Chapter Text
I have always been good at solving puzzles.
As a child, it was wooden blocks and ivory-inlaid riddle boxes from the Eastern kingdoms. Later, it was court protocol—the exquisite challenge of saying something terribly cutting while making it sound like a compliment. But my favorite puzzles have always been the kind with stakes.
The kind that bleed.
My father, King Augustus, was dying. Not the dramatic kind of dying that happens in ballads, with deathbed confessions and meaningful last words. The tedious kind. The kind that involves a lot of phlegm and physicians looking grave and pages running back and forth with possets that no one drinks. He’d been at it for three weeks, and the entire castle had developed the hushed, expectant quality of a held breath.
Personally, I was tired of waiting.
I found Daphne in the tapestry gallery, where she’d set up an entire kingdom of dolls on the cold stone floor. At four, she was still young enough to believe that the world was benign and that her big sisters hung the moon. I intended to keep her that way for as long as possible. The truth of this family would crack something precious in her, and I needed that precious thing intact. She was the only one of us who still smiled without calculating the angle first.
“Felicity!” She beamed up at me, holding a ragged cloth doll with one arm. “Lord Pufflehoof has lost his sword arm again. He’s terribly sad.”
I gathered my skirts and knelt beside her, the stone cold even through the layers of silk. “Lord Pufflehoof,” I said seriously, examining the doll, “has never looked more distinguished. War wounds are very fashionable. All the best heroes have them.”
Daphne considered this, her small face scrunching in that adorable way that meant she was thinking very hard. “Like Father?”
The question landed like a stone in still water.
“Like Father,” I agreed, smoothing her dark curls away from her face. My hand lingered on the warmth of her cheek. “But Father’s wounds are on the inside, little love. The physicians can’t see them.”
“Can you see them?”
“Oh, yes.” I smiled. “I see everything.”
It was true. I saw the way my brother Desmond’s hand trembled when he signed documents he couldn’t read properly. I saw the way our middle sisters—Eleanor and Elizabeth—had already begun the quiet, ruthless work of positioning themselves for the aftermath. Eleanor cultivated churchmen; Elizabeth cultivated soldiers. Clever girls. Wrong, but clever.
And I saw the pattern no one else seemed to notice: that the crown always passes to the eldest, and the eldest in our family had a habit of being tragically, conveniently stupid.
Desmond was three years my senior and possessed all the subtlety of a hunting horn. He thought strength was shouting. He thought leadership was ordering people about. He thought I was his greatest ally because I always agreed with him, always smoothed his path, always made him feel clever.
Men are so simple. Give them a mirror that reflects a king, and they’ll hand you their dagger to hold.
That evening, I went to my father’s chambers.
The smell hit me first—sickness and herbs and the particular staleness of a room where the windows haven’t been opened in weeks. The physicians had withdrawn for their supper, leaving only a single maid dozing in the corner. My father lay propped on mountains of pillows, a ruin of the man who had once lifted me onto his shoulders so I could see the May Day parade.
“Felicity.” His voice was a dry rustle. “Come to watch the old man die?”
I sat in the chair beside his bed, arranging my skirts with precise folds. “Don’t be dramatic, Father. You’ll outlive us all out of sheer stubbornness.”
He laughed, then coughed, then laughed again. “You always were my favorite liar.”
“I never lie to you.” This was true. I simply omitted. There’s a difference, though men rarely appreciate the distinction.
“Desmond came today.” My father’s eyes drifted to the ceiling. “Talked about the hunting lodge he wants to build. The hunting lodge, Felicity. While I lie here, gasping like a fish, my heir wants to discuss timber prices.”
“Desmond thinks of the future,” I said mildly. “It’s a king’s prerogative.”
“Desmond thinks of Desmond.” The old king turned his head, and even wasted with illness, his eyes were sharp. “You’d make a better ruler. You know that.”
The words hung in the air like smoke.
“I’m a woman,” I said, as though stating a simple fact of arithmetic. Two plus two equals four. Women do not rule.
“I know what you are.” He reached for my hand, his grip still surprisingly strong. “I made you. I know exactly what I created.”
Did he? Did he truly understand what he’d shaped, all those years of teaching me to read treaties and spot deceptions and calculate the precise weight of a well-placed word? Did he think I’d learned these lessons for Desmond’s benefit?
“Rest now,” I said, pressing his hand between mine. “We can discuss politics when you’re well.”
“I won’t be well.” He said it simply, without self-pity. “And you won’t discuss. You’ll act. That’s what I made. An actor, not a discusser.”
I kissed his forehead. It felt like ash under my lips.
“Sleep, Father.”
He was asleep before I reached the door. I paused there, looking back at the diminished figure in the great bed, and felt something twist in my chest. Affection, perhaps. Or memory. Or the ghost of the little girl who had once loved him unreservedly, before she learned what love cost.
That girl was dead. I’d killed her myself, years ago, in a quiet corner of the garden where no one could witness the murder.
The maid in the corner hadn’t stirred. Interesting. And useful.
The castle at night has its own language.
Footsteps echo differently. Doors that groan during the day fall silent. Shadows stretch and merge and become things that weren’t there in the sunlight. I knew this language intimately. I’d been studying it since I was twelve and first discovered that the passage behind the tapestry in the east wing led directly to the servants’ stairs.
Desmond’s chambers were in the tower. He liked the height—said it made him feel like an eagle overlooking his domain. I thought it made him feel like a target, but I never said so. Some truths are too sharp to speak aloud.
I didn’t go to his rooms that night. That would have been foolish. Obvious. The kind of direct approach Desmond himself would take.
Instead, I went to the kitchens.
