The Door Ajar

  Two winters later, the Sylrendreis apartments slept uneasily at night. Every corridor was dressed in velvet shadow, each tapestry and urn reduced to a suggestion of itself, but the light in Lord Telemir’s study burned on, a tiny wound in the darkness. Ten-year-old Iliyria drifted through the halls with the practiced silence of the often punished, trailing her fingertips along the cool marble walls. Her legs carried her on autopilot, half-dreaming, until the sliver of lamplight under the study door caught her eye.

  The door was ajar, just barely, and voices filtered through: her father’s, low and sharp; her mother’s, a muffled reply, nearly inaudible. There was a strange rhythm to it, a back-and-forth she couldn’t puzzle out. Curiosity overruled caution. Iliyria crept closer, pressing her eye to the gap.

  Her father on top of mother, pinning her to the divan as if she were a rug needing flattening. His hands were braced on either side of her head; his mouth made the shape of contempt even while he worked. Selphia lay like the back of a tapestry: all knots, no picture, face turned to the wall, eyes clenched tight. Telemir’s face was a mask of pure contempt, as if the effort of touching his wife were a tax only offset by the need to produce an heir.

  Iliyria watched, unable to move. Punishment she knew; this she did not. She recognized the set of her father’s jaw, the flatness of his gaze, it was the look he reserved for things beneath his dignity. Selphia, for her part, betrayed nothing but a single tear, tracking down her cheek into the couch seam.

  The clock ticked; cloth rasped; the divan’s wood creaked like an old ship. Her own heartbeat filled the seam of the door. These details would fuse into nightmares later, but in the moment, Iliyria’s attention tunneled onto her mother’s face. For the first time, she understood what it meant for the Lady to be both tapestry and the knots behind it: nothing of the real thing must ever show.

  She shifted her weight. The old door, treacherous and swollen from too many seasons, creaked.

  Selphia’s eyes snapped open, saw her daughter, and in an instant, a horror deeper than pain filled them. She opened her mouth, but Telemir, sensing the shift, turned to the door.

  He saw the pale ghost of his daughter, framed in shadow. For a sliver of a second something like surprise crossed his face; then the mask closed and the snarl came.

  “Get out,” he snarled, voice flayed of all humanity.

  Iliyria ran. She ran until the carpet gave way to cold stone, until the noise in her ears was only her own breath and the hard slap of her heels. She stumbled to her own room, slammed the door, and crawled under the covers, shivering. She did not cry; she did not trance. Instead, she replayed what she’d seen, over and over, until the world shrank to a single fact: her mother had seen her, and had not called for help.

  The next morning, Iliyria woke to find her mother sitting at the edge of her bed. Selphia’s dress was immaculate, but her hands twisted the silk of her skirt with every pulse of her heart. For a long time, she said nothing.

  “I’m sorry,” Iliyria whispered.

  Selphia shook her head. “No. I am sorry.” Her voice was barely audible. “There are things in this house that you must never speak of. Do you understand?”

  Iliyria nodded, but she wanted to scream: why didn’t you stop him, why didn’t you stop me from seeing?

  Selphia reached for Iliyria’s hand, held it in her own, delicate, cold, and trembling. “Sometimes, to keep the family strong, a Lady must endure unpleasant things. It is our role to bear it. It is… expected. Of all of us.”

  “It should not be,” she added, so softly Iliyria almost missed it, “but it is.””

  “Does it hurt?” Iliyria asked, voice small.

  Selphia looked away. “Not always. But sometimes… it is not pain. It is emptiness. A thing you learn to live around.”

  Iliyria wanted to ask: Why don’t you fight? Why don’t you run away? But the questions stuck in her throat.

  Selphia smoothed her hair, kissed her forehead, and said, “Be brave, my darling. One day, you will have your own life. You must learn to endure, as I have. It is what keeps us whole.”

  But Iliyria did not want to be whole, not if it meant being empty inside.

