Velmara left her castle as a shadow in motion.
A long, deep-black hood swallowed her silver hair and the severe lines of her face. She mounted a white horse whose coat seemed to glow against the dark—a creature whose eyes shone with a faint, unsettling violet light, touched not by nature, but by the old, silent magic of the deep woods.
They rode without sound, swift as a thought.
Forests bent away from their path; Wild creatures stilled in their wake. Velmara did not slow until a small, timber-framed house emerged from the trees, tucked into a clearing like a secret.
She did not knock.
The door opened without a knock.
And there it was Isabelle, the girl she came for.
Isabelle spun, a basket of dried lavender still in her hands.
Her eyes widened.
"Velmara?"
The Witch-Queen stood framed in the doorway, her deep black hood shadowing her face, the hem of her cloak dusted with forest dew. She looked out of place in the small, warm room—like a blade laid upon a woolen blanket.
Isabelle's hands stilled. She had not seen Velmara since Matrona's disappearance—only heard the rumors, the silences, the eventual news of loss.
"You heard of my loss," Isabelle said softly, setting the basket down.
Her voice was tired. She assumed the visit was about her husband—buried just three days prior. A kindness, perhaps. A rare acknowledgment from a queen who never showed pity.
But Velmara did not speak.
She stepped inside sluggishly, letting the door swing shut behind her. Her eyes—frost-colored and sharp—scanned the room: the herbs hanging from the beams, the small hearth, the worn chair where Isabelle's husband used to sit.
The silence stretched.
It was a long time they saw each other, So it was quite stiff to communicate effectively.
Isabelle brushed a strand of hair from her face. Her hair was the same dark chestnut as Matrona's, though streaked with early grey. She was wholly human, but in certain angles, in certain lights, she carried a ghost of her friend's likeness.
"My lady," she tried again, voice firmer now. "Why are you here?"
Velmara's gaze finally settled on her. There was no comfort in it. Not even an inch of condolence.
Only a cold, relentless focus on Isabelle, she looked too like her daughter.
"It is not your husband I come for, Isabelle," she said, her voice low, like wind through stone. "It is your friend."
Isabelle's breath caught. "Matrona?"
Velmara's eyes held hers, and in them, Isabelle saw it—not grief alone, but purpose. A plan for what.
A blade being unsheathed to defeat who ?
Isabelle thought spiraled.
"Sit," Velmara said. Commanding"We have much to discuss. And very little time."
Isabelle obeyed immediately, quickly sitting on the worn chair.
Velmara lowered her hood. In the firelight, she looked less like a witch-queen and more like a woman haunted—her sharp beauty softened by shadow, her eyes holding a grief she seldom showed.
"Mortifer has offered an alliance," she said without preamble. "Sealed by marriage."
Isabelle did not flinch. "To who? Matrona?"
"Yes."
A silence stretched between them, filled only by the whisper of the fire.
"She is gone, She is dead" Isabelle whispered, the words an old ache.
"I know." Velmara's voice was barely audible. "But they do not. And I will not let them use her name as a bargaining chip while her killers walk their halls."
Isabelle's eyes glistened in the dim light. "What would you have me do?"
"Become her," Velmara said, no hesitation. "Not in mourning, but in motion. Go to their court as Matrona. Let them think they have won. And while you are there… listen. Watch. And when the time is right… turn the table from Magnus, the one they offer to the one they prize."
Isabelle stilled. "Don't tell me you think of Tenebrarum."
Velmara nodded once. "The Crown Prince. The one with the mask, the power, the silence that speaks louder than shouts. If you can catch his attention… if you can make him want you… the game changes entirely."
Isabelle looked into the flames, as if seeing another time. "Matrona would have hated this. The deception. The politics."
"I'm sorry to say this— but Matrona is dead," Velmara replied, her voice fraying at the edges, "She's gone."
Another silence, heavier than the first.
Then Isabelle looked up, her gaze clear, resolved. "What must I learn?"
"Everything," Velmara said. "How she walked. How she held a cup. The way she laughed when she was nervous. The way she fell silent when she was thinking. You knew her better than anyone in those last years. That is your weapon."
Isabelle took a slow breath. "And if Tenebrarum sees through the glamour? If he realizes I am not your daughter?"
"Then you will have failed," Velmara said plainly. "But you will not fail. Because you are not pretending to be a stranger. You are wearing the skin of your closest friend. And love… leaves the deepest imprint of all."
She extended her hand. Between her fingers, a small silver pendant gleamed—a serpent coiled around a crescent moon, Matrona's once, now pulsing with a soft, inner light.
"Wear this. It will hold the glamour. It will whisper her voice into your mind when you need it. And it will hide your heartbeat from those who listen for lies."
Isabelle took the pendant. It was warm, almost alive.
"Why me?" she whispered, not looking up. "Why must I be the one to do this?"
Velmara's gaze didn't soften. "You ask foolish questions. Matrona was slaughtered by those monsters. And your husband—" she paused, watching Isabelle's shoulders tense, "—he died fighting to take back the Eastern Plains from them. He fell by a dark creature's claw or blade, it was an abstract war. He died because the dark creatures held what was not theirs, because they took and took until humans had no choice but to bleed to reclaim it."
Velmara stepped closer, her voice lowering, stripped of mercy.
"I could have chosen any other. A spy. Perhaps a stranger. I chose you because you know what it is to lose someone to their kind. Not from stories. Not from politics. From a body brought home covered in a blanket, from a grave you visit in the rain. You understand what it means to have your life split in two by the same darkness that took my daughter."
Tears welled in Isabelle's eyes, she closed her lips tight trying to hold the pain back.
She remembered her husband's hands, calloused from fieldwork, how they trembled the morning he left. He hadn't wanted to go—but the Eastern Plains were their homeland, overrun. He said he was fighting for their land, for their future.
But he never came back.
This wasn't just about Matrona anymore.
It was about the empty space in her bed, the silence in their home, the future they planned that was buried with him.
If she died in that court of monsters, she would die pulling at the root—the very court that commanded the creatures who killed her husband.
She closed her fingers around the pendant. The warmth seeped into her palm, steadying her.
"When do we begin?" she asked, her voice clear now, stripped of doubt.
Velmara's frost-colored eyes held hers.
"We already have."
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To be continued...