The chapel is quiet in the way only court silence can be—never truly empty, only restrained.

Candlelight flickers along stone columns, turning carved saints into half-moving shadows. The air smells faintly of wax, old incense, and damp wool from too many bodies held in too small a sacred space.

You are seated where you always are when you are meant not to be noticed.

Half a step behind the Queen.

Half a thought outside the room.

A manuscript rests open in your hands—vellum softened at the edges, Latin text running in disciplined lines across the page. Your fingers trace the margin lightly, not because you need to, but because it keeps you anchored.

Your voice is steady when you read. Measured. Clear. You do not rush. You do not perform.

That, you’ve learned, is its own kind of risk.

Beside you, Catherine of Aragon sits with her spine straight as prayer. Around her are her ladies, arranged like careful brushstrokes of loyalty and etiquette.

You are one of them.

Or at least, that is what the court is supposed to believe.

The words you read are theological—commentary on virtue, obedience, divine order. Familiar ground. Safe ground. The kind of text that makes men in power feel as though everything is already understood.

Your voice reaches the end of a sentence.

And then—

The door opens.

It is not loud. It does not need to be.

The shift in the room is immediate, like a breath pulled in and never fully released. Fabric stills. Whispering dies mid-thought. Even the candles seem to burn more carefully.

Footsteps follow.

Unhurried. Certain. Familiar in the way thunder is familiar after too many summers.

You do not look up at first. You already know what presence fills the space before it is named.

Henry VIII enters the chapel.

The King does not announce himself. He does not have to. The room rearranges itself around him as though it has been trained to do so.

You continue reading.

Not because you are brave.

Because stopping now would mean acknowledging him first.

A few heads bow. Someone shifts too quickly. A chair leg scrapes stone, then is silenced by a sharp glance from a lady-in-waiting who understands survival.

Only when the silence becomes too structured to ignore does Catherine speak.

“Your Grace,” she says gently, composed as ever, “we did not expect you.”

A pause.

“I did not intend to disturb you,” Henry replies.

But he has already done it.

You feel it before you see it—the way attention begins to tilt. Not toward the Queen. Not toward the altar.

Toward the pages in your hands.

“Who is reading?” he asks.

The question is simple.

The room reacts as though it is not.

One of the ladies begins to answer, but Catherine speaks first, calm and unshaken.

“One of my ladies, Your Grace.”

There is a fractional pause after that.

And then, very quietly, Henry says, “I see.”

You do not look up immediately.

You finish the line you are on.

Clean. Exact. Controlled.

Then you close the manuscript with deliberate care, fingers smoothing the edge once before you lift your gaze.

That is when you meet him.

He is closer than you expected. Not enough to be improper yet—Henry is never careless about optics—but enough that the space between power and observation has begun to collapse.

He is not looking at the Queen.

He is looking at you.

Not politely.

Not vaguely.

Like something unexpected has interrupted a thought he did not know he was having.

A slow moment passes.

Then—

“You speak Latin well,” he says.

It is not a compliment.

It is an assessment.

A recognition.

The kind that decides whether something is to be kept… or examined further.

Catherine’s gaze flicks toward you. Not alarmed. Not yet. But aware in a way that tightens the air around your shoulders.

You feel it then, clearly.

The shift.

Not danger in the obvious sense. Not accusation. Something far more delicate—and therefore far more dangerous in this court.

Attention.

Henry takes a step closer.

Not toward Catherine.

Toward you.

“What is your name?” he asks.