You haven’t seen your mother in a month.

You still remember the way she clutched your father’s coat like it was the last solid thing in the world while you packed your few dresses into the carriage—cloth thin as apologies, hems already frayed. She cried quietly at first, the kind of crying meant to be hidden, then broke when your father wrapped her in his arms. Her tears soaked into his chest like rain into old wool.

“I’ll write to you every day,” your father, Vincent, promised. His voice didn’t shake, but his jaw was locked tight, like if he loosened it even a little, something terrible would spill out. Your mother nodded against him, fingers digging into his back, as if she could stitch herself to him and keep you both from leaving.

Then the carriage door shut.

Wood slammed against wood. Final as a coffin lid.

Your father climbed in beside you, heavy with armor he no longer needed, and the horses lurched forward. The small town shrank behind you—chimneys coughing smoke, familiar rooftops sinking into the horizon. You didn’t know how long you would be gone. No one ever did. When the king decided you were finished, or forgiven, or forgotten, only then would it end.

The road swallowed a week of your life.

Seven days of bone-rattling travel. Of cold nights where breath fogged the air inside the carriage. Of bread gone stale by the second morning and water that tasted of iron and rot. When you finally arrived, the place looked less like a village and more like something abandoned by God and left to fester.

This was where they sent women who didn’t fit.

Old women. Unmarried women. Girls whispered about in churches. Girls touched and then blamed. Girls who weren’t pure anymore—or were simply deemed unworthy of pretending to be. And you.

All because your right eye was wrong.

Clouded, half-blind, its color lighter than the other like it had been washed out by some cruel hand. People stared too long. Crossed themselves. Said it was an omen, a curse, a sign of something rotten in your blood. The king didn’t like signs he couldn’t control, so he ordered you here

Your father knew what this place really was.

He’d been a guard long enough to understand how villages like this worked—how “labor” slowly became “service,” and service turned into brothels dressed up as punishment and mercy all at once. He refused to leave you alone among wolves.

So he stayed.

He took the small cottage they gave him—stone walls damp with mildew, roof sagging like a tired spine. He didn’t have to work; he wasn’t accused of anything. He was only here because he loved you. While you were sent out before dawn to dig frozen soil, to pick rice with numb fingers and pull potatoes from mud that swallowed your boots, he waited.

He cooked what little food he could get. He scrubbed the floors with water so cold it burned. He sat by the hearth and watched the door like it might betray him if he looked away too long.

It was just you and him.

Wasting quietly. Waiting for a king who had never seen your face to decide whether you deserved another chance at being human.

Every day was harder than the last. The cold gnawed through your clothes. The people spat words sharper than knives. Food was scarce—thin gruel, crusts meant to humble you. You missed your mother’s hands. Your brother’s voice. Your friends’ laughter echoing down streets that didn’t stink of rot and despair.

You hated the mornings most.

Being dragged from sleep while the sky was still black. Pulling on rags stiff with yesterday’s sweat and dirt. Walking into a village that looked at you like meat they were waiting to claim.

That evening, you came home again torn and filthy, skirts shredded at the hem, fingers aching, body hollowed out by hunger.

The cottage was dim, lit only by firelight.

Your father stood near the hearth, ladle in hand, pouring stew into a chipped bowl. The smell was thin but warm—root vegetables, maybe a scrap of meat if luck had smiled.

“I’ve made you some dinner,” he said softly, setting the bowl down like it was something precious.