Ch1. The Daughter on the Chessboard

The music of the royal feast had long since faded, and the night lay over Loxinitro like spilled ink, sealing the castle tight.

Jeffery had not left.

He had tied his horse’s reins to a low branch of an old locust tree outside the wall, then found a jut of stone to sit on, his back against the cold brick. One long leg was bent, the other stretched along the ground. His amber eyes were half-lidded, gazing up at a sky where most of the stars were swallowed by cloud. A faint smile touched his lips—bitter, or amused, or something between. She had disappeared too quickly—like a candle snuffed out mid-flame, leaving only a trace of warmth in his palm.

He had told himself it might be nothing more than chance. Years on the road had given him more than enough brief, vanishing encounters; by all logic, he should have mounted up and ridden on.

But those eyes—he could not even recall their color. The night had been too deep, the wall too high. What stayed with him was the way she had looked at him, as if, for once, he were not just a passing stranger in armor and with a sword, but a person. That thought dragged his heart down inside his chest, slow and heavy.

When a lone insect’s chirp split the stillness, he lifted his head. His gaze climbed the wall to the top of the old tower.

The rooftop was empty.

He let out a breath that misted pale in the cold air and rubbed his thumb over the small stone he had been holding all night—a thing he had picked up without thinking when he sat down, meaningless in itself, yet he had never let go. He glanced down at it, set it idly on his knee, and the curve of his mouth flattened into something more intent.

Would she come again today?

Dawn had not yet cleared the top of the walls. It lay in a thin wash over the flagstones, the color of yellowed paper.

Jeffery did not move. He leaned there as before, easy and loose to the eye, yet there was nothing relaxed beneath it—his shoulders were still drawn straight, like a sword sheathed but ready to be drawn at any moment. The stone rolled slowly under his thumb, back and forth, again and again, as if his body were counting without his consent. His amber eyes remained fixed on the tower, but his gaze was far away, the way a man might stare at a map while thinking of somewhere else.

He had waited for many things.

For wells in the desert, for daylight on mountain paths, for a dawn that never arrived on time.

Wanderers learn how to wait, but he had given up on expecting long ago. The two are different: waiting is a habit; expectation is a luxury.

Yet now something caught in his throat, fine and thin as a fishbone—not painful, but impossible to forget. For the first time, he truly looked at the stone in his palm. Gray-brown, pitted, completely ordinary. Still, he felt no urge to throw it away.

At the hour of the morning bell, the city gates creaked open. The first wave of vegetable sellers filed in beneath their baskets, rough-spun clothes still damp with field dew. A few of them let their eyes drift his way—a tall man sitting alone by the wall, travel-worn cloak, sword at his hip—then slid their gazes away without comment.

Jeffery had long since grown immune to such looks. He shifted his attention back to the tower. The morning wind lifted a stray lock of hair from his brow and brushed against the faint old scar above his left eye. He did not raise a hand to fix it; he only narrowed his eyes slightly, his lips pressed into a line that was part patience, part quiet mockery of himself.

She was not likely to come.

He knew that perfectly well.

Anyone linked to the palace—even those merely passing along its walls—could never be simple. To her, a brief meeting like last night’s might be nothing more than a forgettable interruption in her route, gone without a trace come morning.

The notion sank into his chest like a shard of ice, its chill spreading slowly. He did not frown, but his fingers paused—the stone resting on his thumb for the space of two heartbeats—before he curled it once more into his fist and closed his eyes.

If she did not come, he would leave when the sun reached a spear’s height in the sky.

That was what he told himself.

But the stone remained locked in his hand.

Inside the castle, meanwhile—after Anna left the tower, she had been caught by guards sent at the king’s command. The banquet she had run from had not been a simple celebration; it was held to negotiate her marriage to Prince Geelong, eldest son of the king of Gongchinido. The kingdom’s power was modest, but its resources and position on the western front were valuable to King Phetlantis, who coveted expansion. Prince Geelong, meanwhile, had taken a keen interest in Ioanna Riverve Davis—despite being at least fifteen years older than she was, and despite his reputation as a man soaked in wine and women.

