Chapter 7:
For Her Amusement
“Peers,” she muttered under her breath, voice thick with contempt. “As if I needed that kind of entertainment.”
The candle beside her flickered weakly, the only light in the room. Its flame danced, casting long shadows that stretched too deliberately, as if listening.
“Clara can’t hold a thought, Elen thinks she’s a knight already, and Elyne…” She paused, her lip curling. “Elyne is still breathing.”
She exhaled slowly, then gave a small, deliberate snap of her fingers. The air grew dense. Heavy. Like breath held too long.
“I want my entertainment for tonight,” she said, eyes already glinting.
A whisper slid through the room, dragging with it the cold scent of something old and bitter.
“Little lass…” came the rasping voice, more familiar than friendly, more resigned than reverent. “Ye summoned. What is it ye seek now?”
Grace didn’t look up. She simply smirked – a thin, knowing thing that never reached her eyes.
“I’ve had a very long day, Corax. And I’m bored. Again.”
The shadows near the corner of her room thickened, folding in on themselves. Corax took form: a floating orb, no longer a shining curious orb, but dark and heavy, pulsing with a faint, eerie blue light. A corrupted star. A bruised echo of what he used to be when he first appears at Grace’s side.
Grace finally met his gaze, or rather, the space where his eyes might be, if he still had any.
“Take me to the dungeon.”
Corax hovered, silent.
Grace raised a brow.
“Don’t make me repeat myself.”
“They sleep, little one.”
“I know.”
A longer pause.
“Yer mother forbade this.”
Grace tilted her head. “And yet… I’m asking you. Not her.”
The silence stretched.
Then: “Very well.”
The room shifted. Not in light. Not in shape – but in sensation.
A pulling, like being tilted sideways in a dream. The kind of wrong that wasn’t sharp, but deep. Subtle. Real. The candle’s flame stilled. Then it vanished. Snuffed by nothing.
In front of Grace, where floor and air had once been, now shimmered a dark window. Perfectly still. Perfectly black. Her breath caught. She loved this part.
Corax’s glow began to spread, soft at first, then rippling outward like ink across still water. The darkness of the window shuddered once.
And in the reflection… a corridor appeared.
Stone. Wet. Old. The kind of hallway where screams didn’t echo. A single torch flickered somewhere just out of frame, its flame throwing nervous light across rusted bars.
It smelled of rot, even through vision.
Grace leaned forward slightly.
“Closer,” she whispered.
Corax obeyed, the view shifting smoothly from cell to cell.
“Who’s that?” she asked, pointing.
“A spy from House Verneth. Caught near the western outposts.”
Grace clicked her tongue.
“Too old. Not interesting. The next one.”
The vision slid. Another man. Younger. Broken nose. A feverish sheen to his skin.
“Him?”
“A deserter. Confessed to selling training schedules to the enemy. Claims he was only trying to buy medicine for his sister.”
Grace’s lips curved.
“Did it help?”
Corax pulsed. “The sister died two days before the deal.”
She exhaled, almost a laugh.
“Tragic,” she said flatly. “What did they do to him?”
“A beating. Then confinement. The Duchess wants him alive. For now.”
Grace nodded thoughtfully, her fingers steepled in front of her lips.
“Show me the punishment cells.”
A pause.
“You are five.”
“And you are bound.”
Corax dimmed – the magical equivalent of a sigh. Then the vision twisted again, shadows folding into one another until they peeled back like a curtain.
Now the cell was little more than a hollow in the stone, no bed, no bench, no bucket. Just chains bolted to the rear wall, their iron blackened with rust and something far worse. The floor was stained, not freshly, but layer upon layer of old blood, bile, and shame. It pooled in the uneven cracks of the stone like dark memories too stubborn to be washed away.
The air smelled of metal, mold, and something meat-like. Not food. Not rot. Something in between.
From the far wall, a figure hung.Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!
She wasn’t sitting. Wasn’t standing. Just… suspended. Arms stretched above her, wrists bound in rough iron cuffs that bit into the skin, holding her weight in the cruelest way possible. Her head drooped low, chin touching her chest, hair matted to her skin. Bruises bloomed across her sides like sick flowers, and one ankle was swollen, as if she'd tried to kick once – and paid for it. Her breathing was ragged. The kind of breath that doesn’t come from sleep, but from enduring.
