Chapter 26 The Shift Under the Skin

Chapter 26 The Shift Under the Skin

Breakfast was supposed to be calm. Morning spilled through the tall dining-hall windows, pouring light over the long table now only half occupied. Silver plates caught the sun; slices of fruit and warm bread steamed faintly. The scent of butter, honey, and smoked meat drifted together, filling the room faster than the morning prayers.

The men were gone. The chairs at the far left end sat empty, napkins neatly folded, glasses still dewed. The Duke, the lords—including Zade—had gone early for a meeting in the strategy chamber. Only the women remained: the Duchess at the middle seat, a handful of Ladies who stayed in the keep, two empty chairs at my sides that were “for guests later.”

And me. With a plate that was… full.

I still wasn’t sure how it happened. I’d only meant to grab bread. Now in front of me sat two slices, eggs, meat, a few pieces of fruit, and a bit of oat porridge. My stomach must have taken over my hands without consulting my head.

The dream from last night still clung to the back of my neck.

That bed. That star-window. The distant roar. The hand covering mine, the mouth on the wound, the voice speaking like it’d known me long before the world had a name.

I slid my left palm under the table. Smooth skin. It still felt wrong: knowing I’d been injured yesterday, seeing my own blood, feeling that sharp sting, then waking up with a palm as clean as fresh parchment. The healer’s brew wasn’t that miraculous. And that touch in the slip of time between sleep and waking… that had been real.

That voice.

Something in its timbre felt familiar. Heavy, low, dry but warm at the edges. Like someone used to speaking in commands, forced to wrap them in something softer when they touched my name.

But every time I tried to pin that voice to a face I knew in this world, none fit.

I bit into bread. Breath slipped out through my nose. My stomach welcomed the food like something long overdue.

“Castella, sweetheart, you’re eating like you just wrestled two dragons,” the Duchess said, cutting clean through my thoughts.

I lifted my gaze.

Duchess Hayward sat across from me, her moss-green gown fitted perfectly, her brown hair twisted into a neat coil with a few silver streaks left visible like tiny lightning bolts. Her graceful hand held a teacup, but her eyes… were studying my plate.

“Not two,” I answered. “Just one. The rest are in my head.”

A few Ladies let out little laughs. Lady Morwen covered her mouth with her fingertips; Lady Elane only shook her head fondly.

“You usually scare food away with a look,” the Duchess went on. “This morning it never stood a chance.”

“I’m hungry,” I said simply. “It’s good news. Means I’m not dead.”

“You’re always hungry, darling,” Lady Morwen chimed in. “But it’s normally hunger for trouble, not food.”

I stirred my oats with honey. “Today I decided to pick the hunger I can manage. Give me an enemy I can eat, that’s progress.”

The Duchess sighed, though the corner of her mouth lifted. “In any case,” she set her cup down, smoothing the fabric on her lap, “I want to discuss something more important than your attempt to destroy breakfast etiquette.”

“Finally,” I muttered. “I was afraid we were going to talk about morning prayers.”

“Your gown,” the Duchess said.

I took another bite of bread. “Sure.”

“I spent the last two nights with the tailors,” she began, eyes narrowing with that particular mix of pride and righteous frustration reserved for fabric. “I stitched several parts myself. They don’t understand how our shoulders must fall under altar light.”

“That’s because their shoulders have never been under altar light,” Lady Elane said. “Only kitchen lamps.”

“I corrected them,” the Duchess announced, straightening. “Three gowns for the rite. One for the night before, one for the peak day, one for after. For you. For me. And several for the Ladies who will be around you.”

I ate another spoon of oats but my ears tilted toward her. “What colors?”

The Duchess smiled like a cat who’d successfully saved the last bit of cream. “For you, pale gold and milk-white for the peak day. The sun of Hannan will be jealous.”

My face tightened. “That sounds blinding.”

“That’s the point of rites,” Lady Morwen laughed. “Blind everyone until they forget to judge.”

“For the night before,” the Duchess continued, ignoring her, “a midnight-blue gown. Nearly black. With silver threads I pulled myself along the hem. So people remember you’re not only the light. You’re also the shadow of Caeloria.”

Something in that pressed against my ribs. I swallowed slowly.

“And after the rite,” her voice softened, “deep forest green like the heart of Thaldrun, with just a touch of gold. To mark that you return to the world after the prayers end. Not belonging only to the altar.”

“I’ve never belonged to the altar,” I raised a brow.

“Say that in front of the High Priest,” Lady Elane said, “and she’ll drop a scripture on her own head.”

They laughed again. I let my mouth curl a little.

The Duchess watched me, longer this time. Her gaze dropped from my face to my neck, to the hair I’d tied loosely and left half falling, then lifted back to my eyes.

