The betrothal promise hung over Linda like a gilded cage suspended above a pit of vipers. Queen Eleanor's smile, the day after the ball, held the warmth of a tombstone. She didn't shout. She orchestrated.
Linda's world shrank to the suffocating confines of the palace attic. They dragged her from the coal closet's damp misery only to imprison her beneath the slate roof. No window pierced the pitch-dark. Wind whistled through cracks, carrying the skittering sounds of rats nesting in the rafters. A single slop bucket sat in the corner, its reek mingling with the scent of ancient dust and despair. Seraphina turned the heavy iron key each night, her voice a venomous whisper through the thick wood. *"Dream of your vampire, slum rat. If you dare sleep in this crypt."*
Sustenance became a cruel joke. One chipped bowl of watery gruel, cold and congealed, appeared each dawn. Water, drawn from the deepest, rust-tainted cistern, tasted like blood. Sometimes, salvation arrived – a sleek, hooded raven landing silently on the narrow ledge of a loose roof tile, a folded parchment clamped in its beak. Griffin's letters, written on paper that smelled inexplicably of frost-kissed cedars and distant storms, the ink shimmering faintly amber. They spoke of endurance, of wrath brewing, of her soul's hidden fire. But hope was swiftly punished. On the rare days the raven came, Seraphina's personal maid would inevitably "stumble," sending Linda's meager gruel splattering across the filthy floorboards. *"Oh, clumsy me!"* the maid would simper, kicking the empty bowl away.
The days bled into a cycle of torment disguised as preparation. Dawn found her on her knees in the frigid Great Hall, scrubbing marble with stiff brushes and lye soap that ate at her skin until it bled. By noon, her raw shoulders screamed under the weight of endless buckets hauled from the deepest well. Dusk plunged her into the cavernous armoury vaults, polishing ancestral suits of cold iron that seared her human flesh like brands. Midnight's candlelight revealed her hunched over torn silks and velvets belonging to the queens and princesses, a needle pricking her fingers raw as she mended their finery.
Weekly, Eleanor summoned her to a sunlit receiving room that felt colder than the attic. *"Kneel,"* was the only command. Linda knelt on hard parquet. *"A noble bride must be… pliant."* The silver-headed cane cracked down on Linda's knuckles, sending white-hot pain shooting up her arms. *"Silent."* A servant stepped forward, pouring cheap vinegar down Linda's throat until she choked and gagged, the acid burning her gullet. *"Broken."* Seraphina, eyes alight with malice, would pin Linda's arms while Eleanor, smiling faintly, held a glowing ember plucked from the hearth dangerously close to Linda's sea-blue eye. The heat seared her lashes. *"Perhaps Lord Griffin will trade you for a blind one next. More biddable, wouldn't you say?"*
Only two flickers of light pierced the suffocating dark. Most nights, long after the palace slept, a section of the attic wall behind a rat-chewed tapestry would slide aside. Prince Raphael would slip through the hidden passage, his face grim in the moonlight filtering through a high crack. He carried small, warm honey cakes wrapped in linen. *"Eat, Silver,"* he'd urge, pressing them into her trembling hands. His violet eyes, so like Ezra's yet infinitely kinder, scanned her newest bruises, the raw patches on her knees. *"Eleanor whispers to shadows now,"* he warned once, his voice low and urgent. *"Not just about you. About him. Griffin. Be careful."* He became her secret tutor. He showed her the blind spots in the guards' patrols in the lower corridors, taught her how to sharpen a shard of discarded bone into a crude but effective shiv, and traced the path of a forgotten passage leading directly to the stables on a scrap of parchment. *"For when you run,"* he said, the words heavy with unspoken fear.
The other light came from the letters and the ring. After the twelfth raven delivery, a small, weighty box tumbled from the bird's talons. Inside, nestled on black velvet, lay a ring. The band was simple, dark iron. The stone was a single, perfect teardrop of amber, capturing swirling emerald and gold fire within its depths. Griffin's accompanying note was brief: *"Wear this. My essence guards you. Touch it when the dark bites deepest."* Linda slid it onto her finger. It pulsed with a low, comforting warmth against her skin, like a phantom heartbeat echoing Griffin's own. She wore it always, hidden beneath the rough fabric of her work dress.
