Chapter Five: The Locked Room
330 Words
Sioning was at the door within minutes, her voice low and urgent through the wood.
"Madam, please let her out. She didn't do anything wrong."
"I don't care." Betrish didn't even slow down. "You want to take her place so badly? Fine — you go without food for a day instead. Now get out of my sight. Go make yourself useful somewhere."
There was nothing Sioning could do but obey. She'd learned that lesson long before Princess had.
It wasn't the first time. Princess understood that now, curled against the wall of the empty room with her knees pulled to her chest, tears sliding down to the corner of her mouth, tasting bitter the way they always did — not just tonight, but every time this particular cruelty of Betrish's had found its way to her. She could hear her own breath catching, could feel herself curling smaller, and she cried out for mercy anyway, uselessly, into a house that had already decided Betrish's heart wasn't the kind that softened for anyone.
She wasn't sure exactly when help came — only that at some point, in the dark, she heard something slide under the door. A small parcel of food, wrapped quietly, no note attached, because there didn't need to be one. Only Sioning would have risked that.
Something shifted in her after that night. She couldn't have explained it even if someone had asked — whether it was the hunger, or the total silence of that locked room, or simply one cruelty too many stacked on top of all the ones before it. But from then on, she found herself craving solitude the way other children craved company. Quiet places. Empty rooms she chose for herself instead of ones chosen for her. And more than anywhere else — the sea. She didn't know why. She only knew that something about all that water, stretching out farther than anyone could reach her, made the ache in her chest feel smaller.
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