ELARA'S POV
The dark was absolute.
It was a cold, tomb-like blackness, thick and heavy, unbroken by even the memory of a window. The air itself was frigid, smelling faintly of old sweat, damp stone, and the dusty, sour scent of straw. Around her, the quiet, rhythmic breathing of a dozen other girls filled the small, granite-walled room, a chorus of exhausted life.
In the deepest, coldest hour of the morning, Elara was asleep.
She was fifteen, though the endless, gruelling labour of her life had stretched that number thin, making her feel both older in her bones and younger in her ignorance of the world. She lay on her side, curled into a tight ball for warmth.
Her plain, round face was slack in sleep, with a few freckles scattered across her nose. Her mousy brown hair, unbound from its usual tight braid, was a tangled, dull mass on the thin, lumpy pillow. She was dressed in a simple, coarse linen undergarment and thick, woollen stockings, a small defence against the chill that seeped from the stone floor.
The room was a crypt, shared by all the lower female servants. A dozen straw-filled beds, little more than thin ticks laid on crude wooden frames, lined the walls. It was a life of shared, cramped, weary proximity.
A distant, metallic clang echoed, muffled by yards of stone.
Elara's breathing hitched, but she did not wake. The sound was familiar, an intrusion from the kitchens, which lay somewhere on the other side of the wall. It was the sound of the massive iron pots being readied.
It was the sound of the day beginning, whether the sun agreed or not.
A muffled shout followed, the angry, indistinct bark of a man in a hurry.
Elara's body tensed. She burrowed deeper into the scratchy straw, her mind clinging to the last vestiges of sleep, that warm, dark, nothingness.
A foot, hard-heeled and entirely lacking in kindness, slammed into her ribs.
"Get up, Elara."
The voice from the next bed was a low, rough hiss. Merta. She was already sitting up, a pale, sour-smelling shadow in the dark. "It's your turn. Water."
Elara groaned, the sound a faint, breathy thing. Her ribs ached, a dull, familiar throb. She didn't move. The stone floor felt impossibly cold, a sheer wall of ice waiting for her feet.
"To the kitchens," Merta hissed again, her voice sharp with impatience. "The Old Gods know what'll happen if Cook Olfrid doesn't have his water. He'll have your hide."
Elara knew.
She knew the sting of Cook Olfrid's ladle. She had seen another girl, younger than her, sent to the infirmary for a day with a blistering burn on her arm for being too slow. Fear, cold and sharp, finally cut through the fog of sleep.
She still didn't move. Not fast enough.
The second kick was more brutal. It struck her hip bone, the impact jarring and painful.
"I'm awake! I've got it!" Elara gasped, the words tumbling out as she scrambled to sit up.
"Hmph. See that you do." Merta was already on her feet, the sound of her rustling as she dressed.
Elara fumbled in the dark, her chapped, red fingers finding the small shard of flint and the stub of a tallow candle on the floor beside her bed. She struck it once, twice, the spark failing in the damp air. The third strike caught, and a small, weak, greasy-smelling flame sputtered to life.
It cast a flickering, weak glow on her plain, round face and her pale blue eyes, which were already observant, already calculating the day's hardships.
She pulled her kirtle from the foot of the bed.
It was a heavy, ankle-length dress made of thick, coarse, greyish wool. It was scratchy, uncomfortable, and blessedly warm. She pulled it over her head, the rough wool scraping against her skin. She quickly, tightly, re-braided her mousy hair and tucked it under a simple linen cap, her hands moving with the swift, practised efficiency of a girl who had known no other life.
Elara was a domestic servant, born and raised in the shadow of this keep, in the cluster of hardy, grim buildings called Rimehaven.
She was one of dozens assigned to the family wing of Frostguard Hold, responsible for the gruelling, practical work of maintaining the living quarters. Her duties were a litany of physical exhaustion: cleaning the massive hearths of their endless soot, fetching heavy loads of firewood and buckets of hot water, changing linens, and, most importantly, remaining invisible.
And on lucky, freezing mornings like today, also fetching water from the main courtyard well. It was the worst of the morning tasks.
She grabbed her thick, patched cloak and wrapped it around her sturdy shoulders, her hands already stinging from the anticipated cold. She stepped out of the narrow dormitory, her candle pinching back the oppressive darkness of the servant's corridor.
