CHAPTER FOUR

The mornings never come gently to me anymore. I used to think the sun’s arrival should feel like a blessing—its warmth, its promise, the quiet reassurance that life continues even after a night of terrors. But in this house, dawn has become the herald of dread. Daybreak means demands, punishments, reminders of what I am not. And this particular morning carries with it a different kind of weight. Tonight, there will be a ball. Everyone knows it. I have known it since Tremaine first let slip the news, her lips tightening with the peculiar satisfaction she always wears when a plan is in motion. I have been restless ever since, not from excitement, but from the heavy premonition that nothing good can follow.

I rise from bed reluctantly, eyes lingering on the small pile of books I left scattered across my table. They were treasures pulled from the dust-heavy attic, volumes I had lost myself in until sleep crept upon me without warning. I try to recall their contents now, but my mind draws a blank. Only the feeling remains—a fragile sense of wonder, fleeting as a dream dissolving with the light.

The window, stuck half-open from years of disrepair, admits a sharp spear of sunlight. It lands on the trees outside my chamber, scattering into beams through their branches, and the sudden brilliance strikes my eyes wide awake. The warmth gives me a jolt of something I haven’t felt in days: a sliver of strength. I straighten, imagining for a moment that I might actually outwit my stepsisters today. Perhaps I’ll cut them down with clever words, twist their arrogance until it burns them red in the face. That thought alone feels like victory.

I yawn once more, deliberately slow, and step into the hall. If I rise earlier than the rest, I can at least savor the silence of the castle. I know well that Tremaine and her daughters stayed up late last night, their voices carrying shrill through the stone as they quarreled over gowns and jewels. It’s always the same: gloves or no gloves, pearls or rubies, what shade of fabric might catch the eye of a prince. They place their futures in threads and lace, as if kingship were sewn from silk.

And yet I cannot understand it—their obsession with princes. As though clothing could conjure love or power. As though love itself were ever a guarantee in palaces such as these.

When I step into the eating hall, I find it blissfully empty. The long table stretches bare, silent, no simpering voices to slice into me. For a fleeting instant I am disappointed; I had almost longed for the sight of their ridiculous attire so that I might mock it, even in secret. But their absence is a gift I cannot deny.

Then a voice cuts through the stillness.

“Your Majesty.”

The words strike me harder than a slap. I turn sharply, heart stumbling, to find a servant girl standing unsteadily by the door. Her head is lowered almost to the floor in respect, though her voice trembles as though the phrase itself frightens her.

My breath snags. “Please,” I hiss, my eyes darting around the hall. “Do not call me that. If Lady Tremaine hears you—” My voice drops lower. “Call me Solstice. Or Sol. Nothing more.”

The girl looks up, startled, confusion flashing across her face. She shakes her head as though to clear it. “But… you are the late King’s daughter. You must be addressed with respect.”

The words make me flinch. Why is she even speaking to me at all? The servants are instructed to avoid me as though I am plague-ridden. To speak to me is to invite punishment, and punishment here is a constant companion. Yet, she risks it. Perhaps she doesn’t understand the danger. Or perhaps she does and simply cannot help herself.

“At least,” I murmur, trying to soften the command, “call me Lady Solstice. That will be enough.”

She studies me for a heartbeat too long, then bows. “Certainly, Lady Solstice.”

The formality sits awkwardly in my ears, but it is better than the other. “Your name?” I ask.

She blinks, startled again. “My… name?”

“I cannot call you ‘servant.’ Tell me what I should call you when I have need of you.”

Her lips part, but hesitation binds her tongue. Finally she whispers, “It matters not, Lady Solstice. You may call me as you wish.”

Something in me bristles. I fold my arms, steel in my voice now. “I insist. Tell me your name at once.”

The effect is immediate—she gasps, recoiling slightly, as if my tone has pierced through her. She is unused to command from me, yet there is something exhilarating about watching her comply.

“Ali,” she finally breathes. “My name is Ali.”

The name is short, plain, unadorned. I had half-hoped for something lyrical, something that might set her apart in my mind. Still, it is hers, and I nod with satisfaction. “Very well, Ali. What brings you to me?”

She bows again—too much bowing; her neck must ache from it. “The ball, Lady Solstice. I came to ask if you would attend.”

For a moment, everything in me stills. Attend? The question rattles in my skull. “I may come along?”

