“I honestly don’t know.”
“Then are you an only child? Or do you have sisters? An older brother? A younger one?”
“Ha ha. I’m sorry. I’m afraid I…”
The more I pressed, the more Ariena’s expression clouded, the hesitation gathering around the edges of her smile.
“I lost my memory, you see. I woke up one day and simply… didn’t know. I didn’t have anything to go back to, so I decided to get myself employment. I was fortunate—I found a kind mistress, and I’ve been happy in her service.”
Of course.
Everything fell into place.
You have no idea what you really are.
But I’ll put you back where you belong. I promise.
I murmured it softly, more to myself than to her.
“…Something better is coming.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Nothing! Never mind that—where is your mistress now? I thought I saw her go into the hall earlier…”
“You did—but she found the corset uncomfortable and has stepped away to the rest lounge.”
“Ah, perfect!”
“It’s just here.”
She stopped before a door and pushed it open.
Inside, a luxurious private sitting room unfolded—the kind reserved for visiting nobles. Deep sofas upholstered in gold-threaded fabric. Arched windows with curtains drifting lazily in the draught.
This palace really is something else.
After years in a ducal estate where even the windows were kept small against the northern cold, the airiness of this room felt almost extravagant.
“Lovely…”
I was still turning to look around, just settling into one of the sofas, when—
“So you’ve finally come.”
A voice cut through my words from behind me.
Deep and unhurried, laced with something acquisitive.
Every muscle in my body seized.
“Aisha.”
Thud. Thud.
Measured footsteps. Moving toward me.
Coming to a stop directly in front of me, where I had gone white.
“It seems our little game of hide-and-seek is over.”
It was Duke Foss.
________________________________________
________________________________________
When the mind shuts down, the body tends to look rather foolish.
The jaw falls slack. The eyes go wide and forget to blink.
The round man advanced.
One step. Then another.
“I sent nine spies to have a conversation with you. Every last one came back dead. Was that your doing?”
His eyes gleamed—hungry, almost entertained. One more step.
Under the circumstances, the only thing I could manage was what any small child might do when a stranger offered them sweets they hadn’t asked for.
“…St—stop. Stop right there.”
Look frightened. And resist anyway.
“My, my. You’ve grown so bold since I last saw you—giving orders to your betters, no less. You really do believe you’re Duke Krost’s daughter now.”
He smiled at that, like it amused him, and came to a stop.
With some distance between us again, I curled my cold fingers into my palms and swept the room.
Ariena—where is she?
The woman who had guided me here was still standing by the door.
The warm, crescent-eyed smile she’d worn just minutes ago was gone entirely. In its place was an expression I had seen countless times in House Foss: hollow, perfectly still, the face of someone assembled on a production line. The unmistakable look of a spy in formal posture.
…Don’t tell me—
My breathing shortened.
Don’t tell me—was Ariena from the very beginning—
The betrayal wasn’t even the sharpest thing I felt. What came first—what made the rage rise so hot and sudden—was the thought of Calypse. Of what it would cost him to know this.
And because that image was unbearable—
“Were you a House Foss spy from the very start?!”
I lurched to my feet and shouted before I could stop myself. In my arms, Kai—who had been still until now—stirred at the noise and rubbed at his eyes.
“Answer me! Was it all a lie, Ariena?!”
She didn’t move.
“Say something! Tell me it was a misunderstanding—tell me you had no choice—anything! You owe me that!”
Tears came, scalding and unwanted.
“Why?! Why did you—”
“Because I was completing my assignment.”
Her voice was flat and even. She looked at me without blinking.
“Unlike you, I have remained faithful to my mission.”
“That’s not what I’m asking! You—you gave drugs to a child! You know what that makes you? If you really were a spy for House Foss all along—were you living as Calypse’s wife for four years just to kill him someday?!”
How could you?
How could someone who taught me what family was—take that very family apart?
“You have dismantled an entire person’s life!”
