Morning in Inferna did not hurry for anyone.

  It slid in slowly, thin and pale, through high windows and narrow slits in the stone. The palace woke in layers: the distant clatter of pans in the lower kitchens, the murmur of guards changing shifts, the muffled shuffle of servants moving through corridors with baskets balanced on their hips and sleep still clinging to their eyes.

  Soliana woke to the sound of spoons.

  Not loud. Just the small, steady clink of metal against ceramic from the adjoining room.

  She slipped off the bed and padded barefoot across the cold floor, pressing her hand briefly against the wall as she passed. Inferna’s stone was never warm, no matter how many torches it held.

  Flora was already dressed.

  She stood by the small table near the window, sleeves rolled just enough to keep them out of the broth, hair tied back in a quick knot that never looked as neat as the palace maids’ but somehow suited her more. Three bowls sat in a line. She was filling the last one, ladling carefully so nothing spilled.

  Soliana hovered in the doorway.

  “You’re up early,” Flora said, without turning.

  “You’re earlier,” Soliana replied. Her voice came out softer than she meant.

  Flora smiled at the comment, though Soliana could only see the curve of her cheek.

  “Breakfast cools too quickly here,” Flora said lightly. “If I start late, it’s cold before anyone sits.”

  Soliana stepped closer. Steam curled up, carrying the scent of herbs and something savory she didn’t have a name for yet. Inferna’s food always tasted stronger than the dishes from home — heavier, sharper, as if even meals had to be armed.

  Flora set the ladle down. “Come eat before it loses the fight.”

  Soliana climbed onto the chair, feet not quite reaching the floor. She wrapped her hands around the bowl, letting the heat soak into her fingers. Flora didn’t sit immediately. She moved instead — checking the table, straightening the cups, reaching for the kettle.

  “Did you sleep well?” Flora asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Nightmares?”

  “No.”

  “Good.”

  The word landed like a pat on the head, practiced and automatic.

  Soliana watched the way Flora measured tea by instinct, not by counting. A swirl, a pause, a tilt of the wrist. She poured a cup for Soliana and then one for herself, though she didn’t sit to drink it.

  Instead, the door knocked. Once. Twice. No urgency, just the rhythm of someone who expected to be answered.

  “Come in,” Flora called.

  A servant slipped inside — a young man Soliana had seen in the corridors but never heard speak. He bowed his head to Flora, not looking at Soliana at all.

  “Message from the west wing,” he said. “They’re requesting you.”

  Flora’s shoulders tightened almost imperceptibly. “Now?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Her gaze flicked to Soliana. For a heartbeat, something in her expression strained — then smoothed over.

  “I’ll be there shortly,” Flora said.

  The servant bowed again and left, the door closing with a soft click.

  Soliana’s spoon paused halfway to her mouth.

  “Duty calls,” Flora said, sounding almost apologetic. “Eat slowly, alright? Don’t burn your tongue.”

  Soliana stared at her. “Where are you going?”

  “Just an errand.” Flora reached for her outer shawl. “It won’t take long.”

  “You said that yesterday,” Soliana murmured.

  Flora hesitated at the door. Soliana could see the words forming — the usual ones. She’ll be back. Don’t worry. Stay here.

  She swallowed them down. Smiled instead. “Finish your breakfast,” she repeated gently. “I’ll be back before it turns to stone.”

  That didn’t mean anything. It sounded like comfort anyway.

  The door shut behind her.

  Silence came in after. It always did — as if the sound went wherever Flora went and left Soliana the echo.

  She ate another spoonful. It tasted fine.

  It tasted like eating alone.

  After breakfast, no one came to collect her.

  No lessons. No escort. No schedule handed down from above. Soliana sat on the edge of the chair, toes brushing the floor, waiting for something to tell her where she belonged. Nothing did.

  So she stood, brushed crumbs from her dress, and decided the palace could answer instead.

  The corridor outside their room was already alive. A maid hurried past with an armful of folded linens, eyes lowered. A boy not much older than Soliana darted around her with a stack of scrolls clutched against his chest. Two guards at the far end stood as still as the spears they held.

  No one asked why she was there. No one stopped her from walking.

  Soliana moved.

  Inferna’s keep was a maze of long hallways and sharp turns, of staircases that seemed to exist solely to connect one shadow to another. The walls were plain — no tapestries like Reina’s, no painted scenes to soften the stone. Only torches, evenly spaced, burning with a disciplined, unwavering flame.

