Winnifred
Raphael sold our garments. What once shimmered in brocade and threadbare gold now hung in ruin—a brown dress clinging to my bones, thin as a veil against the cold. My jewelry vanished with them, exchanged for coins that barely bought us the roof over our heads. Raphael, once pristine in polished mail and royal silk, now wore a fraying cloak and ill-fitting boots that betrayed his breeding. We chose the cheapest inn we could find and stayed for days without speaking of the past.
We found work at the stables. Rather, Raphael found work. He shoveled dung, hauled feed, and scrubbed muck from hooves until his hands blistered red. All I did was carry buckets of water, my body trembling from the weight. The cold reached into my lungs and made my joints ache, yet I could not complain. Still, it was not enough.
"You'd better help clean the stalls. What are you doin', slackin' off?"
Hereda barked the words like spit on stone. She was the one who got us the job.
I didn't argue. I didn't lie.
It was true—I had done little. Not for lack of trying, but Raphael wouldn't let me. Even when I offered, he stood firm.
The truth was: I couldn't stomach the work. Just walking into the barn made me nauseous. The stench—dung, piss, sweat, rot—hung thick in the air, clinging to my skin like disease. More than once, I'd retched before I even picked up a shovel. The floors were soft with filth, a slurry of things I could not name, and I feared slipping—feared falling into it, as though that would seal what we had become.
I stood at the barn's entrance, bucket in hand, as a gust of wind blew the reek straight into my face. The stables groaned with the low, sluggish breath of beasts and men. Somewhere behind the stalls, Raphael's voice murmured to a horse. Gentle. Always gentle, even now.
I swallowed the bile rising in my throat and stepped inside.
There was nothing here worth remembering. No silence, no stillness—just noise: hooves scraping, men cursing, wood buckling under weight. Muck squelched beneath my shoes and painted my hem with brown streaks. My dress—gods, what remained of it—clung to my thighs with damp.
A mare snorted at me. I flinched.
This was not where I belonged.
I was born beneath chandeliers, raised by courtiers, trained to walk in silence on marble floors. Not here. Not among flies and filth.
I had eaten off gold. I had worn pearls at thirteen. I had stood beside kings. Now I waited for a woman with straw in her hair to decide if I was working hard enough.
Hereda stomped past me again, her glare sharp as hooves. "Bucket. Stall six."
I did not move.
"You deaf, girl?"
I looked her in the eye. My back straightened without thought.
"I am not deaf," I said, my voice low, cold.
Hereda scoffed. "Then act like it."
She turned away, muttering something about nobles with soft hands and empty heads.
Let her speak. Let them all speak. I had no crown now, but I remembered what it felt like to wear one. I remembered how people bowed when I passed, how servants silenced entire halls just by whispering my name.
I would not kneel to a barnhand.
When I walked to the stall, I did so with my chin high, my breath shallow, and my pride intact, though stained, though cracked, though barely clinging to me like the fraying cloth on my shoulders.
Let them think I'm useless. Let them see a girl who could not shovel dung.
But I would not grovel.
I would endure.
We sat behind the stables during the midday break, our backs against the frozen stone wall. A rough cloth was spread between us—Raphael's doing. He'd scavenged scraps from the market stalls this morning. Two pieces of flatbread, half a salted turnip, and a dried fish wrapped in paper. It stank of brine and copper. I could barely look at it.
Raphael broke the bread in half, handed me the larger piece without a word. He always did that. He thought I wouldn't notice, as if I were blind. As if pity could be hidden behind silence.
"I'm not starving," I said.
"You are," he replied, tearing a piece of fish with his teeth. "You just don't know it."
I didn't answer. The bread in my hand was stale, the crust nearly unbreakable. My jaw ached before I swallowed the first bite.
A stablehand passed by us with a full bowl of stew. Steam curled in the cold air. I followed it with my eyes before I caught myself. No. I would not envy a stablehand. Not in front of Raphael. Not in front of anyone.
He looked thinner now, despite the layers. Mud clung to his knees, dried in patches along his sleeves. He used to wear armor like it was part of him. Now he flinched when he moved, his left shoulder stiff. I saw it when he reached for the turnip. He didn't think I noticed that either.
"I can work," I said, chewing slowly. "Truly."
He said nothing.
"I'm not porcelain."
Still, silence.
Then he looked at me. Not harshly. Not pitying. Just tired. "You still smell like the palace, Winnifred. Even under all that dirt."
"I'll scrub harder."
"That's not what I meant."
I hated the way he said my name now. Soft. Careful. As if he were handling a wound that hadn't scabbed right. I hated that he fed me. That he carried our burdens. That he made space for my silence and never once asked me to bow.
It wasn't mercy. It was cruelty in a different form. Because I still had pride.
And I wanted to keep it. Even now.
I set the rest of the bread down. My hands were cold.
"Don't starve yourself," he said.
"Don't carry me."
Raphael leaned back against the stone. "Someone has to."
I turned my face from him then. The sun was beginning to fall behind the church towers in the distance. The shadow of the spires reached long across the stables.
It was going to be a long winter.
Malton was far from the capital. Far from everything, really. A quiet place near the northern woodlands, where the frost came early and left late. The village was small—no more than thirty buildings with smoke curling from their crooked chimneys. No palace. No watchmen. No courts. No one here knew who I was. And no one would care if they did.
We returned to the inn after our break, past frostbitten fences and yellowing trees. The roads here were dirt, packed tight from hooves and heavy wheels. No stone. No cobble. Just mud and silence. Even the wind moved slowly in Malton.
The innkeeper barely looked at us when we entered—just nodded. We paid in advance. He liked that. Liked silence too.
Our room was above the kitchen. The walls were thin, and the ceilings low. The bed creaked even when we breathed. There was a stove in the corner that coughed heat when it remembered to work. Raphael had to feed it every few hours to keep the room from freezing.
I sat by the window and watched smoke rise from the neighboring barn. The sky was the color of old slate, and the hills beyond it were quiet and gray. No bells. No processions. Just crows, and that brittle kind of wind that made the bones in your wrist ache.
Raphael pulled off his boots near the stove, wincing slightly.
"You're hurt," I said.
He didn't answer.
"Let me see."
"I'm fine."
"You're limping, Raphael."
"It's nothing." He pulled a blanket around his shoulders and sat near the fire. "It's always nothing. Isn't that what you want me to say?" I said nothing. He rubbed his ankle, teeth gritted.
I turned back to the window.
Malton was the kind of place where you buried your name. Where no one asked what you were running from because they were running too. The people here lived close to the earth—too close. Their backs bent early. Their children worked before they could read. No one here had time for dignity. You ate what you had. You did what needed doing. You didn't ask why.
But I was not like them.
Even if I could no longer say it aloud.
—---
The market square had not changed since her arrival. Malton was always a tangle—spices on the air, men shouting over crates, women sweeping thresholds as if it made a difference. But on that morning, the bulletin board was freshly pinned.
A notice caught her eye.
"Seeking a skilled herbal specialist. Familiarity with lunar flora preferred. Contact through Briar Apothecary – Malton."
She stared at it longer than she should have.
Lunar flora.
No one in Sera called it that.
Only Faeryn had named it so—plants that bloomed under moonlight, fed by mana not sun. The kind her mother used to grow in the royal gardens.
She took the notice. Folded it once. Tucked it into her sleeve.