Chapter 15 – The Forbidden Fragments

  The First Scrap

  The basket came up heavier than usual, which was either a blessing or a problem. My money was on problem.

  I dragged it onto the sill, untied the cloth, and found the usual—bread with a crust mean enough to chip a tooth, two apples pretending they hadn’t been bruised within an inch of their lives—and then something that didn’t belong. A fold of parchment tucked flat as a guilty thought. The edges were singed. Spidery ink bled across it in a hand I didn’t recognize, lines cramped and urgent, half the bottom charred to lace.

  “Well,” I said to no one, because the tower preferred its comedy dry, “this looks legal.”

  I unfolded it with bandaged fingers. A spell, or the carcass of one: instructions strangled mid-sentence, syllables pinched where the fire had eaten through, diagrams reduced to ribs of black. Enough to tempt an idiot. I have never pretended not to be one.

  I leaned out over the slit of the window. Far below, Elayne looked up, hands still on the rope, face pale as bread dough, eyes too bright. “Are you trying to get us both executed?” I hissed. “Because if so, excellent start.”

  Her chin wobbled, but it didn’t drop. “Better executed than forgotten,” she whispered, and the words floated up like a dare. The wind tried to steal them; I caught them anyway.

  Saints and all their bad habits. I stared at her for the length of one heartbeat, two, then slid back inside and spread the parchment on my knee. The moonstone’s heat pulsed through the thin paper as if it recognized its own kind. The letters smelled like old smoke and candle grease, the kind of scent that gets under your nails and lives there.

  “Elayne,” I called down softly, because I could be cruel to anyone but her, “you do realize this is the sort of thing Mother dearest hides under locks and teeth, yes?”

  A breathless pause. “I do.” A longer one: “I watched where she kept them.”

  There it was—the tremor in my chest that wasn’t fear. Pride is an ugly, dangerous thing. It looks good on me.

  “Fine,” I said, and folded the parchment back along its burns, tucking it beneath my sleeve where the chain of my mother’s necklace lay warm. “If we’re courting treason, we might as well dance.”

  I hauled the empty basket down to her again—faster this time, because now the walls felt like they had ears and sharp opinions—and when the rope slipped into mist, I pressed my palm to the ruined text and let myself grin. A thin, sharp little thing. Not pretty. True.

  “Better executed than forgotten,” I murmured, and the tower, old gossip that it is, kept the secret. For now.

  The Princess’s Delight

  The parchment sat across my lap like contraband, edges curling from old fire. I smoothed it flat with my scarred palms, ignoring the sting. Words leapt up at me in their fractured, ugly glory, half of them ruined beyond sense, the rest sharp enough to draw blood if I looked too closely.

  It was nonsense in places: syllables cut mid-breath, diagrams missing limbs like broken puppets. And still—I drank them in as if the words themselves were wine, heady and forbidden. My pulse quickened with each jagged line, each whisper of meaning half-torn from the page.

  “Finally,” I muttered, lips twitching, “something worth more than moldy bread.”

  I traced a rune that had survived the flames, black ink flaring faintly where my finger passed. My grin sharpened. Dangerous, delightful nonsense. Like all the best things in my life.

  Elayne’s defiant whisper still echoed in my skull: Better executed than forgotten. Brave little dove, dangling scraps of death above my window. She thought she was feeding me apples; she didn’t realize she’d just fed me fire.

  The tower’s stones seemed to lean closer, humming faint approval as if they, too, were thirsty for the words. My necklace pulsed against my collarbone, a steady beat in time with the symbols. Not warning, not protection—agreement.

  I laughed, low and sharp, the kind of sound that cuts. “So this is how it begins. With scraps. With leftovers. With the bones of someone else’s spellbook.”

  I folded the page carefully, as though it were holy, and slid it beneath the broken floorboard that had become my treasury. My hands trembled—not from fear, but from hunger that bread could never touch.

  I leaned back against the cold wall, tilting my head up to the runes barely flickering above. “Take note, old stones. This is the first bite. I’ll eat the rest of the world before I’m done.”

  The tower whispered back, a faint rustle in the silence, like parchment sighing. And I smiled, because we both knew—I meant it.

  The Growing Supply

  The basket no longer carried only bread. Some mornings it brought paper—crumbled, singed, ink bleeding into stains where candle flame had licked the edges. Other mornings it carried maps folded so small they looked like talismans, smudged with wax and soot. Once, Elayne sent up a scroll fragment still smelling of smoke, half the words ghosting into nothing.

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  I began hoarding them beneath a loose floorboard near the ruined hearth. My own little treasury, tucked away where no one but I—and perhaps the tower—would know. “A princess’s kingdom,” I muttered one night, lips curling, “built on crumbs and leftovers. What grandeur.”

  But I laid them out anyway, carefully, reverently, like relics. Torn pages with scribbled marginalia, maps stitched with tiny sigils, diagrams of symbols I half-recognized from the walls. Each one slotted into place like a jagged piece of a puzzle I had no picture for. And yet, the more scraps I collected, the more my hunger sharpened.

  Sometimes Elayne’s hand trembled when she passed them to me, knuckles white on the rope, eyes darting toward the forest as though shadows might leap out and swallow her. She never said where they came from, but I knew. Her mother’s study, the queen’s forbidden chambers—places where knowledge and death slept side by side. My little sister was stealing from the serpent’s nest, and each scrap she delivered was another fang broken loose.

  I whispered down once, with a grin that was all teeth: “Keep this up, dove, and I’ll have to knight you. Sir Elayne, smuggler of scraps.” She flushed and nearly dropped the basket, but the glimmer of pride in her eyes was worth the jest.

