CHAPTER 3: TWO PRISONERS, ONE BUCKET

  The first thing Irena saw when she woke was the bent nail where that cheap brass Sun had glared down at her. For a moment, she didn’t remember where she was. The mattress was all wrong. It was lumpy and too narrow. The smell, too, was wrong. Cold stone and stale dust instead of fresh beeswax and lavender linens. Her hand went up to rub the sleep from her eyes and came away gritty. Her head throbbed dully behind her temples, with the memory of weeping.

  Then came the memory of the ride, her arrival at the tower, the dragon’s roaring fire, and the bolts in the door closing behind her. Right. The Grey Marches. The mad wizard’s tower. Exiled “for her own good.” It all came back to her in a crushing wave.

  She pushed herself upright with a muttered curse and swung her legs off the bed. Her throat still tasted of old tears.

  The room was as bare as it was last night, but harsher in the morning light. The first thin rays picked out every crack in the plaster, every mote of dust swirling. Yesterday’s clothes lay in a sad heap on the chair, with no one to take them. The grey dress Lira had mended waited for her in the chest, still folded with almost military precision, the seams puckered where the halfling's small, neat stitches had battled with old thread.

  Somewhere below, something scraped rhythmically. A broom on stone, by the sound of it.

  There was no one ready to dress her, so Irena flattened her hair as best she could with her fingers, shoved her feet into her boots, and stood up. The air was knife-cold on her cheeks. She crossed to the narrow window and peered out.

  The world beyond, the vastness of the mountain and the misty lands below, were wider than her vantage, restrained by that arrow-slit, could afford her.

  The tower clung to one shoulder of the mountain; beyond it, the valley fell away, a bowl of rolling fog and dark pines. The sky was a painfully clear, pale blue with the high white smear of distant cloud. The other peak loomed across the gap, laden with its own cowl of stone and scrub. It was quiet now. There was no fire. No movement. No sign of the dragon at all.

  If she didn’t know better, she could have believed she’d imagined the whole thing.

  Suddenly, the idea of spending another moment in this room, with that cheap brass Sun, even hurled in the chest as it was, made something angry ball up in her chest. Before she could talk herself out of it, she shrugged on her cloak and headed downstairs.

  The main hall seemed larger in the daylight, and even emptier for it. The torches from last night had guttered out, leaving streaks of soot above their brackets. The sweeps of bare stone where tapestries had once hung were all the more obvious now; she could pick out where heavy cloth had protected the wall, outlines darkened. The ghosts of furniture similarly marked the flagstones in pale rectangles.

  In the middle of it all, Lira was sweeping.

  The maid looked smaller without the heavy cloak. She did not reach Irena’s shoulder in height, narrow-shouldered and slight, with the stocky legs and broad feet of her people. Her dark curls had been yanked back into a plait that stopped halfway down her back; whisps had already escaped to curl damply around her ears. The broom was almost as tall as she was. Each stroke of it took obvious effort.

  She didn’t even see Irena at first. Her head was bowed, face set in a determined squint, as if she could bully the dust into obedience.

  “I am going out,” Irena said, because proceeding in silence unnerved her more than she wanted to admit.

  Lira jumped. The broom clattered against the floor, setting off a small explosion of dust.

  “Y-your Highness,” she stammered, snatching at the broomstick before it fell. “I— I didn’t realise you were awake yet. I can bring—”

  “I said I’m going out to get some air,” Irena repeated, more sharply than she’d intended. “Is that forbidden, too?”

  Lira’s fingers tightened around the broom as she recovered it.

  “You’re not—” she stopped, swallowed. “The baron said you mustn’t leave the tower grounds. That the dragon—”

  “The dragon is all the way up there,” Irena said, jerking her head towards that distant peak. “I am hardly going to go climbing up there onto its back. I just want to look.”

  Lira’s gaze flicked to the heavy door, then back to Irena’s face. She didn’t quite dare contradict her.

