Read Chapter 2: The Invalid Princess

The dawn light crept through the gauze curtains like a thief, silver and unforgiving. Anya sat upright in bed before her eyes fully opened, her hand already flying to her temple where a dull ache pulsed beneath the skin. The motion sent a spike of pain through her palm, and she looked down to find a thin red line bisecting the flesh—a cut, clean and deliberate, already beginning to scab.

She stared at it. Tried to remember. Came up empty.

The room around her was familiar in the way a stranger's face can be familiar—she knew the canopy, the embroidered bedspread, the portrait of a woman with dark hair and kind eyes watching from the far wall. But the hours that had brought her here, the day that had preceded this morning, the events that had left a wound on her hand—

Gone.

She pressed her fingers to the cut and winced. The sting was real. That was something, at least. Real pain meant something had happened. But what? And why couldn't she remember?

The door opened before she could spiral further. A maid entered with a tray of bread and watered wine, her face carefully neutral. Anya opened her mouth to ask—she wasn't sure what, exactly—when her brother swept in behind the maid, his boots loud against the stone floor.

Marius looked like their father in the way a shadow looks like a man. The same sharp jaw, the same pale hair, but where their father had carried warmth in his eyes, Marius carried calculation. He smiled at her now, and Anya felt the curve of it like a blade pressed lightly against her throat.

"Sister. You look—" He paused, his gaze flicking to her bandaged hand. "—troubled."

"I don't remember yesterday," she said flatly. There was no point in pretense. He knew the curse as well as she did. Everyone in the palace knew the curse. It was the great irony of her life: Princess Anya, who forgot everything at midnight, was the most discussed person in the kingdom.

Marius's smile didn't waver. "Then it's fortunate that nothing of consequence occurred. You spent the day resting. The physician recommended it."

"The physician." Anya swung her legs over the side of the bed, testing her balance. "And who recommended the physician?"

"The physician recommended himself, I imagine. You were unwell." Marius stepped closer, and behind him, Commander Voss materialized in the doorway like a guard dog who had smelled blood. The commander's armor gleamed in the morning light, his face carved from the same stone as the castle walls. "You should not attend court today, Anya. You need rest."

"I don't need rest. I need to—" She stopped. What did she need? The thought slipped away before she could catch it, like a fish darting beneath the surface of dark water. She needed to remember. She needed to know what had happened. But the specifics refused to take shape.

Voss cleared his throat. "Your Highness, the court physician has expressed concern about your—"

"My what?" Anya's voice sharpened. "My curse? My conveniently convenient curse that allows everyone around me to decide what I should and shouldn't know?"

Marius's expression flickered—annoyance, quickly masked. "No one is deciding anything for you, sister. We are trying to protect you."

"From what?"

"From yourself." He said it gently, and somehow that made it worse. "You were found wandering the grounds yesterday evening. Disoriented. Unwell. The physician fears your episodes are growing more frequent."

Anya's hand went to her temple again. The ache pulsed. Wandering the grounds? That didn't feel right. But she couldn't say why it didn't feel right—couldn't point to any memory that contradicted it. She had only the hollow space where a day should be, and the thin red line across her palm.

"I want to attend court," she said.

"Out of the question." Marius's tone hardened. "The Valdris envoy arrives today. You will not meet them in a state of—"

"I'm not in a state. I'm standing. I'm speaking. I'm perfectly capable of sitting in a damn chair and looking ornamental for an hour." Anya rose fully, squaring her shoulders. She was shorter than Marius by a handspan, but she knew how to wield her presence. "And I will not be confined to my rooms like an invalid princess while my brother negotiates my future without me."

The words landed. Marius's jaw tightened. Voss shifted his weight, his hand drifting toward his sword hilt—a gesture so habitual it was probably unconscious. But Anya caught it, and filed it away.

"Sister—"

"Am I to understand," Anya said, cutting him off, "that the Valdris envoy is here to discuss a marriage? My marriage? And you thought you would simply... handle it?"

Marius exchanged a glance with Voss. Some silent communication passed between them, and Anya felt a cold knot tighten in her stomach. There was something they knew. Something they weren't telling her. Something that, due to the cruel mechanics of her curse, she had probably known yesterday and had already lost.

"The Valdris negotiations are not about you," Marius said carefully. "They are about the kingdom."

