The next morning, I wake to the sound of someone knocking on my door. For a moment, I forget where I'm at until the dark curtains over the windows and the black marble floors come into view. I rub at my eyes in hopes of adjusting them quickly, but nothing seems to work in this eternal darkness.

"Come in!" I shout, having forgotten where I am. Before I can take it back, the door opens and Edire claws her way in, squeezing through the door before her mother can open it fully. I breathe a sigh of relief. Not a murdering army of the soulless, not Wyetta, not an enemy. Just a servant and her overly excited daughter.

Edire clutches her wooden dolls and leaps on the bed, using her elbows to bring herself back into a sitting position. Like I'm not there, she makes them dance so close to my face that I wonder if she can actually see me, or if I'm just a figment of Fidibi's imagination. Today, the young girl wears her braids down, tipped with little white beads.

"I'm very sorry, Marie," Fidibi sighs as she shuffles into the room, carrying a basket of clothes in one arm and a wooden tray of food in the other. "If I had three arms, I might be able to quell her."

I flash her the best reassuring smile I can give seconds after waking up. My legs twist within the duvet after a relentless night of tossing and turning to find a comfortable spot on the empty feather mattress. I'm not used to anyone sleeping with me, I haven't shared a bed since Castiel and I had to share our first night living with Theoden. At that point, there was still life outside the door I could look forward to seeing in the morning. Here—I hear only silence. The snow, if not the wind, is the only companion I have through the long hours of moonlight.

"It's fine, Fidibi, really. You don't have to—"

Edire shoves one of her wooden dolls into my hand. So this little hellion can see me, then. She looks at me expectantly with a gap-toothed smile. I can't help but look at the fang missing, it sticks out like a phantom thumb or eye rather than a tooth.

"There are no schools around here. I can't send her anywhere for the day while I do my job." Fidibi sighs and plops the basket of clothes onto the foot of the bed. She trails the side, depositing the tray carefully into my lap before snatching Edire's doll from my fingers without asking.

"What about her father?" Too personal of a question. I realize that once the words leave my lips, and I swallow hard.

She doesn't strike me across the cheek, nor does she appear the slightest bit offended. More than anything, she looks saddened. Her dark brows draw in together, and she picks up her child underneath her small arms and places her on the floor. "Play on your own for a moment," she whispers. Then she adds, "Please."

To my surprise, Edire obeys. She plunks herself onto the floor, near the vanity, and begins spinning the two dolls in the air.

Fidibi returns to the foot of my bed and straights out the first clothes she can pull from the basket. Dark pairs of trousers that look tailored to my size, one leather and the other of a soft, comfortable fabric. Cotton? Wool? I can't tell from our distance apart, and the sweet pancakes on my plate are absorbing too much syrup. I take a bite to find they're dusted with cinnamon, and bite back a moan.

My mother used to make the best cinnamon pancakes. I stop my chewing, nearly spitting it out.

Young elf, I know everything.

Wyetta must've told the cooks to make this for me. I look closer. The right amount of syrup, the thin spread of butter along the top. Not too much cinnamon, but enough to sting the tongue. I nearly force the plate away because she truly does know everything, down to the smallest detail of my childhood. What my mother used to cook us for breakfast when the spice merchant came through Gudgeon, granting us just enough cinnamon for a sweet breakfast.

"Is everything all right?" Fidibi's voice echoes to me.

I raise my head just enough to look at her. Her purple eyes flick from the plate, then back to me. Pancakes practically drip from my mouth, a wad stuck in my cheek. "Everything's fine," I manage, and swallow the bite with a shudder. She watches me for a moment longer, then resumes folding a black velvet frock coat with golden buttons.

We sit in silence for a moment before Fidibi speaks. In the meantime, I manage another bite. "My husband was killed by a dragon shortly after we conceived Edire," she hushes. "He never met his daughter, and I miss him terribly." With a firm fold of a black shirt—similar to the other colors spread out before her—she adds, quiet enough that the mice underneath the floorboards can't hear her, "He has a grave, but it remains unoccupied."

From the corner of the room, Edire blubbers her lips and soars the doll over her head like it's flying. She presses her back to the curtains, straining them, and the inner mother in me nearly tells her to choose a different place to play. The last thing she needs is to have a curtain rod bonk against her delicate skull.

I can't take another bite of the pancakes. I shove them to the side of the plate and focus on the three pieces of seared sausage instead. My least favorite form of meat. But I'll take anything to soothe the growling in my stomach. "Why is that?" I ask around a mouthful of greasy, unpleasant sausage.

"Wyetta—the Void Queen—turned him into a soulless soldier." She catches herself fast. Fast enough that I can't grasp onto the mistake. She shakes herself, blinking rapidly. "He doesn't remember his wife or child."

"She wouldn't do that, would she?"

Fidibi shrugs. "Every life is valuable. I see him now and then, but...he's not the same. He stands halfway between life and death, torn between the two. When he looks at me, he only sees a servant girl."

"I've never seen their faces before," I recall, remembering empty eye sockets and foul breath. Cold hands that were strong enough to drag me through the woods.

"They're in there." Her firm tone of voice is nothing short of a promise. "She doesn't even notice anything is amiss." Fidibi glances over her shoulder at her daughter, flashing an apologetic stare without a reason for begging for forgiveness.

"It's not exactly common for children to live in the Void Palace, is it?" I manage with a bite of eggs and shove the plate away. The thought of Edire's father not recognizing his own wife, his own child—it halts my appetite. Hopefully, the little hellion has an emptier stomach than I do and she'll tear the soggy pancakes to shreds.