  “As you wish, Your Highness,” she murmured and made a small, helpless gesture, as if to say: What can I possibly do?

  Exactly, Irena thought, and that was enough to propel her to the door.

  The iron latch was stiff with age. So were the bolts. It took both hands and a shove of her shoulder to get them moving. The thick wood grudgingly groaned open a hand’s breadth, then wider. Cold air knifed in, carrying with it the scent of pine, distant water, and the faint acrid tang of old smoke.

  Her breath misted in front of her. From her position just inside the threshold, she could see the ring of pale stones that glimmered faintly where they’d been set into the ground in a wide circle around the perimeter of the tower, their carved faces a dull opalescent sheen in the morning light.

  She stepped outside.

  The change was immediate. The air outside was sharper, cleaner. The sound was clearer. The faint rush of wind, the cry of some unseen bird in the rocks. The little fortification yard at the tower’s base was paved with uneven stones, patches of frost clinging stubbornly in the shaded corners. A low wall marked the edge; beyond it, the mountain fell away steeply, dotted with scrub and coarse grass, the old road snaking down in narrow zigzags.

  For four or five moments, she simply breathed it in.

  No priest. No baron. No banners. Just the wide open sky and the vast world below her.

  See? She told herself, fingers loosening on the edge of the door. It’s not so bad. You could walk down that road. You could go. You don’t actually have to—

  The mountain ahead of her moved.

  It was subtle at first. A dark curve against blackened stone, the suggestion of a spine uncoiling, the shadow of wings.

  Then the sound hit.

  The roar rolled down and across the valley like a physical blow. It made the flagstones under her boots vibrate. The breath in her lungs seemed to freeze. Her heart forgot what to do for an instant, seizing against her ribs.

  Upon that distant ridge, a long seam of dull black scales caught the light as the dragon stretched, cat-like, along its perch. It was only a silhouette at this distance, but its sheer size was obscene. It yawned, baring teeth larger than swords, and then casually opened its wicked jaws wider still.

  Fire spilt out.

  Not towards her. It poured, a lazy, disinterested sheet of orange and red tumbling down one barren slope like a waterfall, incinerating shrub and blackening rock. Heat washed across the valley a moment later, a slap of hot air that reached even Irena in the tower courtyard.

  And Irena’s body didn’t care about the distance between them, nor the fact that the flames weren’t even aimed at her. Every fibre of her being screamed predator.

  She jerked back without meaning to, boots skidding. Her shoulder thumped into the door. For a wild, dizzying moment, she thought about bolting forward anyway, about springing for the road, risking it all—

  Another roar, deeper this time, punched right into her sternum.

  Her courage folded like wet paper.

  She found herself back inside the tower again, slamming the door shut with both hands. The bolts grated in their brackets as she shoved them closed. Her breath tore in and out of her lungs in frantic gulps.

  “Your Highness?” Lira’s voice floated across the hall, small and thin. A second later, the halfling appeared at the base of the stair, broom still clutched like a spear. “Are you— are you hurt?”

  “I’m fine,” Irena snapped.

  Her hands were shaking. She pressed them against the wood, as if that would make it less obvious. The dragon’s next roar echoed around the mountains, through the stone of the tower, and then died down.

  Lira’s wide brown eyes flicked between her face and the door. It didn’t take a genius to work out what had happened, but she was too afraid or too polite to say it.

  “If you’d like to break fast—” she tentatively began.

  “I am not hungry.”

  Her stomach chose that exact moment to growl, loudly enough that it could not be denied. Heat prickled up Irena’s neck.

  Lira pretended not to have heard.

  “I can make porridge,” she offered instead. “And there’s a little honey. The baron’s men left it.” She said this with a kind of quiet pride, as if she’d personally stolen it from under their noses.

  “Fine,” Irena muttered. “Do whatever you like.”

  She pushed herself away from the door and stalked past Lira up the stair, annoyed at herself for the tremor still haunting her legs.