  She followed the direction the servant had gone earlier, thinking perhaps she would find Flora at the end of his path.

  She did not.

  She found kitchens instead.

  Heavy doors swung open and closed as people moved in and out, balancing trays, carrying sacks, swapping orders in short, precise sentences. The smell of bread wrestled with the smell of metal and smoke. Pots clanged. Knives thudded rhythmically against cutting boards.

  Soliana stopped at the threshold. No one stopped working.

  “Excuse me,” she tried.

  A woman with flour on her forearms glanced her way and gave a quick nod of acknowledgment — polite, no more. “Don’t stand there, little miss. You’ll get run over.”

  Soliana stepped aside automatically, pressing herself against the wall as two men bustled past with a steaming cauldron between them.

  They did not look at her.

  Everyone moved with a purpose she did not know the name of. Every hand carried something. Every pair of feet had somewhere to be. Even the smallest child there — a boy barely older than her, scrubbing vegetables at a basin — had tasks heavy enough to bow his shoulders.

  Soliana’s hands were empty.

  She watched a while longer, then drifted away, swallowed back into the corridors.

  In another wing, she found a room stacked with papers and ledgers. A thin man with ink-stained fingers muttered to himself as he wrote, quill scratching swiftly across parchment.

  A girl brought him more pages without being asked. She knew exactly where to place them. He didn’t say thank you. He didn’t need to. It wasn’t that kind of room.

  Further on, she passed a storage hall where two servants were counting crates, calling out numbers and recording them with quick strokes.

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  “Thirty-two.”

  “Thirty-two. Marking it.”

  “Thirty-three. That lid’s warped. Call the carpenter.”

  Everywhere she turned, responsibility moved. Not in grand strokes — not battles, not ceremonies, not proclamations — but in quiet, relentless tasks that stitched the palace together.

  Soliana walked through all of it, an unmarked page in a book already written.

  No one asked her to help.

  No one told her to leave.

  It was as if the building had already decided what she was: something to be left where Flora had placed her.

  She found Flora again near midday.

  Not by tracking. By accident.

  She had wandered onto a balcony that overlooked one of the inner courtyards — not the one where Roland and Anastasia trained, another one, narrower and quieter, with a single tree growing stubbornly out of a crack in the stone.

  Below, Flora crossed the yard with a basket at her hip, speaking quietly with another servant. She looked tired — not in the dramatic way stories described exhaustion, but in the small details. The way her shoulders dipped a fraction between sentences. The way her free hand flexed, as though the bones inside it ached.

  Soliana pressed her fingers against the cold stone railing.

  “Flora,” she called.

  Her voice didn’t carry.

  The courtyard swallowed her words before they reached the ground.

  Flora returned to their room hours later.

  Soliana had worn a groove in the floor by then, pacing between the bed and the window. She straightened instinctively when the door opened, as if caught doing something wrong.

  Flora slipped inside and closed the door with more care than it needed.

  “I’m back,” she said.

  “I know,” Soliana replied. She knew because the room felt less empty.

  Flora set a small parcel on the table. “They sent up lunch. I told them not to bother reheating it, or we’d be eating at midnight.”

  She spoke as she moved. Always moving. Removing her shawl, folding it, checking the window, glancing at the door again as if it might call her name a second time.

  “Did you stay here?” Flora asked.

  “Yes,” Soliana lied.

  “Good girl.”

  The words scraped more than they soothed.

  “How was it?” Soliana asked.

  Flora paused halfway through untangling her sleeves from her shift. “How was what?”

  “Your errand.”

  Flora’s lips pressed together, the way they did when she stepped around things on the floor that other people pretended not to see.

  “It was fine,” she said. “Busy.”

  “Oh.”

  Flora turned to the table, unwrapping the parcel. Bread. A small dish of something salted. A pot of soup that had gone from hot to merely warm. She began arranging them automatically.

  “Can I help?” Soliana asked.

  Flora glanced over her shoulder, surprised. “Help?”

  “With…” Soliana gestured vaguely. “That.”

  Flora watched her for a moment, then smiled. The expression was kind. It was also distancing.

  “You don’t need to,” she said. “Sit. I’ll bring it.”

  “I want to,” Soliana tried.

  Flora’s smile thinned, just a little. “Not today,” she said, gently but firmly. “You’re a guest here, remember?”

