Tristan's POV
I stood frozen in the shadows just outside the palace gates, staring at the tall stone walls that had once been everything I knew. The wind carried faint sounds from inside with distant voices, the clink of armor, but my mind was somewhere else entirely. Centuries peeled away like old paint, and suddenly I was eleven again, small and scared, watching my mother on her knees in the grand hall.
She scrubbed the marble floor with a rag that was already brown from dirt and blood. Her back was bent, hair falling loose from its knot, but she never complained. Another queen, tall, jeweled, and cruel, walked past and stopped to watch. "Do it well," she said, her voice dripping honey with venom. "Scrub it harder! We don't want streaks."
