his face until he listens?"
She said nothing. The frustration rolling off him was enough to unsettle her instantly, tightening something in her chest. What she could not understand was what she had done wrong to deserve Davian speaking to her with such coldness.
Davian exhaled, but it did not ease him. His next words came harder. "You think this is simple? You think he will suddenly fall in line because you want him to? That all it takes is good intentions and stubbornness?"
His tone was cruel. It was the kind of harsh, tired frustration that did not need shouting to hurt.
Cessalie leaned back, her fingers brushing the edge of her sleeve, searching for something solid to hold onto, still trying to find some solution to easen Davian's frustration.
"You said he believed in the witches," she looked up at him immediately, her voice small. "Maybe there is still a way—"
"Cessalie."
Her name cracked like stone against glass. It was not angry, but that tone left no room for argument, no space for hope.
He looked at her, but it was like he had already decided she was wrong, and saying it aloud would be a waste of breath.
Cessalie's mouth closed. That was it, then.
The moments when he had told her she was right, when he said she should have ruled, when he acted like her voice mattered... it all fell flat when things actually fractured.
All the respect and careful acknowledgment he had shown her for months seemed to unravel in that single moment, undone by the way he spoke her name.
In the end, she was still only the girl beside him, the one meant to sit quietly, t patch him up when the world bruised his pride, to play the soft voice beside the Duke's name.
She nodded once, tight. "Alright," she said.
And she stopped looking at the sunlight. It was not going to give her answers either.
He sighed and looked away. Maybe he regretted the tone. He did not say anything, and Cessalie did not expect him to.
His hand found hers. He squeezed it gently. For a moment, she wanted to pull away. Not because it hurt, but because it didn't.
Cessalie knew that was how it always began. Gentle hands, tirred voices, soft apologies. Then one day, they stopped being soft.
Just because she didn't flinch didn't mean she wasn't scared. She was. Scared that whatever he gave her might be a trap waiting to close. She trusted him now. She believed what he offered was real. And that was what frightened her most. The thought that it could break apart and turn into something cruel she had faced in her own house.
He kept speaking after that. Something about border negotiations, something about the council delaying decisions again. Names, numbers, strategic shifts. His voice filled the space, but she did not hear any of it.
She nodded when necessary., blinked when his eyes met hers, so he would think she was still present.
But her mind had drifted far from the garden. It lingered under that patch of sunlight between the trees, in a place that still felt soft and safe, even if it was only an illusion.
Eventually, he left.
He said her name again, quieter this time. Like a truce.
Cessalie did not respond.
He hesitated, as if waiting for a goodbye, a word of forgiveness. She offered neither.
The sound of his boots crunching against the path faded into the distance. A bird chirped right after, as if it had been holding its breath.
She stayed on the bench. Her eyes stayed fixed on the sunlight between the trees. She waited for it to give her some answer.
It did not.
She sat there longer. Time drifted around her. Only the sunlight remained, its glow dulling the second he had walked away.
Eventually, she stood. Her legs ached with pins and needles, and she realised they had gone numb from sitting so long.
Cessalie did not return to her chambers. She did not want to hear Gini asking if she needed tea or whether the window should be opened. She left the estate grounds, slipping past the guards and down the worn paths, into the deeper woods beyond.
Roxy noticed her first, bounding forward with the quiet grace of a predator, her body brushing against Cessalie's side. Vonyr stood tall behind her, his ears twitching as he scanned the trees. Athen dropped down from the branches neatly as his head tilted toward her, his eyes knowing.
She sat down on the grass in front of them, crossing her legs. Her breath left her in a slow exhale.
"I think he showed me the future today," she said. Her voice was low, uncertain. She didn't know if she was telling herselt or her children.
Roxy pressed her head against Cessalie's arm, her warmth grounding and familiar.
"He didn't shout," Cessalie whispered. "He didn't hit. He just… said my name." Her voice wavered, the cracks of something deeper slipping through. "And still… I was scared."
Athen settled beside her, his large body curling protectively near her feet. Vonyr stood guard behind her, as unmoving and solid as a wall.
"I know he's not like my father," she continued, fingers curling into the grass. "I know that. But the way he said it…" Her voice faltered. "It was like hearing the version of him that doesn't exist yet. The one that will, a few years from now. The one who stops softening his edges. The one who stops listening when I speak. The one who gets angry when I challenge him… and not in a way that starts a conversation. In a way that ends me."