  Irena stayed in her room for about twenty minutes before the confines felt suffocating again. By the time she drifted back down to the hall, her attempt at composure had all but frayed into a kind of brittle restlessness. Lira had set a cracked bowl of porridge and a spoon on one corner of the main table and retreated a cautious distance, out of the way, and she busily pretended to sweep, as if trying to tame the wild princess closer.

  The porridge had gone a little thick on top. Irena sat, scowled at it, then ate anyway. It was bland and gluey and unexpectedly comforting.

  She caught herself watching Lira over the rim of the bowl.

  The halfling moved methodically around the room in widening circles. The broom was too big for her, its bristles long since worn unevenly, but she wielded it with a certain stubborn pride, pushing the dust towards the door. Every few strokes, she had to pause to catch her breath; her chest rose and fell fast under the plain bodice of her dress. Her arms were wiry, but the muscles trembled faintly from the exertion.

  She’s half my size, Irena thought, not for the first time. Literally. If they hadn’t sent a halfling, they might have sent a child.

  The nobles at court didn’t say things like that out loud, of course. They had more graceful ways of dismissing people. Lowborn. Smallfolk. Riverfolk. When they actually said “halfling,” it was usually with a little pursed-lip shrug, as if to indicate that such people were very amusing, very quaint, and very much not to be considered in serious affairs. Irena had never questioned it. No more than she questioned why the serving staff vanished and reappeared with full platters as if by magic during mealtimes. Now, one of these “quaint smallfolk” was the only other person in her world, and she was sweeping a hall much too large for her, with a broom that didn’t even fit in her hands properly.

  The porridge sat heavily in Irena’s stomach.

  “You are going to wear yourself out,” she said before she could stop herself.

  Lira jerked mid-sweep and turned, clutching the broom to herself like a shield.

  “It needs doing, Your Highness,” she said. “The dust will get in the food if I leave it.”

  “It will just come back,” Irena pointed out.

  Lira looked genuinely puzzled at that.

  “Yes,” she said. “But… slower. If I sweep.”

  Irena didn’t have a good answer to that. She watched in silence as Lira shuffled over to a patch of floor where an old wine-stain has sunk into the stone. She set the broom aside, fetched a bucket from the corner, and knelt with a rag to scrub at it.

  The bucket looked absurd next to her, the wooden hoops nearly reaching her hip. When she tried to lift it again a few minutes later, the water sloshed sharply. She staggered and caught herself against the wall, cheeks flushed with effort.

  “Give it here,” Irena heard herself say.

  Lira blinked.

  “Your Highness?”

  “The bucket.” Irena pushed her chair back and stood. “If you faint just trying to keep the floor spotless, what am I supposed to do? Step over your body until it dries?”

  That came out much more harshly than she had intended, but some of the rawness behind it was not actually aimed at Lira. Not really.

  “Oh, I won’t faint,” Lira said, flustered. “I just misjudged— It’s not so—”

  “Give. It. Here.”

  Lira’s resistance crumpled. She stepped aside and let Irena wrap her hands around the iron handle. It was heavier than it looked. The cold metal immediately cut into her palms. She could feel the water sloping around within it, a slosh of weight that wanted to go everywhere but where it was supposed to.

  She’d watched servants carry buckets a thousand times. It had never looked complicated, but two steps later, she’d already splashed water over her boots. By the fourth, the bucket had collided against her knee hard enough to leave a bruise.

  “Careful,” Lira blurted out, darting to her side. “If you— if you keep your elbows in, like this—” Warm fingers lightly touched Irena’s arm, nudging them inwards. “And— um— walk a little slower. Shorter steps.”

  “I know how to walk,” Irena snapped, even as she grudgingly adjusted. Under normal circumstances, no maid would ever be allowed to touch her. She wondered if Lira was clueless to that fact, or was just a special kind of impudent.

