Prologue:

A pawn that reaches the other side...

This was the only thing I could think when I woke on the lake shore, lungs sore from the water they still held.

I had tried to drown myself.

Even death evades me when I wish for it.

The air burned as I coughed up the last remnants of the lake. My chest spasmed. My ribs held me prisoner. My throat abraded as I struggled to draw breath. The water held onto me, cold and heavy.

My body shook as I tried to sit up. The world tilted as my vision danced. The dark trees along the bank swayed in a rhythmless cadence that made my stomach lurch. Damp strands of hair clung to my face, their weight foreign and unfamiliar. When I brushed them aside, my hand paused. 

The strands were black.

Not gold.

Not the color I had known all my life.

I forced my breath to steady, but each one came sharp. The fog hung low across the lake, wrapping the water in a pale blanket. Beyond it, the chorus of crows pierced the silence. Their cries answered one another in waves as though to mock my failure. 

I stared at my reflection in the still water. Gray eyes. Empty and cold. I barely recognized the face. Not because of the color, but because it's not the same.

Not the same face I had seen in my last reflection, now forever ago. 

A pawn...

The girl who stepped into the lake had been softer. Idealistic, maybe. 

She had still believed, in some secret part of herself, that if she did everything right—if she had obeyed, and endured, played the part written for her tile by tile—there might be room for something like a future. For something like a family—or a promise to be honored.

I was wrong. 

I see that only now. 

The past folds itself around my throat. Fragments of memories press behind my eyes, like shattered glass.

I remembered the library, as it once was. The hope of a foolish girl who didn't know that it was never a game. I remembered the vows not spoken—but sold through contract.  I remembered the dove, and its fragile, trusting weight in my hands. 

Nothing but a token for someone else's ambition.

Another lesson surfaces: "Checkmate, is often reserved for those with the courage to sacrifice."

He had spoken those words so easily back then. As if life and loss were pieces on a board.

He was right.

I ignored the shivers that coursed through me, drawing my knees to my chest. The fabric of my dress plastered to my skin, heavy and soaked. My breathing slowed as I pressed my forehead to my knees.

Even here, alone, my thoughts distract me from grief.

The crows screamed again, even sharper. Closer.

A cold wind swept across the lake's surface, rippling the obsidian-smooth water into distorted shapes that mocked my visage. I watched my reflection contort with the waves, twisting and compressing, falling and lifting. My gaze rose with the water, up into the shifting fog. 

And then—movement.

The mist parted, almost gently, and through its wall I saw them.

Green eyes. Watching without pause.

I did not move. My trembling breath betrayed my thoughts.

No longer will I be the pawn.

A mouth curled into a cruel smile, under the ever-watching eyes.

I steeled myself.

Chapter 1

Windsor Manor—5 Years Earlier

The library breathes differently than the rest of the Manor.

But here—I am me.

The air smells of old wood and parchment. Dust hangs in the beams of colored light that filter through the stained-glass dome overhead, fractured into thin ribbons that cross the long tables like pieces on a game board. The sun is still low, barely cresting the southern towers.

My home within a home.

I sit in my usual place: second alcove from the door. The table is wide, polished to a dull shine, scarred faintly by decades of scholars before me. 

The blueprint sprawled before me struggles to hold itself flat, the edges curling stubbornly. My elbows press down the bottommost edge, the soft cotton of my sleeve bunching under the pressure. I can feel my pulse faintly in my forearm.

A trebuchet. 

Not the crude ones that rely on ropes twisted in agony like some captured animal, but a proper counterweight design. Elegant. Predictable. The way the earth yields to gravity every time, without variance, without compromise.

The world outside does not work like this.

My eyes follow the arc sketched in faint black ink. A perfect curve, rising and falling in a graceful parabolic sweep. The force diagram rests to one side: mass, distance, angle, acceleration, release point... all accounted for. 

I slowly trace the line with my fingertip, as if touching something alive. In a way, I am. There is life here, predictable motion captured in beautiful stillness.

Sixty degrees. Slightly steeper than most might assume optimal. But the math doesn't lie. 

"Sixty."

At this angle, the weight transfers fully into the arm's acceleration, maximizing the projectile's arc, allowing for greater range—provided, of course, the sling releases at the right moment.

The word vanishes into silence.

Another faint curl along the bottom irritates me for pulling my attention. 

I smooth it flat with my palm, feeling the coarse texture of the heavy vellum beneath my fingers. I can see slight ridges where the ink thickens.

The scribe pressed too hard. 

Even in design so precise, the human hand leaves the small imperfections. 

A siege engine functions precisely as guided. The trebuchet does not protest the material of its make. A battery officer does not blame the engine for the missed placement of a projectile.

One might argue a matter of maintenance, but even that is at no fault of the subject. 

Always the small imperfections.

Yet here, in these margins, the flaws are different.

Errors of mark or material I can tolerate. Those are honest flaws. Not like the errors of people. Not like the things they say. The way they laugh when they think I'm not listening. The way they speak as if I do not understand. 

But I do. I always do.

Beyond the tall windows, faint voices rise and fall. 

Outside these walls, everything expects something of me. The servants with their lowered gazes, waiting for orders I never give. The stewards and tutors who measure my progress against his invisible expectations. 

His silent glances—always appraising—but void of praise. The empty corridors, filled with echoes of conversations that are not mine to enter.