Elara kept to the side of the hall, her soft-soled shoes making almost no sound on the cold stone. 'Be invisible. Be quick. Don't be seen.'
It was the mantra of her life.
She thought, as she always did in these quiet, cold moments, that despite the gruelling work, she had it good.
She was a commoner, but she served in the keep. She had a roof, however shared, over her head. She had food, however plain, in her belly. She was not starving in Rimehaven, nor was she freezing to death on some failed farmstead.
She had a place. It was a hard place, but it was hers.
Her place was in service to the Marquess of Rimescar.
She had only seen the Lord of the keep a handful of times. He was a giant of a man, wreathed in dark furs and smelling of steel and cold air. He was imposing, terrifying, a figure from a story. But his eyes, the few times she'd been brave enough to glimpse them, hadn't seemed cruel.
The Marquess, she'd heard the guards mutter, was a kind man.
'Kind for a noble,' she mentally corrected. He was also an extremely powerful one. He had to be, to be in charge of this cold, desolate land.
Rimescar. The name itself was a threat. This was the border, the jagged, frozen wall against the enemy kingdom.
She feared all nobles.
She feared their power, their influence, their magic. They were a different species, one that could command men to die, one that could end her, Elara, with a single, careless word. She was a tool. A servant. Nothing more. To think otherwise was a dangerous, foolish fantasy.
Her thoughts softened as she passed the turning for the family wing. The Marquis's three children.
He was lucky to have them, the other servants said. Three healthy, high-born children. They were still young, still... human. Still young enough to laugh at silly games, to treat a servant girl with something other than cold indifference.
Her thoughts drifted to the twins, Lady Alara and Lady Alise. They were identical mirrors of pale skin and dark hair, and still possessed that childish, careless ignorance of station.
Lady Alara, especially, was a source of endless, quiet confusion.
When she'd been younger, the servants had often mixed their names, calling for "Elara!" when they meant the noble-born girl, and "Alara!" when they wanted a hearth scrubbed.
It had been a rare, bright moment of shared, nervous laughter. The girls were still soft. The world had not yet hardened them into the cold, distant women they were destined to become.
'They must be nearing seven winters now,' she calculated, her mind idly marking the time.
Her thoughts, as they often did, naturally drifted to the eldest. If the twins were almost seven, then the Young Master, Brandt, the sole heir to Rimescar, must be approaching his tenth winter.
Elara felt a slight, involuntary shiver that had nothing to do with the cold.
She didn't fear the Young Master, not in the way she feared the Marquess. He wasn't a pompous brat, not like the heirs in the stories the older servants whispered about, the ones who threw tantrums or made cruel, impossible demands. He didn't throw things. He didn't hit.
He was just… a boy. Quiet, sturdy, and too large for his age. He had that look about him, though—the one she'd seen in all the guards, even in her own father once or twice.
A certain level of cockiness, a silent, brooding confidence that she supposed all men with powerful fathers eventually grew into. It was the natural shape of their world, a shape that left girls like her on the outside, looking in.
'A lucky man, the Marquess.'
Three healthy children. Two daughters to forge alliances, and a strong son to inherit this unforgiving land and the title.
The thought of her master's luck circled back, and a familiar, quiet sadness touched her.
He was lucky... but he was also unlucky. His wife, the Marchioness, was long dead. Elara had been nine years old herself, but she remembered the chill that had fallen over the keep, a gloom colder than any winter.
The older servants still spoke of her in hushed, reverent tones: a kind, beautiful woman from the south, swallowed by the cold and the endless darkness of a Rimescar winter, dying just after the twins were born.
Elara's brief, sad thought was shattered as she stepped through the final archway and the full, biting force of the pre-dawn cold slammed into her. The sheltered corridor was gone, and the world opened up.
She had arrived at the courtyard.
It was not a place of beauty. It was a vast, uneven square of grey cobblestones, slick with a thin, treacherous layer of rime ice that glittered weakly, murderously, in the dark.
Elara pulled her thin, patched cloak tighter, her worn shoes sliding dangerously on the ice. She hurried her steps, her gaze fixed on the centre of the yard.
The well stood there, a squat cylinder of the same dark stone, its mouth a perfect circle of absolute blackness.