  “It’s not the walking,” Lira said in a rush. “It’s— it’s how you carry it. You have to move with it. Like… like when you dance, and you don’t want to tread on any toes.”

  A smallfolk trying to relate to a princess via dance. It was definitely the former, then. Irena considered pointing out that the only partners she’d ever deigned to notice were taller than a bucket. She shut her mouth instead and endeavoured to follow the instructions. By some miracle, she got the bucket to the stair without slamming into anything. Her hands were burning. The muscles in her forearms trembled, and her shoulders were already aching.

  “How many of these have you carried this morning?” Irena asked, panting slightly.

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  Lira glanced away. “A few,” she said.

  “How many.”

  “... Six?”

  Irena stared at her. “You are half my size.”

  “It’s my duty,” Lira murmured, eyes on the floor. “And I’ve more practice than you, Your Highness. The water needs to be changed, or it turns, and then the smell gets into everything.”

  It was such a simple, practical horror that for a moment, Irena didn’t know whether to laugh or scream.

  “Very well,” she said, instead. “Fine. Show me how to change the water.”

  Lira blinked again, as if she hadn’t heard that correctly.

  “I— I can do it—”

  “I am well aware that you can manage,” Irena cut her argument off. “That is the problem. You are managing everything. I am bored out of my skull. Let me carry a bucket and feel useful for ten minutes before the tedium kills me.”

  The halfling’s mouth closed softly. A strange expression crossed her face as she looked at Irena. It might have been something like relief.

  “All right,” she said quietly. “As you wish, Your Highness.”

  Between the two of them, with Lira’s murmured instructions and occasional steadying hand, they managed to get the bucket to the cistern in the north passage, empty it without soaking the corridor, and refill it. By the time they’d lugged it back, Irena’s arms felt like lead, and her fingers were bitterly protesting. Lira didn’t look much better for the turmoil of wrangling the headstrong princess, but there was a flicker of satisfaction in the corners of her mouth that Irena hadn’t seen before.

  They ended up stripping the bed next.

  “You don’t have to—” Lira began, automatically, as Irena started tugging the thin mattress away from the rope base.

  “If you tell me I don’t have to help one more time,” Irena said through gritted teeth. “I will throw this entire bed out of the window and sleep on the floor just to spite you.

  Lira made a tiny, strangled noise that might have been a laugh and might have been panic. It escaped before she could stop it. They both froze, each as surprised as the other. Irena huffed and palmed her hair back, pretending she hadn’t heard a servant laugh at her.

  The mattress turned out to be as cooperative as a cat. It flopped, it sagged, it tried to fold intself in half at the most unhelpful of moments. They wrestled it between them like two men-at-arms grappling with the enemy, until they managed to drag it out onto the floor and beat the worst of the dust out of it with the broom handle.

  Irena’s swings were enthusiastic but useless.

  “You don’t need to hit it so hard,” Lira observed after a while. She coughed into her sleeve and then looked a little sheepish as Irena looked at her, perhaps with the delayed realisation that smallfolk were not supposed to cough like that in the presence of a royal. “You beat it faster. Use your elbow.”

  “Faster? How?”

  “Just like this, Your Highness.”

  Lira demonstrated the right way: shorter, sharper blows, as they turned the mattress between them, working around in a pattern. Irena found that watching Lira was oddly calming. She moved with a rhythm born of long practice, all small, economical motions. Where Irena flailed, Lira moved with confidence and spread the impacts evenly.

  Once they’d beaten the worst out of the mattress and remade the bed together, Lira showed her how to fold the corners of the sheet under the mattress so that they stayed tight.

  “Like wrapping bread in cloth,” she said, her small hands guiding Irena’s larger ones. “It’s easier if you tuck this bit first. No, look— here.”

