River didn’t remember walking back to her chambers. Everything after that final, tense smile shared with the Queen had become a blur, like mist creeping over a field after dusk, dense and consuming.
She could still feel the weight of every stare, every veiled jab, every false smile with daggers behind it, and as soon as the door of her chambers closed behind her, she stumbled toward the bed and collapsed onto it, still dressed in the regal gown chosen for her that morning by the tailor, a symbol now of suffocating control and court games she was not prepared to play.
Her breathing came in short, shallow bursts, and her vision narrowed, the edges of the world darkening as a cold wave of panic rose from somewhere deep inside her, familiar and terrifying.
She sat hunched on the edge of t
