He swung there, his eyes reflecting the firelight with an unnerving, glassy sharpness. Before he could say another word, Evangeline's hand flew out. It wasn't a Queen's strike; it was a desperate, panicked swat to his dangling head.
"You idiot!" she hissed, her voice breaking. "You nearly scared me to death!"
Silver unhooked his feet and dropped. He hit the stone floor without a sound, his body folding with an ease that felt wrong, almost skeletal. Before he'd even fully landed, he was sinking into a sweeping, mockery of a bow, his forehead nearly touching the filth on the floor. The bells on his cap gave a thin, pathetic jingle—the sound of a child's toy left in a graveyard.
"My deepest apologies, my Liege," he murmured. His greasepaint was a mess, smeared by sweat and grime into a pale, sweating mask, but his eyes were too bright, too sharp. "Shall I juggle gold for you? To settle the royal nerves? Or perhaps..." He tilted his head, his grin stretching until it looked like a wound. "...the dance of the daggers?"
At the word daggers, her chest seized. It wasn't a "phantom pain"—it was a violent, physical jolt that made her breath hitch. She could almost feel the cold metal sliding between her ribs again, the weight of the hand that had killed her out of a twisted kind of love.
She stared at him. Her eyes traced the familiar lines of his face—the same face she had last seen gray, draining of life, and covered in his own blood.
The urge to grab him, to claw at his tunic just to feel the thrum of a pulse that wasn't supposed to exist, was a physical ache in her throat. She wanted to scream, to weep, to break. But the crown felt like a lead band tightening around her skull. He was a prisoner, a fool in a dirty cell; she was the woman who had put him there. The distance between them wasn't just time—it was the blood already on her hands.
She didn't sob. She didn't scream. A single, hot tear escaped her, cutting a clean, wet track through the grime on her cheek.
Silver's mask didn't just slip; it fell apart. The theatrical swagger vanished, replaced by a raw, panicked look that made him seem younger—smaller. He looked less like a Joker and more like a boy caught in a nightmare.
"Highness?" The word was a clumsy stumble. "What… what did I do? I swear, I didn't mean to… Please, don't. My head is already yours, don't take the rest of me too."
But the control she'd been gripping since sunrise finally snapped. The memory of the dead, the ashen faces from the coup, and the suffocating weight of a future she had to carry alone—it all came down at once.
Her legs simply gave out. She didn't "sit"; she collapsed, her white silk nightgown hitting the filthy, soot-covered floor and soaking up the dampness of the stone. She pressed her forehead against the cold wall, the grit scratching her skin, and let out a sound that wasn't a sob. It was a low, hollow groan that vibrated in the small cell.
"Let me stay like this," she rasped, her voice breaking. "Just for a minute. I've earned this."
She wept until her chest ached and her throat felt raw. Silver looked destroyed. He hovered over her, his hands twitching, reaching out and then pulling back, paralyzed by the fact that he was just a fool in a cell and she was a Queen breaking on the floor.
Then, he reached into his hat. His fingers moved with a frantic, shaky rhythm. He began pulling out a string of cheap, multicolored silk handkerchiefs—the tawdry props he used to make children laugh at garden parties.
One by one, he held them out. A stained yellow. A garish purple. A faded green.
Evangeline took them. She didn't say thank you. She sat there in the muck, dabbing her eyes with the tattered remnants of his act, using his fake magic to wipe away the grit and the salt of her own breakdown.
When the shaking finally stopped, she wiped her face one last time and dropped the pile of colored rags into the dirty straw. She stood up, her legs stiff, and drew a breath that tasted of dust and damp stone.
"Are you finished, then?" Silver's voice was a mere rasp, so thin it barely carried across the cell.
"I am," she said. She pulled her shoulders back, forcing the royal coldness to settle over her like a heavy cloak. The woman who had just collapsed was gone, locked away behind the stare of a Queen. "Now, talk to me, Jester. Who put you in this hole?"
She stepped closer, the hem of her ruined, filth-heavy nightgown rustling against the straw. "I told you to stop that play. I wanted you out of my sight, yes. But I never signed a warrant for this. I didn't send you here to rot for sixty days. I'm not that far gone."
Silver tilted his head. The bells on his cap gave a soft, lonely jingle. "The truth isn't going to help that mood of yours, Majesty. Some things are better left under the dirt."
"Speak," she commanded. Her voice dropped into that low, dangerous tone that usually made the court go silent. "I'm done with the lies. All of them. Who was it?"
A slow, ugly smile spread across Silver's face. It wasn't a grin; it was a warning. He leaned in, his breath warm and smelling of stale water against her ear—a sickening contrast to the freezing stone pressing against her back. He whispered the name, and for a second, the sound of her own heartbeat drowned out everything else.
"It was the King of Hearts himself, my Lady."
The words didn't just "hit" her; they hollowed her out. The Golden Dawn. The man who had been 'too tired' to join her. The husband who waved to the crowds with the same hand he'd used to bolt this door.
"Julian," she said. The name felt like grit between her teeth.
"The very same," Silver whispered. He pulled back, his eyes searching her face for the crack he knew was coming. "It seems your King has a much longer reach than you realized. Or maybe, he just doesn't like to share his Queen's attention."