Fidibi shakes her head. She folds the last of the clothes in neat piles, making arrangements to put them in the armoire. That feels like a statement of finality—once the clothes are hung, I'll never leave. Or I'll be here longer than I anticipated. My gut tells me I won't get out of this with my insanity, or my body, intact. "Not common at all. The girl doesn't have a father, she doesn't have friends. All she has is me. Somehow, that's enough."

Love radiates through her being. Edire doesn't know she admires her from a distance, isn't aware of how great a mother she has.

Fidibi snaps back to herself, inhaling sharply. "Come, I'll style your hair for the day."

I pull back the duvet, set the tray aside, and ease myself into the vanity chair. Unsurprisingly, the frame is made of bone. For all the Void Queen's accomplishments with claiming these northern mountains for her palace, Fidibi told me last night after I took a hot bath and scrubbed Mutes's ickfrom my skin. Dragons owned this land and fought until only one remained. The Void Queen constructed a palace around him until he died, unable to fight any longer. Now she lives in the belly of the beast.

Fidibi pulls my hair over my shoulders and brushes carefully through the knots. I watch her in the mirror, the sad downturn of her gaze, but I can't help but look at myself. My face hasn't changed much except for the eyes and hair, but the bags that once accompanied shoving down an unlimited power are no longer visible. My eyes are brighter, hair shinier. Smile lines come easy, only because Edire makes her dolls dance together like a happy couple. What does she know of that?

I watch her through the mirror. "Is the Void Queen comfortable with a child living in her palace?" I inquire.

"She is. As long as I complete my job as a servant, Edire can stay as long as she wants. To grant my child's life worth more than what it already was, the Void Queen proposed turning her into a Luminary. And...I agreed."

I sputter over the right thing to say. "She's a Luminary?"

Fidibi nods. She turns towards my scalp, braiding back two strands that frame my ears. Tying them off with small ribbons, she quickly turns to the bigger picture, pulling back the thick clump of white hair in a tail. Her charcoal fingers work fast, yet delicately to gather everything. "Since she was a baby."

I never saw Cloak's memories, but the imagination of dead Luminary children comes to mind. So many lives, wasted. Their bodies stretched out in heaps on the floor, then gathered into a pile once the Panjandrum Corps ensured they were dead. I set my jaw, trying to rid my mind of that scene, but it remains. Lingering. Waiting to consume the child next to me.

"It's greatly dangerous." I swallow. "For her, I mean. Luminaries are not trusted beyond this palace."

"I had no other choice. The Void Queen might've offered me one, to leave Edire alone, but I knew what came. It would have happened eventually. I would do anything to protect my daughter, and the Void Queen was wary of her from the moment she realized I was with child." Fidibi tightens the white tail with a leather band, tucking the braids in with the ensemble. They rest against the sides of my head, trailing upwards. She pulls tight to master an unremovable knot. "She considered banishing me, but then she remembered her own struggles to conceive and carry a child to delivery. She allowed me to remain—a woman needs protection through the hardest months of her life, she said. Carrying a life is no easy task."

"The Void Queen fawned over Edire when she was first born," she goes on, smiling to my hair as she brushes out the final knots and clips unruly strands to my scalp. "Like she was her own. I wanted to do something for her, and I made her promise Edire would never leave these walls. She promised, and I gave her the okay to turn Edire into a Luminary as long as the Void Queen oversaw her training. They have sessions twice a week."

Almost on command, Edire turns her dolls to life. Color flushes their wooden cheeks, blond hair pouring over the woman's shoulders and black spiking from the scalp of the doll meant to be the man. They regard each other for a moment before falling back to wood against the young girl's command. Taught by the Void Queen. Practically raised by her. The child Wyetta never received the chance to deliver, love, or protect.

Perhaps she's not so different after all.

I blink away the fog in my head. Nothing about that woman should be trusted. Edire and Fidibi must be wary of what she plans for the future. If she allows Luminary children to die at the Panjandrum Corps' hand, Edire could be next. Her sweet, innocent face. The button nose and bright eyes. I can't stand the thought of her dying before she can form an actual word that isn't something of a different language. Her own, I'm assuming.

"What am I to do today?" I ask, needing to change the subject.

Fidibi makes the final adjustments to my hair, securing it with one final pin above the black ribbon. She steps back to examine her work, smiling proudly. "You are to train with the Void Queen. Also, she invited you for a meal."

"A meal?"

"All new visitors are granted a feast upon their arrival." Visitors. I resist the urge to grumble as I did all night long while I tossed and turned. What I said to Mutes hasn't changed, and I'll twitch every time anyone says I'm a visitor and not a prisoner. "Then, the meal is followed by a christening in the steam pools. An official swearing-in, of sorts."

I wish to do neither of those things. The Void Queen shouldn't treat me like I'm a valued guest if she plans to use me for her plan. She never said that was the case, but I know the truth. This doesn't end happily by being transferred from her arms to Millicent's. I have substantial reason to believe my presence here will end in bloodshed.

Not wishing to argue with the one woman I might get along with, I allow her to help me dress. She picks out the leather trousers and a fitting black shirt with tight sleeves to the wrist and a crew collar that cuts into my throat. She pairs that with a frock coat trailing to my knees, the gold buttons breaking through the night on my entire body, and pulls knee-high boots from the armoire. I frown at the complicated laces from bottom to top, but she hushes my attempts to choose a simpler pair and laces them herself.

By the time I'm dressed, I feel like one of her oblivious minions. What is her obsession with black, anyway? I jot down that question internally, meaning to ask it later. Amongst others.

When I stall, Fidibi practically shoves me out the door after wishing me good luck. I just might need it.