Chapter 276

Lani

I look at my pregnant sister’s protruding stomach, a perfect, round curve beneath the intricate embroidery of her luxurious dress.

We are in her sitting room within the royal palace itself, all silk cushions and the faint, ever-present scent of lemon polish and power.

She reclines on a chair, one hand resting on the stomach, the other gesturing as she speaks of her morning—a tense meeting with some noble lady, a surprisingly pleasant walk in the queen’s private garden with Lady Edith... I mean Queen Edith, and ofcourse his highness the king.

I indulge her and listen, and mentally shudder at the thought of how this would have been my life once upon a time.

"...that’s all about me," she says, finally pausing to take a delicate sip of infused water. "What about you? How is the married life?"

Ah, yes. My husband.

I met him back at the academy. A quiet wolf-shifter from a minor but respectable line, who, like me, has particular interests.

Our marriage is a document, a shield, a mutually beneficial business arrangement. He has his life with his male partner in the country estate we purchased together, and I have mine with Marie, and several other ladies, I haven’t been fortunate enough to find a stable partner but my current life is not so bad.

Only a select few know the true nature of our marriage and unfortunately my twin is not one of them.

"He is well," I say, my voice perfectly even.

"Preoccupied with the new timber imports from the eastern marches. He sends his deepest regards and regrets his duties kept him from accompanying me today."

It’s a lie ofcourse.

"Oh, pish!" Lira laughs, a bright, tinkling sound that suits the sunlit room. "I’m almost glad. This way we get to be just sisters for an afternoon."

She seems happy. Genuinely happy.

I’m happy for her. Truly. It might be because I don’t spend as much time with her, and our lives have completely diverged. The paths that once ran parallel have now stretched so far apart that I can look across the distance and simply see my sister, not my rival.

The old, one-sided envy and jealousy I used to carry like a second skin has finally withered and fallen away. There is no more score to keep, no spotlight to fight for.

"It suits you," I say, my voice softer now, all pretense gone. "Motherhood. This place. All of it."

She looks at me, and for a moment, the bright socialite facade drops. I see the girl I shared a womb with, the one who knew all my secrets before I even had words for them. "Thank you, Lani," she says, and it’s just her, not the consort.

"It does. It really does," she says, her voice softening into something private, real. The performance for the court falls away entirely. "I’m happy here. And I love Felix."

"I know you do," I say, and there’s no bitterness in it, only a quiet awe.

My own love is a different creature—hidden, unorthodox, flourishing in the spaces the court’s light doesn’t reach. It doesn’t make hers less, or mine more. They are just different.

"I’m glad," I say again, because it’s all that’s left to say.

***

Poppy

I look at my son, a small, sun-gilded whirlwind of laughter, and at my husband, who is on his hands and knees in the grass, pretending to be a fearsome stag-monster.

The sound of their play—my son’s shrieks of delight, Isaac’s playful growls, fills the garden of our modest, sunlit townhouse. The air smells of cut grass and the sweet pastries I brought out for our picnic.

My gaze drifts past the garden wall, past the rooftops of the noble district, to the distant, gleaming spires of the palace.

I wonder, not for the first time, what my life would have been like had I just stayed. Would it have been this peaceful? Would I be sitting in a manicured royal garden instead of this slightly wild one? Would I still have this bone-deep, quiet happiness, or would it have been chipped away by the constant, quiet terror of being small in a world too large, of being prey in a den of predators?

My son, little Harry, chooses that moment to shift.

With a bold leap, he launches himself onto his father’s head, his little paws scrabbling for purchase on the broad, velvety antlers. Isaac lets out a comical, startled "Oof!" and then a rich, rumbling laugh that shakes his whole frame, the tiny bunny now a living, wiggling crown.

I snort out a laugh, the sound inelegant and utterly free.

Yeah.

I look from my laughing husband with a bunny on his head, to the distant, cold palace spires.

I don’t think I would have been this happy.

***

Lumiya

"Your Grace, the Duke requests your presence."

The attendant’s voice is a servile murmur from the doorway. I don’t respond. I continue staring out the narrow window of my northern estate’s tallest tower, watching the grey clouds scrape against the even greyer mountains.

"Your Grace, I—" she tries again, her tone dipping into nervousness.

Without patience, without even turning, I snatch the half-empty crystal wine glass from the ledge beside me and toss it over my shoulder. It arcs through the dim room and hits her square in the face with a satisfying thwack and a tinkle of shattering crystal.

A sharp cry, quickly stifled.

"Can’t you use your brain, or something?" I snap, my voice icy and sharp as the broken shards on the floor.

"Say I’m sick. Say I’m indisposed. Say I’ve been carried off by a feverish melancholy. Invent something. Must I script every lie for you?"

A ragged breath, the sound of a hand clamped over a stinging cheek. "Y-yes, Your Grace. Apologies, Your Grace."

The scuffle of a retreat, the door clicking shut.

Silence, my beloved and only faithful friend, returns with the attendant’s disappearance.

In the deep quiet, I accidentally catch my reflection in the dark, cold windowpane—a pale ghost against a darker night. I resist the urge to smash this image too. To destroy the evidence of my own stagnation.

My beauty. I am so proud of it. My heritage. A Snowfrost. We are carved from ice and starlight, bred for thrones.

But in the blurred reflection, the image shifts. My own white hair seems to lighten into a platinum blonde. The sharp, cold features soften into a vulpine cunning, a smile that doesn’t reach her eyes. Edith.

I stand so abruptly my chair scrapes violently against the stone floor. A raw, guttural scream tears from my throat, directed at the phantom in the glass. "Get out!"

The image shatters in my mind, leaving only my own furious, panting face.

That’s all she is. A cheap imitation.

She came and took my place. My destiny. All she did was spread herself for that stupid, weak-willed man, and he fell for it like a dog for a scrap of meat.

Is that all he thinks with? To replace me—a Snowfrost, a queen in blood and bearing—with that? Is it because I chose not to roll in the sheets with him at the academy like his other little whores? But I am different! I am a Snowfrost! Our value is not measured in sweaty, fleeting moments in a dormitory bed. It is measured in centuries, in lineage, in power!

As if I could not? What is so special about laying with someone? It is a transaction of fluids, a momentary loss of control. I could have performed it. I could have mimicked the sighs, the movements.

I clench my fists so tightly my claws pierce my own palms. The sharp, familiar pain is a grounding counterpoint to the chaos in my head.

A new, corrosive thought drips into my mind, more terrifying than any phantom.

Maybe if I had... if I had simply given him that one, meaningless thing...

Maybe if I had lain with him, played the simpering lover in the dark as well as the polished partner in the light, I could have been the one standing on the palace balcony. I could have been the Queen, not a duchess exiled to this barren, silent land.

The possibility is a torture more exquisite than any insult.