The news of the prisoners' escape spread through the palace like wildfire. Guards stumbled over themselves in explanations, swearing they had seen nothing, swearing the maid with the bread was faceless in the dark.
Magnus' voice thundered through the great hall, echoing against stone walls.
"Idiots! You let every cell empty beneath your very noses?" His hand struck the arm of his chair, rings clashing against wood. "And not one of you knows how?"
The guards knelt low, trembling, their foreheads to the floor. Not one dared meet his eyes.
Queen Isadora's cool voice cut through the silence. "Perhaps it is not the guards who failed, but someone within our midst who opened those doors." Her gaze lingered where Iridessa often sat, but the Queen only lowered her lashes, feigning unawareness.
For all their searching, no one knew the truth. And that unsettled them most of all.
-
Days later, Iridessa held in her hands the parchment she had prayed would never come. The script was her father's, the seal broken with trembling fingers. She read, and the words bled her heart dry.
A war fought. Fields burnt black. Villages turned to ash.
Her people scattered like hunted birds.
And her brother—her closest, the one who once chased her through Dhalmar's orchards, the one who placed flowers in her braids—dead, in war.
Her breath caught. She pressed the letter to her chest as though by doing so she might pull him back, but the silence of her chamber mocked her. She wept until her hands shook and the ink blurred. She wept not only for her brother but for her mother, who must now bear this grief; for her father, who still had to stand as king with his heart half-shattered; for every nameless villager who had died in the war.
If only Magnus had sent the aides her kingdom requested, perhaps none of this would have come to pass.
She could hear the laughter from the royal ball spilling into the night, music twining through open windows. Magnus had thrown the celebration, despite knowing what was written in the letter his wife had received.
From that day, Iridessa's lips grew heavy with silence. At the dining table, she bowed her head and ate without speaking. In the court chamber, she only sat with her hands folded, her eyes vacant. At gatherings, she moved like a shadow, unremarkable, untouching.
"She has learned," some whispered among the lords. "The fire is gone from her. Finally."
Magnus was pleased. So was his mother.
But none of them—none—saw what truly flickered behind Iridessa's silence. They did not see how grief had sharpened her, how loss had carved something stronger in her soul. They mistook her quiet for defeat, when in truth, it was only the stillness before the storm.
-
The night was thick with silence when Miri pressed the iron latch closed behind them. The hidden tunnel was damp, narrow, its stones old and forgotten, but Iridessa walked it with sure steps.
At the end of the passage, they emerged into a deserted wing of the palace—one that connected to the royal solar. Iridessa's pulse throbbed, but her face was calm.
"Keep watch," she whispered, and Miri obeyed, positioning herself at the corridor's mouth.
Inside the solar, moonlight spilled over parchment-strewn tables. Isadora's hand was everywhere: red wax seals, tallies of grain, signed decrees, letters to the wardens. Plans to divert food from the villages, to deny the lower servants, to consolidate everything in the high court's vaults. It was greed painted in ink.
Iridessa read quickly, her chest tightening. If the orders were carried out, hundreds more would starve before the month's end.
Her hands moved with steady precision. One by one, she took the scrolls, pressing the seals into soft wax she had brought, lifting clean imprints of Isadora's signet. Then she worked swiftly, rewriting new orders in the queen's hand—redistribution to the villages, release of more stores than Isadora had ever intended.
By the time she was done, the forged documents were indistinguishable from the originals. She slid them neatly into place and tucked the true orders beneath her cloak.
Back in her chamber, Miri fed them one by one into the brazier until nothing remained but grey ash.
The following week, chaos erupted.
Reports streamed into the court: wagons of grain dispatched to the outer villages, guarded by royal soldiers who swore they carried the queen's seal; villagers rejoicing with food enough to fill their storehouses; fields alive again with workers who had been starving only days before.
Isadora nearly collapsed when she first heard it.
"They have moved the stores?!" Her voice rose to a shriek, snapping through the chamber. "By whose command?"
"By yours, Your Majesty," the steward stammered, pale and trembling. "The orders bore your seal. They left under escort two nights past."
Magnus tried to laugh, but the sound was uneasy. "Surely there is a mistake—"
"There is no mistake!" Isadora seized the parchment handed to her, eyes scanning the flawless script, her own signature staring back at her like a curse. She knew this was her hand—or something too close to deny.
Some marveled that the queen had finally shown generosity. Others wondered aloud if she had been moved by the prayers of the starving.
And among the villagers, chants of her name rose with new fervor.
But in the high chamber, Isadora's fury could not be contained.
She stormed into Iridessa's quarters without knocking, her gown swaying like a storm cloud. "You," she hissed. "This reeks of you."
Iridessa looked up from her embroidery, face smooth, eyes wide in quiet innocence. "Your Majesty?"
"You dare play me for a fool?"
"I have not left these chambers without His Majesty's guards on my trail," Iridessa replied softly, nodding toward the guards outside her door. "Surely they would attest."
The guards bowed their heads, confirming what they believed to be true.
Isadora's lips trembled with rage. She could not prove it, not here, not now.
When she swept out of the chamber, Miri closed the door gently behind her. Iridessa lowered her gaze to her lap, a slow smile tugging at her lips.
"She cannot starve them anymore," she whispered. "Not without admitting to the whole court that her own hand betrayed her."
And in that moment, Iridessa knew her silence was not submission. It was power. Hidden, sharpened, and waiting.
The lords gathered, the parchment crumpled in Isadora's trembling hands as she read it again, her eyes burning as if the ink itself mocked her.
"This—this is not my order!" she spat, her voice raw with fury. "I would never waste the royal stores on peasants!"
The lords shifted uneasily in their seats. Some bowed their heads, others dared quick glances at each other. The scroll bore her seal. The signature was hers. To argue against the evidence was to argue against her own hand.
One of the lords cleared his throat. "With respect, Your Majesty… the ink is fresh, the seal intact. The soldiers marched with full confidence."
Isadora's jaw tightened until her teeth ached. She wanted to scream that it was all false, forged, trickery—but who would believe her? Who in this hall would dare admit their queen could not control her own commands?
It was then Magnus laughed. A sharp, careless laugh that rang across the chamber.
"Mother," he drawled, leaning lazily against his chair, "perhaps age is finally pricking at your memory. First you order grain for the villages, then you forget." He smirked, his voice cutting like a whip. "Shall I set someone to keep track of your decrees, so we do not mistake them again?"
Isadora's head snapped toward him, fury blazing. "Watch your tongue!" she hissed.
But the court had already caught the exchange. A murmur rippled through the lords, the queen contradicted by her own son, her authority mocked in open council.
Isadora almost bit through her tongue, the humiliation so sharp it tasted of iron. She wanted to claw the smirk off Magnus's face, to wring the neck of whoever had dared forge her hand.
Across the table, Iridessa sat silent, her gaze lowered, fingers folded in her lap. Not a word, not a glance—but the faintest shadow of calmness lingered in her eyes, a serenity that twisted the queen's gut.
"Enough!" Isadora slammed the parchment onto the table. "If my seal was used falsely, then we are in the midst of treachery. I will find the hand that did this, and when I do, it will not be grain the villagers eat—it will be ash."
But the damage was already done. To the court, she was a queen at odds with herself. To the lords, she was weakened. To Magnus, she was laughable. And to the starving people beyond the walls, she had become—by trickery or truth—their savior.
And in the quiet of her chamber that night, Iridessa smiled to herself. Isadora's rage had fed the very fire she wanted burning.