She reached it and crouched, the rough wool of her kirtle scratching her legs. She grabbed the heavy iron crank, her chapped, red hands instantly stinging as they stuck to the frozen metal. She grimaced, pulling her hands back for a moment to blow a wisp of hot, useless air onto her raw knuckles.
She gripped the crank again, biting back the small, sharp pain. With a low grunt, she put her sturdy shoulders into the work and began to turn.
The heavy pulley wheel groaned. The sound was a deep, wooden protest that echoed, loud and lonely, in the silent, stone canyon. The rope, thick and stiff with ice, slowly began to draw upward, its fibres scraping against the lip of the well.
It felt heavy. Unusually so.
'Just the cold,' she told herself, gritting her teeth as she fought the crank. Her muscles, still stiff and aching from sleep, burned in protest. The damp cold was already seeping through her shoes, numbing her toes. 'It's always heavier when the rope freezes.'
She continued to crank, her body falling into the familiar, gruelling rhythm. The chain clinked. The wheel groaned. The rope scraped.
But the weight... it was wrong.
It wasn't the steady, even, familiar resistance of a full bucket of water. It was a dead, sluggish, unbalanced weight, and it seemed to be fighting her, as if it were snagged on something deep in the blackness.
' Old Gods, don't let it be a rock.'
Her stomach tightened with a cold, practical fear.
If a boulder had fallen in during the night, if it had broken the bucket, or if she couldn't retrieve it... Cook Olfrid would not just strike her. He would send her to the Quartermaster, and the Quartermaster would have the cost of a new bucket taken from her meagre tithes.
That fear, more potent than any monster, gave her a new, desperate surge of strength. She put her entire body into it, her back and legs straining, her feet slipping on the slick, icy cobblestones. The crank fought her, groaning as if in agony, but it moved.
Slowly, painfully, she hauled the unseen weight up from the black, frigid depths. The rope grew taut, vibrating with the strain. Water splashed and dripped, the sound lost in the groan of the pulley.
The droplets instantly froze on the stones at her feet.
She cranked, and cranked, and cranked. Her arms felt like they were being torn from their sockets.
Finally, with a last, shuddering groan from the pulley, something breached the black surface of the water.
It wasn't just the bucket.
It was... a shape. A bundle of pale cloth, ghostly in the gloom, was draped over the wooden lip. It was snagged, heavy and sodden, trailing water.
Elara's heart hammered against her ribs, a sudden, sharp drum of terror. 'What... what is that? A... a deer? Did an animal fall in?'
She cranked faster, her panic rising, her breath pluming in the frigid air. As the bucket cleared the high stone lip of the well, the shape slumped, held in place only by a single, small arm.
An arm hooked, almost playfully, through the iron handle.
It was the Young Master.
The recognition hit Elara like a physical blow. She stumbled back, her hands flying from the crank as if it were burning iron. It slammed against the locking ratchet, the loud, metallic CLACK echoing, sharp and violent, against the stone walls.
Brandt.
He was soaking wet, his linen nightshirt plastered to his sturdy, small body. His auburn hair, that strange, reddish-brown colour, was dark and dripping, plastered to his pale, still face. He was draped over the bucket, his head lolling to the side, his other arm dangling lifelessly, his fingers trailing in the black water.
'No. No, no, no...'
She stared, frozen, her mind unable to process the sight. 'Is he dead? Did he fall? Did I... did I just pull the heir's corpse from the well?'
A burst of terrified adrenaline, born from a life of knowing the consequences of being in the wrong place, of being the one to bear bad news, surged through her. She rushed forward, slipping on the ice she'd just made.
He was surprisingly heavy. He was too heavy to lift cleanly from the bucket. She grabbed him under the arms, her fingers sinking into the freezing, soaked linen. His body was a dead, sodden weight.
With a desperate, panicked grunt, she hauled him up, dragging his inert form out of the bucket and over the high, icy stone lip of the well.
He fell onto the cobblestones in a heap, a grotesque, boneless tangle of limbs. A puddle of freezing black water instantly formed around him.
He wasn't moving. He wasn't breathing.
Elara stared, her hands hovering over his small, still body, her mind a screaming, white-hot blank. She was alone, in the dark, with the cold, wet corpse of her master's heir at her feet.
Her throat, which had been too dry to whisper just moments before, tore open.
"HELP!"
The scream was raw, high-pitched, and filled with pure, animal panic.
"SOMEONE! ANYONE! HELP!"