  After that night, Iliyria stopped trying in her classes. She answered questions with shrugs, forgot her lessons, left her hair unbrushed. She learned exactly how to miss a curtsey by half an inch, exactly how to pour with one deliberate spill she could call an accident. In the court etiquette exams, she deliberately made mistakes, smirked when Mistress Vellana and Mistress Iviore scolded her. By supper, the clerk’s neat hand had copied “DEFICIENT IN COMPORTMENT” beside her name in the Ladies’ ledger. When her father’s punishments came, she took them with a stony silence that only enraged him further.

  She started to spend more time with Nalea, shirking lessons to sneak into the garden, climbing trees, tearing her clothes, daring the bees to sting her. The more her mother urged her to conform, the more she rebelled, until even the servants whispered about the “difficult daughter.”

  At home, she stayed out of sight as much as possible, listening to her parents fight through the walls. The bruises on her mother’s arms became more frequent, the makeup more expertly applied.

  One evening, after a particularly vicious argument, Selphia found Iliyria in the kitchen, legs swinging from the counter as she gnawed a heel of bread.

  Selphia knelt before her. “What will become of you?” she asked, voice crumbling.

  “I won’t be like you,” Iliyria said, not cruelly, but as a simple, irreducible truth.

  Selphia’s eyes filled, but she only nodded, stroked her daughter’s hair, and left the kitchen without another word.

  From that night, Iliyria kept “Mother” for public rooms. In her chest she kept “Selphia,” a warning label, not a name.

  She would not be a tapestry. If they wanted the knots hidden, they would have to look away.

  Rules for Hurting

  Iliyria sat on the stone bench at the edge of the menagerie. They always met by the lion; the night porter knew to leave the menagerie gate unlatched. Her dress was bunched above her knees, calves exposed to the cooling night. Purple welts slashed down her calves, some old, some so fresh they still oozed. She flexed her toes to make them sting less, but the pain radiated all the way to her jaw. Next to her, Nalea knelt with a small jar of arnica and comfrey Nalea had warmed between her palms, two fingers dipped into the greenish paste.

  “Stop moving,” Nalea whispered, not unkindly. “It’s worse if you fidget.”

  Iliyria rolled her eyes, but did as told. “You sound like the nursemaids.”

  Nalea smiled, the corners of her mouth quivering as she dabbed the salve onto a swollen patch. “Someone has to.” She worked in little moons, never across a stripe: you didn’t blur caned lines, you cooled them.

  They worked in silence for a while, the hush punctuated by distant garden sounds: a moth batting against a lantern, the rattle of dry leaves. Above, the first evening bats sketched parabolas against a violet sky.

  At last, Nalea asked, “Why do you keep doing it?”

  Iliyria stared at the bruise blooming on her calf. “Doing what?”

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  Nalea’s hands hovered, sticky with balm. “You know. The… the things that make your father so angry.”

  “Because he deserves it,” Iliyria said, voice flat. “Because I won’t be what he wants.”

  “But it hurts you,” Nalea said, gently. “It always hurts you.”

  Iliyria chewed her lip, eyes fixed on a point beyond the hedge. “If I do what he wants, it will hurt forever. So I pick hurts that end.”

  Nalea, not understanding but sensing the edge, changed the subject. She reached for a fresh bandage and wrapped it around Iliyria’s leg, her touch light as silk.

  When she was done, Nalea sat back on her heels. “You could just… not fight. You could pretend for a little. Just until you’re bigger,” she said. “Then you can stop pretending.””

  Iliyria looked at her, truly looked, and for a moment her face was all the ages she would ever be: child, woman, something else entirely. “That’s what my mother does,” she said. “Pretends. I don’t think she’s really there anymore. I think she left and forgot to tell anyone.”

  Nalea’s eyes shone with tears she would never shed. “But you have me,” she said, quietly.

  Iliyria reached out, took Nalea’s hand, and held it in her own. “I know,” she said. “That’s why I keep coming back.”

  The garden had gone almost black now, the shapes of the animal hedges turning into monsters or guardians depending on the tilt of your mind. Here, inside the hedges, the hurts slowed. Not gone, slowed. Far off, the palace bells rang the hour.

