The winter wind gnawed at the stables long after Kael's whistling faded, its howl seeping through the cracks in the wooden walls to curl around Hannah's bones like a cold fist.
The bread she had forced down was bitter on her tongue, the mold a faint, metallic tang that lingered even as she swallowed hard, fighting the urge to retch.
Bess nuzzled her hand, her warm breath fogging the air between them, but Hannah barely felt it—her fingers were numb, her toes blocks of ice in the threadbare boots that had been too small for her since last spring.
She leaned against the horse, her eyes slipping shut before she could stop them.
The cold vanished first.
In its place was warmth—soft, golden, like sunlight through glass.
She was small again, no taller than the roses climbing the trellis beside her, her cheek pressed to the smooth silk of a woman's dress.
The air smelled of jasmine and honey, sweet and heady, and when she looked up, she saw her: a woman with hair like spun sunlight, cascading in loose waves down her back, and eyes the color of sapphires caught in the light—the exact same shade as Hannah's, bright and clear, crinkling at the corners as she smiled down at the girl.
They were in a greenhouse, its glass panes fogged with humidity, the air thick with the buzz of bees and the drip of water from the leaves above.
The woman hummed a tune Hannah did not recognize but felt in her bones, a lullaby that wrapped around her like a blanket, and when she lifted Hannah into her arms, her touch was gentle, so gentle that the girl thought she might melt.
"My sweet Hannah," she murmured, her voice like honey, and Hannah buried her face in the woman's neck, breathing in the scent of lavender and sunshine.
For the first time in two lives, she felt safe. Wanted. Seen.
The dream did not last.
It shattered with a crack—not the crack of a branch breaking, but the shriek of wind tearing through the stable's rafters, the sound sharp enough to slice through the warmth of the greenhouse and yank Hannah back into the cold of the barn.
She gasped, her eyes flying open, and for a second she was disoriented—her cheek was pressed not to silk, but to Bess's rough mane, the jasmine replaced by the stench of hay and manure, the lullaby drowned out by the howl of the storm.
The memory of the greenhouse lingered, bright and painful, like a wound exposed to the air. That woman—who was she? Her mother.
The first countess, the one who had died giving birth to Hannah, the one who had brought her, Kael, and William into the world before Stephanie ever stepped foot in the castle.
The one whose memory Stephanie loved to spit on, calling her foolish and weak for leaving her husband with a third daughter she deemed useless.
Stephanie never missed a chance to sneer at Hannah, to call her a burden, a mistake, a stain on the Bennington name that even her own mother's legacy could not wash away.
Why did the woman in the dream feel like a memory Hannah had buried so deep she had forgotten it existed? Why did her sapphire eyes look so much like Hannah's own?
The thought curdled in her chest, and with it came a wave of despair so thick she could barely breathe.
What was the point?
She had prayed for a new start, a clean slate—and what had she gotten?
Another cage.
Another life where she was nothing, where she was kicked and mocked and forgotten, where even the memory of a mother's love was nothing but a fleeting, cruel dream.
She had clung to that spark of resolve earlier, the silly thought that this was a test, that she could fight back—but fight back against what?
Against a father who did not care, a stepmother who hated her, her own full brothers who looked away, and a stepsister who took pleasure in her pain?
Against a world that saw her as nothing more than a shadow to be stepped on?
Her struggles were useless. Her effort, wasted. No matter what she did, no matter how hard she tried to survive, this life would chew her up and spit her out, just like the last one.
Hannah stood up, her legs shaking so badly she almost fell. The stable door was ajar, the snow swirling beyond it, white and endless and cold. She did not think.
She just walked—stumbling, unsteady, her boots sinking into the drifts that had piled up against the walls.
The wind cut through her dress, freezing her skin, but she did not care. She did not care about anything anymore.
She saw them then—Kael, his back to her, walking toward the castle with Layla at his side, her high-pitched laughter carrying on the wind.
William was ahead of them, his shoulders straight, his cloak billowing behind him, already halfway to the door.
They were warm. They were fed.
Kael and William were loved—blood of their mother's blood, true Bennington heirs, even if they chose to act as if Hannah did not exist.
