Cerys pressed her forehead to the chill of the simulation chamber wall, letting the tal steal a fraction of the heat raging beneath her skin. Her lungs burned as if she’d run a marathon uphill in plate, each inhale scraping against ribs already tender from too many training blows. Sweat trickled down her temple, pooling at the edge of her jaw before sliding to the floor in a slow, steady drip. The visor’s seal released with a soft hiss, cool air rushing over her face.
Rodion’s tone was smooth as glass, yet its faint, almost smug inflection pricked at Cerys’s pride. She scraped damp hair from her forehead and forced herself upright.
"I’m getting better," she rasped, voice raw from barked battle shouts and the occasional involuntary scream the visor thought it clever to muffle.
Cerys rolled sore shoulders, ignoring the AI’s sardonic bite. Lectures from a floating crystal, she thought, but her lips twitched despite themselves. Rodion’s nagging ant she was still alive to hear it.
She let her gaze drift across the silent chamber. The floor was scuffed with chalk lines and faint scorch marks—evidence of hundreds of illusions dying under her blade. Broken wooden spars lay in a heap, ends splintered where her frustration had cracked them against imaginary skulls. Above, dim arc-lamps flickered, bathing everything in a sterile silver glow that reminded her too much of midnight patrols.
As the ache ebbed from her arms, another mory surfaced—Lucien’s grin that morning. "et in the garden after your practice, Cerys. Sunset tea tastes sweeter if you drink it with company." He had said it with that earnest softness he never quite managed to hide. She’d rolled her eyes at the ti, but now the thought of warm tea and lemon cakes tugged at the edges of her fatigue.
A small smile found her lips. He’ll scold for training too long, she mused, and I’ll scold him for fussing.
She stripped off her battered training cuirass, the leather straps sighing with relief as they parted from her sweat-drenched gambeson. Purple bruises mottled the skin of her forearms where feedback runes had bitten. She rinsed at the stone basin beside the door, relishing the icy water that cascaded over aching muscles. After towelling off, she slipped into a clean linen tunic and drew a dark cloak over her shoulders—quick, practiced motions, the sa routine she’d followed since squire days.
The corridor outside echoed beneath her boots, torchlight lapping at the walls like sleepy fireflies. She passed an open balcony where sunset painted the sky in lting shades of persimmon and rose. For a heartbeat she paused, letting the cool breeze play with strands of red hair that had slipped free of her braid. The world looked peaceful—too peaceful to fit the fresh mories of clanging steel inside her head.
She resud her pace. The crescent moon garden lay just beyond the library tower—a hidden courtyard folded between two wings of the castle. Vines hugged the archway, their leaves shimring under glow-motes enchanted to flicker like fireflies. It was a place for secret conversations and quiet daydreams. Mikhailis had once declared it the best spot in the entire palace for midday naps, though he rarely managed to stay unseen for long.
Cerys stepped beneath the ivy curtain and entered the garden. The hush felt sacred. A fountain whispered at the centre, its water catching the failing light in glimring arcs. Perfud air—jasmine, night-bloom heather, and a hint of damp earth—wrapped around her, easing tension she hadn’t realised still coiled in her shoulders.
Then she saw the bench.
Empty.
At first, confusion. Lucien was punctual to a fault. If he promised sunset, he arrived on the last ray of sun. Her eyes flicked from shadow to shadow. Maybe he’d wandered deeper among the hedges, chasing the stray cat that sotis lingered here.
She took a slow step toward the bench. A porcelain teacup perched on the armrest, thin tendrils of steam still spiralling skyward. Next to it lay an open book—The Poems of Elder Wynne, Lucien’s favourite. Its silk bookmark dangled, thread snapped as though yanked in haste. She brushed her fingers over the torn ribbon; the ends were uneven and frayed, fibres fresh. The faint warmth radiating from the cup crawled beneath her skin, chilling her faster than any winter wind.
"Lucien?" Her voice was barely louder than the fountain’s murmur. No reply, only the soft rustle of leaves high above.
She circled the garden’s stone path, checking behind trimd yew walls, beneath the flowering arbor, beside the old sundial where he liked to sketch. Each step stiffened her spine a little more.
"Lucien!"