  Her fingers were surprisingly strong. They pressed Irena’s knuckles into the right position, turned her hands at the wrists, and smoothed the linen with a quick, sure sweep. Irena had never thought about the fact that someone had had to learn how to do this. That it was a skill. By the time they were done, the bed looked… better. Still a cheap, old thing, but it looked less like someone had just dragged it out of an old storeroom and more like a place she might want to sleep.

  And there was a tiny, treacherous spark of pride in Irena’s chest.

  “Thank you,” she said before she could stop herself.

  Lira’s head snapped up. “Your Highness?”

  “For showing me,” Irena said, awkward now. “If I am to be imprisoned here, then I really would rather not be entirely useless.”

  Lira’s mouth parted and then closed again. Colour had crept up to the tips of her ears.

  “You’re not useless,” she said, very quietly. “You’re… you’re the King’s daughter.”

  “Which is precisely why no one has ever let me do anything more complicated than to sign my own name and pick out a dress,” Irena said dryly, before glancing sidelong at Lira. “Until now.”

  Silence settled between them. It was not quite companionable, but neither was it hostile. The wind whistled faintly at the window. Somewhere in the tower, an old beam creaked as it settled.

  “Why did you agree to come here?” Irena suddenly asked. “To this place. With me. You are not a prisoner. Surely you could have said no.”

  Lira’s hands tightened as she clasped them together.

  “Yes. I could have,” Lira admitted. “My family keeps a stall. We sold— we sell candles, mostly. Tallow and beeswax, when we can get it. My father does the wicks. My mother— did— the accounts. My brother helps load the carts.” Her voice had gone soft and her eyes far away. “When the Concord came looking for a girl to tend to the princess in seclusion, they said it was an honour. For someone like me. A blessing. The priest said the Sun had turned His eye on our family.

  Irena made a small, incredulous gesture. “So they volunteered you.”

  Lira nodded, a tiny head bob. “The notice said there would be wages. That the girl chosen would be housed and fed and close to grace, and that her family would be remembered in prayers. We… needed the money.” Her mouth twitched. “And halflings are not… usually asked. For important things. My father said it meant we must have pleased the Sun. My little brother followed me all the way to the Concord House and had to be dragged back.”

  “How old is he?” Irena asked before thinking better of it.

  “Eight.” Lira swallowed. “He thinks… he thought I was going to the palace on Highcourt. To serve you there. He wanted me to see the golden floors.” Her gaze dropped to the rough planks under their feet. “I didn’t know until some time later, after a carriage journey to the Shirekeep, and the priest brought me to the baron’s hall, that I would be coming… here. That it would just be me. That I wouldn’t be allowed to write home, or, at least, not for a while.”

  Irena’s stomach turned, and sat heavy as a stone.

  “They took your life away to tend to mine,” she said.

  Lira flinched. “Your life is more important, Your High—”

  “Don’t,” Irena snapped. “Just. Don’t say that.”

  Lira’s mouth snapped shut. She stared down at her own hands, thumbs worrying together. Her shoulders had hunched inwards again, as if she were trying to make herself even smaller.

  “You hardly did anything wrong,” Irena said, more quietly. “I did not mean to startle you. And the Concord… You were just… Convenient. The right sort of person to throw into the dark with me, because no one at court would know.”

  The words tasted bitter to Irena. Perhaps because some part of her recognised herself in them. The halfling’s eyes shone suddenly, but she didn’t cry. She swallowed hard and nodded once.

  “Maybe,” she whispered. “But my family will eat well. And I will do my duty. That’s what the priest said. Every soul has its duty. Yours is more numinous than mine. That’s why you’re a princess, and I’m…” She gestured vaguely at herself.

  “A girl with more sense of duty than the entire council chamber,” Irena muttered. “If duty is supposed to be rewarded, someone failed in that rather sorely.”

  Lira’s mouth twitched again. This time, it even became a tiny, reluctant smile.

