CHAPTER 62
The golden light of the late afternoon slanted through the high windows of the North Wing, spilling in narrow bands that stretched like prison bars across the charcoal-silk sheets.
Isabella didn't move to close the heavy velvet curtains. She didn't move at all.
It had been three days.
Three days of the same four walls. Three days of watching dust motes drift and spin in the light, their lazy freedom a quiet mockery. Three days of listening to the distant hum of a living castle while her own world shrank to a bed, a window, and a locked door.
Three days of feeling her body turn into something unrecognizable—no longer wholly hers, but a collaborative project between a King's blood and a witch's fading spark.
Every few hours, the heavy lock on the door would groan open, the sound echoing through the room like a gunshot in the suffocating silence.
Clara would enter.