A shrill voice tore across the stone corridor, shattering the evening’s peace. “Let—let go of me! Or I swear I’ll make you regret it!” Anna struggled wildly, but could not break free of the captain’s iron grip. He said nothing, simply dragged her toward the banquet hall.

When the great doors opened, a single imposing figure waited upon the high seat. The tables and floor still bore traces of last night’s feast, but now those remnants only highlighted the king’s displeasure—and the fate awaiting Anna.

She was forced to stand before King Phetlantis. The hall was so quiet that even a coward might startle at the sound of their own heartbeat. “Ioanna Riverve Davis,” the king said, slowly and evenly, each word holding a rage forced under iron control. “Do you know what you have done?”

Anna froze at the sound of her full name. Fear licked up her spine, yet she forced herself to stand straight. “I—I don’t want to marry Prince Geelong, Father!” she burst out, clinging to the last fragile thread between a daughter and her parent. “I don’t want to be a bargaining chip… b‑besides, there are plenty who suit it better than I do—my other sisters could—”

Bang.

His palm slammed against the table. The sound detonated in the vast hall like muffled thunder bouncing off stone, making the remaining goblets tremble. One tilted silver cup rolled to the table’s edge and stopped at the point of falling, shivering there.

King Phetlantis rose slowly. His voice remained low—that was the worst of it. On his severe face, anger was not boiling water; it was a stone heated red in a sealed furnace—no sound, no flame, yet hot enough to burn through anything. His gaze slid over Anna’s face inch by inch, like a straightedge measuring some tool that had failed him.

No one dared to speak.

The guards kept their heads bowed; the maids shrank back against the walls. Even the air seemed to be holding its breath.

On the far side of the table, a man lounged against his chair, long fingers turning a wineglass, an ambiguous smile resting on his lips—Prince Geelong.

He looked to be around thirty-five, perhaps a little older. His features were handsome enough, but his eyes were too bright—bright in the way of a hound that smells blood. From the instant Anna had been shoved through the doors, his gaze had latched onto her and never once strayed. He lifted his chin and studied her with the leisure of a man inspecting a prize he already considered his, tongue pressing lightly against his teeth as a soft, almost inaudible chuckle slipped out. He said nothing, simply watched, like someone who had already mapped out the game and was now waiting for others to set the board.

“You said,” the king repeated, “that your other sisters could—”

His tone was as flat as if reading a dull report, yet his words cut off abruptly.

He stepped around the corner of the table, moving toward Anna one measured step at a time, each footfall landing as heavily as if upon her chest. He stopped in front of her, looking down at this daughter who lifted her chin and tried to hold her back straight. He stared in silence for three full breaths. There was no father’s softness in his eyes now—only the cold arithmetic of a sovereign.

“There are no daughters here,” he said quietly. “Only pieces I place on the board.”

Outside the walls, at that same moment, dawn had climbed to the parapets, stretching long shadows across the seams of the stone.

Jeffery opened his eyes. At some point, a tension had crept into the nape of his neck—a subtle stiffness honed by years on the road. It was the kind of instinct even he couldn’t fully explain, just a sense that something somewhere had shifted, that the air did not feel quite right. He turned his head toward the gates. People came and went, everything seeming ordinary. He looked back down at the stone in his fist.

He tightened his grip.

Something sank in his amber gaze—whether foreboding or worry he could not say. His brows drew together for an instant, then smoothed back into calm. He did not move from his place, but he straightened away from the wall and no longer leaned upon it, like a man waking from a feigned sleep into full alertness.

The sun kept climbing.

He kept waiting.

Anna had not expected to hear those words from her father’s mouth. Her heart felt as if it had shattered. “I—I…” She bit down so hard on her lip she almost drew blood, then let it go. “I’m a person! Not a thing. I have the right to choose my own life!”

