The cellar held the cold like a secret, stone walls weeping condensation in the lamplight. Fran descended the narrow steps carefully, her boots finding purchase on stones worn smooth by decades of servants fetching wine for better occasions than this. The air was thick with the scent of old oak and fermenting grapes, but underneath it—something sharper. Something that tasted of salt and desperation.

  She found Nyvara sprawled against the far wall like a discarded doll, legs splayed in a tangle of silk and mud-stained hem. One boot was missing entirely, the other half-unlaced and hanging loose from her foot. Her hair had escaped its careful arrangement hours ago, dark waves tumbling over shoulders that shook with each ragged breath.

  The bottle in her hand was expensive—Fran recognized the vintage from her uncle's collection, something that should have been savored by candlelight, not gulped like medicine in a cellar. Wine stained the front of Nyvara's gown, a spreading dark bloom across pale blue silk that had probably cost more than most families saw in a year.

  Nyvara didn't look up when Fran's footsteps echoed on the stones. She was staring at something in the middle distance, her free hand tracing absent patterns in the dirt beside her hip.

  “We're doomed, you know?” The words came out thick, slurred at the edges but sharp enough to cut.

  Fran paused at the bottom of the steps, her hand still resting on the stone banister. “What do you mean?”

  Nyvara tilted the bottle, watching the golden liquid catch the light. “Seventeen years and three days ago.” She spoke like she was reciting scripture, each word carefully measured despite the wine. “He's been dead longer than he was alive. Stupid boy.”

  The silence stretched between them, broken only by the distant drip of water somewhere in the darkness. Fran felt understanding creep up her spine like ice water. Prince Raemond. The fifth of his name. Dead at sixteen during what should have been a simple hunting party.

  “Ray...” Nyvara's voice cracked on the single syllable, then steadied with visible effort. “He was a fool. And the sweetest boy you could ever meet. I adored him.”

  She brought the bottle to her lips—not a sip, but a deliberate swallow that made her throat work. Wine dribbled down her chin, and she wiped it away with the back of her hand, smearing the carefully applied kohl around her eyes.

  “He died in a clearing just outside your perfect little fairy-tale village. Mauled by a beast he had no business chasing.” Another drink, longer this time. Her hand was shaking now, barely perceptible tremors that made the bottle clink against her teeth. “And Father? He never speaks his name. Never did. Just looked at us and saw empty wombs.”

  Nyvara's laugh was like breaking glass—sharp and dangerous and utterly wrong in the quiet cellar.

  “Ordered us to marry. Told us to breed the next heir. Didn't matter who. Just as long as someone shoved a crown onto a cock." She gestured vaguely with the bottle, wine sloshing. "Aeryne tried. Still is. All girls. Useless cunts, apparently, when what the kingdom needs is a proper set of balls. As if a pair of swinging bollocks made anyone fit to rule.”

  Fran remained perfectly still, her face carefully neutral. But her hands had tightened at her sides, nails biting into her palms hard enough to leave marks.

  “I almost saved them, you know?” Nyvara's voice dropped to something that might have been tender if it hadn't been so broken. “Twice. Two sons. Born too early. Didn't even get to scream.”

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  She closed her eyes, head falling back against the stone wall with a dull thud that made Fran wince.

  “I don't remember their faces. Or their names. No one ever spoke them aloud. Because they didn't matter.” Her voice shattered completely on the last word, raw and scraping like a blade on stone. She rubbed tears from her cheeks with the back of her hand, leaving streaks of kohl across her temples like war paint.

  “Then my husband dies. And I'm back where I started. Useless. Unwanted. A name on parchment. A womb to be priced.” The bottle was nearly empty now, and she drained what remained in one practiced motion that spoke of too much experience with drowning sorrows. “Unless I give this fucking kingdom a fucking baby boy.”

  She let the empty bottle roll away into the darkness, where it clinked once against stone and went silent.

  “We're cursed. Damned. Paying for sins we didn't commit.”

  Something cold settled in Fran's chest—not pity, exactly, but recognition. The understanding that came from seeing your own trapped reflection in someone else's eyes.

  Nyvara looked at her then, and there was something wild in her gaze. Something hungry and desperate and utterly reckless. Her eyes swept over Fran's face with an intensity that felt like being catalogued, mapped, memorized.

  “It would've been easier if you'd been born a man,” she said, and the words came out like an accusation. Like a prayer. Like a curse. “If you had a fucking cock between those legs.”

  Fran's face didn't change, but something flickered behind her eyes—surprise, maybe, or recognition of something she'd tried not to see.

  “You're an Elarion. Your family ruled empires before the Crown learned how to count its fucking coins.” Nyvara pushed herself forward, closer, her voice gaining strength as it gained venom. “Your uncle? He was a king. No title, no coronation—but the only true ruler this kingdom ever had.”

  The words rang in the shadows like struck bells, bitter and precise and echoing with the weight of old truths.

  “And you—you could've claimed the throne. Gods, your name alone would've been enough.” Nyvara's voice dropped to something almost intimate, almost pleading. “And I'd have stood beside you. Queen to your crown. I'd have opened my legs for the cause. An army of sons. The kingdom saved by one good fuck and a bloodline that mattered.”

  Fran's jaw tightened, but she didn't speak. Didn't move. Didn't give Nyvara the reaction she was clearly seeking.

  “But no.” The word came out like a whip crack. Nyvara struggled to her feet, swaying dangerously before catching herself against the wall. “Destiny gives us Alric's heir, and surprise—another useless woman. No cock. No heirs. Just hope in a dress.”

  She took a step toward Fran, then another, until they were close enough that Fran could smell the wine on her breath, could see the desperation naked in her eyes.

  “We're fucked. Velmora's fucked.” Nyvara's voice broke again, but this time there was something else in it. Something that sounded almost like longing. “I saw the table upstairs. Saw your little domestic paradise. Two places set for dinner. Candles burned down to nothing. Very cosy.”

  The words hit like a physical blow. Fran's carefully maintained composure cracked, just for a moment, but it was enough. Nyvara saw it and smiled—sharp and bitter and utterly without humor.

  “Did you think I came here just to drink your wine and cry about my dead brother?” She laughed, but it sounded more like sobbing. “I came here because I thought—” She caught herself. Shook her head like she could throw the thought away. “Doesn't matter. I was wrong. Again.”

  She turned away, stumbling slightly. “I'm tired of you. And your lapdog. And your haunted manor full of memories that don't bleed anymore. I'll be gone before the hour strikes noon. No need to endure my presence a moment longer. Farewell, Elarion.”

  Nyvara began climbing the stairs, her steps uncertain but determined. Halfway up, she started singing—loudly and badly, a half-remembered tavern song about a sailor with three wives and no teeth. Her voice cracked on the high notes, but she kept going anyway, as if the song were the only thing keeping her upright.

  Fran remained in the cellar long after the singing faded, long after the distant creak of doors and the crunch of gravel announced Nyvara’s departure. She stood among the wine casks and the lingering scent of expensive perfume and cheaper desperation, trying to parse the tangle of accusations, confessions, and half-spoken truths that had just shattered the careful quiet of her home.

  Somewhere above, the clock in the hall struck noon.

  And Princess Nyvara was gone.