  Soliana looked at the table, then at her own hands. “Is that why I can’t go with you?”

  Flora stilled.

  “This morning,” Soliana continued. “And yesterday. And the day before. You always say you’ll come back. But you never say I can come with you.”

  Flora took longer answering that. Longer than she took to answer anything.

  “There are places that aren’t safe,” she said at last.

  “You go,” Soliana said.

  “I have to.”

  “So do I.”

  “No,” Flora said. The word was soft but absolute. “You don’t.”

  Silence crawled back in.

  Flora set a bowl in front of her, then another across from it. The third she left empty. She didn’t notice until her hand hovered there, waiting for something that wasn’t there.

  She withdrew it quickly. “Eat before it goes stale,” she said.

  Soliana picked up her spoon. She didn’t feel hungry.

  Later, when Flora bent to pick something up and winced — just slightly, hand pressed against her lower back — Soliana couldn’t stop the question.

  “Does it hurt?”

  Flora straightened. The movement turned into a stretch, casual and unbothered, as if she was only loosening stiff muscles.

  “Just a little,” she said. “Nothing to trouble you with.”

  Soliana watched her move around the room again — gathering laundry, checking the small chest by the wall, adjusting the blankets on the bed out of habit.

  “Can I come with you next time?” Soliana asked.

  Flora didn’t answer immediately. She touched the edge of the window, as if checking for drafts, although there were none.

  “Not yet,” she said. “Later.”

  “When is later?”

  Flora’s hand tightened just enough for her knuckles to pale.

  “When things are… settled,” she said.

  Soliana didn’t know what that meant. She knew it didn’t mean soon.

  The next day, Soliana didn’t wait to be left.

  When Flora was summoned again — a guard this time, not a servant — Soliana stood up at the same moment.

  “I’ll come too,” she said.

  Flora turned. The guard didn’t look at either of them directly, gaze fixed somewhere above their heads.

  “No,” Flora said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because it isn’t for you,” Flora replied. “Stay here. Please.”

  The please made it worse.

  “I’ll be quiet,” Soliana said. “I’ll listen. I won’t get in the way.”

  Flora’s jaw tightened.

  “This is work,” she said. “You’re not meant to work.”

  The guard shifted his weight, metal brushing stone. Time pulled at Flora’s sleeve.

  “I’ll come back soon,” she added, as if that soothed the wound she’d just cut.

  The door closed again.

  This time, Soliana didn’t eat.

  She stood in the middle of the room and stared at the space Flora had vacated, the air still carrying a faint trace of her soap and the smoke of the halls.

  Not meant to work.

  The phrase rolled around and around in her head like a marble in a bowl, hitting the same edges every time.

  Not meant to work.

  Then what was she meant to do?

  She went back to the corridors.

  This time she didn’t drift. She watched.

  In every room, someone worked.

  The kitchen boy from yesterday carried a pail twice his size, arms straining. No one told him he wasn’t meant to. A woman with streaks of gray in her hair scrubbed a table with the same energy as someone half her age. A man old enough to be a grandfather swept the same patch of floor three times, each stroke precise.

  No one stopped because they were tired. No one stopped because they were too old. No one stopped because they didn’t like it.

  They stopped when someone dismissed them.

  They left when someone sent them.

  They disappeared when they were no longer needed.

  Soliana watched a maid pour tea for a noble passing through — the movement smooth, unshaking, practiced. The noble didn’t thank her. He didn’t look at her face. He took the cup and continued talking to someone else.

  But when he walked away, he took the tea with him.

  The maid stayed.

  Soliana watched another servant receive instructions from a steward — a list of tasks rattled off in quick succession. The servant didn’t write anything down. He nodded, once, and went.

  He knew where to go.

  No one told him to “stay here.”

  No one left him in a room alone and closed the door.

  A thought she didn’t like settled in the back of her mind and refused to move:

  People who worked were always moving toward someone.

  People who didn’t work were told to wait.

  And waiting meant being left behind.

  That evening, Flora came back late enough that the torches in the corridor had already been replaced.

  She looked more tired than before. The lines around her mouth had deepened, pressed there by the sort of day that didn’t make stories but left bruises anyway.

  Soliana didn’t greet her with a question this time.

  “Welcome back,” she said instead.

  Flora smiled, small and grateful. “Thank you.”

  A tray had been brought up while she was gone — tea gone lukewarm, bread a little stiff at the edges. Flora set it on the table and reached for the teapot.