Layla, Stephanie's only child, was doted on just the same.
And Hannah was nothing.
Aghhhhh…
The scream tore out of her before she could stop it—a raw, guttural sound, loud enough to make the birds in the trees fall silent, loud enough to make Bess whinny in alarm from the stable.
It was not just a scream of pain or anger; it was a scream of grief, of two lifetimes of loneliness and neglect, of the hope that had died inside her the second she had woken from that dream.
Hannah screamed until her throat felt raw, until tears streamed down her face, freezing on her cheeks.
She clawed at her hair, the tangled, uneven chestnut strands that Layla had hacked at with kitchen shears, pulling so hard her scalp burned.
She fell to her knees in the snow, the ice seeping through her dress to soak her skin, and she wept—great, heaving sobs that wracked her entire body.
She did not care who heard her. She did not care if they came to watch, if they laughed, if they called her mad.
Let them. Let them see the useless third daughter, the mouse, the nothing, finally breaking.
From the stable, Bess whinnied again, a low, mournful sound—worry, or fear, Hannah did not know. She did not look up.
She heard a voice, though—Kael's, sharp and mocking, cutting through the wind.
"Is she finally going mad?"
Hannah looked up then, through blurred tears, and saw him standing a few feet away, his face twisted in disgust.
Layla was beside him, her hand covering her mouth, her eyes wide with cruel amusement. William had not turned around.
He kept walking, until the castle door closed behind him, and he was gone—oblivious, or indifferent, to the sister who shared their mother's eyes, left to die in the snow,
Kael stared at her for another second, then turned away, his shoulders shaking with laughter as he walked toward Layla. They did not look back.
A moment later, she heard footsteps—soft, hesitant. Servants emerged from the castle's side door, their faces wary.
They did not come closer.
They just stood there, watching her, their eyes filled not with sympathy, but with disgust and contempt.
Fear that if something happened to the count's third daughter, they would be the ones to blame. Fear that they would be the ones to suffer for her madness.
No one cared. No one ever would.
Hannah sank deeper into the snow, the cold creeping into her chest, and closed her eyes.
Let the storm take me. Let the frost claim me.
It would be better than this.
.
.
.
The next thing Hannah knew, she was in her bedroom.
It was smaller than the servants' quarters, a cramped, drafty box tucked into the furthest corner of the castle, where the winter wind snaked through the gaps in the stone walls unimpeded.
No fire crackled in the hearth—Stephanie had deemed it a waste of coal for a girl who spent most of her time in the stables anyway.
The furniture was all scuffed, splintered wood: a rickety bed with a thin, lumpy mattress, a wobbly desk cluttered with dust, and a cracked mirror propped against the wall, its surface warped enough that her reflection looked like a twisted shadow.
It was the only mirror in the castle that no one else wanted, its size matching her frame exactly, as if it had been cursed to only show her.
She woke with a fever, her skin burning hot even as the cold nipped at her fingertips, but her head was clear—clearer than it had been in days.
The dream played on a loop behind her eyelids: the golden hair, the sapphire eyes, the lullaby that felt like a memory she could almost grasp.
But clarity did not bring comfort.
It brought a cold, hard truth, sharp as a shard of ice.
No one was going to love her.
No one was going to change for her. No one would smile at her successes, no one would mourn her demise.
She was a ghost in two lives, a shadow no one bothered to notice, a mistake Stephanie resented and Father forgot.
The spark of resolve she had clung to earlier was gone, snuffed out by the frost and the mold and the weight of two lifetimes of loneliness.
She gave up.
The word settled in her chest, heavy and final, as she pushed herself up to sit—too fast, too sudden.
The movement jolted the man perched on the edge of her desk, and he jumped, his greasy fingers fumbling away from her arm where they had been hovering.
It was the quack doctor Stephanie sometimes sent when one of the servants fell ill—a man with yellowed teeth and eyes that lingered too long, one who cared more about coin than cures.
Hannah did not remember him being called.
She did not remember being dragged from the snow to this room. But she did not need to.
The way his gaze slid over her fever-flushed skin, the way his lips twitched into a leering smile, told her everything she needed to know.