  At night I spread the fragments around me, the way some girls laid out silks or jewels. My silks were ink-stained. My jewels were words half-burned. The runes carved into the walls flickered when I touched the scraps, as though recognizing the old master’s voice in them. My necklace pulsed hot against my throat, echoing that strange acknowledgment.

  I laughed, sharp and bitter, the sound bouncing off stone. “Look at me—queen of trash, empress of ash. My kingdom begins with dust, and it will end with fire.”

  The floorboards creaked beneath me, the tower humming faintly as if amused. And I smiled back, teeth bared, because I meant every word.

  The Sister’s Courage

  Elayne’s whisper came strained one night, her voice snagging on the dark. “I shouldn’t tell you… but you’ll ask anyway.” Her hazel eyes flickered nervously upward as the rope strained under the basket’s weight. I leaned on the sill, scars on my palms glowing faintly in the moonlight, and arched a brow. “Well? Out with it. You’ve already risked execution just to bring me stale bread and bedtime stories. What’s one more secret?”

  She swallowed, then blurted it out like a confession: “I take them from her study.”

  For a moment, I stilled. The queen’s study. The viper’s nest itself. My little sister, sneaking through its doors like a shadow. “You’re stealing,” I said softly, rolling the word on my tongue like wine. “From her. With her watching. And somehow you still have a heartbeat.”

  Elayne flinched at my sharpness, but she didn’t look away. Her fingers twisted in the rope until her knuckles went white. “If you’re to survive, you’ll need more than bread,” she said, voice breaking, “and I… I can’t just let you vanish here. Not you.”

  Something hot curled through my chest, sharp as pride, sharp as fear. I smirked, leaning forward until the torchlight gilded my smile with malice. “Remind me to crown you when I take the throne. Sir Elayne, patron saint of idiocy and bravery.”

  Her breath caught; she looked half like she wanted to laugh, half like she might cry. But pride—real, dangerous pride—smoldered in her eyes before she ducked her head.

  I curled my fingers tighter around the parchment she had given me that night, the ink smudged, the words crooked. A fragment of power stolen from the very witch who caged me. And my little sister—the girl too small, too nervous, too fragile—was the thief bold enough to hand it to me.

  “Careful, dove,” I whispered down, my grin barbed but my throat tight. “If you keep this up, one day you’ll be more dangerous than me.”

  The tower hummed in the silence that followed, as though it agreed.

  Knowledge as Power

  The scraps were nonsense at first—half a charm here, a single word scrawled sideways there, diagrams that looked like drunken spiderwebs. But I spread them across the stone floor anyway, smoothing each one flat with the same care another girl might use to fold silk. My little hoard of tatters and lies.

  “Brilliant,” I muttered, circling one page that showed a rune I’d seen carved into the tower wall. “Half a map to nowhere. Let’s see if nowhere lights on fire.”

  I copied the mark with chalk, my fingers already blistered from earlier trials. When I whispered the syllables scratched in the margin, the rune flickered—then fizzled, leaving behind a curl of black smoke that smelled of burned hair. I coughed, waving it away. “Excellent. I’ve mastered the art of setting the air on fire. The world trembles.”

  Failure after failure. Scraps that refused to fit together. Scroll fragments that mocked me with broken promises. And still I kept at it. I tested one symbol on the floor, another on the wall, cross-referenced two fragments that looked like they’d once been neighbors before someone ripped them apart. A rune finally flared faintly, lines glowing as if alive. The light lasted a single heartbeat before vanishing, but it left a scorch mark in the stone.

  I leaned back, lips curling despite myself. “So I haven’t blown myself up yet. Truly, progress.”

  I tucked the scraps beneath a loose floorboard in the corner of the chamber, crouching low like a dragon over its hoard. Not much to look at—burned edges, smudged ink, stains from someone’s careless candle—but they were mine. Mine to puzzle over, mine to fail with, mine to shape into something more.

  The tower’s runes pulsed faintly as I hid them away, as though amused. Watching. Always watching.

  “Well?” I hissed up at the walls, scarred hands pressed flat to the boards. “Are you laughing at me too?”

  The glow sharpened once, quick and sly, and I laughed back—low, bitter, but real. “Good. Then we’ll laugh together. And when the time comes, we’ll burn her kingdom with nothing but scraps.”

  The Whisper of Ambition

  At night, when the tower’s whispers went quiet and even the stars seemed to hold their breath, I laid my scraps across the floor like relics. Torn parchment, soot-stained scrolls, a map with ink bleeding into the shape of rivers. My treasure, my altar, my proof.

  The necklace gleamed faintly in the dark as I leaned over them, tracing each line with calloused fingers. Words I barely understood throbbed beneath my skin, half-magic and half-lie. “Look at me,” I whispered to the silent tower. “Your little exile, your forgotten princess, building an empire out of trash.”

  The runes etched into the walls flickered faintly, as if amused. Or approving. I couldn’t tell which, and maybe that was the point.

  I spread one page flat, the ink smeared by someone else’s careless hand centuries ago. Still, the bones of the spell remained. I mouthed the words silently, savoring the weight of them. Dangerous syllables that could crack if spoken wrong. My lips curled. “Better than lullabies.”

  I pressed my palms against the cold stone, parchment scraps fluttering in the draft. My voice dropped to a hiss meant for no one but the walls. “Do you see? I’m not just surviving. I’m building. Every scrap is mine, every word I steal is another nail in her coffin.”

  The tower’s glow sharpened once, quick and sharp, like a smirk carved into stone.

  I grinned back into the dark, teeth bared. “One day, I’ll burn her whole kingdom with nothing but stolen scraps.”

  The words hung in the air like a curse, like a promise, like a prophecy already written. And as the runes flared and dimmed, I could have sworn the tower was laughing with me.