I know how it will be someday. Polite greetings, eyes that skip me in favor of whomever I am married to. The men will speak of their exaggerated heroics and of their horses. Of their duels and of the violence they were taught to romanticize. 

The women will whisper about dresses and engagements and gossip that has nothing to do with themselves. No one will speak of fulcrums or torsion stress or yield thresholds. 

And when I try, their smiles will stiffen. Their eyes will flicker elsewhere. 

Not my station.

But that is then, and here is now.

Here, there are no variables I cannot account for. 

I copy a formula into my notebook, careful to keep my script clear and even, careful to not press too hard, nor too soft. The graphite slides across the page without hesitation. Each symbol in its rightful place. Each calculation building toward something more.

Here, I am certain.

A lock of my hair falls across my eyes, the pale blonde strands catching the colored light and glowing faintly in the morning light. I brush it back behind my ear, annoyed at its distraction. It's grown too long again. I'll need to ask the maid to trim it soon. 

I likely won't. 

She'll ask questions I don't want to answer, or worse, compliment how pretty it's gotten.

Pretty.

What a useless word.

I am not here to be pretty, though it seems that is precisely the station I was born to. 

My fingers linger at my temple as I glance once more at the mechanism's release point. There's still a minor inefficiency in the sling length: The pendulum arc could be slightly smoother if weighted with distributed mass along the arm rather than concentrated at the tip. 

I scribbled the revision quickly into the margin. 

Another laugh echoes from the hallways beyond, breaking my focus again. I exhale sharply.

They'll never care about any of this.

Their world is titles and inheritance. Mine is torque and velocity.

And yet, I still wish they would see me.

Not praise, exactly. Not the empty words of courtly approval, but acknowledgement. The simple recognition that I am not some glass doll placed in the library to keep quiet.

I want them to see me.

The thought clings like the rain stains on the library windows

The morning bell from the manor's central tower chimes the hours. Its deep, sonorous toll vibrates faintly through the marble floor beneath my feet.

I do not move.

No one is waiting for me. No one will notice if I remain here all day.

Perhaps, in time, I will simply vanish into the pages. A name etched in the margins of someone else's ledger, as forgotten as the scribes who copied these blueprints before me.

I shift my gaze upward toward the stained glass dome. The sun has risen higher now, sending sharp beams of colored light across the alcoves. Gold, green, and purple shift like floating banners across the stone walls. The beams reach the edge of my desk but never quite touch me.

I wonder if they avoid me on purpose.

It feels appropriate.

I close my notebook softly and rest my hands atop it, fingertips aligning perfectly along the cover's edge.

Order. That's all I want. The comfort of knowing where everything belongs. 

Even me.

But the world is not kind to those who think like this.

The parchment curls again. 

I press it flat. 

The door hinges whispered behind me. Not loud enough to startle, but present enough to fracture the stillness. I knew who it was before he spoke.

"Lady Speer."

The steward's voice was silk stretched thin over formality. Polite and measured. I let my hand remain on the blueprint a moment longer before raising my gaze. 

He stood by the threshold, posture as straight as the hall's carved pillars. His uniform held the Windsor crest: a golden falcon upon white, but without the flare of nobility. 

"Good morning, Ser Diener," I offered.

He glanced briefly toward the table, eyes flickering over the array of notes, calculations, and the wide blueprint that still resisted my efforts to keep it flat. A small, almost invisible smile pressed at the corner of his mouth. Not unkind, more... amused.

"I came to ensure all was well, Lady Speer. The late-morning bell has rung." His words paused at the edges, inviting response. "You've missed breakfast, m'Lady."

I took a small breath. "I apologize, Ser. I… got distracted..."

"Of course," he said with the tone adults use when speaking to children. 

"Your father asked after you."

I kept my expression composed. I shifted slightly in my chair, folding my hands atop my closed notebook, as though arranging a defensive line of soldiers across my chest. My tone remained gentle. "Please give him my apologies, Ser."

"I shall, m'Lady."

His eyes wandered back to the blueprint, this time allowing themselves a few seconds of true study. The trebuchet's arching release curve cut clean across the vellum like a falcon striking its prey midflight. His eyebrow twitched as he saw my annotations that filled its margins.

"You've a curious interest for a girl your age."

I didn't answer right away.

The air between us softened, but only slightly. He hadn't meant it cruelly. Just the statement. Observational. Honest, in its way, but still a reminder. 

"You've a curious interest in my interests, Ser." I said, with a slight curl on my lips.

Diener's head inclined. 

"A poetic answer, m'Lady."

His eyes lingered for another moment before withdrawing politely. "Shall I inform the kitchen to prepare a plate, should you feel hungry later?"

"No. Thank you, Ser."

"As you wish."

With a small bow, he turned toward the door and pushed against it. 

The heavy oak didn't move. 

"It pulls." I said flatly after a brief pause, not moving from my seat.

"Naturally." Diener whispered, pulling the iron handle with smooth correction. "Thank you, m'Lady."

The door closed shut behind him, restoring the library's breathless quiet.

You've a curious interest for a girl your age.

I turned back to the blueprint, but my focus wavered now, the formula's certainty dulled by the reminder. 

Not because I disagreed. I knew I was different. 

Because I had hoped, perhaps, they would stop noticing.