A young woman.
Grace leaned forward slightly, eyes glinting in the candlelight.
“Oh… now that’s interesting,” she whispered.
Corax hesitated – a flicker in the vision, as if trying to pull away from the image before reluctantly solidifying it again.
“Her name is Sera. Former handmaid. Stole a sealed letter from the Duchess’s private study and attempted to flee the estate. Apprehended at the north gate.”
Grace blinked slowly.
“What was in the letter?”
“Unknown. The letter was recovered, resealed, and returned directly to the Duchess’s personal vault. Sera has not spoken since capture.”
Grace tilted her head. “Loyal. Or stupid.”
Corax said nothing.
“She’s pretty,” Grace noted, her voice distant. “Even with the bruises.”
She giggled.
“Wake her up for me.”
Corax pulsed dimly, almost recoiling. “Little one…”
“Do it.”
A long pause.
Then the vision rippled, and a cold gust swept through the dungeon cell. Chains rattled slightly. A whisper, silent to any but the spirit’s target, slid across the room.
The girl stirred. Her breath hitched. Her head twitched upward, just enough to show one swollen eye. She groaned — low and raw — blinking in the sudden awareness of her pain.
Grace smiled.
Like a child watching a caged bird flutter.
“There we go,” she whispered. “Now the real show begins.”
Corax hovered silently, his glow faint and trembling. Bound by her command. Watching her become something monstrous.
The girl stirred, a groan rasping from her cracked lips as her swollen eye blinked against the darkness. Blood had dried along her collarbone, smeared into the remnants of lace.
Grace sat perfectly still, watching her with the calm patience of a cat at the edge of a nest.
“She’s awake.”
Corax’s voice was hollow. Reluctant.
Grace giggled, soft and satisfied.
“She looks confused. Good.”
Her fingers curled gently into her lap. “I wonder how long she’ll last.”
She tilted her head, thoughtful.
“You know,” she mused suddenly, “it’d be so much funnier if it were Elyne in that cell.”
Corax pulsed, a faint shudder of magical disapproval.
Grace’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t look at me like that. She already thinks she owns me. This would just… balance things.”
She didn’t laugh this time. She just stared at Sera, her voice lowering into something colder.
“But she’s not here. She is.”
She raised her hand, palm open toward the vision.
“Cut her. Lightly. But somewhere that hurts.”
Corax didn’t respond right away. The air around him began to hum.
Grace’s smile vanished. Her voice dropped.
“I said: Cut her.”
A beat of silence. Then: “Where?”
Grace looked at the screen again.
“The side of her stomach. Just enough to sting. Remind her she’s real… wait. Maybe a little more as just a sting…”
A jagged thread of blue-black light unraveled from Corax, twitching like a live wire as it lanced forward into the vision. It didn’t drift gently – it ripped through the boundary, crackling as it tore into the dungeon cell like a whiplash of pure malice.
In the dark, Sera screamed.
Not a yelp. Not a gasp. A scream… a ragged, hoarse, pulled from a throat already scraped raw from silence. Her back arched violently against the chains, heels kicking uselessly at the stone, wrists twisting as blood spattered the wall behind her.
A brutal line had been carved into her side, not surgical, but sloppy, jagged, as if the blade hadn’t just cut… but dug.
Grace shivered with delight.
She leaned closer to the vision, her breath fogging the air as her eyes shimmered – not blue anymore, but a stormy pink creeping in around the edges, swallowing the softness. Only a faint ring of blue remained, like the last polite boundary before something darker.
Corax hovered, his glow dimming, a faint flicker where once there had been steady light. The edges of his orb quivered, unstable now, like smoke fighting to hold form.
And again… he darkened.
Not visibly at first. Not to the untrained eye. But Grace saw it. She always did.
The faint sapphire that once marked his core flickered beneath a spreading wash of ink; his light now veined with threads of shadow. Slow. Subtle. Irreversible.
And Sera?
Sera was sobbing now, breath hitching, her whole-body trembling like a leaf in a thunderstorm. One eye flicked wildly around the cell, unable to understand what had just happened. No footsteps. No voice. No blade. Just pain. Raw pain.
She was alone.
Or so she thought.
Grace’s voice was barely a whisper.
“Do you feel it?”