Winter of her eighteenth year brought the breaking point. Seraphina cornered her in the steam-choked laundry, the air thick with the smell of lye and boiling linens. *"Your fanged monster forgot you,"* Seraphina hissed, her eyes glittering with spite. Before Linda could react, Seraphina snatched her hand, ripping the amber ring from her finger. *"Two years? Not one visit? He trades you for a snake-kin whore with better blood!"* Seraphina dangled the ring tauntingly over a vast, bubbling vat of milky-white lye solution. *"Beg for it, slum rat! Beg pretty!"*
Something snapped inside Linda. Not fear. Fury, cold and sharp. She didn't beg. She lunged, putting all her weight into a shove against Seraphina's chest. The princess shrieked in genuine shock, stumbling backward. Her flailing hand, still clutching the ring, plunged wrist-deep into the seething lye.
The sound was sickening. A wet, angry *sizzle*. Seraphina's shriek curdled into an unearthly wail as she yanked her hand free. Flesh hung in ragged, melting strips. Glimpses of white bone showed through the horrific damage. The acrid stench of burning flesh filled the laundry.
Eleanor's retribution was swift and absolute. *"The Ice Well,"* she decreed, her voice colder than the winter wind. A forgotten stone shaft in the oldest part of the palace, open to the sky at the top. Linda was stripped to her thin shift, her protests ignored, and lowered down into the frigid darkness on a creaking rope. The icy stone walls leached all warmth instantly. The meagre slush at the bottom soaked through her shift. Her breath crystallized in the air, each gasp a knife in her lungs. *"Let your vampire lover warm you!"* Eleanor's voice drifted down from the distant circle of grey sky before the cover slammed shut, plunging her into near-total darkness and deepening cold.
Trembling uncontrollably, Linda fumbled for the ring Seraphina had dropped in her panic. Her numb fingers found it lying miraculously unharmed on a dry ledge. She clutched it, the amber stone blazing with sudden, fierce warmth against her frozen palm. The warmth spread up her arm, a defiant ember in the glacial dark. And in that warmth, a vision flashed: Griffin's face, his usually cool amber eyes incandescent with emerald fire, his voice resonating not in her ears, but in her very bones. ***"I come."***
The morning of the wedding dawned bleak and grey. No fanfare. No celebration. A carriage of black lacquer, unadorned and ominous, stood in the courtyard. Griffin was not there. Only his captain, a man encased in armour that seemed forged from solidified shadow, his face impassive beneath his helm. *"The Lord awaits his bride at Shadow Keep,"* he announced, his voice like gravel grinding stone.
Linda was hauled from the attic, unwashed, reeking of despair and the icy well. They threw a coarse, stinking sackcloth robe over her thin shift. Her silver hair, lank and dulled by grime, hung loose. Queen Eleanor stood on the grand steps, a picture of regal malice. *"Do try not to disappoint him… whore,"* she purred, the words dripping like poisoned honey. The fourteen princesses formed a gauntlet, each spitting on the stones as Linda passed, their hatred a palpable force. King Ezra watched from the distant throne, his face a blank mask. *"Go with… duty,"* he intoned, the words empty.
Only Raphael stood apart, near the carriage. As the shadow-armoured captain turned to open the door, Raphael pressed something small and hard into Linda's hand – the bone shiv. *"Remember the stables, Silver,"* he whispered, his violet eyes holding hers with fierce intensity. *"Survive."* Then the captain's gauntleted hand gripped her arm, steering her firmly into the carriage's dark interior. The door slammed shut, the oak bolt thudding into place outside.
The carriage lurched forward. Linda pressed her face to the grimy, frost-rimed window. The towering, spike-topped gates of the palace swallowed the monstrous silhouette of her prison. As the distance grew, she clutched the amber ring. Its inner fire flared, a sudden, intense warmth that burned away the sackcloth's stench, filling the small space with the scent of cedar and frost. It pulsed against her skin, a promise, a warning, a lifeline.
Deep within the retreating palace, buried in its lightless heart, the ancient mirror ball shuddered violently in its pool of congealed black sludge. The sludge itself rippled, then surged upwards, clinging to the dank vault wall. Slowly, agonizingly, it formed a single, glistening word that dripped thickly onto the stone floor:
**SOON**