POV Selene
I woke with the amendment letter crumpled in my hand, creased where sleep had tightened my fist. One line burned behind my eyes: custody to Queen-Consort Isolde. I must have dozed reading it, too exhausted to reach my bed.
Dawn thinned the dark. From Ari’s room came the clatter of wooden soldiers. He looked up when I entered, smile bright and uncomplicated.
“Mama! I had good dreams.”
“That’s wonderful, my love.” I knelt. “What did you dream?”
“Ravens. Hundreds filling the sky.” Wonder lit his face. “Father taught me to call them.”
My heart clenched. I smoothed his hair, checking temperature by habit. “A beautiful dream.”
A knock at the connecting door; Casimir entered with a breakfast tray—bread warm, cheese in cubes, fruit arranged with care, warm milk in a cup Ari could hold. He did this every morning now; ritual had become sacrament.
“Good morning.” His eyes found mine. “Did you sleep?”
“Not much.”
We ate together like a family while Ari chattered about lessons, ravens, and a book of star charts. Normal talk around a cage.
When Ari finished, Casimir dabbed his mouth. “Shall we visit the falconry? The master will show how they train the birds.”
“Really?” Ari bounced, then stilled. “Can Mama come too?”
“Of course,” Casimir said.
We spent the morning in the mews—stone, hay, leather. Ari watched hawks with polished-amber eyes. The falconer answered his questions.
“This is Tempest,” he said of a peregrine. “She dives faster than an arrow. Want the gauntlet?”
Ari nodded. The man fitted a leather glove and steadied it as the bird stepped across. Casimir stood beside me, his nearness a steadiness when the world slid.
“He’s happy,” he murmured.
“For now.” Bitterness roughened my voice. “Until they hand him to someone who sees property, not a person.”
His fingers found mine, hidden in my skirts. “I won’t let that happen.”
I wanted to believe.
After lunch a welfare investigator arrived: thin, ash-gray, mouth carved into disapproval. He inspected our rooms with meticulous zeal, noting size, furnishings, medical stores. His questions were invasive and flat, as if the answers filled blanks in a judgment already decided.
“Regular medical supervision?”
“Daily,” I said. “Doctor Saren oversees all care.”
“Education?”
“A palace tutor. Letters, numbers, history.”
“At an appropriate level?”
“Advanced. He reads beyond his age.”
“Private interview required,” he said.
“He’s six,” Casimir answered, cold. “You’ll terrify him.”
“Protocol.”
They brought Ari. He picked at his sleeve, small and brave. The man asked: Do you feel safe? Does your mother take care of you? Are you happy? Has anyone hurt you? Ari answered carefully, seeking my eyes each time.
After, he pressed his face into my skirts. “Did I do all right?”
“Perfectly,” I said. “I’m proud of you.”
Evening brought a preliminary report. Casimir stood at my shoulder as I read:
Living conditions: adequate but sterile. Medical care: sufficient, appears reactive. Emotional stability: child anxious, possibly due to maternal stress. Recommendation: continued monitoring.
“It’s not terrible,” Casimir said without conviction.
“He’s building by accretion,” I replied. “Small cuts until they crush me.”
That night, after Ari slept clutching his raven, frost feathered the window. Seven days to the hearing. I pictured Isolde raising my son into something polished and cold.
The connecting door opened. Casimir entered. “Come here,” he said. I went. He held me—cedar and wool, the steady drum of his heart.
“I’m terrified,” I said.
“So am I. But we face it together.”
Candlelight softened his features. His hand cupped my cheek.
“I keep thinking about that night,” he murmured. “Strangers, and somehow home.”
“I thought about you every day,” I whispered.
“Constantly,” he said. “I kept your ribbon because it was all I had.”
“I’m here now.”
“Yes.” He leaned down slowly. I didn’t refuse. Our lips met—soft, then deeper. Heat bloomed; seven years fell away. We broke apart, breathless.
“We can’t,” I said, not stepping back. “The hearing, the scrutiny.”
“I know,” he said, not letting go.
Across the palace, Isolde watched our lit wing and sent for Kestrel. “He’s in love with her,” she said.
“Then we separate them faster.” He caught her hands. “We need an incident proving the child is in immediate danger under her care.”
“What kind?”
“Leave it to me. When it happens, you must be compassion itself—the perfect alternative mother.”
“And after?”
“The boy is yours to shape. The king will learn the cost of defiance.”