Stephanie had not sent him to heal her. She had sent him to amuse herself—at Hannah's expense.
Disgust curdled in her throat, hot and bitter, as his hand reached for her again, slow and deliberate.
"Easy now, little lady," he purred, his voice thick with slime. "Just let me check that fever of yours—"
Hannah snapped.
The fever fog lifted entirely, replaced by a cold, burning rage that seared through her veins. She did not think. She just acted.
"Do you want to die?"
The words were quiet, a low, lethal snarl that hung in the frigid air between them.
The quack froze, his hand halfway to her face, his smile dropping off his ugly features.
Before he could recover, before he could even blink, Hannah lunged for the chipped ceramic vase on her desk—a cracked, dusty thing Stephanie had tossed at her once in a fit of rage. She grabbed it by the neck, hefted it with all the strength her fever-weakened body could muster, and threw it at his head with full, unforgiving force.
It hit him square between the eyes.
A sickening thud echoed through the room.
Blood bloomed instantly, a bright, sticky red against his pale forehead, dripping down his nose and onto his tattered coat.
He yelped, a high, pathetic sound, and stumbled backward, tripping over the leg of her bed and crashing to the floor in a heap.
Hannah stared at him, her chest heaving, her hands shaking—not with fear, but with the wild, feral thrill of fighting back.
For the first time in two lives, she had not run. She had not hidden. She had not let them hurt her without a fight.
The quack groaned, clutching his bleeding forehead, and Hannah stood up, her knees wobbly but her resolve unshakable.
She looked down at him, at the blood on his face, at the fear in his eyes, and smiled—a cold, sharp smile that did not reach her sapphire eyes.
"Get out," she said, her voice steady, deadly.
"Or the next thing I do will not end with a simple scratch."
The quack did not need to be told twice.
He scrambled off the floor, his hands still clamped to his bleeding forehead, and stumbled toward the door—tripping over the threshold so hard he nearly face-planted into the corridor.
He did not look back, did not even pause to grab his satchel of worthless herbs.
He ran, his boots thudding against the stone floors, the sound fading into the howl of the wind outside like a rat scurrying back to its hole.
Silence settled over the room again, thick and tense—until the door slammed open a second time, hitting the wall hard enough to rattle the dust from the rafters.
A maid stood in the doorway, her face twisted with a fury that matched the storm outside.
Her hair was the color of wilted moss, stringy and unkempt, pulled back in a tight bun that made her sharp features look even harsher.
Freckles dusted her nose and cheeks, sparse and faded, and her eyes were small and beady, narrowed to slits as she took in the scene: the broken shards of the vase on the floor, the dark smudge of blood on the wood, Hannah standing there with her fists clenched, her fever-flushed face set like stone.
She looked exactly like the third-rate villain from a tragedy—the kind who delighted in tormenting the heroine, who got off on the sound of her cries, who would sell her own soul for a scrap of the lady's favor.
She was the maid Stephanie had put in charge of "keeping Hannah in line"—a task she took far too much pleasure in.
She was the one who had dragged Hannah from the snow to this room, her fingers digging into the girl's arms hard enough to leave bruises, if only to avoid being flogged for letting a daughter of the house freeze to death.
She was the one who had stood by while the quack loomed over the bed, who had turned a blind eye to his leering gaze and wandering hands, because Stephanie had told her to.
"Have you lost your mind?" she shrieked, striding into the room and pointing a finger at Hannah—her nail broken, black with dirt, and the girl flinched back from the sight of it.
"That man is a guest of the countess! You'll be flogged for this—flogged—if I have any say in it!"
Hannah did not flinch. Did not cower. Did not drop her gaze like she always did.
She stared right back at the maid, her sapphire eyes cold and sharp, and let the silence stretch between them—long enough that the woman's sneer faltered, long enough that she shifted her weight from foot to foot, as if suddenly unsure of herself.
For the first time in two lives, Hannah did not care what the maid thought. Did not care what she would do.
She was tired of being the mouse.
Tired of being the shadow.
Tired of being the nothing they all wanted her to be.
And for the first time, she realized she did not have to be.