Rodion spoke, volu hushed as if wary of the twilight.
A cold knife slid under her breastbone. Her fingers found the hilt of an absent sword, reflexive. She cursed, spun on her heel, and strode out of the garden.
The castle corridors blurred. Golden sconces, velvet tapestries—ornants she barely registered. Her boots skidded once on polished marble, balance saved by instinct alone. A pair of guards in Calderon livery turned a corner ahead, quiet voices leaking back toward her.
"...told you, that boy won’t be a problem anymore."
"Shh, keep walking. Orders were clear."
They passed without noticing her figure tucked into an alcove, shadows hugging her like an old friend. She waited only a heartbeat after they disappeared before sprinting again, fury pounding behind her ribs.
Back in her quarters she ripped the cloak free, letting it crumple to the floor like discarded skin. Maps and scroll tubes rattled as she slamd her hands on the desk. "Rodion. Runes. Everything—now."
Crystalline panels unfolded above the desk. Lines of light stitched together into a grainy feed: eastern corridor, torch flicker creating jittery silhouettes. Ti-stamp—ten minutes earlier. Cerys leaned in so close her breath fogged the projection.
Lucien appeared, walking with a book tucked under one arm. Two figures lood behind him, faces shadowed beneath black hoods. A cloth pressed to his mouth. His arms flailed, book tumbling. He tried to shout—silent in the footage. They dragged him into a side passage; the wall sigil flared and sealed, erasing them.
Cerys replayed the mont, each loop hamring at her heart. A low growl escaped between clenched teeth.
"They took him from our garden..." The whisper cracked like brittle glass.
The projection’s pale glow lit her features—eyes hard as winter ice, jaw trembling with suppressed rage.
"No." She straightened, a soldier resuming parade rest. Her voice steadied into sothing lethal. "This is my mission."
_____
Cerys pushed open the disguised wall panel behind her wardrobe—a slab of knot-worked oak that looked like ordinary carpentry until the right pressure made hidden hinges whisper. Cold air, tinged with mineral damp and old paper, crept out to greet her. She slipped inside, tugging the panel closed on velvet hinges, and began the spiral descent.
The stairwell was narrow, rough-hewn stone long since worn smooth by generations of determined boots. Sconces of blackened brass lined the curve, but she bypassed them; fla might betray activity. Instead she touched the rune at her collar. A low amber radiance flared just enough to keep her from mis-stepping, leaving the stairwell otherwise drowned in shadow.
Father never bothered with this place, she reflected. Too much dust, too many ghosts. And Mother...Mother had kept it secret, teaching only Cerys the sequence of glyph-locks that barred the final door. Even Mikhailis—curious, ddling Mikhailis—had never stepped across its threshold; the room sat beneath Arundel land, far from the prince’s usual haunts. If he knew it existed, he had the grace not to pry.
At the bottom, she pressed her palm to a set of iron slats worked into the shape of interlocking wolves. Old ward-stones pulsed beneath her skin, recognising Arundel blood. Bolts groaned, retreating. The door drifted open a finger’s width, then another, until the dim chamber revealed itself.
The archive slled of cedar shavings and lamp-oil gone slightly rancid—a scent that always sent her mind spinning backward to childhood evenings spent copying tactics scrolls by a single sputtering wick. Rows of bookcases stood taller than a man, packed edge-to-edge with scroll tubes and ledger slabs, bindings colour-coded by century. Dust sheets hung over the central lecterns like pale ghosts, and in the silence she could hear her own pulse drumming behind her ears.
She drew off one sheet, folds flying in a quiet sigh. Beneath lay the main mapping table: a thick slab of slate veined with silver conduits. When she laid her gauntlet on the centre sigil, the conduits flared to life, sending trails of light racing outward into a vast three-dinsional projection that filled the room from floor to ceiling.
Fortifications rose in miniature, battlents gleaming like starlight. Streets braided in glowing threads. Patrol dots slid along their routes, tid to the second. And in the east wing—the Calderon wing—those dots pulsed in a steady, arrogant rhythm she already knew too well.
She inhaled slowly, letting the chill of the room burrow deeper until the anger simring beneath her sternum condensed into sothing cold and sharp.
"Overlay last decade’s shift rosters,"
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