Cessalie swallowed hard, her chest tightening like something sharp was lodged there.
"I thought he was different," she whispered, her voice shrinking to something small and breakable. "I needed him to be different."
Roxy let out a soft whimper, her large paw sliding into Cessalie's lap. She didn't cry. she just sat there, jaw clenched, eyes burning, with that same patch of sunlight from the garden still ghosting behind her eyelids.
It was strange how much it could hurt to hear someone say your name the wrong way. Not the pronunciation, but the weight behind it. The meaning it carried.
It took her back to the palace, back to those long, suffocating dinners with her family, back to those moments when she couldn't tell if someone loved her or simply tolerated the version of her that kept quiet and convenient.
She leaned her head against Roxy's fur.
"I'm so stupid," she muttered, her voice cracking. "So fucking stupid."
Roxy gave a frustrated little grunt, the kind of sound that said she would happily rip the throat out of anyone who called Cessalie stupid, even Cessalie herself.
Vonyr let out a low rumble, barely audible.
"I didn't even say anything wrong," she went on, her voice getting thicker now. "I was trying to help. I just said that there might be another way. That maybe the High Lunarch wasn't a dead end and—"
Her throat tightened, cutting the words short.
"—and he shut me down just like that. It was just word... my name liike I was speaking out of turn, like I needed to be silenced."
Athen shifted beside her, his long tail curling gently around her ankle.
"It's not fair," she whispered, staring at the dirt beneath her boots. "Why does everyone always do this to me? They let me speak, just enough to feel safe and to fool me into thinking my voice matters. But the second I cross some invisible line, it flips. I'm not the girl they love anymore. I'm the problem."
She began to remember every moment when this had happened to her. One moment Cyrion would hold her in his arms, and the moment she said something that would irritate him... he would throw her to the floor. Sometimes, while getting her braid done by her mother, if she said that she also wanted to play with her brothers and sister, she would get slapped.
"I knew it was coming," she whispered. Her fingers curled into the grass. "I always knew. The first time he raises his voice, or loses patience, or looks at me like I'm wrong, everything changes. And now…"
Her arms wrapped around her knees, pulling them close.
"Now it's started."
Roxy nuzzled into her, the force of it knocking her slightly off balance. Cessalie didn't fight it. She buried her face in the warm fur and closed her eyes.
"He's not my father," she mumbled, as if saying it out loud would make it true.
But that didn't mean he was safe.
She couldn't cry. Her tears had run dry years ago, somewhere back in childhood, when they stopped meaning anything. So she stayed with them, her only real family...the only ones who ever seemed to understand.
After a while, she made her way back to the estate.
When she finally reached her chambers, she shut the door behind her and collapsed onto the bed, burying her face in the pillows like they could smother the memory of that moment.
"I don't want to see him again," she muttered into the fabric, her voice muffled and shaky. "How dare he—"
She paused.
Something was off.
She'd seen it when she first walked in, just out of the corner of her eye. But she was wrapped in herself to register it. Now, a pulse of dread settled in her chest.
She lifted her head and turned toward the window.
And there it was.
A desk was perfectly placed beneath the window frame, with a plain wooden chair tucked in neatly as if it had always belonged there.
But it didn't.
She never gad a desk. Her room had always been intentionally barren. Her father called it "discipline."
But this… this was new.
She rose from the bed, cautious, slow, like the desk might vanish if she blinked too fast.
It was made of deep brown polished oak, its smooth grain catching the light. The corners had been carefully rounded and filed down. It was not ornate, yet it was far from rough.
A few small items sat on top. A stack of parchment, a glass ink bottle, a feathered quill, a candle in a glass jar. A wooden tray with pressed flowers, arranged like a keepsake like someone had tried to make the space hers.
The chair was pulled in neatly, waiting for her.
She reached out, fingertips brushing the parchment. But underneath it, something rustled.
A folded slip of paper.
She pulled it out carefully, her chest tight with quiet nerves.
She unfolded it and read the words.
"My apologies for my behaviour today. This is a small apology for the girl who loves to read."
Her breath caught. Her eyes widened.
Davian.
He noticed.
He saw the shift in her face, the silence, the way she had not followed him. He had seen how that single word, her name, had bruised something fragile inside her.
A warmth bloomed quietly in her chest. Shy and flickering, like a candle in a cold room.
He had seen her.
And maybe… maybe he wasn't like her father after all. Cessalie hugged the letter to her chest and started smiling, forgetting everything she had felt moments ago.