Reverie sat in the middle of the wreckage — bottles tipped over, the air thick with wine and smoke. Her hair was a tangle, her lips cracked, eyes open but empty. There was no anger left in her, no grief either. Just the echo of both, stretched too thin.

Cardan stood in the doorway for a long time. His crown caught the firelight, but he looked smaller than it made him seem. For once, he didn’t have that careless smirk. He only looked at her — really looked — and it was obvious he saw what everyone else did.

“She should sleep,” Nicasia said quietly. Her voice sounded wrong in the silence.

“She doesn’t sleep anymore,” Cardan replied.

He crossed the room, careful not to step on the broken glass. When he knelt in front of her, Reverie didn’t look at him. Her gaze stayed fixed on the fire, her reflection trembling in the red light.

“Reverie,” he said.

Nothing.

“Reverie,” again, softer.

Reverie had stopped being herself the moment Roiben left. The memory of his absence clawed into her chest so sharply that her magic didn’t survive it — at least, not as it had been. Her shapeshifting no longer danced between forms of beauty or grace; it twisted into something darker, something hungry. The only form she could summon now was a creature of rage and despair, a thing that fed on anger and sadness like air.

The court used her for war. They sent her to smash through lines and break defenses, a living battering ram, a weapon shaped by her heartbreak. They didn’t see the girl underneath, didn’t see the trembling hands, the hollowed eyes, the exhaustion that made her stumble over her own feet in the corridors. She looked weak, damaged, and everyone around her felt powerless to do anything. Nothing could fix her.

Even Cardan, her friend, could only watch. He kept her close when he could, whispered little things that might tether her to something human, but it was never enough. She moved like a shadow of herself, pale and ragged, haunted by her own reflection, haunted by what Roiben had done.

And Roiben… he was with Kaye. That thought alone made the hollow in her chest flare with the beast inside. Every memory of him — every laugh, every soft touch — pressed against the wound in her heart, feeding the creature that now wore her face.

She was gone, really. Not dead, not missing — just gone. The magic was there, yes, and it was dangerous, but the girl who once had laughed too loud, loved too fiercely, and shifted into things of light and beauty, had vanished. All that remained was this hollow vessel, moving through the halls like a storm wrapped in skin, carrying heartbreak that no one could heal and a monster that no one could calm.