The Iron Queen

The Girl Who Remembered Everything

Time did not pass in St. Bartholomew's; it accumulated. Layer upon layer, like dust no one bothered to wipe away.

Years settled quietly on Prisca Collen, but they did not soften her. They refined her. Filed her down into something sharper, more deliberate. At fifteen, she moved through the home like a shadow that had learned the shape of every wall.

She spoke when required, she listened always, and she remembered everything.

It unsettled them. The matrons could never quite name why. Sister Agnes, especially, watched her with measured patience that felt less like supervision and more like calculation.

“Some girls grow out of silence,” she said once, during a lesson on proper conduct.

Prisca stood by the window, hands folded behind her back.

“And some,” Sister Agnes continued, “hide inside it.”

Prisca turned her head slightly. “Some people mistake silence for hiding,” she said.

A subtle and dangerous pause followed.

Sister Agnes smiled. But again, it did not reach her eyes.

***********

Memory was not a gift. It was a burden that refused to go away.

Prisca could recall her father’s last look with painful clarity, the way his expression had flickered between love and something heavier, something resigned. She remembered the tone of her mother’s voice, the exact tremor that entered it when fear broke through her composure.

And finally, she remembered every version of the story that came after.

“They were involved,” one police officer had said, not unkindly, as though explaining something inevitable. “Things got… complicated.”

“They were targeted,” another claimed months later, lowering his voice as if the walls might listen. “Wrong place, wrong time.”

A third, older and less careful, had leaned back in his chair and muttered, “Your father knew too much.”

Three stories. Three truths. And none of them was the same.

Prisca did not argue. She simply added each contradiction to the growing ledger in her mind.

*******

Pantaleone Haskew’s name surfaced often. Never loudly and never carelessly, but always with a certain tension.

‘Little Caesar.’

The man who funded the home. The man whose portrait hung in the main hall, framed in gold, his smile wide and benevolent. His hand rested on a child's shoulder in the photograph, a staged gesture of protection.

The first time Prisca stood before it, she had felt something crawl beneath her skin.

The smile was unnatural. It was too precise and practised.

“Be grateful,” one of the younger girls had whispered beside her. “Without him, we would not be here.”

Prisca had said nothing because she understood something even then: Being kept alive and being kept safe were not the same thing.

************

Mara came like a question. Not loud. Not dramatic. Just… present.

She was older than most of the girls who came through, already thirteen when she was brought in. Too observant for comfort. Too quick to read a room and adjust accordingly.

The others kept their distance at first, but Prisca did not.

They noticed each other before they spoke. Across a dining table. In the corridor. During lessons.

Two silences recognising one another. It was Mara who broke it.

“You do not react,” she said one evening, sitting opposite Prisca as the others drifted toward their routines.

Prisca continued eating.

“Most people do,” Mara added. “Even when they try not to.”

Prisca glanced up. “And you?” she asked.

Mara smiled faintly. “I react,” she said. “I just choose when.”

Something changed then, not yet trust, but something close to alignment.

Their friendship grew in the spaces no one watched closely.

Late evenings. Quiet corners. Conversations carried on in low voices that blended with the hum of the building.

Mara had a way of speaking that felt like stepping carefully through a room filled with glass.

“You are collecting things,” she said once, watching Prisca with unsettling precision.

Prisca paused.

“What things?” she asked.

“Details. Patterns. People.” Prisca replied.

Mara leaned back, her expression thoughtful. “You don’t forget anything.”

It was not a question, and Prisca did not deny it.

“Why?” Mara asked.

Prisca considered the word. Then she said, “Because someone expects me to.”

Mara’s gaze sharpened. “That is not an answer.”

“It is the only one that matters,” Prisca said.

A silence followed. Not an uncomfortable one, but just… full.

“You are waiting,” Mara said finally.

“For what?” Prisca asked.

“For something that has not happened yet,” Mara replied.

Prisca held her gaze. “Yes,” she said.

Mara exhaled slowly. “Good,” she murmured. “Because so am I.”

*************

Together, they began to notice more, or perhaps they simply stopped pretending not to.

The donors came and went with the same polished ease, but patterns emerged.

Certain men returned more frequently. Certain names appeared in the visitor logs when the logs were allowed to exist at all.

Mara had a talent for conversation. She could coax information out of people without them realising they were giving it.

Prisca had a talent for listening. She caught what others missed.

Between them, the home began to reveal its cracks.

“There is a gap,” Mara whispered one night, pointing to a page in a ledger she had managed to glimpse. “Three names missing from last month.”

“They were not adopted,” Prisca said.

“No,” Mara said.

“They were taken,” Prisca said.

Mara nodded. “Same as before.”

There was a brief pause, then Prisca said, “Same as always.”

The words hung between them. Unspoken but understood: No one leaves this place without a reason.

