Page 73 of Unravelled
“You’re earlier than I expected,” Perrin remarked, though her tone held no annoyance, only surprise.
“Nerra cleaned up for me.” Mira said simply.
Perrin studied her for a moment, then nodded to herself and returned to scribbling something into a ledger.
“Good. The gardens need attention.” Mira blinked.
“The gardens?”
“Specifically the reflecting pool,” Perrin clarified, not looking up. “The leaves are clogging the stone beds, and the water’s begun to scum over.”
Mira nodded. “I understand.”
“Good,” Perrin murmured, already moving on to the next line of script. “Take the gloves from the lower hooks. And Mira.” She paused, finally lifting her eyes. “Don’t rush.”
Mira nodded her head, then turned toward the door. The stone hallway felt cooler somehow, the weight of the morning settling around her shoulders like the memory of velvet. And outside, the light continued to rise.
???
Mira’s hands had been wrist-deep in the cold waters all day. The last water-lilies of the season brushed her fingers, fragile as breath, as she trimmed back into the overgrowth. Silverleaf vines coiled like serpents across the shallows, their roots tangling in the stone beds. The day had been crisp with a hint of autumn’s chill, but as the sun began to set, its last rays still gently warmed her neck and the backs of her hands. The air smelled of damp leaves and mint, the sweet decline of fading summer buried beneath it. She moved methodically, letting the sounds of the palace stir around her, boots scuffing stone, the soft clatter of buckets, voices rising and falling in the rhythm of routine. It was the background. Noise she had long since learned to ignore. Until a name cleaved through it.
“Hallen…” someone whispered.
Mira froze. Her fingers curled involuntarily around a lily, crushing the petals. White bruised into pink. The bloom floated free in the rippling surface, a small, broken thing drifting on the water.
“The Kharador’s came in the night,” said Harwen, voice hushed and frayed, as though speaking it too loud might summon the same fate. Her sleeves were pushed to her elbows, arms dusted with flour. “Fires. Screams. The whole town’s gone.”Mira didn’t move.
“They slipped through like smoke,” Garrick added, stooping beside a cart of mulch, his gnarled hands stained with earth. “No alarm. No warning. Just... gone.”
The name thudded in Mira’s chest again, and this time it dragged something with it. A memory. The Festival of the Final Sun. Velvet and wine and laughter sharp as crystal. She hadn’t paid attention. A noble’s bored murmur. Her mind twisted around the edges of the memory, fingers searching for the seams.
A whisper, half-drowned by music and clinking glasses. Someone had mentioned the Hollow, offhand, careless. She couldn’t place the voice, not clearly, but it had been male. Sharp. Familiar. A laugh edged in cruelty. She felt the cold of realization crawling up her spine. If someone had fed the Kharador information, if someone had marked Hallen’s Reach for ruin, then it had come from within the palace. She stood, water dripping from her hands, her breath shallow.
She moved fast, weaving between the hedgerows and garden walls, her damp hands leaving ghostly prints on sun-warmed stone. Her pulse beat too loud. She reached the palace doors just as a pair of guards passed her, but neither stopped her. The cold marble of the hallway hit her like a slap. She paused, just for a breath.
She should warn someone. Ren flickered at the edge of her thoughts. A gnawing unease settled. Ren, who stood at council tables. Voice calm, eyes sharper than steel. Ren, who had always asked the right questions. The kind that left no doubt. The kind that carved the truth out of silence. But what if that wasn’t all he carved? A Regent bore the weight of choices that protected the many not the few.
Her breath snagged in her throat as the thought formed fully. What if Hallen hadn’t fallen? What if it had strategically unprotected? Mira rushed through the halls, the cold marble under her feet echoing the drumbeat of her heart. Past the carved pillars, past the tapestries, past the whispers that clung to the edges of the halls like smoke.
Brahn had told her to speak to Dren, the Kharador officer. He’d told her what to wear. What to say. Tell him we’ll be in the Harrow’s Hollow. Harrows Hollow, the nearest trade route to Hallen. Her mouth went dry.
Not they. We. Mira stopped short in the middle of the corridor. She hadn’t given Dren a lie, she hadn’t fed him misdirection. She’d confirmed a plan. Brahn’s plan. He hadn’t needed to tell her more. He’d counted on her not to ask. On her loyalty. On her belief in him. He’d used her voice like a knife, her body like a lure. Dren had taken the bait, and Mira had smiled while he swallowed it.
And Hallen had burned. She gripped the edge of a stone archway, fingers digging into the carved sigils like they could anchor her to this moment, to this realization that bloomed sharp and hot behind her ribs.
Brahn had set her up.
19
Mira found Brahn in the kitchens, past the quiet corridor where the scent of morning bread and spice masked tension better than any soldier’s steel. He was already speaking low to a pair of cloaked couriers. Sharp-eyed men who blended into stone and shadow too easily. One accepted a scroll, nodded once, and slipped through the side door. The other moved past her without a word.
Brahn looked up when he saw her. Not surprised. Not cautious. Just calm. As if he had expected her.
“You heard,” he said simply. Mira nodded, her face carefully composed.
“Harrow’s Hollow.” Her voice held just the right amount of shaken, just the right breathlessness.
Brahn nodded once, sleeves rolled to the elbow, forearms dusted with flour. “We’ve already sent people. Quiet ones. They’ll move the survivors. Shelter beyond the river.” He didn’t look up from the dough he was folding. “Kharador hit harder than expected. But they didn’t stay. Just swept through.”
