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Chapter Text

The silence in the palace felt louder than the echoes of screams on the battlefield.

Paedyn sat alone in her chamber, knees drawn tight to her chest, nails digging crescent moons into her skin through the thin fabric of her dress. The candle beside her had long since melted down into a wax puddle, its last flicker gone hours ago, but she hadn’t bothered to light another. Darkness pressed against the walls, pressing against her chest, pressing against her lungs until she swore she couldn’t breathe.

She hadn’t spoken in hours. Not since the others had left her with their empty reassurances, their whispered promises that things would “get easier with time.” Lies. Words that fell flat against the raw edges of her grief.

Because there was no “easier” when you killed someone who wasn’t supposed to die.

Mak’s face haunted her. She hadn’t known him, not truly, but that didn’t matter—not when his final moments replayed behind her eyelids every time she closed them. His voice, startled and strangled. The way his body had gone slack. The blood—warm and real and irreversible—on her hands.

She remembered the weight of him. The way she had felt him slip away.

And Adena—Adena, who had so little, who had been clinging so tightly to the one tether she had left. Paedyn had severed it.

“I killed him,” Paedyn whispered into the dark, her voice hoarse. Her words clung to the stone walls and came back to her sounding broken. “I killed him.”

Her hands shook. She dug them harder into her arms, as though pain might keep the guilt from eating her alive.

It didn’t.

She kept seeing Adena’s face at the last trial, when Blair murdered her. The disbelief. The hollowing-out of her eyes. The pain. The way her eyes drew towards her broken, beautiful sewing fingers. The way her shoulders had folded in like the world had collapsed on top of her—and Paedyn was the one holding it up, just so she could slam it back down again.

Mak had been Adena’s anchor. Her protector. Her brother in everything but blood. And Paedyn had taken him before she even had the chance to know what he could have meant to her too.

That was the cruelest part.

“I didn’t even know him,” Paedyn muttered. Her breath hitched, jagged, like her lungs couldn’t stand to carry air anymore. “I didn’t even know him, and I—”

Her words broke.

She rocked forward, forehead pressed to her knees, chest rising and falling in a desperate rhythm. She couldn’t scream. She couldn’t cry properly. The grief was too heavy to leave her body; it just stayed lodged inside, choking her from the inside out.

Her mind conjured what-if’s in cruel, endless loops.

What if she’d hesitated? What if she’d asked more questions? What if she hadn’t assumed?

What if Mak was still alive?

She pictured Adena sitting alone now, with no one left to hold her together. Paedyn had ripped her open. And for what? For a mistake? For her own survival instincts?

She wanted to claw the memory out of her skull, but it stayed. Blood on her hands. His eyes dimming. Her heartbeat roaring like thunder in her ears.

Paedyn wrapped her arms tighter around herself. “I should’ve been the one,” she whispered. The words were thin, fragile. “Not him. Me.”

It was true. She’d been trained for death since she could breathe. She’d lived with it pressed against her throat her whole life. Mak had deserved more. Adena had deserved more.

The chamber around her blurred. She blinked, but the world still swam.

Her chest ached, but not with tears—because tears would have meant release. No, her body just hollowed out instead, leaving nothing but a cavern where her heart had once been.

The silence pressed closer. She welcomed it.

Maybe if she sat here long enough, she would disappear too.

Chapter Text

Paedyn didn’t cry.

Not when the sun rose the next morning, burning gold against the broken horizon. Not when she laced her boots and tied the straps too tight, the rawness biting into her skin until she nearly welcomed it. Not even when Adena’s name caught in the air, half-whispered by someone passing, like it had become a curse on everyone’s tongue.

She didn’t cry—she shut down.

The fortress buzzed with survivors and soldiers, all moving around her like water spilling past a stone. She walked among them, silent, steady, carrying out whatever task was placed in her hands. Hauling supplies. Carrying scraps of cloth for the wounded. Sitting still during debriefings, nodding when expected. But her mind wasn’t there. It was replaying Mak’s laughter, Adena’s bright eyes when she spoke of him, the cruel knowledge that she—Paedyn—had stolen that from her.

“Paedyn.”

Kai’s voice broke through the fog. She turned, slow, deliberate, like her body had to remember how to move. He stood in the doorway of the storeroom she’d been sent to organize, his hands braced on the frame, his expression caught between frustration and concern.

“You’ve been at this for hours,” he said. “You should eat something.”

Her gaze dropped to the sacks at her feet. She hadn’t noticed how many she’d stacked. Her hands were raw from the rope edges, skin rubbed red and stinging. Still, she shrugged. “I’m fine.”