  They sat together in the dark, neither wanting to leave, until a flutter of wings broke the silence overhead.

  Nalea tipped her head up, searching the sky. “Look,” she whispered. “It’s the bird.”

  And there it was, a blue scrap of bird from another summer, grown now, healed, skimming above the garden in a ragged, uncertain flight.

  Iliyria watched it go, her face unreadable. But when she spoke, her voice was sure and steady.

  “I hope it never comes back,” she said. “I hope it finds somewhere better.”

  They sat a while longer, then gathered up the bandages and the empty jar, and walked home side by side, their shadows long and tangled on the path behind them.

  Behind them, the lion kept its watch; ahead, the path remembered their feet.

  Sanctuary, With Time Limits

  The parlor of the Lumear family’s palace suite was the opposite of the Sylrendreis apartments in every way that counted. It was not the grandest set of rooms in Isrannore, nor the most expensive; there were no onyx-inlaid floors or ceilings painted with the triumphs of ancient ancestors. No portraits watched from the walls here; the books did, gently. The furniture, though old, shone with a gentle polish that betrayed care rather than ostentation. The air smelled of books and lemon oil, and the windows were never curtained so thickly as to keep out the sun.

  On this afternoon, a rare one where the clouds were more ornament than threat, Nalea and Iliyria sat at a lacquered tea table in the sitting room, feet swinging under their chairs and fingers wound tight around porcelain cups. The china was thin, hand-painted with trailing vines and tiny blue flowers, and the cookies on the tray looked as though they had been arranged by someone who genuinely hoped children would eat them.

  Carine Lumear, Nalea’s Great Aunt and the family steward, presided over the service, movements precise, her brown hair pulled back in a plaited knot. There was no portrait of a husband in this room; Carine’s gaze didn’t defer to empty space. Iliyria filed that under Possible Futures.

  The silver streaks in Aunt Carine’s hair glinted in the light, a badge of honor rather than something to hide, and her voice had the even, musical timbre of someone who had spent decades smoothing conflict before it could ever become a crisis. Nalea was perched at the edge of her seat, chin propped on her knuckles, listening to Iliyria with rapt, open-mouthed attention.

  “So she said,” Iliyria was reporting, eyes wide, “that unless I improved my posture, I’d never be allowed to serve at the High Table. And then she tried to push my shoulders down with her stick, but I just stood up and walked away. She’s lucky her stick didn’t break.” The girl’s feet thumped against the base of the chair with every other word.

  Nalea giggled, then covered her mouth. “You didn’t! You just left?”

  “She left,” Aunt Carine confirmed, setting down the teapot with a practiced hand. “And then Mistress Iviore sent a full page of complaints to her father. Which he was thrilled to receive, I’m sure.”

  Carine looked at Iliyria, the corners of her eyes wrinkling, “Wasn’t that right after your last escapade with the garden tools?”

  Iliyria blushed, but grinned. “Maybe. But they haven’t found the shovel yet.”

  Carine sighed in the way only a mother or an aunt could, long-suffering but secretly amused. “I suppose it’s not the worst thing a Sylrendreis has done. Please, girls, more tea?”

  She poured, the amber arc catching a glint of the late sun, and for a moment the room fell quiet except for the sound of liquid and the gentle clink of spoon against cup. Nalea took her tea with three sugars and a dangerous splash of lemon, making a face after every sip but soldiering through, determined to be grown up. Iliyria dumped her sugar in all at once, swirling the cup until it threatened to overflow.

  They drank in a companionable silence, the kind that would never be allowed in the Sylrendreis home but was here regarded as not only acceptable, but vital. Aunt Carine settled into her own chair, folding her hands over her lap.

  “It’s good to hear laughter in here,” she said, not quite to anyone. “This room’s had too little of it lately.”

  Nalea looked up, her face suddenly serious. “Father says you work too hard,” she said. “He says you should spend more time on the east balcony and less time reading the ledgers.”