  “Let me,” Soliana said.

  Flora opened her mouth to refuse, habit moving faster than thought.

  Soliana was already reaching.

  The teapot was heavier than it looked. She wrapped both hands around the handle and lifted carefully, tongue pressing against the roof of her mouth in concentration. The liquid sloshed once against the lid.

  “Careful,” Flora murmured.

  “I am,” Soliana said.

  She tilted the spout over Flora’s cup. The first stream of tea missed by a finger’s width, splashing onto the saucer and then the table.

  She jerked the pot back, cheeks flushing hot.

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s alright.” Flora moved quickly, reaching for a cloth. “You don’t have to—”

  “I know,” Soliana said.

  Her voice came out level. No tremble. No argument.

  Flora dabbed the spill away with practiced efficiency, then gently took the teapot from Soliana’s hands and poured the rest herself — steady, unshaken.

  “You see?” Flora said lightly. “It’s just experience.”

  Soliana watched. She watched the angle of Flora’s wrist, the height she held the pot, the way she braced the base with her other hand at the last second.

  Experience.

  Something you only got by doing it.

  Not by sitting and waiting for it to happen to you.

  Flora fell asleep faster than usual that night.

  The day had worn her down far enough that she didn’t bother pretending otherwise. Once the lantern was turned low, she lay down fully dressed, only loosening the ties at her sleeves. Her breathing steadied within minutes.

  Soliana lay on her own side of the bed, eyes open, watching the faint rise and fall of Flora’s shoulders in the half-dark.

  Not meant to work.

  You’re a guest.

  Stay here.

  She waited until Flora’s breathing settled into the slow rhythm that meant the day had finally let go of her. Then Soliana slipped carefully out from under the blanket.

  The room was dim. The coals in the small brazier near the wall glowed faintly, painting the furniture in soft reds and blacks.

  She went to the table.

  The teapot sat where Flora had left it, empty now, still carrying the faint scent of tea leaves. The cups were stacked neatly. The cloth was folded.

  Soliana reached for the teapot.

  It was cool now, so the weight was all there was. She held it the same way Flora had — one hand on the handle, the other supporting the base.

  She lifted.

  Tilted.

  Imagined the invisible line where the tea should land.

  She set it down.

  Then she did it again.

  And again.

  Her arms tired faster than she expected. The handle dug into her fingers. Her wrists ached. She kept going until her movements stopped wobbling.

  When she could lift and tilt and set it down without the base knocking the table, she exhaled quietly.

  It wasn’t much.

  It was something.

  She put the pot back in its exact place, aligning the handle with the edge of the table the way Flora always did.

  Then she crossed to the small chest where Flora kept their clothes. She opened it without making a sound and took out one of the folded dresses — not her own. Flora’s.

  Soliana climbed onto the chair and laid the dress across her lap, smoothing the fabric with small, clumsy hands. She tried to fold it the way she’d seen the maids do: sleeves tucked, hem aligned, corners neat.

  The first attempt made a wrinkled lump.

  She unfolded it. Tried again.

  The second attempt was better. Still crooked.

  By the fifth, it looked almost like something that belonged in a drawer.

  She placed it back into the chest carefully.

  Then she took it out and did it again.

  By the time tiredness finally dragged her back to bed, her arms felt heavy, her fingers sore. She slipped under the blanket and turned onto her side, facing Flora’s back.

  In the dark, with no one watching, the decision settled into place so quietly it almost didn’t feel like a decision at all.

  If people who worked were always called, always sent, always needed—

  If people who worked were allowed to go where others could not—

  If the closest place to Flora was wherever duty pulled her—

  Then Soliana would go there too.

  She wouldn’t ask to come along.

  She would become someone it made sense to bring.

  Not a guest.

  Not a child left in a room with a bowl and a promise.

  Someone who poured the tea without spilling. Someone who folded the linens right. Someone who listened to instructions and moved before being told twice.

  Someone useful.

  The word didn’t feel noble or dramatic. It felt practical. Heavy. Real.

  Flora shifted in her sleep, murmuring something Soliana couldn’t catch.

  Soliana closed her eyes.

  Tomorrow, she decided, she would stand in the corridors again. Not to watch.

  To learn.

  Inferna would not change for her.

  So she would learn the steps it demanded — not because she loved it, not because she belonged here.

  Because Flora did.

  And Soliana was tired of doors closing between them.