I screamed until my voice cracked. Ariena exhaled.
Then stood up.
“You were young, so you were handled gently. Calypse always had a weakness for children.”
She crossed toward the door.
And then—
“You’ve disappointed me greatly.”
Thud.
She nudged Kai’s face with the toe of her low attendant’s shoe—light, almost careless. As though he were an inconvenience left on the floor.
“A spy who loses herself in her role and turns her back on her own family. She has no right to go on breathing.”
Click, click.
The footsteps came toward me. Unhurried. Inevitable.
“Rejected by House Foss. Exposed as a fraud in whatever role she was playing. And in the end, you’re the one who betrayed someone—you betrayed Duke Foss, who trusted you.”
The closer she came, the more my neck ached from holding my chin up.
But I refused to lower my head.
“You’re right,” I said. “Spies can’t betray anyone.”
She paused. Something flickered across the fortress of her face—faint, but there.
“Spies aren’t people, are they? They’re tools. How would a tool know how to betray?”
“…What?”
Good. I want to see that wall crack.
“A person who can’t tell right from wrong and only follows orders isn’t a person—they’re an object. Just an object.”
“…Shut your mouth, child.”
“You shut yours! You, who are going to spend the rest of your life as a spy and die forgotten by everyone who ever—”
Crack.
The sound hit before I understood what had happened. My head snapped sideways. The left side of my face blazed, like skin pressed to a hot iron.
I blinked—eyes wide, entirely startled—and turned slowly back to look at her.
“…A five-year-old.” Her voice, for the first time, was unsteady. “How on earth are you this calculating.”
“You were a mistake from the start.”
“…?”
The words landed like a blade between my ribs.
My head, still turned to one side, swiveled back to face her.
What is she saying—
“An unplanned pregnancy. One stupid, careless mistake, and then there you were—”
Ariena was trembling.
________________________________________
✶ · · ·𝒟 · · ·✶
________________________________________
Like me, still reeling from the blow. Like Kai, fighting to stay upright when everything in him wanted to fold.
More than that—this woman, right now—
“—and when I finally got out of that estate, you, of all people, were already—”
This woman is telling me she’s my mother.
And then—
“Ariena. That’s enough.”
The door opened. The voice that came through it was rich, unhurried, faintly pleased with itself.
“Your Grace.”
The instant it registered, whatever had fractured in Ariena’s voice—in her face—sealed itself shut again.
By the time I had processed the sound, she had already inclined her head toward Duke Foss, her posture immaculate once more.
What just happened.
Something was wrong.
Knights and spies, when greeting their superior, typically offered a curt salute or a brief nod—nothing more. But Ariena had bent at the waist with her head almost at her knees, the kind of deep bow reserved for a subject groveling before royalty.
…Why is she—
No. It wasn’t just the depth. I looked closer.
She was bent at the waist—and her jaw was clenched.
…What is going on.
“Now that the black magic has been sealed into the child, our work here is done. Bring her.”
The thought broke apart as the situation crashed back in around me.
At Duke Foss’s command, a knight nearby lifted me as though I were a parcel.
“Let go of me! I said let go!”
I hammered my small fists against his arm. Once, twice, again.
I already knew it was useless. No amount of spy training changes the basic physics of a five-year-old against a grown man.
I need to think.
If they got me through that door—if they got me out of the palace—there was no coming back.
“What are the exit conditions?”
“His Majesty the King has shared knowledge of a secret passage. It runs through a section of the palace with minimal foot traffic—we should be able to leave without incident.”
A secret—
Secret.
In the space between one heartbeat and the next, a fragment surfaced.
I’m not the only one, it seems. Other nobles have the same hobby—keeping a creature or two as a pet. What’s the harm in it?
The conversation I had overheard from the ceiling on my last visit to the palace. The one between Duke Foss and King Arzen.
There are Creatures here.
The fog cleared. My eyes sharpened.
________________________________________
