"Then prove it," Henry said, his voice devoid of all warmth—a flat, stark challenge. "Show me how much you have missed me."
Gisela's breath caught. "I… I should," she whispered, more to herself than to him.
With a sudden, desperate resolve, she stepped onto the arch of his boot, balancing on her toes to bring her face level with his impassive one. Her hands rose to frame his jaw, her fingers threading into the hair at the nape of his neck. She held his gaze, searching for any flicker of response, before slowly closing the distance between their lips.
Clang—
The shattering of glass on stone was a violent, icy punctuation. Gisela stumbled back from him as if electrocuted, her heels hitting the floor.
They turned in unison. Emily stood frozen, a tray upended at her feet amidst a constellation of broken porcelain. "I'm—I'm so sorry, My Queen… My King," she stammered, her face as white as the shards. She dropped to her knees, her hands trembling as she began to gather the fragments.
"Ah!" A sharp, pained gasp cut the air as a sliver of glass pierced her palm. She recoiled, clutching her hand, bright blood welling instantly between her fingers as tears streamed down her cheeks.
Henry moved at once. In three strides he was beside her, his battlefield instincts overriding the fraught moment. He knelt, his large, blood-stained hands surprisingly gentle as he took her wounded one. "Be still," he commanded, his voice low and focused. With careful precision, he extracted the glittering fragment, discarded it, then tore a strip from the hem of her own apron. Efficiently, he bound the clean linen tightly around her palm to stem the flow.
Gisela stood where he had left her, utterly alone. She watched, her earlier performance forgotten, as the King tended to the weeping maid with a tangible, practical care he had never shown her. The silence around her was no longer intimate; it was vast, cold, and filled with the sound of another woman's sobs and her husband's murmured assurances.
Gisela's hands clenched at her sides, her knuckles bleaching to bone-white. The scene before her—Henry's uncharacteristic gentleness, the maid's submissive pose, that common brown hair—pierced her composure like an icepick. The ghost from the library, with her plain brown locks, materialized in her mind. A coincidence? The doubt was venom, seeping cold and quick. Would the King truly debase himself for a servant?
A scalding, unreasoning fury erupted, scorching away her regal restraint. She advanced, the strike of her heels on stone like cracking ice.
"Get on your feet, you clumsy fool!" Gisela's voice, a weapon usually sheathed in courtesy, sliced through the corridor. "Such carelessness! That glass was worth ten of your wretched live!"
Henry rose, a tower of stained steel and weary muscle. He turned, and in his eyes she saw not anger, but a stark, unfeigned shock at her brutality.
"I said, up!" she snarled, her arm snapping back to deliver a blow.
Her wrist was arrested in mid-air, captured in Henry's unforgiving, blood-crusted grip. He drew her back, a single step that placed him as a shield between queen and maid.
"You will not speak to anyone under my roof with such base cruelty," he stated, his voice a low rumble that vibrated with restrained power. "It was an accident. Remember your station."
"My station?" A brittle, mirthless laugh escaped her. "You, who return stinking of slaughter, dare to school me in decorum?"
Henry's expression solidified into something colder than stone. Without breaking eye contact with Gisela, he issued a single, quiet command. "Leave us."
Emily needed no second bidding. She stumbled upright, cradling her bandaged hand, and fled. The frantic patter of her footsteps vanished, leaving a silence more deafening than the crash.
Henry released Gisela's wrist.
"I saw the way you looked at her." The accusation spilled from her, hot and corrosive.
Henry scoffed, a short, disdainful breath. "Gisela. You truly do not think before you speak."
"Do I appear a child in your eyes?" she demanded, her voice climbing. "Yes, I may be young, but do not mistake that for foolishness, Henry! I saw you. I saw you!" With each word, she struck his armored chest, her fists meeting the unyielding metal with futile, furious thuds.
He stood unmoved, a statue enduring a rain of feathers.
Her strikes slowed, her breath coming in ragged gasps. The anger cracked, and the raw hurt beneath seeped through. "A few hours before our wedding… I saw you with another. But you could not… you could not even perform the duty, the right of a husband. You have never touched me, Henry." Her voice dropped to a shattered whisper, tears tracing clean paths through her dignity. "I stand before you now, still your virgin queen."
The words hung in the cold air, a confession far more devastating than any insult. The truth of her untouched state, laid bare amidst the shattered glass, was a weapon she had finally turned upon herself, and the silence that followed was more terrible than any roar.
"When I discover who she is," Gisela seethed, the words sharp as a blade, "I swear upon the crown I wear, I will carve that woman's head from her shoulders myself."
A fresh wave of tears, hot with fury and humiliation, streaked down her cheeks. Without granting him another moment, she turned and fled down the corridor, the heavy silk of her gown swirling around her like a storm. She did not run as a girl might, but retreated as a wounded sovereign—head high, even as her composure shattered with every step.
The door to her chamber closed behind her with a solid, resonant thud, leaving Henry alone in the aftermath of her oath. The silence that followed was cold, deep, and heavy with the promise of vengeance.
"Perhaps… I went too far," she whispered, a fresh tear tracing the path of its predecessor. The admission was swallowed by the silence of her chamber. "But I cannot… I cannot carry this agony inside me forever."
A violent sob wracked her frame, bending her forward as if struck. The dignified queen was gone, leaving only a girl drowning in the humiliation of her own marriage.
When the storm of weeping eased, her thoughts, dark and sharp, coalesced around a single point. She lifted her head, her amber eyes glinting with a cold, damp fire.
"Emily," she breathed, the name a venom on her tongue. "I know not why my suspicion falls upon you… but if I discover you are the one from the library, I will kill you myself. And I will have your head mounted above the gate, as a lesson to all on the price of touching a king."