“What?” I froze in mid-spoon. “Do I have soup on my nose?”

“No.” Her scrutiny sharpened. “There’s something different.”

“Do I?” I swallowed. “I’m eating.”

“Not that.” Her fingers tapped lightly against the table. “There’s something… else.”

Lady Morwen looked at me now, outright. Elane too.

I leaned back in my chair, tilting my head. “If you say I look sick, I’ll return this soup to the kitchen.”

Morwen shook her head quickly. “Not sick. Quite the opposite.”

Elane lifted a hand, hesitant, as if afraid she might accidentally touch something fragile. “Your skin,” she said. “You’re usually… striking. But this morning… you look like you just stepped out of a prayer chamber. Or out of a very good dream.”

The back of my neck tightened. A few curses twirled on my tongue and I swallowed them.

“You’ve all lost your eyes,” I said. “I woke up with tangled hair and a poor attitude toward the world.”

“Your hair has been tangled since you were little,” the Duchess replied calmly. “The difference is that back then it looked like an angry lion that fell off a roof.”

A few Ladies smiled, some hiding laughter behind teacups.

I remembered the child I used to be, running through Evrithall’s corridors, brown hair in snarls with streaks of gold flaring outward like tiny tongues of fire, clothes dirty, knees scraped.

“Now,” the Duchess went on, making a small gesture around my head, “it isn’t a lion. More like… something that grows wild but chooses its own shape. Dark, with streaks of sun that refuse to die.”

My hair. Brunette, threaded with stubborn blond that appeared without anyone’s permission.

“People used to say it was Elyra’s curse,” I recalled.

“People are fools,” the Duchess snapped. “I said it was a sign you hadn’t yet decided whether you’d drag the world into light or burn it at the edges.”

“That sounds suspiciously similar to what the High Priest said yesterday,” I muttered.

“The High Priest stole my line,” she answered.

Her eyes paused on my face again. A slight crease formed between her brows, like she was reaching for something just out of memory’s grasp.

“You’re brighter today,” she said at last, voice lowered. “Not just pretty, Castella. You know you’re pretty. That’s an entirely different problem.”

“Thank you for understanding,” I set my spoon down, settling back in my chair. “I didn’t want to ease you into that realization slowly.”

Lady Morwen sighed dramatically. “Some people take a lifetime to admit they’re attractive, you know.”

“I’m saving them time,” I replied. “They don’t need to lie out of politeness. They just need to acknowledge what’s already obvious.”

The Duchess nearly scolded me, but her mouth shifted into a smile she didn’t bother hiding. “Your confidence remains intact, I see.”

“If the day ever comes when that breaks,” I said, “we have a much bigger problem than dresses.”

But she didn’t let go of the strange brightness she saw. Her gaze dragged across my cheekbones, my neck, the line of my shoulders beneath the thin fabric of my breakfast gown.

“Did you sleep?” she asked.

That question slammed right into the place last night’s dream sat. The metal bed. The mouth on my palm. The voice....

“I… slept,” I said, picking each word with care. “With debatable quality.”

“I’ve seen the eyes of the unrested,” the Duchess said. “They look hollow. Their skin dulls. You… do not look like that.”

Lady Elane narrowed her eyes. “Your skin looks like—” she paused, hunting for the right image. “Like someone who stood too close to something that glowed, and a trace of that glow stayed under the skin.”

I forced myself not to touch my cheek. “You’re just hungry,” I said. “Hunger causes aesthetic hallucinations.”

“We ate before you came down,” the Duchess replied. “And I rarely hallucinate.”

A servant passed behind my chair, placing more bread on the side table. I felt his stare linger on my shoulder a moment too long. When he walked away, a flicker of relief softened his face, as if confirming something.

This was becoming annoying.

I straightened, lifting my chin.

“If you all expect me to start floating or singing prayers in midair,” I said, “bad news: I’m only going up to my room to read something the High Priest hates.”

“Of course, you do,” the Duchess exhaled. “That sounds much more like you.”

But before she let it go, she reached across the table and touched my fingers. Soft. Brief. But there was something else beneath that gentleness, something belonging to a woman who had once stood at the same altar, survived the rite, watched the world try to swallow her whole, and refused to be eaten.

“Castella,” she said, her tone shifting. More personal. “If there’s something, you’ll tell me?”

Something.

A dream that kissed a wound. A gold thread in someone else’s chest. Light in my palm.

No. I wouldn’t tell her. Not because I didn’t trust her but because what words were big enough to explain any of that without tearing everything open?

“There are many somethings,” I grinned. “Which one do you mean?”

“You always find a way to dodge,” she sighed. “I forgot.”

Still, her fingers tightened around mine for a heartbeat before she pulled back. In that touch, the small soft part of me that hated being touched felt like opening its mouth. I shut it immediately.