Maren’s Past ,  A Flashback

The hallway was long, dimly lit by lanterns burning low, their oil nearly spent. In the quiet of her memories, Maren walked that hallway again, her younger steps quiet on the stone floor, a tray balanced in her hands, head bowed low. The walls of House Vessant had always whispered. Secrets moved faster than light in that place, wrapped in silk and stitched into shadows.

She had been fifteen when she first served wine at the high table. That was when she began to study people carefully, memorizing their habits, their preferences, and their silences. She learned to track influence by where people stood, and danger by what they didn't say. It became her quiet advantage, gathering truths others thought too small to matter. The older servants told her to keep her mouth shut, her hands clean, and her eyes lower than her thoughts. She obeyed. Obedience kept you alive.

Lady Calis Vessant had not been unkind. Sharp, yes. Reserved, careful, always three steps ahead of everyone in the room. But never cruel. She spoke to Maren like she mattered, never quite with familiarity, but with purpose. Maren knew how rare that was. She remembered one night clearly: Calis had asked for rosewater with her evening bath, and when Maren delivered it, the Lady had said, "You have steady hands. That will serve you well, if no one cuts them off first." It wasn't kindness, but it was trust, in its own strange way.

In those early days, Maren learned the rhythms of the court by watching from corners. She memorized the names of courtiers by the types of wine they preferred. She noticed which noblewomen left powder marks on their gloves and which men stayed too long near the servants' stairs. She learned to watch not just actions, but silences. Gaps in conversation. Moments too quiet. They always meant something.

But none of it mattered until the night she found the letter.

It had been folded into a bouquet of red valerian, set in a vase beside Lady Calis' writing desk. Maren had been replacing the water when the letter slipped free. It bore no seal, only a thin thread of red silk holding it shut. She hadn't meant to read it, but when it opened against her fingers, the words struck her silent.

The message was short. A directive. Precise and cold.

"End the Lady's interference. Quietly. No scandal. Use discretion."

The handwriting was elegant, unfamiliar, but the language was unmistakable. Someone wanted Lady Calis gone. Not politically ruined. Dead.

Maren tucked the note into her apron and ran. Her pulse had screamed in her ears as she darted through the corridors, her heart a hammer of panic. She didn't go to the guards. She didn't go to the steward. She went straight to Calis.

She remembered standing outside her chambers, heart thundering, hands shaking. When the door opened, Calis looked at her in surprise.

"You shouldn't be here, child."

"I need to show you something," Maren had said.

Calis took the note. She read it once. Then again. Her face didn't change. Only her breath slowed.

"Where did you find this?"

Maren explained.

Calis nodded, very slowly. "Then I was right. They know I intended to speak out."

She walked to her desk and opened a drawer. Inside were several other letters, all unmarked, all bearing the same style. Maren saw the weight in Calis's eyes. A woman standing at the edge of a final decision.

"I thought these were warnings," Calis said. "But this one is different. This is an execution."

She looked at Maren. "You have done something brave and dangerous."

"What will you do, my lady?"

"I will prepare. And you will forget you ever saw this. If they suspect you know anything, you will be next."

Maren wanted to protest, but the look in Calis' eyes stopped her.

"Go," Calis said. "Now."

The next day, Lady Calis did not come to breakfast. By evening, the estate physician declared she had fallen ill. Within forty-eight hours, she was dead.

They said it was a fever. No one questioned it.

But Maren had seen too much to believe that.

The household moved quickly. Calis's name was whispered only in the past tense. Alaric was sent away for schooling shortly after. Within a week, the servants were reshuffled. The staff lists changed. Maren was moved to the laundry quarters and kept there for nearly a year. Her every movement was watched. The letter had vanished. She had no proof. Just memory. Fear. And a burning knowledge that something larger had moved through House Vessant like smoke through a locked room.

Years passed. Alaric rose to power. His mother's name faded from conversation. But Maren never forgot. She worked her way up, methodically, patiently. She learned to listen even when she wasn't meant to be anywhere near. She learned which documents to copy by hand, which rooms to clean slowly. Her mind became a vault of whispers.

When the second directive came, it was delivered not to her hands, but through hushed voices. Maren had become head servant by then, older, quieter, harder. She heard whispers of special shipments, rare tonics. Ingredients that masked poisons. She remembered those names from Calis' old correspondences. The same pattern. Again.

Someone was still pulling strings. Someone outside House Vessant.

She started recording everything in secret. Every overheard conversation, every odd order, every vanishing servant. She kept her records in the lining of old drapery, in the false bottom of a flour barrel. She didn't know what it meant yet, only that the corruption ran deeper than House Vessant. It ran deeper.

The symbol came to her in fragments. First, on the edge of a broken seal she found in the ash heap behind the kitchens. Then again, stitched into the lining of a discarded cloak. A serpent, wrapped around a shattered crown. Not a family crest. Not a known house. Something older. Hidden.

She kept sketches. Notes. Maps. Her memory became sharp as steel.

Then one day, a new steward arrived. A man she didn't trust. One who asked too many questions. He caught her in the records room one evening, rummaging through old staff lists. His smile was too sharp. His words too polite.

That night, she fled.

She took nothing but her notes and the burned ring she had found beside Lady Calis' bed. It had been scorched, the serpent barely visible. But it did not belong to any house she had served.

Her departure wasn't quiet. She staged a fire in the lower kitchens to draw attention. By the time they noticed she was gone, she was already halfway to the southern ranges. She slept in barns, in the hollows of trees. She paid for silence with old coin and sharper promises.

She settled in a crumbling house far from the capital, living under a false name. She grew herbs, read old books, and waited for time to pass.

But the truth never faded.

She lived alone. She buried her notes in clay pots. She planted false letters in case someone ever came searching. She became so used to danger that she could sense footsteps before they reached the door. And she never forgot.

Sometimes, she imagined conversations with Calis. What she might have said if she'd been allowed to live. Whether she would have saved the House or burned it herself. Maren thought it might have been both.

She watched rumors rise in distant papers. Whispers of tribunals, broken alliances. The name Seraphina D'Lorien caught her attention more than once. She never sent word. She didn't need to.

She knew that eventually, Seraphina would come.

And when the knock came at her door, she already knew who stood on the other side.

Lady Seraphina.

Maren did not tremble.

She opened the door, box in hand. And stepped back into the fire.