Chapter 21 One Soft, One Black

Chapter 21 One Soft, One Black
The group begins to shift as the guards step forward to lead the girls into lines, but before Amaris can move, the same head guard who noticed her earlier breaks formation and strides directly toward her. His steps are sharp and deliberate, and the girls nearby instinctively edge away from his path.

He stops in front of her, towering, his expression carved from granite.

“You should learn the rules of this palace before you make another mistake,” he says quietly. There is no kindness in his tone. “A failure to bow before the King is considered an insult. Another slip like that and you will not see tomorrow.”

His words strike her like a blow. She opens her mouth to explain that she had not known, but several girls around them snicker before she can speak. Someone laughs outright and calls her clueless. Another remarks that she must have grown up under a rock. Rhea is among them, smiling like she enjoys every painful second of it.

The guard waits for no reply. He turns and returns to his place in the formation, leaving Amaris standing there with her pulse thundering in her ears.

A sharp whistle echoes across the courtyard. Three women dressed in fitted uniforms stride out of a side entrance, their steps perfectly synchronized. Their presence immediately calms the crowd. With quiet authority, they begin dividing the girls into groups, each woman reading from a long parchment and calling out names.

Amaris’s name is called within the second group. Rhea is assigned to the same one, a detail that earns a victorious grin from the younger witch. The group of about ten girls follows the assigned woman down a long walkway that curves behind the main courtyard and leads toward the east wing.

The moment they step into the corridor, the noise begins. Some girls chatter excitedly about the King. Others whisper about potential mates. Rhea talks the loudest, her voice intentionally carrying as she describes how she expects to be placed in the finest room.

Their head attendant leads them into a long hallway lined with doors. She explains in a clipped voice that each girl may choose a room from the available ones along the corridor. Rhea slips past the attendant before she even finishes speaking and claims the room at the very end. The other girls rush forward to scramble for the next best options.

Amaris lingers a moment, watching the chaos unfold.

She is not angry at first, simply tired, still unsettled by the courtyard incident. But then she hears Rhea’s delighted laugh drifting down the hallway and sees two other girls tussling over a room near the windows while a third tries to shove someone else away from a door.

She chooses a quieter option, a room closer to the middle, clean and unobtrusive with soft light spilling in from a narrow window. The door hangs slightly open, almost inviting.

She steps toward it, intent on claiming the space before she is dragged into more drama, but another girl reaches her before she crosses the threshold.

The girl places a hand on the doorframe and blocks Amaris’s path. Her expression is smug in a way that reminds Amaris painfully of Rhea.

“Sorry,” the girl says, her voice sharpened with arrogance, “but I think I will be taking this room.”

Amaris blinks in disbelief. “I reached it first.”

The girl lifts her chin. “And I want it more.”

Behind them, a few girls stop to watch. Someone snickers. Another whispers that Amaris should move aside and know her place. After all, she is already the strange one. The girl in front of her crosses her arms and taps her foot, clearly waiting for Amaris to crumble and step back like she has done her entire life.

A low heat begins to rise through Amaris’s chest. She has been insulted from the moment she entered the palace gates. She has been mocked, laughed at, threatened by a guard, and now pushed again for no reason except someone thinking they can walk over her.

Her fingers twitch slightly.

Let me handle it, her wolf murmurs softly, the voice sliding into her thoughts like warm fur brushing against her spine.

Amaris breathes in sharply, not wanting a scene, but her anger spikes so quickly she cannot contain it. It lifts through her like a sudden burst of inner wind.

The girl steps forward and pushes her shoulder as if daring her to react.

Something inside Amaris snaps.

Her vision flickers. Her hearing sharpens. The corridor stretches and warps in that strange way it does when her wolf moves with her. She feels her control slip, just for a breath, just long enough for her wolf to surge through her limbs with quick, silent precision.

There is a short sound. A gasp. A thud.

When Amaris comes back to herself, she is standing exactly where she had been a moment before. But now there is a girl lying unconscious on the floor several feet away from her. The other girls are no longer snickering or whispering. They have stepped far back, forming a wide circle around her, staring with wide, horrified eyes.

A voice breaks the shocked silence.

“What happened here?”

It comes from someone at the far end of the hall. One of the attendants rushes toward them, skirts swishing sharply against the stone floor.

Someone close to Amaris mutters loudly, “She attacked her!”

Another voice joins in. “Get the woman in charge!”

A third girl takes one look at the scene and bolts down the hall, calling urgently for the head woman.

Amaris stands frozen, staring at her hands, her heart thudding heavy and wild inside her chest.

She does not remember striking anyone.
She only remembers being pushed.
And then the world went red for a blink of time.

Her wolf breathes inside her mind with slow, dangerous satisfaction.

No one pushes us anymore.

Amaris closes her eyes briefly, fear and adrenaline mixing in her blood.

This day is only getting worse. And it has only just begun.