And the reasons are never what they claim to be.

***********

The rumours followed Prisca beyond the walls. Whispers in passing conversations when the girls were taken into the city. Fragments of stories overheard in markets, in passing remarks, in careless exchanges between strangers.

“Collen,” someone said once. “That name sounds familiar.”

“Military, wasn’t he?”

“Corrupt, from what I heard.”

“No… opposite. Clean. Too clean.”

“Does not matter now, does it?”

A dismissive and irrelevant laughter then followed.

Prisca stood still as the voices faded. Her father existed now only in contradiction. Her mother barely existed at all.

Alessia Collen had been reduced to a footnote. A casualty. A name spoken only in relation to something else.

Prisca closed her eyes briefly, and in the darkness behind them, she held onto what remained.

A hand brushing her hair back from her face. A voice humming softly in the kitchen. A warmth that no version of the world outside could erase.

They could rewrite the story. They could bury the truth. But they could not take what she remembered.

*********************

“Careful,” Mara warned her one afternoon, as they stood near the back garden.

Prisca did not look at her. “I am careful.”

“Not enough,” Mara said quietly. “You are starting to look at people like you already know something they don’t want you to.”

Prisca considered that. “Maybe I do.”

“That is not the point.” Mara turned to face her fully. “The point is they might start to notice.”

She paused for a beat. “And if they notice, they won’t ask questions.”

Prisca met her gaze. “They will act.”

The word settled heavily between them. It was real.

Prisca nodded once. “I know.”

Mara studied her for a long moment, then she smiled softly, briefly.

“You are going to get out of here,” she said.

It was not hope. It was an observation.

Prisca tilted her head slightly. “So are you.”

Mara’s smile faded. “No,” she said.

She did not say it out of fear or sadness but with certainty.

“Not like you.”

**************************

The day Mara left, the air felt wrong. It was too still and expectant.

They were called into the common room, lined up as usual. Clean, Quiet, and Presentable.

A man stood at the front. He was older and expensively dressed. His gaze moved across the girls with practised disinterest.

Until it stopped… On Mara.

“There,” he said simply and decisively.

Mara did not react. She stepped forward when instructed. Her movements were controlled and precise, like someone walking a path she had already seen.

Prisca’s chest clenched tightly.

“She is being adopted,” one of the matrons said brightly.

“Such a wonderful opportunity.” The words echoed emptily.

Mara turned her head slightly. Their eyes met.

For a brief moment, everything else faded away. No words passed between them. None were needed.

“Be careful.”

“Remember.”

“Wait.”

Then Mara looked away. And she was gone.

She did not return. Not that night. Not the next. Not ever.

And no explanation followed, no discussion.

Her name disappeared from records that had once contained it as if she had never existed.

Prisca stood in their shared space that evening, staring at the empty bed.

It looked smaller without Mara in it. Less real.

She sat slowly, her hands resting on her knees, fingers curling inward.

For a long time, she did not move.

Then she stood, crossed the room and knelt.

The floorboard lifted easily now. So familiar and trusted.

She pulled out the notebook and opened it. Her eyes moved across the pages, names, dates, and patterns.

Evidence of something no one else would say out loud. Her hand tightly wrapped around the pencil. Then she wrote, 'Mara - Taken.'

The word felt strange, too clean and too simple.

She pressed harder: ‘Selected.’

No. Still not enough.

Her jaw tightened. She struck through the word.

Then, slowly, deliberately, she wrote: ‘Removed.’

The graphite tore slightly into the paper.

Good. It should.

She closed the notebook, but her hand did not release it. Something burned beneath her ribs now. Not the wild, consuming anger Sister Agnes had warned about.

No.

This was different, sharper, colder and controlled. Then a decision.

They were not saving girls.

They were moving them.

Using them. Disappearing them.

And no one outside asked why because no one outside wanted the answer.

Prisca slid the notebook back into its hiding place. Replaced the floorboard and stood.

The room felt smaller now, the walls closer, the air thinner.

She moved to the window and looked out into the garden where everything remained perfectly arranged. Perfectly false.

“I will leave,” she said softly.

The words barely made a sound. “I will find out what happened.”

Her reflection stared back at her in the glass. She was not a child, not anymore.

“And I will make them answer.” The vow settled into her bones permanently and unyielding.

Behind her, the door creaked open. Prisca did not turn immediately. She watched her reflection instead, the way it shifted.

The way another shape appeared behind her. A figure, still and watching.

Then there came a familiar and measured voice.

“You are writing things down again,” Sister Agnes said too calmly.

Prisca’s reflection did not flinch. But her eyes… Her eyes sharpened.

Slowly, she turned. And for the first time since arriving at St. Bartholomew’s…

She wondered if the notebook had truly been hidden…

Or if someone had been waiting for her to fill it.