MERA'S POV
(Flashback)
The kitchen at dusk holds its breath like a thing that's learned how to wait. Light slides through the high windows in a flat, golden ribbon, softening the edges of the room—making the knives glitter, making the copper pans look like ornaments. The world tries to prettify itself; the smell of wine and smoke does its best to make violence smell domestic. It almost works.
My hands do not soften.
The vial is cool and alarmingly alive against my palm, thin glass that seems too fragile to be dangerous. Pretty things hide their teeth best. I know that. Rogues teach you early: you never mistake a pretty thing for harmless.
Someone in the prep room had leaned on the counter and laughed at me that morning. "You're glowing, Mera," she'd said, as if pregnancy were a badge of softness. As if the world handed comfort to those with rounded bellies.
I smiled. I always smile when everyone is watching. Soft eyes, softer voice—the costume that lets you approach the edge without anyone calling you reckless. They see the orphan who was lucky enough to be chosen. They see the woman who would never make a monster of herself. That is the show. I learned my cues a long time ago.
Duskthorn's plate waits on the board: roast venison, wine-reduced until the sauce sticks to the meat like varnish. He likes his meals—rich, deliberate, served with thrones of attention. He believes the way other men believe in breathing. That is the problem. He would never step back. He would never choose to hand over the wheel to Kael, no matter who stood begging.
I uncork the vial with a motion so calm it feels like inevitability. Inside, the liquid moves like night, thick, swallowing the light. It tastes of old things—of promises sold in a whisper. I paid for it in favors I still count on nights when I can't sleep; the rogues never sign their names.
There's a small pause—only the tiniest fissure where conscience might creep in—then I measure. How much to tilt the balance but not topple the world. How much to make him falter without making a spectacle.
Dwyn would have screamed at me. She'd have called me monstrous and small and everything that woman always called someone who refused to play by the rules.
I pour.
The sound is a traitor's hush, a line of ice sliding into simmering sauce. The sauce receives it like it had been waiting—like the meal and the moment were always meant to meet this way. My hand moves with practiced stealth; my fingers remember the choreography taught by a mother who traded in silence. Tuck a coin, fold a note, hide your heartbeat in the seam of your sleeve. No one here is meant to know.
I stir without looking. The window dresses my reflection in smoke; my face blurs until I cannot tell whether the woman in the glass is smiling or merely breathing. Guilt tries to stir—something hot and small—but I have long ago learned to turn feeling into fuel. I wrap the empty vial in cloth, tuck it under the sink where morning will drink the night away, and press the bundle into darkness.
"Just a little push," I whisper to the hollow of my belly, because words shape the world. Saying it aloud gives the future a name. For us. For what we will be.
Kael laughs through the doorway—easy as a song—unconcerned and bright. He believes in simple truths: the right food, the right look, the right word at the right time. Soft men are useful. They forgive too much. They make good shields and convenient witnesses.
I step into the hall with grief on my shoulders like a lamp: slow, dignified, visible. They will see me and they will pity me, and pity is a garment that hides many small sins.
—
PRESENT TIME
The clinic smells like bleach, cold metal, and the particular kind of hope that buzzes around machines. They have him on a bed that smells of detergent and old rope and mornings that never quite begin right. I sit where the light will catch me, hands folded, a picture of composure. Fragility collects attention like a net.
"She's so brave," a nurse says, and the words wash warm and naive across me. Brave, pregnant—two labels that will make the crowd lean forward to watch the tragedy unfold.
They don't know what I know.
They don't know I was the last to pass his table, that the tremor in his hand was the first clue. They don't know white foam at the corner of a mouth can scream poison even when the village elders call it just a seizure. They don't know my fingers, the same that stitch quilts and braid hair and soothe pups, slipped the night into his meal.
Kael bursts in like wind—boots sharp on tile, guilt etched into his face. He moves like a man who has already lost and is trying to look like he hasn't. I take his hand because people like to see hands linked, because the image steadies them. He answers with clipped words "Unconscious. Vitals stable but damaged. They can't explain it."
"Could it be something he ate?" I say it in a voice so small it sounds like someone else's worry. The medics look away from the question; explanation requires instruments, tests, and time—luxuries the living will not always have.
When Kael comes closer, when he offers the promise to protect me and the child, I let the soft sound of fear fill my chest like a mask. I rest my head on his shoulder, eyes down, and let him wrap his arms around me. Let him lean on me as if I am the talisman that will hold him together. Let him believe he is needed.
No one watches my fingers when they squeeze his. No one reads the calculation in the way I relax into his arms. The women around us sob with such earnestness that their grief is contagious—perfect theater. It's astonishing how quickly a room will applaud the performance of sorrow.
I don't mourn Duskthorn. He is an obstacle, a roadblock of tradition and stubbornness. Dwyn with her voice and sharp, inconvenient honesty would have tried to burn it all down; I unspool it more quietly. I will take the pieces that fall.
"I'll protect you both," he tells me—the promise sounds like metal.
I murmur the correct answer, lift my chin, and let the fluorescent lights flatten everything into a photograph I will show them again and again if I must. I will be the mother. I will be the mate. I will be the faithful heart they point at and praise. I will sew myself into their memories until doubt has no room to breathe.
They do not suspect. Not now. Not yet.
Absent is a girl called Dwyn—across oceans and stages, wrapped in applause. Her absence is a wide thing I can walk into and fill: with voice, with the loyalty they all crave. I will hold the line beside Kael, steady the Beta's cloak that never seemed to fit, and when the time is right, I will push him closer to the edge till he falls off.
Time is a luxury. I have it. They hand me garlands and whispered thanks; they will call me savior. They will never imagine that the hand that soothes their grief is the same one that loosened the knot at the root.