LOGIN*Anastasia*For a moment I can do nothing but look on. Her name burrows against the paper like a brand, burning deeper the longer I stare at it, the ink dark and deliberate against pale cream. I cannot look away. Cannot make my eyes move on to whatever waits beyond it.Queen Belinda.There it is. Written so neatly. So deliberately. Every stroke measured, every curl chosen, as if even the front of an envelope were a performance she had rehearsed until it revealed nothing she hadn't decided to give. That poised control reads even here — in the particular elegance of the B, in the precise tail of the d — the way her red lips are always painted to the exact edge of her mouth and no further. No warmth bleeds through. No softness escapes by accident.She would never allow it. Not toward me.But then—Why?My pulse stutters hard enough that I feel it in my throat. A skip, then a surge, then something that settles wrong — too fast, too shallow, as if my body has already understood something
*Anastasia* “And what do we have here?” Mykhol’s voice slips over the courtyard lightly, like a thin layer of ice grown over the stone. Slick and simple, but deadly if not prepared, not cautious. Yet equally as expectant as the very chill around us. He speaks as if nothing were amiss at all. Yet his eyes do not lift. They have yet to look back to me. Because they are still on Nugen. His vermillion eyes roll up and down Nugen, in long slow strokes. Taking stock of it all, every detail. The sight of Nugen still on the ground near the frozen fountain, between guards. His uniform dirtied from the struggle. Blood drying on his lip. Mykhol looks at him with a stillness that feels almost intimate. As if he is drinking the sight in without needing to touch it. His smile remains as it was, never growing wider–but something in him settles at the image the longer he watches. Recognition. And I’m sure Nugen feels it.I see the change in him at once. His whole body goes tighter. I see it i
*Anastasia*For a heartbeat, I cannot feel. Anything. Not the cold.Not the numbness spreading from my fingertips, past my wrists, up into my forearms like water climbing cloth. Not the wind catching at the loose silver strands over my eye, lifting them, letting them fall, lifting them again. No, not even that. Because my mind refuses what my eyes are– What am I even seeing?My gaze catches on details instead. The scrape of his boots against stone. The flash of silver armor. The blood at the corner of his mouth. The way Fulcan's gauntleted hand is twisted into his sleeve.Each little piece. Separate yet…together they make no sense. None of it does.Because this is Admiral Nugen–A scar over one eyebrow.The steady voice that always seems to have an answer before I have finished asking the question. Always there. The only one now who is still left…And he doesn’t belong between guards. Does not belong hanging limp between Sir Philo and Sir Fulcan like a common vagabond hauled in f
*Anastasia* “Bruno?” His name comes out too sharp on a snagged breath. But I can’t stop myself. Because he was just here. I only looked away for a second but he already is– He's-He’s…gone?!Already, my eyes sweep over the garden, the barren hedges, the ribs of trellises, even the charcoal sky pressed low over the garden. As if for a heartbeat I can still find him. That he couldn’t possibly have moved that quickly.Please–Then I catch it.Almost missing it entirely if I was a second slower, I found that trace. A flicker of burgundy at the very edge of the path. Hair moving in step, the light bounces, just once—before it disappears behind stone. The sound of a neglected hinge creaking on rusted joints.The servant’s side door. It draws back and closes again with a low groan, wood meeting frame like a mouth shutting. Heavy and stubborn. The door gives out easily because it’s unlocked. Or simply forgotten by anyone who isn’t watching for exactly that kind of escape.And worse…not gua
*Anastasia*“Unforgive—” The word catches on my tongue, thin, startled, as if my mouth rejects it on instinct. Not because I don’t know the word—of course I do—but because why on earth would he say—He says unforgivable like it’s a verdict.The absurdity of it lands instantaneously. Not because it’s funny or anything, but because that is just impossible.The light shifts overhead.Clouds are churning, swallowing up the pockets of light before spitting them back out in flat, brittle flashes that don’t warm anything. Bruised slate stacked on slate, sagging lower by the minute, pressing the sky down until even the garden feels cramped beneath it. Already turning the pale day sour, both too bright in one moment, and then too dim at once, as if mocking the way the sun is still above, but smothered in wool.And all the while, the air keeps scratching the inside of my throat with that strange charge. As if it was protesting for rain. But it doesn't feel right.It just pricks at my skin. My
*Anastasia* “Why are you running from me?” My words hang over the air, too loud to be just a simple question, because it feels too alive, twisting with so much more felt than said in the plainness of it, before slowly fading into thin shapes back into the bare bushes and trellises. For a moment, neither of us speaks.Only our breathing fills the space between us.His comes fast but controlled, like he’s already actively forcing it down in preparation. Like he may have already decided where he’ll bolt if given another chance. Like his eyes are already seeking new routes of escapes. Cracks to fall through. Stay out of reach like a whisper of smoke. Bruno feels like a spring, coiled tight and ready to vault once again, while I…I don’t think I can. Because I’m still breathing ragged, uneven like little torn sounds drag out of a body that was not made for sprinting. My lungs burn right now as if I’ve swallowed the torches from inside the corridors. Decorating the air with hot puffs o
*Ana* The rain has finally stopped. Not that I'd noticed right away—what with my ears still ringing from the hours in court, my head too thick with thoughts to recognize the earned silence. But here, in the stables, where it smells like damp hay and warm leather, everything feels hushed. The hors
*Pendwick* There were worse places to be standing by the time court dismissed—a lightning strike, say, that burnt him to a crisp. Or perhaps under a falling chandelier, the crystal shards slicing him into ribbons. But next to his grandfather while the last of the nobles trickled out after Lord Myk
*Ana*The click of the study door echoes too sharply behind me, like the snap of a thread pulled too tight. The sound reverberates through my bones, settling somewhere cold between my shoulder blades.My hand lingers on the knob longer than necessary, the cold brass pressing into my palm like a rep
*Ana*The wind snarls with a bone-shattering snap, its howl echoing off the marble columns like a wounded beast. It cuts through velvet and wool and fur, no matter how tightly I clutch my reinforced cloak around my shoulders. She is hell-bent to reach into every tender space with vengeance, her ic







