Chapter 63: Low and strange
Stefan’s POV
I grabbed the folded cloth and a smile broke across my face.
As I held it, I had my fingers running through it already. Rough on one side, worn soft on the other, the kind of wear that came from being handled often, not just stored away. I unfolded it and my eyes landed on a pair of shorts folded neatly inside it, the kind cut from thick hide, clearly meant for someone built for combat rather than court life.
I recognized the style instantly. It was the same kind of undergarment the lady had scrambled to find for me the previous day, when I’d begged her for anything to wear beneath that obscene see-through gown they’d tried to dress me in.
I hadn’t given it much thought when she came back with something clearly meant for a soldier, not a slave, something she shouldn’t have had easy access to at all.
That detail alone might’ve meant nothing. Servants borrowed things sometimes. People made do, improvised, scrounged.
But then my eyes caught the small towel folded beside it, half tucked under the shorts like she hadn’t wanted it seen easily, and everything sharpened at once.
There was a crest stitched into the corner of the fabric, faded from washing but unmistakable once you had seen it before. And I had seen it before, just a day ago, riding behind Belladonna on that ridiculous, magnificent horse of hers, staring at the exact same mark worked into the gold band at its neck. The one I’d stolen and burned in a fire out of spite and desperation, the one that had nearly gotten me executed twice over for its absence.
It was a warrior’s crest. Not just any warrior’s. A Bloomhold Flower’s.
I sat back on my heels, turning the towel over slowly in my hands, feeling the shape of the idea solidify before I even had all the words for it. A clan mark, this deep inside a lady-in-waiting’s modest little collection of belongings, tucked away like something private. Something sentimental.
"Dove," I said, not looking up yet, still turning the fabric over, "do the ladies-in-waiting have access to the Flowers’ belongings? Their personal items. Things like this."
Dove, still hovering near the doorway with her arms crossed, answered without hesitation, the way someone answers a question they’ve never once had reason to think twice about. "No. Unless they are clan sisters, and the Flower chooses to bestow something on them herself."
I looked up at her slowly, letting that settle where it needed to settle, watching her face for any flicker of realization that might beat me to the punchline.
"So," I said, standing now, brushing dust off my knees, "the missing lady-in-waiting. She’s a clan sister to one of the Flowers in the Bloomhold."
Dove’s expression didn’t change much, careful and composed as ever, but something in her stillness told me I had landed exactly where I was supposed to.
"Yes," she said, quieter than before.
I smiled, and this time I let it be as smug as it wanted to be.
The whole picture had clicked into place with a satisfying little snap, the kind I used to feel right before closing a con, right before watching some rich fool sign over exactly what I wanted with her own hand and a genuine smile still on her face. This wasn’t so different. Different stakes, different planet, same feeling settling warm in my chest.
"Take me to the Queen," I said.
Dove didn’t say anything in response. We walked out of the shared room together, back into the corridor, and she paused near the entrance to the courtyard, glancing up at the tall stone pillar standing at its center.
Shadows fell across its base at an angle I didn’t understand yet, some system of telling time I hadn’t bothered learning, carved with markings that meant nothing to me but clearly meant everything to her. She read it the way I’d read a clock face back home, quick and unthinking, a skill so ordinary to her she didn’t even seem aware she was using it.
"It’s mid-morning," she said. "The Queen will be in the court room. Busy."
I nodded, not bothering to ask what exactly kept a queen busy in a court room on a planet with no scrolls, no ledgers, nothing I recognized as bureaucracy. I pictured, briefly, some version of a boardroom with gold thrones instead of chairs, and decided I’d learn the actual shape of it eventually. For now, there were bigger fish.
"Then I’ll wait," I said. "Come find me when she’s free to see me."
"Yes," Dove said, and before I could add anything else, she was already turning, already walking briskly away, her steps quick and purposeful in a way that told me she was relieved to be done dealing with me for the moment, at least until the Queen summoned us both back into it.
"I don’t want to be around you either!"
I huffed out a breath, watching her go, then turned to head back toward the room I’d slept in the night before.
My stomach picked that exact moment to remind me, loudly, that I hadn’t eaten a single thing since waking up. I thought, with a pang of something close to grief, about the breakfasts I used to have back on earth. Fresh croissants, real coffee, some poor barista scrambling to get my order right before I’d even finished parking. Out here, breakfast meant whatever a slave could scrounge and roast, and I hadn’t even gotten that far yet today.
I decided instantly that I would change that and got myself some pampering in this palace from the ’Queen’s concern I was currently solving.’
I turned to walk back and immediately realized I had absolutely no idea where I was going.
The palace was enormous. Obscenely, unreasonably enormous, corridor after corridor of gold-plated walls that all looked identical once you weren’t being marched through them by someone who actually knew the layout.
Every archway looked like the last one. Every column was carved with the same looping pattern, gold vines twisting up toward ceilings so high they nearly disappeared into shadow.
I turned one corner, confident, certain I recognized the shape of it, and found another identical stretch of hallway waiting on the other side, mocking me with its sameness.
I turned another corner, muttering under my breath about how a civilization wealthy enough to gild every surface in sight hadn’t figured out something as basic as directional markers. A little paint. A carved symbol. Anything?
A slave hurried past me at one point, carrying an armful of folded linens, and didn’t so much as glance in my direction, too focused on wherever he was headed to spare a stray Alien a second look.
I considered stopping him to ask directions, then thought better of it. Getting lost with dignity intact felt marginally better than admitting out loud that I couldn’t find my way out of a hallway.
I kept walking anyway, figuring eventually I’d either recognize something or stumble into someone who could point me toward food, whichever came first.
Then I reached the mouth of one entrance, an open archway leading into some part of the palace I hadn’t seen yet, and a sound drifted out from beyond it, low and strange, catching against the quiet the way a wrong note catches against a melody.
My head whipped around toward it...