The lie scraped her throat.

Kai didn’t move. His shadow filled the threshold, watching her with that infuriating patience. “You’re not. You haven’t been fine since—” He broke off, jaw tightening. “Since them.”

Her stomach twisted. Them. Adena, who would never smile again. Mak, who she hadn’t even allowed herself the chance to know. Who she had murdered, as if fate itself had laughed and decided she should be the blade that severed Adena’s last thread of hope.

Her fingers trembled, and she shoved them into the folds of her skirt, nails biting her palms. “Don’t,” she whispered.

“Don’t what?” Kai’s voice was soft. Careful.

“Don’t say their names. Don’t talk about it. Don’t look at me like—like I’m going to fall apart.”

Her words sliced sharper than she meant them to, and for a moment Kai looked as though he’d been struck. But he didn’t back down. He stepped into the room, his footsteps steady against the stone.

“Paedyn…”

She snapped her head up at him, meeting his eyes at last. The weight there nearly crushed her—because he saw her. He saw the hollow place in her chest, the raw guilt clawing through her veins, the way she was unraveling piece by piece and refusing to let anyone touch the threads.

“You’re starving yourself. You’re not sleeping. You’re not—” He bit back his frustration. “You’re going to break if you keep going like this.”

Her laugh was brittle, sharp. “Maybe I should.”

The silence after those words was thick, suffocating. She hadn’t meant to say them, not out loud. But the truth of it lingered in the air between them. She should break. Maybe then she’d feel less like a ghost carrying a living body. Maybe then she’d stop seeing Adena’s eyes when she closed her own.

Kai reached for her, his hand brushing her wrist. His touch was warm, grounding. Too grounding.

Paedyn jerked back like she’d been burned. “Don’t.”

The finality in her tone froze him. His hand fell uselessly to his side, and something flickered across his face—helplessness, frustration, sorrow. But he didn’t push. He simply stood there, close enough that she could feel the weight of his presence, far enough that she could keep her walls intact.

She turned back to the sacks, forcing her hands to work again, though the ropes blurred in her vision.

Hours later, she was still there. Still stacking, still moving. Still refusing to stop. The fortress grew quiet around her, torches burning low, the world shrinking until it was only her, the endless tasks, and the ghosts she carried.

And somewhere in the corner, Kai sat on a crate, silent. He didn’t leave. Didn’t press her. He just stayed, watching her slowly unravel, as if his presence alone might hold the pieces together for one more night.

----

Silence pressed between them, thick and unrelenting. Kai lingered, his hands twitching like he wanted to reach for her but didn’t dare. Paedyn kept her eyes on the floor, on the cracks in the stone that felt safer than his steady gaze. Words burned on her tongue, but they withered before they could take shape.

She wished he’d stop looking at her like she was glass. She wasn’t fragile—she was fractured. A thousand sharp pieces shoved together to look whole.

Her body trembled with the effort of keeping it all contained. She forced her breath steady, but even that felt like a battle she was losing. The truth was, her grief wasn’t quiet. It screamed in her chest, clawing at her ribs, begging for release.

“Paedyn,” Kai tried again, softer this time. “You can’t keep carrying this alone.”

She wanted to laugh, but the sound never came. Instead, her chest constricted, and she shook her head. “I have to.”

The words rasped out, ragged and final. She had to because no one else understood. No one else had taken Adena’s brother from her. No one else had stolen something sacred before ever getting to know what it could have meant.

Her legs felt heavy, like the weight of it all was seeping into her bones. She sank down against the wall before she even realized she was moving. Her arms wrapped around her knees, her forehead pressed against them, and for the first time, she didn’t fight the weakness.

She didn’t cry. Not yet. The exhaustion was deeper than tears—it hollowed her out, drained her until even grief felt too heavy to hold. Her eyelids fluttered, betraying her, her body demanding rest when her mind begged for vigilance.

Kai crouched in front of her, hesitating. His shadow fell over her as if he could shield her from something he couldn’t even name.

“You’re burning yourself out,” he murmured, like saying it any louder might shatter her.

She didn’t answer. She couldn’t. The darkness was pulling at her, and this time she didn’t have the strength to resist.

Her body slumped sideways, exhaustion dragging her under at last. Her shoulder brushed against Kai’s arm as she collapsed into sleep—not trusting him, not seeking comfort, just giving up.

Kai caught her before she hit the stone, his jaw tightening. He didn’t move for a long moment, just held her in silence, as though the act of carrying her weight was the only thing he could do. And in her unconscious state, Paedyn looked… small. Too small for the grief she bore.