  They ended up in the kitchen later, side by side at the scarred table, shelling a bowl of wrinkled peas that had been soaking in a cracked pottery dish. It was tedious, fiddly work, the sort servants’ hands learned early, and princess’ hands never did. Irena’s fingers rumbled. Her nails tore the skins. Lira’s moved quickly, neatly, leaving little piles of green on the board.

  The hearth smoked, but less than it had even hours ago. Lira had found a way to wedge a stone just so to stop the draught that made smoke spill back into the kitchen. Soot had smudged into the fine lines of Lira’s small face, darkening the hollows under her eyes. Up close, Irena could see the faint pattern of freckles across the bridge of her nose, and the soft curve of her cheekbones.

  She forced herself to look away.

  “May I ask you something?” Lira asked suddenly, fixing her gaze firmly on her own hands.

  Irena made a noncommittal noise. Her own fingers were starting to ache from prising stubborn pods open.

  “Why are you here?” Lira’s voice barely rose above the crackle from the hearth. “I mean— I know what the priest said. That you defied the King’s will. That you… that there was… impropriety.”

  The word sounded as if it had been borrowed from someone else. In a way, Irena supposed, it had.

  “But I wondered—” Lira continued, “If you don’t mind me asking— if that’s what really happened.”

  Irena’s hand slipped. A pea shot across the table and landed in Lira’s lap. Lira stared at it, absurdly transfixed, for a moment or two.

  “You heard the priest,” Irena said. “Why do you care to ask me?”

  “Because it’s your story, not his,” Lira said simply.

  The little green thing sat accusingly on the dark wool of Lira’s skirt. Irena suddenly plucked it up and dropped it into the bowl to be rid of it. Lira looked away.

  The princess could have lied. She could have said something sharp and dismissive, cutting the conversation off there. But something in Lira’s tone—earnest and genuinely curious—made Irena’s usual armour feel heavier than usual.

  “I refused to marry a man I hated,” she said. “Is that reason enough for you?”

  Lira’s hands worked automatically, fingers splitting pods without her eyes ever leaving Irena’s face. “Is that… all?” she asked.

  “No.” Irena’s laugh came out thin. “If that were all, they’d have shouted and sulked and found me another man.”

  She took a deep breath.

  “They spent years arranging it,” Irena said quietly. “Drilling a company to travel with me to the Starharbour. Minstrels composing songs and scribes drafting countless copies of the same treaties. All to be issued across the Kingdoms of Lyrienne and renegade Nesstrieas, reuniting them… A realm renewed from coast to shining coast. ‘Prince’ Jorren of House Caravel…” Her mouth twisted around the title. “He and I were to stand before the altar at the centre of Sunhold and pretend we felt anything but boredom and contempt for one another. He gets the prestige of an actual royal bride. My father gets ships and silver and the blessing of the Concord and peace in his domain…”

  “And you get..?” Lira prompted gently when she trailed off.

  “A lifetime of smiling in public and lying in private,” Irena said. “Children I did not choose with a man I did not choose in a house I did not choose. I am not na?ve; I knew that was always part of the bargain. I just thought I would have a little more say in who I was traded to.” Her fingers had started to move faster, the peas tumbling unevenly into the dish. “Jorren is pompous. Sanctimonious. He brags about his piety like it is a sword to make shine. He called me ‘wayward’ twice before the betrothal feast was even over.”

  Lira’s nose wrinkled. “That sounds… unpleasant.”

  “That is one word for it.” Irena snorted. “I told my father I would not. He told me I would. We shouted. He forbade me from seeing El— from seeing my friend. I did anyway. The baron found us in the rose courtyard at night and ran straight to the High Prelate and my father with a story about indecent behaviour.”

  She could still hear his voice, oily with false distress: I am loath to tarnish the princess’ name, Your Grace, but my conscience as a loyal vassal compels me…

  We were just talking, she had said. Her throat felt tight again, just remembering it. We weren’t— there was nothing to see. Sitting on a bench. Her head was in my lap because she’d had one too many cups of wine, and she always gets dizzy. I was… playing with her hair. That’s all.