Cook was asleep, as I’d known she would be—she drank heavily before bed, a fact I’d noted three years ago and filed away for future use. The kitchens were dark and warm, smelling of bread and the lamb stew that would be served for tomorrow’s dinner. I moved through them like smoke, finding what I needed without hesitation.
I’d prepared for this moment for months. Years, if I was honest with myself. The herbs I’d gathered myself, drying them in secret places, grinding them to precise consistencies. The late nights studying old texts in the library, the ones that weren’t supposed to exist. The careful, casual conversations with apothecaries and physicians and old women who still remembered the old ways.
They said I was clever. They had no idea.
The powder went into the small vial I’d hidden in my sleeve. The vial went into the pocket sewn into the lining of my gown. I was out of the kitchens before the church bell tolled midnight, and no one saw me.
No one ever saw me.
I was in the garden when they found my father the next morning.
Daphne had wanted to see the roses, and I had wanted to give her something beautiful before the world turned ugly. She was chattering about Lord Pufflehoof’s upcoming nuptials to a lady-in-waiting doll when the screams began.
They echoed from the castle, high and thin and utterly genuine. Servants’ screams, not courtiers’. Courtiers know better than to scream.
“What’s that?” Daphne’s small hand tightened on mine.
“Nothing, darling.” I knelt and tucked a curl behind her ear. “Someone’s probably seen a mouse. You know how silly the maids are about mice.”
“Are they scared of mice?”
“Terrified.” I smiled. “Now, which rose do you think Lord Pufflehoof would prefer for his buttonhole? The red, or the pale one?”
She considered with great seriousness, and by the time she’d chosen the red, the screaming had stopped. Replaced by the low hum of chaos, the sound of a household trying to remember how to grieve.
We stayed in the garden until the Chancellor himself came to fetch us, his face arranged in appropriate solemnity. I helped Daphne gather her dolls and took her hand, walking slowly back toward the castle, toward the noise and the tears and the performance of loss.
“Felicity?” Daphne looked up at me, her eyes wide and uncertain. “Is Father with the angels now?”
“Yes, little love.” I squeezed her hand. “He’s with Mother. They’re together again.”
She nodded, satisfied with this answer, and I felt the twist in my chest again. Felt it and ignored it.
Grief was a luxury. I had work to do.
The castle was in uproar. Desmond had locked himself in his chambers—grieving, they said. Or drinking. Possibly both. Eleanor was already organizing the funeral arrangements with the head of the household, her pale face the perfect picture of sisterly devotion. Elizabeth had positioned herself outside Desmond’s door, intercepting anyone who tried to enter, controlling the flow of information.and Clementine was searching up scrolls in the library
They were good. They were very good.
They weren’t me.
I settled Daphne with her nursemaid, pressed a kiss to her forehead, and went to find my brother.
Elizabeth tried to block me, of course. “He’s not seeing anyone. He’s devastated.”
“I’m not anyone.” I didn’t slow down. “I’m his sister.”
“Felicity—”
But I was already past her, through the door, into the dim chaos of Desmond’s chambers. He was slumped at his desk, a half-empty bottle of brandy in front of him, his face blotchy with drink and tears.
“Felicity.” He looked up, and for a moment I saw the little boy who used to let me ride on his back through the nursery. “He’s gone. Father’s gone.”
“I know.” I crossed to him, placed my hand on his shoulder. “I’m so sorry, Desmond.”
“What do I do?” He grasped my hand like a drowning man. “Tell me what to do. You always know what to do.”
I did know. I’d known for years.
“First,” I said gently, “you need to pull yourself together. The court needs to see their king strong. Then you need to meet with the Chancellor, confirm the succession, start planning the coronation. I’ll help you. I’ll help you with everything.”
“You will?” The relief in his face was almost pitiful.
“Of course.” I squeezed his hand. “That’s what sisters are for.”
He believed me. Of course he believed me. He’d never learned to read the spaces between words, the silence that follows a promise. He’d never learned that when I said “I’ll help you with everything,” what I really meant was “I’ll help you right up until the moment I don’t.”
That moment was coming. Sooner than he thought.
I stayed with him for an hour, guiding him through the immediate necessities, soothing his panic, being the perfect, devoted sister. Then I left him with a cup of mulled wine—to settle his nerves, I said—and went to my own chambers to prepare.
The vial in my pocket was still full. That was fine. There would be other nights.
There would be other vials.
I stood at my window, watching the sun set over the kingdom that would soon be mine, and I allowed myself a small smile. They would call it grief, tomorrow. They would call it a tragic accident, a weak heart, the stress of succession. They would call it many things.
They would never call it me.
Daphne found me there an hour later, still staring at the darkening sky. She’d escaped her nursemaid again—she was clever that way, my littlest sister—and she climbed into my lap without asking, curling against me like a small, warm animal.
“Are you sad, Felicity?”
“A little,” I said. It wasn’t entirely a lie.
“Don’t be sad.” She patted my hand with her small one. “I’ll take care of you.”
I looked down at her, this child who had no idea what the world truly was, who still believed in happy endings and brave knights and sisters who kept you safe.
“I know you will,” I said. “And I’ll take care of you. Forever.”
Another promise. Another truth hidden in the words.
Forever, for Daphne, would be a world where she never had to learn what I was. Where she could stay exactly as she was—innocent, loving, whole. I would build that world for her, stone by stone, on whatever foundation necessary.
Even if that foundation was blood.
Even if that blood was family.
The first puzzle was solved. My father was dead, mourned, buried in my memory alongside the child I’d been.
The second puzzle waited in the tower, drinking himself to sleep, utterly unaware that his sister had already planned his funeral.
I kissed Daphne’s hair and began to calculate.