Her defiance snapped the last thread of the king’s patience. Phetlantis’s gaze grew colder still. Anna had always been headstrong, and it was far from the first time she had contradicted him—but at this juncture, such resistance only fanned the flames. With a flick of his eyes toward a nearby guard, he gave a silent order. Moments later, a whip was brought forth.

The air in the great hall seemed to congeal.

The guard presented the whip with both hands. The soft rasp of leather against his palms rang unnaturally clear in the stillness, like a key sliding into the lock of a door that should never be opened.

Phetlantis did not take it at once. He only looked down at Anna, his eyes devoid even of anger’s heat, replaced by something far more chilling—calm so deep it was like a frozen lake, everything buried beneath the ice. Slowly, he closed his fingers around the whip, the leather giving a faint creak in his grip. When he spoke, his voice was low, each word falling with deliberate weight, as if offering her a final chance—or as if he had never meant to offer one at all.

“Kneel.”

The maids in the corners lowered their eyes, not one daring to look up.

The man lounging in his chair—Prince Geelong—finally set his glass aside.

He rose, unhurried, straightening his collar. The smile on his face deepened, touched with the predatory delight of a hunter who has scented wounded prey. He did not step in, did not intervene; he simply walked around the length of the table to a spot neither too near nor too far from Anna, crossing his arms as he watched. His gaze traced her from head to toe, lingering on the way she kept her back stiff with pride, and his smile turned slow, assured.

“Your Majesty,” he said smoothly, his voice carrying an easy, practiced charm, “the princess’s temper—one might even call it… entertaining.” He drew out that last word with meaning. “I find myself rather curious what she will be like once she’s… learned restraint.”

Everyone in the hall understood exactly what he meant.

Phetlantis’s eyelids lifted a fraction as he glanced at Geelong. He did not answer, but his hand closed more tightly around the whip. His gaze returned to Anna, and something flickered there—not guilt, but a hard, merciless finality, as if the whole affair had already been tallied and decided.

Outside, the morning wind shook the branches of the old locust tree, leaves whispering against one another.

Jeffery’s eyes flew open.

He did not know why. He only knew that something in his chest suddenly clenched, as if a stone had dropped, silent and heavy, into deep water. He looked at the gray-brown stone in his palm, his brows knitting, then slowly smoothing out again.

He rose, brushing dust from his cloak, his back straightening to its full height. His eyes fixed on the closed gates. He had no idea what was happening beyond those walls—he knew nothing at all. But that sensation in his chest, that fine, snagging ache like a fishbone in his throat, sharpened, twisting as if some unseen hand had closed around his heart.

He sat back down on the stone ledge, but he did not close his eyes again.

The whip cracked through the air—once, twice, again—each strike biting into Anna’s back and tearing flesh. She clenched her teeth, yet could not keep a sound from escaping; low, strangled cries slipped through her lips. A few tears fell, not for the pain itself, but for the knowledge that those sounds, to men like these, were nothing but a pleasing melody. She bit down harder, tasting iron, as she felt the sting of blood welling along the raw stripes on her back.

The maids nearby trembled, but did not move. Only one of them never took her eyes off Anna. In that gaze were fear and sorrow and an almost uncontrollable urge to throw herself between whip and mistress.

The crack of leather against skin echoed again and again between the stone walls, each report like a chisel driven down along every spine in the room. The maids kept their heads bowed, shoulders shivering. No one dared to shift, no one dared to speak—they knew that the slightest misstep could drag them into the same cold water.

Yet at the very edge of the gathered servants, one pair of eyes remained stubbornly raised. That maid stood a half step ahead of the others, her long fingers twisting hard in the cloth at her sides until her knuckles blanched, as if that pain alone anchored her in place. Her gaze was nailed to Anna, flinching with every blow. Tears glimmered in her eyes, filling and receding, but never falling—she had learned even earlier than her mistress how to swallow tears in this palace. Her toes inched forward, her whole body leaning—imperceptibly, helplessly—toward Anna, like a slender sapling straining against the wind.

When the whipping finally stopped, the silence that followed was heavier than the sound had been.