  Lira’s eyes dipped to Irena’s hands. Irena realised they had fallen still, fingers curled loosely, as if they were still twined in someone’s hair.

  “The rumours say you were… I mean, not to be unkind, Your Highness,” Lira said carefully.

  “The rumours are lies,” Irena snapped. “We hadn’t— we didn’t—”

  Heat slapped up the back of her neck. The words died in her throat: We didn’t kiss. I wanted to. I thought about it every night that week. I dreamt about it. I imagined a life where that would be allowed.

  None of that came out.

  “We were friends,” she said instead, fiercely. “Just friends. They twisted the truth because it served their interests. Because it made me look soiled and unfit for the crown or council. Because it gave them a way to paint my refusal as madness, not choice.”

  Lira didn’t argue. She didn’t nod either. She watched Irena with that same steady, understanding gaze.

  “You miss her,” she said softly.

  “Of course I miss her.” The answer came too quickly. “She was the only person at court who did not treat me as some bargaining chip or a holy relic. We grew up together. We— we shared everything. Lessons, meals, secrets.” Her voice died on that last word. “She is my best friend.”

  Irena shoved another handful of empty pods aside. Her eyes stung. The room smelled of smoke and peas, and something raw ached in her chest.

  “They took her away,” she said. “They called me impure, and they called her a temptress, and they dragged her to a convent I have never even seen, and they dare tell me it was mercy. They said I was lucky not to be flogged through the streets for godless perversion.” She laughed once, short and sharp. “So yes. I miss her more than anything. No matter what they call it.”

  Lira’s hands had gone very still. “You didn’t get to say goodbye,” she said.

  “No. No, I did not.”

  “That’s cruel.”

  The words were so simple, but they landed with such weight. No Sun Priest would have admitted that. No courtier would have dared.

  “Yes,” Irena said quietly, her voice trembling. “It was.”

  There wasn’t much to say after that. They finished shelling in silence. The little green peas rattled into the dish, one by one. Little Lira occasionally glanced over at Irena with a newfound resolve in her eyes that had nothing at all to do with supper.

  Later, when the light outside had turned thin and grey, and the shadows in the hall were starting to lengthen, Irena found herself back at the tower door. It felt like there was a hook in her chest, pulling her towards it.

  Lira followed at a distance, carrying a bunch of firewood in her arms. She hugged it close, the logs stacked precariously against her small frame.

  “Your Highness?” she ventured as Irena pulled the bolts. “What are you—”

  “I am not staying here,” Irena said, as much to herself as Lira. “I refuse. Not like this.”

  The door groaned open. Cold air rushed in again, sharper now with the evening falling over the mountain. The yard lay in shadow, the far ridge smeared in dusky blues and purples. The dragon was just a darker shade against the growing night, half-coiled, as if deep in slumber.

  She stepped out. Her boots scuffed the frost. Her breath ghosted in front of her.

  Lira hovered just inside, clutching the firewood, eyes huge.

  Irena walked to the edge of the yard. The ring of pale stones around the tower’s perimeter glimmered faintly where the last of the light caught them. Up close, she could see the sigils etched onto their surfaces, tiny and intricate, like writing in a language that she recognised but could not read. They formed an unbroken circle around the tower.

  Her heart hammered against her ribs. She told it to shut up, lifted her foot and stepped towards the nearest gap between the pale stones, but her boot never reached it. Something caught her foot mid-stride. Like the air had gone as solid as stone. It jolted her leg, coming to a stop suddenly, the shock seizing up through her hip and up her spine. Irena staggered, arms pinwheeling, and she stumbled back away from the pale stones.

  “What happened?” Lira yelped, half dropping the firewood in her rush to reach her. “Are you hurt?”

  Irena started at the stones, pulse thudding in her ears.

  “There is something there,” she said. “It is like walking into glass.”

  Lira’s gaze fell upon the pale stone circle, the blood draining from her already pale face.