Corax hovered, his glow dimming, the edges of his form trembling as if the air itself recoiled. Again, his orb began to darken, a creeping shadow coiling through him like a bruise spreading under translucent skin.
But Grace… she leaned forward, breath held, eyes locked on the girl writhing below.
Sera sobbed, shaking violently in her chains, blood trailing in uneven trickles down her side. Her cries echoed in the cold stone chamber, the kind of sound that should have struck pity into the heart of any onlooker.
But not Grace.
She smiled.
And as her lips parted, her eyes shimmered.
The blue of her irises, once soft like summer skies, had been fading for some time. A faint pink halo had always circled the edges, subtle, strange, almost delicate.
But now?
Now the pink swallowed the blue.
Like ink blooming in water, it spread rapidly, violently, pulsing outward from her pupils. Her entire eyes shook, not with light, but with some internal quiver, as though something behind them was waking up.
Something old.
Something not hers.
She blinked.
And in that breathless second, Corax felt it. A tremor in the Veil. A crack in the world.
A presence. Watching. Breathing. Remembering.
Something from the In-Between.
Something that had clung to her soul as she crossed over. Quiet until now. Dormant. Waiting.
Not fully her. Not fully separate. But with her.
And now, with blood on the stone and cruelty in her heart, it stirred.
Grace exhaled slowly. The grin never left her lips.
"That," she whispered, her voice smooth and low, “felt… right.”
And then… a sound. No, not a sound. A presence. Slipping through the cracks in her mind like oil through silk.
A voice spoke. Not in her ears, but in her head. No… behind her head. Beneath thought.
Ĝ̵̜̥̣̈́r̸̜̊̽a̴͍̝̦̓c̵͚̼͕̍̋͑ȩ̷̭̣̀̂͘ ̵̣̥̓Ĭ̶̠̘͝ ̶̻͎͊f̸̱̈́̍̾ơ̸̮͂u̸̱͚̹͋͗n̸̻̈ḑ̴͉̌̍ ̶̙̕ý̵̺̲̤o̵͕̜̺̍̈́͠ư̵̖
--::--
The next morning.
Elyne opened the door with the soft creak of familiarity, the gentle rustling of morning silk in her arms. “Gracieee, time to wake up…”
The sun poured into the room like honey, golden and soft, spilling across the covers. Grace lay peacefully in her bed, curled slightly, hair mussed just so. Elyne stepped closer, brushing a lock of hair behind Grace’s ear, fingers stroking gently over her head.
A soft hum. Grace stirred. And her eyes blinked open, bright, clear, blue. Innocent.
She smiled sweetly. “Good morning, Elyne.”
There was no trace of the night before. No blood. No cruelty. No voice. Just a perfect little girl in a sunlit room.
“I had a really nice dream,” Grace continued cheerfully, swinging her legs over the edge of the bed. “There was this field, it was full of stars! Not flowers, stars! And I flew over them in a boat made of feathers.”
“Well,” Elyne said, stepping forward to help her dress, “that sounds… delightfully strange.”
“I am delightfully strange,” Grace replied, puffing her chest in mock pride as Elyne slipped the dress over her head. “Everyone says so. Even Mother. But I think she means it as a compliment.”
“Of course, she does.” Elyne chuckled as she carefully buttoned the back and tied the sash. “You’re the most unusual five-year-old I’ve ever met.”
“Unusual is good,” Grace chimed. “Ordinary people are so… predictable. Boring.”
Elyne raised a brow but said nothing, focused now on brushing out Grace’s hair. The girl sat still for once, humming a little tune — some strange melody Elyne didn’t recognize, soft and sweet and just slightly off-tempo.
As she finished tying Grace’s ribbon, Elyne paused, eyes narrowing slightly.
“You seem different today,” she said. “Happier.”
Grace beamed at her, eyes wide and blue and filled with light.
“Well,” she said simply, “I just decided… today’s going to be a perfect day.”
Elyne smiled, touched in spite of herself.
“Well then, my lady,” she said, offering her hand with mock ceremony, “shall we begin it with breakfast?”
Grace took it without hesitation. “Lead on, Miss Marren! I’m starving.”
And so, they walked together down the quiet halls of the manor – a perfectly dressed noble daughter and her ever-watchful governess – chatting about stars, dreams, and why toast was better when slightly burned.
And Grace’s laughter echoed just a bit too perfectly in the morning light.