POV: Celeste
Maximilian comes at night.
He always waits until the lantern outside my door dims to its lowest glow, until the guards’ footsteps stretch farther apart, until the tower settles into the deep, breathless quiet that only comes when everyone believes nothing inside is alive. I learn to hear him before I see him—the faint scrape of metal, the careful pause, the soft knock he makes twice and then once, our signal.
I sit up every time, my heart leaping painfully against my ribs.
“Celeste,” he whispers through the door.
“I’m here,” I answer, my voice still rough but stronger than it was.
When the iron door opens, the warded air shifts. It always hurts—a tight, burning pressure that flares in my chest and fades just as quickly—but I welcome it. Pain means something is changing. Pain means I am not alone.
He slips inside and closes the door behind him, moving with the practiced quiet of someone who has learned to be invisible. Tonight he carries a bundle under his arm, wrapped in cloth.
“I brought more,” he murmurs, his eyes searching my face like he’s afraid I might disappear if he looks away too long.
“Did anyone see you?” I ask.
“No,” he says. “I was careful.”
I nod and step back to give him room. He sets the bundle on the small table and unwraps it piece by piece. Bread, still soft. Cheese that smells sharp and real. A candle, thicker than the stub he brought last time. And then—my breath catches—two books.
I reach for them before I can stop myself.
“They said you liked stories,” he says, watching my reaction. “I thought… if you’re going to be stuck here, you shouldn’t be trapped in your head too.”
My fingers tremble as I open the first book. The pages are yellowed and soft at the edges, the ink faded but legible. Words spill out in careful lines, histories and myths and names I’ve never been allowed to learn.
“I can read a little,” I admit, embarrassed. “They stopped lessons.”
“Then we’ll start again,” he says simply.
He lights the candle and sets it between us. The flame flickers, casting shadows that stretch and bend along the stone walls. For the first time since I woke in this tower, the room feels… less empty.
We sit on the floor with our backs against the wall, knees nearly touching. He reads aloud at first, his voice low and steady, guiding me through the words when I stumble. I repeat them quietly, tasting each syllable like something precious.
I forget the stone. I forget the wards pressing against my chest. I forget the silence outside the door.
When my eyes start to blur with exhaustion, he closes the book gently.
“That’s enough for tonight,” he says.
I nod reluctantly. “You’ll come back?”
“Always,” he says. “As long as I can.”
The words warm me more than the candle ever could.
***
The nights blur together.
Sometimes Maximilian brings food. Sometimes candles. Once, he brings a small blanket that smells faintly like our mother’s lavender soap. I press my face into it and cry until my chest aches.
He brings books whenever he can. Histories of Astoria. Stories of distant kingdoms. Old legends about magic and curses and heroes who were never afraid of the dark.
I devour them.
During the day, when the tower is silent and the pain of the wards hums low and constant, I read. I trace maps with my finger. I memorize names and dates. I escape into other lives, other places, until the walls feel farther away.
At night, when Maximilian comes, I ask questions.
“Is the festival happening this year?” I ask once, after hearing faint music drift through the stone like a memory.
“Yes,” he says. “They’re preparing banners already.”
“Do people still talk about me?”
He hesitates. “They talk about the princess who died.”
I swallow. “Do they miss her?”
His jaw tightens. “Some do.”
I stop asking after that.
The warmth inside me changes as the weeks pass. It grows quieter, deeper, less wild. When it stirs now, it feels… aware. Watchful. As if it is learning with me, growing in the spaces the wards can’t quite reach.
Sometimes, when Maximilian reads aloud, the candle flame leans toward him without flickering. When I concentrate hard enough, the air seems to thrum, low and steady, like a heartbeat.
I don’t tell him.
I don’t want to frighten him. I don’t want to give the court any more reasons to keep me here.
One night, after he finishes reading, I can’t stop the question from spilling out.
“When can I leave?”
The words hang between us, fragile and sharp.
He looks at the floor, then back at me. “Not yet.”
“Why?” I ask, though I already know the answer.
“They’re afraid,” he says quietly. “Of what they don’t understand.”
“Of me,” I correct.
He shakes his head. “Of losing control.”
I lean back against the wall, the stone cold through my thin clothes. “How long, Max?”
He doesn’t answer immediately.
“I don’t know,” he admits at last. “But I swear to you, Celeste, this won’t be forever.”
The hope flares despite my effort to contain it. “You promise?”
“Yes,” he says. “When I become king.”
The words are soft but heavy, settling into my chest with the weight of something real.
“When I take the crown,” he continues, “I’ll have the authority. The power. I’ll end this. I’ll bring you out into the light.”
I stare at him, my heart pounding. “You’ll free me?”
“I will,” he says without hesitation. “I swear it on everything I am.”
I close my eyes, clinging to the sound of his voice.
One day.
Not now.
But one day.
The promise becomes my anchor.
***
After that, I count time differently.
Not by meals or lantern light, but by how close Maximilian seems to adulthood. His voice deepens. His shoulders broaden. He starts wearing the weight of the crown long before it ever touches his head.
“Soon,” he tells me, again and again. “Soon.”
I believe him.
I have to.
Because the alternative—the thought that this tower is all I will ever know—is unbearable.
On nights when he cannot come, I sit alone and press my back against the wall, breathing through the ache of the wards, repeating his promise like a prayer.
He will be king. He will free me. I am not forgotten. The warmth inside me hums softly, as if listening.
And for the first time since the blood on the marble, I allow myself to imagine a future beyond stone and iron—one where I step into the sun without fear, where my brother stands beside me, and the world finally sees me as something other than a curse.
I fall asleep with the book open on my chest, the candle burned down to a pool of wax, holding onto hope like it is the last living thing in this tower.
Because for now, it is.