Phetlantis handed the whip back to the guard, calm and steady, as if he had merely finished reviewing a report. He looked down at Anna, waiting for a long moment before speaking. His voice was roughened and low, each word landing like a nail driven into the floor.

“Tomorrow, at the palace banquet, Prince Geelong will make his formal proposal.”

He paused.

“If you dare to be absent, today’s lashes will be the least of it.”

Prince Geelong stood to one side, his eyes never leaving her.

He watched the blood seeping through the thin fabric on her back. The curve of his mouth did not fade; if anything, it grew, as though something inside him had been pleasantly fed. He lifted his wineglass again, taking a slow sip. His throat moved once, savoring. Over the rim, his gaze lingered on the strands of hair falling over Anna’s face, warmed by a revolting sort of certainty.

“You’ve suffered, Your Highness,” he said lightly, stepping a little closer. “I’ll be a very good husband—so long as you learn to obey.”

Outside the walls, the shadows of the locust leaves swayed across the ground.

Jeffery stood up abruptly.

He could not have said why. He simply rose and walked to his horse, resting a hand on its neck. Warmth met his palm, steady and alive. He drew in a slow breath of morning air tinged with grass, then let it out again, the line between his brows never smoothing. His amber eyes fixed on the sealed gates for a long, long time, as if waiting for an answer he could not yet name.

His thumb moved absently through the horse’s mane. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse, barely above a whisper, as if he were asking himself.

“…Are you all right?”

No one answered.

Only the wind.

After the king left, the punishment finally drew to a halt. The maid whose gaze had never left Anna hurried to her side.

Addie slipped an arm around her, carefully easing her upright. Anna’s body trembled with every movement, and the sight made Addie’s throat close with unshed tears. “Miss… you…” She knew she should not speak, but the words forced their way out under the weight of fear and grief. “You shouldn’t have resisted. You know what the king is… what kind of man he is…”

Anna fought to keep her footing. Addie had served her since childhood, close as breath, and Anna did not scold her. “I know… but… I don’t want to be someone’s possession…”

The words were firm, yet drained of strength. She knew her resistance was almost certainly useless. In the end, she would either submit—or find some extreme way of ending the matter herself.

Addie bore half her weight, easing each step. “Let me take you back to your chambers. I’ll fetch medicine and tend to your wounds.”

The stone floor of the corridor was cold, reflecting two slow-moving shadows, one deeper, one more faint, overlapping as they went.

Addie walked with exaggerated care, as if she were carrying something that might shatter at the gentlest jolt. Tears slid unchecked down her cheeks, but she did not dare sob aloud; every now and then she swiped at them with her sleeve, then turned to look at Anna, her gaze filled with pain and helplessness, neither feeling weaker than the other.

Anna did not speak.

She simply walked, one step at a time. With every movement, the lashes on her back tore open a dull, burning ache. The thin fabric clung and lifted, again and again, as if someone were tracing each wound with deliberate strokes, refusing to let her forget.

But she did not bend. She did not allow herself to fold in on the pain. Her spine stayed straight—so straight that Addie could feel the strain in the way Anna leaned against her, every muscle trembling with the effort of remaining upright. Anna’s eyes were fixed on the long corridor ahead, empty yet lucid, like someone who has sunk deep enough beneath the water that the struggle has gone quiet.

That quiet was not peace. It was something heavier, like a lump of lead resting in the heart.

I don’t want to be a possession.

The moment she had spoken those words, Anna had known how light they were in this place.

In this palace, her name had never belonged only to her. Her body had never been hers alone. Her future had been traced out long ago, in some council chamber, by a finger tapping a map.

Addie eased open the door to the bedchamber and helped Anna sit on the edge of the bed. Immediately, she bent to rummage through the small chest by the headboard, movements swift but careful, as if even a louder sound might hurt. She took out a bottle of medicine and turned back to Anna, swallowing hard before forcing her voice steady.

“Miss, I’ll have to lift your dress a little. It will sting… please, bear with it.”