Espionage

Cecilia rose before dawn, her body stiff with unrest, though her candle had long since guttered out in the night. The words Peregrine had thrown at her still clung like barbs beneath her skin, but she could not let herself bleed for him. Not now. Her guilt would not save him. Only foresight might.

If Olrin was indeed the hand behind the deaths that plagued the manor, then she would have to be sharper, quieter, and swifter than he suspected. She would not simply endure. She would learn him. Unravel him. And when the moment came, she would cut him down with the very knowledge he thought she was too meek to grasp.

She began with his movements.

Every morning, Lord Olrin took his coffee in the west study. At first, Cecilia only brushed past, carrying trays, dusting shelves. But she noted: the precise time he arrived, the way he dismissed servants with a flick of his fingers, how he lingered by the tall windows when no one watched. She observed the frequency of his guests, the books he touched and those he ignored.

She became shadow.

When her duties carried her past the dining room, she paused outside the heavy double doors, cloth in hand, polishing the silver handles while listening to the murmurs inside. His voice cut through like velvet lined with steel—commanding, teasing, cruel beneath its polish. And through the cracks of laughter or the rattle of cutlery, she caught scraps of secrets: mention of debts owed, of visitors expected, of instructions given to guards and footmen.

At night, she learned the house itself.

When the other maids collapsed exhausted into their cots, Cecilia lit a stub of candle and walked barefoot through forgotten corridors. She traced the servants’ staircases and measured the time it took to move from one wing to another. She found where the locks sat heaviest, where windows jammed, where doors opened too easily. She memorized squeaking floorboards, catalogued shadows that might conceal her in haste. She drew the map in her mind until she could walk the house blind.

And always, she watched him.

When Olrin crossed the hall with that unhurried stride, she bent low in a curtsy and studied the rhythm of his steps, the slight favoring of his left leg, the tension in his jaw when displeasure stirred. When he held court with guests in the grand salon, she saw how his charm flared brightest just before it soured into menace. She noted the way he drank—generous, yet never quite to excess. The way he touched his pocket, as if checking something hidden there.

It was dangerous work, this study of a predator. Every glance she risked might become a snare. But Cecilia felt something shift within her, a cold steel where once there had only been trembling.

By week’s end, she had gathered threads enough to weave into strategy.

She knew the hours when Olrin preferred solitude—late at night, pacing his private library with a glass in hand. She knew which guards lingered longer at their posts and which grew lax. She knew that his temper sharpened most after letters arrived from the city, and that he often vanished into the locked west wing after such moods struck him.

She did not yet know what secrets the west wing concealed, but she meant to find out.

In her chamber, Cecilia sat cross-legged on the narrow cot, tracing the house’s outline on the palm of her hand with her fingertip, as though branding it into her flesh. Her heart pounded, not only with fear but with a terrible resolve.

The lord Olrin believed himself unassailable, enthroned by wealth and menace. But Cecilia knew that arrogance was a chain as well, binding him as tightly as any lock. And chains, once found, could be broken.

She blew out her candle and lay back, the darkness thick around her. In her mind, she walked the halls again, each corner, each creak of board, each locked door. Somewhere within the stone and silence of the manor, there was a chink in his armor, some Achilles’ heel to exploit.

And she would find it.

…

The days that followed grew heavier. The house itself seemed to lean against Cecilia, its weight pressing into her chest. Olrin’s gaze lingered on her longer than usual, as though he were measuring her, waiting for some inevitable falter, or perhaps for another display of revolt. The other servants carried on with their chores, but when Cecilia tried to speak of the strange drafts in certain halls or the footsteps echoing when no one walked, they only shook their heads, unwilling—or maybe unable—to hear.

And then came Dmitri’s voice.

At first it was a murmur at the edges of her hearing. A phrase breathed beneath the clatter of dishes, beneath the creak of the stair: “You are mine.”

Cecilia told herself it was only weariness, only her mind. But each day it grew clearer, insistent.

You are mine. You belong in my grip, and that is where you will remain.

It came strongest in the library, where the fire hissed low and the shelves cast long shadows. Once, while dusting, she felt a page shift behind her as though a book had opened itself. She turned—and saw words scrawling onto the parchment as if written by an invisible hand.

The maid hesitates, but she cannot escape her role. She will serve, she will bend, she will stay.

Cecilia staggered back, breath short. She wanted to flee the room, but her feet would not move. The words bled into the page as though carved into her fate.

You are mine.

The whisper curled around her ears, gentle and merciless all at once. She pressed her hands to her head. “No,” she gasped, but her voice was thin, drowned out by the stillness of the library.

The door creaked open. For a moment she thought the lord himself had entered, but no, it was only the wind from the hall. Still, the voice lingered, as though the house itself were speaking—

This story binds you. Do not struggle. There is no other path.

Cecilia fled then, breathless, her apron catching on the corner of the desk. She stumbled into the corridor, chest tight, eyes burning with unshed tears.

She thought of the heiress, her blue eyes and her promises—Of knowledge, of courage.

That night, Cecilia lay awake in her narrow bed, every creak of the beams above carrying the weight of that whispered claim, You are mine.

Her fingers clenched the blanket. She did not want to believe the voice. But if the story itself had marked her, if the lord and the walls themselves conspired to bind her, then perhaps Calliope was right.

Perhaps the only way to resist was to seek knowledge sharper than chains.