  Carine snorted, very quietly, and her gaze softened. “Your father forgets that if I don’t read the ledgers, we will have nothing but the balcony. Numbers are how the palace pretends to be fair,” she said. “I like to watch them misbehave. But thank you, darling.” The palace liked ladies for display; Carine made herself useful and, somehow, free.

  She reached out and brushed Nalea’s cheek with her thumb, then leaned forward, voice dropping into a gentle, confiding register. “And he forgets that the world does not always reward hard work. It rewards the performance of effort. Especially from women.” She smiled, but there was a tiredness behind it that both girls recognized.

  Iliyria, emboldened by the safety of this room, asked, “Was it always like this? For you?”

  Carine tilted her head, considering. “Not at first. When I was your age, my own mother, your great-grandmother, Nalea, used to say we could remake the world if we only wanted to badly enough. I believed her. But she didn’t tell me how much the world prefers to remain exactly as it is.”

  There was a faint sound from the corridor, a page, probably, or one of the Lumear household staff, shuffling through with an errand. But none of the three flinched, or straightened, or even lowered their voices. In this suite, the tyranny of “ladylike” had been suspended at the door.

  Nalea, always the peacemaker, steered the conversation away from politics. “Are we going to the market this week, Aunt? I want to find more of those yellow plums.”

  Carine’s eyes twinkled. “If your comportment class goes well, we’ll make a detour. Otherwise, you’ll have to eat the dreadful ones from the palace orchard.”

  Nalea groaned, but the promise was enough. “I’ll be perfect,” she said, “I’ll out-lady even Mirella.”

  Iliyria snorted, then caught herself. “You’re already better than her. She only pretends.”

  The two girls shared a conspiratorial smile, recalling the morning’s lesson where Mirella had tripped on her own hem, then spent an hour blaming it on the uneven carpet. The joke was funnier because it could never be repeated in public.

  Carine smiled at their mirth, then, more gently, “You girls did skip comportment last week. I let it slide, but your parents will expect more next time.”

  Nalea nodded, a picture of earnestness. “We won’t miss again. I promise.”

  Iliyria’s smile faltered, just for a heartbeat. The word “parents” still had a knife-edge for her, and Carine saw it, of course she did, there was nothing in this household that went unseen for long. She reached across the table, and Iliyria was briefly startled to find her hand enveloped in a warm, dry grasp. If there was a map through this place, Iliyria thought, Carine had drawn it.

  “It’s all right to not be perfect, Iliyria,” Carine said, her tone the one reserved for comforting animals or children after a storm. “But you should still try, for the times when it matters.”

  Iliyria nodded, throat tight. “I do try,” she said, not quite sure who she was trying to convince.

  Carine squeezed her hand, then released it. “I know. And so does your mother, even if she can’t show it safely.”

  The silence that followed was not awkward, but full of things unsaid. It was Nalea who broke it, a master at redirecting sadness before it could pool too deep. She eyed the tray, then said, “Are we allowed to have more of the cookies?”

  Carine looked at the tray, then at the girls. “I’m sure the world won’t end if you do.”

  They dove in, and the conversation drifted toward safer topics: what animal the palace cook most resembled, which corridor in the palace was haunted, and whether you could truly see Lake Miriel from the top of the southern tower. The cookies were gone in minutes, and the tea was refilled twice more before the sun began to edge toward the line of rooftops beyond the gardens.

  As the afternoon faded into a golden hush, Aunt Carine said, “You’ll both do well, in your own ways. Sometimes it just takes time to find them.”

  Iliyria and Nalea shared a look, then burst into a fit of giggles that lasted until they couldn’t breathe.

  When the sun finally fell below the horizon, Carine gathered the empty cups and plates, shooed the girls from the table, and set them to washing their hands before dinner. As they left the room, Nalea turned and waved, her hand sticky with crumbs.

  Iliyria lingered at the threshold, looking back at the parlor, at the sunlight, and the books, and the memory of warmth. For a moment, she imagined this was her home, that she belonged here, that the world outside these walls could be forgotten or remade.

  She didn’t linger; even the best sanctuaries have hours. But the room went with her, a lemon-sugar aftertaste she could call up at will.