Her brow furrows at my disbelief. “Of course. The Kingdom of Cromwell requests the presence of Canmores.”

The air leaves me in a rush. Cromwell has summoned the Canmores—Tremaine and her daughters, surely. Not me. No one beyond these walls even knows I exist. Father kept me hidden, for reasons I am too weary to question aloud. If I appear at the ball, the truth risks unraveling. My identity is meant to be invisible. My presence, a secret shielded by silence.

Ali looks stricken at my hesitation, as though she regrets speaking. She bows yet again, voice hushed. “Forgive me, Lady Solstice. I should not have—”

I manage a faint smile. “It is nothing, Ali. Thank you for asking. I will decide in time.”

She lingers, clearly wishing to argue, to press me further, but I lift my hand to silence her gently. “Worry not. The ball means little to me. You are excused.”

And I leave her standing in the hall, her uncertainty trailing after me like a shadow.

The streets are quieter than the castle halls, though they hum faintly with life. Few pay me notice as I walk—no second glances, no whispers. Not one of them knows me, though I bear the face of their late king. My father worked tirelessly to keep me hidden, to shield me from dangers that had already claimed my mother. And yet, in hiding me, he erased me.

I wonder, not for the first time, if things would have been different had he let me be seen. Would the people have recognized me as theirs? Would they have defended me? Would he still be alive?

The ache of it brings me to my knees beneath a tree, my hand pressed to its trunk for support. Questions coil endlessly in my mind, bitter and unanswerable. Why did he not give me the throne? Why did he keep me veiled from the world? What am I to do now, when the kingdom drifts further into Tremaine’s grip?

And it is then—when despair threatens to swallow me whole—that a voice intrudes.

“Did you bring bread?”

For a moment I freeze, my heart thudding with the reflexive fear that only a witch could inspire. It sounds absurd—witches, here, in broad daylight, under the trees—but that instinct refuses to be silenced. I whirl halfway, half-expecting to find some cloaked figure, ready to curse me. But no. Witches don’t beg for bread.

And then it strikes me why the voice is familiar.

I rise from where I sit beneath the tree, brushing dirt from my skirt, almost certain I have mistaken my memory. But when I turn fully, my stomach drops. I wish—desperately wish—that I had misheard. That it belonged to anyone else.

But no. Of course it’s him.

Flynn.

His presence is as insufferable as I remember, standing there with that infuriatingly casual posture, as though the world owed him not only bread but amusement.

“Early in the morning and you are already asking for bread?” My frown deepens, partly out of irritation, partly to mask the strange, unsteady relief of recognizing him rather than some darker threat.

He shrugs as if my disapproval were nothing but dust in the air. With lazy arrogance, he leans back against the trunk of the tree, and the sudden shift makes the branches shiver. Leaves, brittle and sun-bleached, rain down around us. I brush them from my hair with sharp, annoyed gestures while he folds his arms across his chest, satisfied with the little disruption he has caused.

“Should I ask later, then?” His tone is mockery softened into charm. “Or I can steal. I am a thief, after all.”

I stare at him, wondering how anyone could carry so much arrogance and so little shame. To declare theft as though it were a badge of honor, as though nimble fingers and a sly grin were trades fit for pride.

“You could try being regretful about stealing, brute,” I snap, unwilling to let him win even this small ground.

But he doesn’t flinch, doesn’t even glance at me with the acknowledgment of someone scolded. My words slide from him like water on stone.

“Why would I?” His expression is maddeningly steady. “It is my job.”

The devil himself could not provoke me so quickly. I shake my head and move to the other side of the tree, folding into its shade as if to carve out distance, a small sanctuary of silence.

But silence is not what Flynn ever brings.

He follows without hesitation, lowering himself beside me with a proximity that makes me stiffen. Too close, far too close, but I cannot bring myself to protest. Some treacherous part of me knows he will only ignore the complaint or laugh at it, and I am unwilling to give him that satisfaction.

“Did you bring bread for me?” he presses again, leaning in, his face suddenly close enough that I am forced to blink and recoil, retreating into the bark behind me.

“Do I have another responsibility now?” I retort, trying to steady my voice. “You are supposed to know how to find work. Why can’t you?”

He shrugs, and this time his arrogance fades into something quieter, edged with truth. “Believe me or not, I tried everything. But no one feeds another man’s stomach when they can’t feed their own.”