Deep night: a soft sound from Ari’s room. I ran. He sat upright, hand to his nose. Blood slicked his palm, bright in moonlight.
“Mama,” he whispered. “It happened again.”
“It’s all right.” I gathered cloths, lifted his chin, pinched the bridge, counted breaths. Casimir arrived with water; Anya with salt. We worked the quiet choreography of fear. The bleeding slowed, then stopped. Ari sagged against me.
“Better?” I asked. He nodded. “Sorry.”
“You never apologize for bleeding,” I said, kissing his hair.
Casimir’s gaze held grief and fury. “We log this—when it began, how long, what we did. No one will twist it into negligence.”
At dawn, Saren examined Ari, adjusted doses, left notes. I filed everything, each page a brick in a wall I prayed would hold.
The palace woke to rumor of a midnight bleed. By noon a broadsheet printed a barbed paragraph about the “fragility of the bastard heir.” I set it aside. The investigator returned unannounced. “Linens,” he said. “And the record.”
Anya produced labeled cloths and the log in Casimir’s exacting hand. He inspected, nodded. “Responsible,” he said. “Yet concerning that such episodes occur frequently.”
“Concerning,” I agreed evenly, “and exactly why he is safest with the people who know his body.”
When he left, I sat on Ari’s floor and breathed until the rushing in my ears eased.
Days narrowed to checklists: hydrate, medicate, document. Tutoring, supervised play, measured walks. Guards at the doors; political gossip a cold wind.
Evenings opened a small aperture. Casimir brought simple meals and chess lessons. We walked the garden, frost on roses, guards a shadow behind us. Ari collected leaves as if they were coins from another kingdom.
“Tell me a story,” he’d say.
Casimir obliged, voice low, threading legends between breaths. Sometimes I watched them and felt a dangerous hope uncurl.
On the sixth evening a page delivered a sealed notice: amendment acknowledged, hearing date confirmed, investigator empowered to recommend temporary removal before court “should conditions warrant.”
“They’re hunting pretext,” I said.
“Then we give them none,” Casimir answered.
Still, pretexts can be invented.
Two mornings later Ari woke listless and gray. Saren ordered rest, fluids, a tincture for nausea. I curled beside him reading about ships until his eyes drooped. When he slept, I paced to keep terror from ossifying.
Kestrel chose that afternoon to arrive with Isolde and courtiers, all concern. “A wellness visit,” he said smoothly. “May we see the child?”
Casimir met them at the door. “Briefly.”
They entered like frost. Isolde hovered over Ari with manufactured pity. “Poor lamb,” she murmured. “We’ll make sure you have everything you need.”
“We already do,” Ari said, braver than he felt.
Kestrel scanned the room—bottles, basins, logs—cataloging. “And if there is a crisis?”
“We handle crises,” I said. “We’ve had practice.”
He smiled without warmth. “Yes. That is precisely what concerns us.”
After they left, Casimir swore softly. “They’re testing the walls.”
“Let them,” I said, tucking the blanket higher. “Ours hold.”
Night brought snow. Ari pressed his palm to the window, marveling at lace on glass, then slept after warm milk.
I sat with the ledger of proofs, adding dates, doses, witnesses. The ribbon from the Night of Silent Lanterns lay beside the inkwell, its knots worn smooth by worry. I touched it and made a vow with no witnesses: I will not yield.
Near midnight, a crash split the quiet—a tray dropped in the outer hall, a guard’s curse. I opened the door to a spilled pitcher and a junior guard babbling apologies. Anya arrived to mop. Nothing, I told myself. Accidents happen.
Later I would remember how the guard’s eyes flicked to the hinges of the connecting door, as if measuring a future story.
At dawn, new broadsheets bloomed: rumors of nightly crises, whispers of maternal instability. I stacked them unread. The only narrative I could control was the one I wrote in ink.
Five days to the hearing. Five days to keep my son whole, to keep the record immaculate, to outlast the quiet war waged in rooms with soft rugs and sharper knives. I tied the ribbon around my wrist, breathed once, and went to wake Ari to the snowlight.
Before I touched his shoulder, I paused to memorize the quiet: the faint hiss of snow, the coals’ soft breath, Ari’s steady sleep beyond the door. This was the shape of what they wanted to break—a boy, a mother, a father learning how to be one. I would catalogue every minute if I had to, and fight with the weight of time itself.