  “You mustn’t cross it,” she said, voice shaking. “They said— I mean, the priest said that the baron had the old wards mended. And that if anyone tried to break them again, then the tower would throw them back. Or worse.”

  “Worse,” Irena repeated, numb. “Worse how?”

  “I don’t know what it means,” Lira whispered. “I didn’t ask. He said they were for your safety. To keep assassins out. To keep you inside. Where nothing can disturb you.” Her gaze flicked towards the dragon’s ridge and back. “And no one can get in without permission. The guards and the priest had to say words when they crossed. I… I don’t know how it works.”

  The dragon shifted on its perch far above. The booming scrape of stone on scale bellowed across the valley a moment later. One massive eye opened, lazy and half-lidded, a slit of molten orange in the dark. It regarded the tower, the courtyard, the two tiny figures at its base, for a long, unreadable moment.

  Then it snorted a thin plume of smoke into the air and settled its vast head back down, apparently unimpressed.

  “So this is not to keep the dragon at bay,” Irena said, more to herself than to Lira. “This is all just to keep me inside…”

  The ward hummed faintly as she stepped closer again. She could feel it now, even without touching it, a pressure against her skin, as if the air surrounding the stones buzzed with potential energy. She reached out, hand trembling, until her fingers brushed against the nothing.

  Cold washed up her arm. It wasn’t sharp, like snow or ice, but a deep, dry chill that seemed to slip straight through flesh and sink deep into her bones. Tiny sparks danced along her nerves, a frightfully sudden bout of pins and needles.

  She yanked her hand back with a hiss.

  “Please don’t, Your Highness.” Lira had dropped the firewood now. Her fingers closed around Irena’s sleeve, stopping her from reaching out again. They were surprisingly strong for such a small hand. “Please. If something happens— if you hurt yourself— there’s no healer here. No one will come. They said— they said the ward is old wizard magic, and the Sun-priests just… tied it to new words. I don’t think they really understand it, either.”

  Old wizard magic.

  Irena looked down at the ring of carved stone. At the tower rising behind her, its dark windows watching. At the empty road snaking its way down the mountain. At the dragon upon its distant peak, a living mark of no trespass, territorial and waiting. They had locked her in here with someone else’s stolen magic, magic they didn’t even understand, and told themselves a story about mercy and dignity.

  Her fear, earlier, had been sharp and animal. This was now different. There was anger burning, hot and fierce in her chest, surprising her with its weight and its intensity.

  “All right,” she said at last, letting Lira’s hand tug her back from the boundary. “Fine. I shall not slam my head into a wall for a third time today.”

  Lira exhaled shakily, her breath puffing white. “Thank you, Your Highness.”

  “But I am not staying here forever,” Irena added. The words came forth themselves, now, low and steady. “Not because it suits the priests. Not because the baron wants me removed from court. And certainly not because some dead wizard’s tricks hold me here.”

  The wards hum seemed to deepen, just for an instant. Or perhaps she imagined it.

  Lira swallowed. “How will you leave, then?”

  “I do not know,” Irena admitted. “Not yet, anyway.”

  She flexed her fingers, feeling the residual sting where the invisible barrier had denied her. The sensation lingered, like the afterimages of the sun behind her eyes. She lifted her chin and looked back up at the dark and empty windows of the tower.

  “This tower was built by an archmage,” she said. “He warded it and probably wrapped it in so many mysteries, before he blew himself into smoke trying to reach the heavens. Let’s see what else he left behind.”

  Beside her, Lira shivered. Whether it was from the cold or from a fleeting glance at that slumbering dragon, Irena couldn’t tell. They went back inside together.

  The door groaned shut behind them, bolts sliding back into place. Outside the ward lay quiet around the tower’s foundations, invisible and patient. Inside, for the first time, Irena’s gaze turned to the bare walls and broken hooks and thought not only of what had been stolen, but of what might still be hidden.

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