I fall silent. He is right. The town groans beneath poverty; desperation clings to every corner like smoke. The rich tighten their gates, the poor tighten their belts, and men like him fall somewhere in between—too skilled at surviving to starve, too proud to beg, too untamed to bow.

“Don’t nobles come here often, looking for servants?” I ask, drawing on half-remembered passages from the library.

His eyes narrow. Suspicion flickers. “How do you know that?”

I blink. Careless. Too careless. I cannot afford to let him see too much. “Am I not supposed to know? I was like you once. Until I was chosen by the late King. Lucky, I suppose, to be taken into the palace.”

I avert my eyes before his can pierce me. My façade trembles at its edges, but I force it to hold.

“Perhaps no one is as lucky as you,” he says at last, his gaze unreadable. “At least, not here. Since you work in the palace, maybe you can ask Lady Tremaine.”

The very name tightens my jaw. “That is impossible.”

He grins, mocking. “I wasn’t serious. The last people I expect to help this place are the palace folk.”

“Do you hate them?” My voice is cautious, my heart already racing.

His lips press into a hard line. “I despise how they ignore the cries of these people. I despise the way they rule. The late King may have earned love in some way, but he failed where it mattered most—he married a manipulative woman instead of fixing what was broken.”

The words strike like a whip. I clench my teeth, my control fraying. “Do not speak ill of the dead, Flynn. And never of the late King.”

The name slips from me before I can stop it—his name, on my tongue, too natural, too reckless. I hadn’t meant to remember it, much less to reveal it.

“I am only saying,” he continues, undeterred, “that the King failed his people.”

My frown hardens, and with it, the heat rising in my chest. He does not know. He cannot know. And yet the audacity of speaking such words in front of me—his daughter, his blood—sears me raw.

“That is absurd. You don’t know how much time the King gave to this kingdom. His family knew it. I witnessed it. He did his best. He married Tremaine for nobility, for the kingdom’s survival. You cannot say he failed.”

Flynn watches me closely. For a moment, his eyes soften, but it is not enough to soothe the wound.

“You sound as though you loved him,” he says quietly. “As though you knew him better than most.”

My throat tightens. My façade trembles. I want to scream the truth, but instead I force a brittle smile. “He was kind. He did not treat me differently from others. That is enough.”

He says nothing, only studies me as though the truth might slip from the cracks in my voice.

Finally, he breaks the silence. “Are you not worried Lady Tremaine will demand your service?”

“I think they have no need of me tonight,” I say, though the words taste strange.

“Why?”

“There will be a ball. I doubt servants will be allowed inside.”

His head tilts. “The ball at Cromwell’s castle?”

My pulse leaps. “How do you—”

“Everyone knows of the Annual Ball.”

Annual Ball. The words hang heavy in the air. I had thought it nothing but legend, or perhaps something distant, irrelevant. A ritual where courts gather, where princes choose brides among the princesses, where alliances are sealed with rings and vows.

But the ball Tremaine prepares for is no ordinary gathering. And if what Flynn says is true—if it is the Annual Ball—then the stakes are far greater than I imagined.

My chest tightens. “She cannot… she would not… ally herself with the Winter Court?”

Flynn scowls, his disdain cutting sharp. “I have nothing to do with Winter.”

But I am no longer listening. My mind races, stumbling through the pieces of Tremaine’s schemes. Anastasia and Drizella giggling over gowns, their mother whispering of noble families summoned from Winter, the sudden urgency to hold the ball at Cromwell’s palace rather than here.

It cannot be coincidence. She means to marry them into power.

I push to my feet. “I have to go to the ball.”

Flynn rises too, blocking my path with a grin that mocks but does not hide his curiosity. “You? At the Cromwell’s castle? You’d need more than luck. I’ve heard their defenses are so tight not even a rat could pass.”

“Sneak,” I correct sharply. “And yes, perhaps you could help me. If you’re certain you wish to.”

His grin widens. “Better than wasting time here.”

Heat creeps into my cheeks despite myself. “Then tonight. I’ll meet you here.”

I step past him, but his voice follows.

“Do you even know where Cromwell’s palace is?”

I freeze. My face burns hotter. Slowly, I turn back. He is still there, leaning on the tree, that insufferable grin plastered across his face.

“Well?” he prompts.

My voice comes out smaller than I’d like. “Do you?”

“Of course.” He bows with mock gallantry. “That is where I came from.”