Cracks
1624 Words
REIGN POV
Petra had my outfit laid out before I was fully awake.
A soft cream blouse, tailored trousers, simple heels. Palace appropriate without being overdressed. She was getting good at reading what I needed without me having to ask and I was quietly grateful for it.
"How did you sleep?" she asked, fastening the small buttons at my wrist.
"Fine," I said.
Breakfast was in the small morning room off the main corridor. I'd expected to eat alone and I did — but the solitude came with a surprise.
A young man appeared at the door, tall and easy in his movements with a chef's whites and a smile that had clearly never met a bad day.
"Good morning my lady." He gave a small bow that managed to be genuine rather than performative. "I'm Marcus. Junior chef. I'm managing today's menu and wanted to ask your preferences directly."
I blinked. Nobody had asked me what I preferred to eat since — actually I couldn't remember the last time anyone had asked.
"Anything is fine really," I said.
He looked mildly offended by that answer. "My lady. I have an entire kitchen. Anything is not an answer."
Something close to a smile pulled at my mouth. "Surprise me then."
He did.
Twenty minutes later the table in front of me held roasted lamb chop sandwiches, scrambled eggs, a bowl of fresh fruit, warm oats and a tall glass of juice the color of sunrise. I stared at it for a moment before I started eating.
It was the best breakfast I'd had in my entire life.
I didn't say that out loud but Marcus seemed to read it on my face anyway because he looked deeply satisfied when he came to clear the plates.
Petra led me to a quiet room on the second floor.
A tutor was already waiting inside — small, neat, somewhere in her fifties with sharp eyes behind delicate glasses and the posture of a woman who had spent decades demanding correct behavior from people who outranked her.
She dipped her head when I entered. "My lady. I am Miss Primrose. Your tutor."
"Reign," I said.
"My lady," she repeated firmly, making it abundantly clear that Reign was not going to be happening in this room.
I sat.
And we began.
Lycan History was dense and layered and Miss Primrose delivered it without mercy.
The origin of the bloodlines. The hierarchy of the lycan court. The significance of the moon goddess and the sacred rites tied to her cycles. Coronation protocol. Dining etiquette at formal court functions. Forms of address for every rank from warrior to high elder.
She spoke and I absorbed and took notes in the margins of the leather bound journal she'd provided and asked questions when something wasn't clear. Miss Primrose seemed mildly surprised by that. Like she'd expected me to sit glassy eyed and wait for it to be over.
Hours passed without a break.
My hand cramped around the pen. My back ached from the straight backed chair. The words on the page started swimming slightly around the edges.
"Miss Primrose." I set the pen down carefully. "I'd like a short break please."
She looked up from her notes. Considered me for a moment over the rim of her glasses. Then she nodded once — the way someone nods when they've decided to allow something rather than been asked permission.
"Twenty minutes," she said.
I took that as a win.
Petra was waiting just outside the door when I stepped into the corridor.
I exhaled. "Please tell me there's air somewhere in this palace."
She smiled. "Actually my lady — why don't we take a stroll through the garden? You haven't stepped outside since you arrived. It would do you good and —" she tilted her head "— you don't really know your way around yet. Consider it a small tour."
I looked at her and felt something warm move through my chest.
She was right. I had been inside these walls since the car pulled up two days ago. I didn't know the grounds, didn't know the layout, didn't know anything beyond the path between my room and the dining room.
"Yes," I said. "Good idea."
The garden was at the east side of the palace grounds.
Low hedges, clean gravel paths, flower beds well maintained. And at the far end where the path curved — the sunflower fields starting up again beyond the low stone border, gold in the afternoon light.
I walked with Petra beside me and let the outside air work on the tension behind my eyes. She pointed things out as we moved — the east greenhouse, the path that led to the training grounds, the small courtyard the senior staff used in the evenings.
For approximately four minutes it was peaceful.
Then the whispers started.
Two maids on the path ahead slowed when they saw me. Then three more appeared from the side path.
"Is that her?"
"The hybrid girl. She's human — look at her, she has no wolf at all."
"I heard the prince was furious when he found out what they sent him."
"Her father is Dorian Sinclair. You know what they say about the Sinclairs —"
"Barely above a rogue if you ask me. The whole bloodline."
Petra's spine went rigid beside me. "Mind your work," she said sharply, her voice cutting through the whispers like a blade.
The cluster near the hedges went quiet. For about three seconds.
Then one of them stepped forward.
She was taller than Petra by a head, with the particular confidence of someone who had never been checked in her life. She looked at Petra first with slow contempt and then slid her eyes to me.
"And who are you to tell us what to do?" she said to Petra. "You're a maid. Same as us." Her lip curled. "Actually below us — because at least we aren't serving a human."
"How dare you —" Petra started forward.
"How dare I?" The girl laughed. It wasn't a nice sound. "She doesn't even have a wolf. She can't shift, she can't fight, she can't do anything a proper mate should —"
"You will not speak about my lady that way —"
"Your lady." Pure mockery. "She's nobody. She's —"
Petra grabbed her arm.
The girl grabbed Petra's hair.
And then it stopped being words.
I stepped forward — "Stop, both of you —" — and the girl's free hand came out without looking and shoved me hard in the chest.
I went down.
The gravel came up fast and I hit the ground palm first, one knee taking the impact, the breath punching out of me. My hands scraped raw against the path. I stayed there for a stunned second — the shock of it more than the pain, the horrible familiar feeling of being put on the ground by someone who simply decided they could.
Everything went very quiet.
"What is going on here."
The voice came from the garden entrance.
Low. Quiet. The specific quiet of something that didn't need volume to be terrifying.
I looked up.
Ares stood at the garden gate with Blaze a step behind him, both of them still in training gear, sweat damp and loose limbed from exertion. Blaze had stopped mid-sentence about something and was now watching the scene with wide eyes.
Ares was not watching the scene.
He was looking at me on the ground.
And something in his face — in that carefully maintained fortress of an expression — had gone completely and utterly still in a way that was more frightening than anger. His jaw was tight. His eyes moved from me to the maid still gripping Petra's hair and something dark moved through them.
The girl released Petra instantly.
The entire group of maids took a collective step back.
"Your — Your Highness." The tall girl's voice had lost every drop of its confidence. She dipped into a bow so fast she nearly folded in half. "We were just —"
"Leave." One word. Absolute.
They scattered.
Petra was at my side immediately, helping me up, her hands shaking slightly as she checked my palms. "My lady — are you hurt, are you —"
"I'm fine," I said quietly. My knees were stinging. My pride was worse.
I straightened and found Ares still looking at me.
He crossed the garden in a few strides and stopped in front of me. Close enough that I had to tilt my chin up to hold his gaze. His eyes moved over my face, down to my scraped palms, back up. That muscle in his jaw ticked once.
"You." He looked at Petra. "Take her inside. Have those hands seen to."
"Yes Your Highness."
He held my gaze for one more second — something burning in his eyes that he clearly had no intention of explaining — and then he turned and walked back toward the palace without another word.
Blaze lingered a half second longer, looked at me with something like curiosity and what might have been the beginning of sympathy, and followed.
I stood in the garden with stinging palms and the echo of gravel under my knees and watched Ares Blackwood walk away.
He hadn't helped me up.
He hadn't said a single word to me directly.
But he had cleared that garden in under ten seconds and the look on his face when he'd found me on the ground —
I didn't know what to do with that look.
So I did what I always did.
I filed it away. Straightened my blouse. And walked back inside.
- Writer