"Ah. Of course. How foolish of me to assume a marriage envoy concerned the person being married." Anya smiled, sharp-edged. "I'm so glad we cleared that up. Now, if you'll excuse me—"

She walked past him, toward the door, but Voss blocked her path. The commander's bulk filled the frame, impossibly solid.

"Your Highness," he said, his voice like gravel. "Your brother has ordered that you remain in your chambers today."

"My brother." Anya didn't look back at Marius. She stared at Voss's chin, because looking into his eyes felt like looking into a wall. "My brother, who is not the king. Who has no authority to confine me."

"I have the authority as Commander of the Royal Guard to ensure the safety of the royal family." Voss's eyes were flat, unreadable. "And I have determined that attending court today would not be safe."

"For whom?"

He didn't answer. Behind her, Marius let out a breath that might have been frustration or might have been relief. The moment stretched, taut as a bowstring.

"Captain Kael," Anya saidsuddenly. The name surfaced from the hollow space in her mind like a stone rising through mud. She didn't know why she knew it—couldn't trace the memory—but it felt important. Urgent. "The new Captain. He was assigned to me. Where is he?"

Marius's expression flickered again. "Captain Kael's appointment is under review."

"Why?"

"Because I requested it," Voss said. "A captain with no history in this court, no lineage I can trace—"

"I want him." Anya's voice rang clear and steady. "He was assigned to me, and I want him. Unless you'd like to explain to Father why his daughter is being denied the protection he personally ordered."

The silence that followed was thick enough to choke on. Marius's face cycled through several expressions before settling on something like resignation. He nodded once at Voss, a sharp, clipped motion.

The commander stepped aside.

Anya swept past him without looking back, her heart hammering against her ribs. She didn't know why she'd said Kael's name. She didn't know why it felt like the only solid thing in the shifting sands of her mind. But she trusted it. She trusted the way it felt in her mouth, like a word she'd spoken a thousand times before.

She found him in the corridor, waiting as if he'd known she would come. He stood with the stillness of a man who had learned patience through violence, his dark hair cropped close, his eyes—grey, she noticed, the color of storm clouds—fixed on her approach.

"Your Highness." He bowed, but his eyes never left her face. "You remember me."

It wasn't a question. Something in the way he said it made her pause, made her look at him more carefully. There was a familiarity in the lines of his face, the set of his shoulders, that she couldn't place. It itched at her like a half-remembered dream.

"I remember your name," she said carefully. "Nothing else."

Something flickered in his eyes—disappointment, or perhaps something older and rawer. Then it was gone, replaced by a formal mask.

"I'm told you've been confined to your chambers," he said. "Your brother and Commander Voss seem concerned for your health."

"They seem concerned about something." Anya crossed her arms, studying him. "You know what happened yesterday. Don't you."

"I know some of it."

"Then tell me."

Kael was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was low, pitched for her ears alone. "I can tell you that you are not ill. I can tell you that you were not wandering disoriented. And I can tell you that whatever happened to you happened inside the west wing."

The west wing. The words fell into her mind like stones into still water, sending ripples outward. The west wing, sealed since the fire. The fire that killed their mother. The fire that no one would speak of, that her father refused to even mention, that had been walled off and forgotten like a shameful secret.

"Why was I there?" she asked. "Why would I go there?"

"I don't know. But I intend to find out." Kael stepped closer, lowering his voice further. "Your Highness, I swore an oath when I took this post. I swore to protect you. Not to confine you, not to manage you—to protect you. And I believe the threat to you lies in that wing."

Anya searched his face for deception, for the careful masks she'd learned to read in courtiers and politicians and her own brother. She found none. She found only that grey, steady gaze and the weight of a promise she couldn't remember receiving.

"Commander Voss wants you removed from your post."

"I know."

"He's afraid of you. Or suspicious of you. Or both."

"He should be." A ghost of a smile crossed Kael's face. "I'm the only person in this castle willing to tell you the truth, and that makes me dangerous."

Anya felt something shift in her chest—a recognition she couldn't name, a trust she couldn't justify. She looked down at her hand, at the cut that had appeared overnight, and made a decision.

"Then you'll stay," she said. "You'll stay, and you'll tell me the truth, starting now."

"About what?"

Anya met his eyes. "Why am I forbidden from the west wing?"

Kael's gaze held hers, and in it she saw something that looked terribly like grief. "Because," he said slowly, "I don't think that wing is sealed to keep people out."

The words hung in the air between them, cold and strange.

"I think it's sealed to keep something in."