WHAT LIVES BENEATH THE VEIL
Book One: The Unblooded Lamb
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CONTENT WARNING: This series contains explicit sexual violence, human sacrifice, psychological torture, murder of innocent characters (including children and family members), ritualistic killing, and extreme horror. No character is safe. Read at your own risk.
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Chapter Three: The Boy Who Asked
Year 7 – Three Days After Mira
Finn did not know Mira was dead.
He knew she was gone. Gone was a word the adults used when they didn't want to explain. Your friend has gone away. She had to leave. She won't be coming back.
Finn was six years old. He had been six years old for three months, and in those three months, he had learned that "gone" meant different things depending on who said it.
When the cook said "gone," she meant fired.
When the guards said "gone," they meant dead.
When the princess said "gone," she meant—
She hadn't said anything yet.
She had only smiled at him. Once. In the hallway, the day after Mira disappeared. She had stopped walking, turned her head, and smiled at him with her soft mouth and her wide eyes.
Finn had smiled back.
He didn't know better.
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Liora – Evening of the Same Day
Liora watched the boy from the window of her chamber.
He was small. Smaller than she had expected. Six years old, yes, but underfed—the kind of underfed that came from giving half your bread to someone older who then vanished. His ribs showed through his tunic when he stretched. His wrists were like twigs.
Weak, she thought. But useful.
Mira had loved him. That was clear from everything Mira had said in those weeks before the stone. Finn needs me. Finn has no one else. Finn is like a little brother to me.
Love was interesting to Liora. She did not feel it herself—had never felt it, not once, not even as a reflex—but she understood its mechanics. Love made people predictable. Love made people reachable.
If she wanted to know whether anyone was looking for Mira, she needed to watch the boy.
He was looking.
Every morning, he asked the same question: "Have you seen Mira?"
Every morning, the adults shook their heads. "Gone," they said. "Away." No one asked why a twelve-year-old serving girl would leave without her belongings, without her wages, without saying goodbye to the boy who followed her like a shadow.
No one asked because no one cared.
Liora had counted on that.
But Finn cared. Finn asked. Finn remembered.
That made him dangerous.
Not immediately. Not urgently. A six-year-old boy could not topple a princess. But he could wonder. And wondering led to questions. And questions led to—
She stopped the thought.
Not yet, she told herself. Wait. Watch. Learn.
The boy would keep.
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Finn – One Week After Mira
Finn had started having nightmares.
In the dreams, Mira was standing in a garden. Not the pretty garden near the great hall—a different garden. Overgrown. Forgotten. Full of shadows that moved when he wasn't looking directly at them.
Mira was crying.
"Why didn't you come?" she asked in the dream. "I called for you. At the end. I called your name."
Finn woke up screaming.
The other servants' children ignored him. He slept in a corner of the kitchen, on a pile of old sacks, and no one checked on him when he cried. No one had checked on him since Mira left.
He was alone.
But he was not stupid.
He had seen things. Small things. The princess's dress had been clean the morning after Mira disappeared—too clean. Princess Liora always wore white, and white showed everything. But that morning, her dress had been perfect. No mud. No stains. No wrinkles.
As if it had been washed in the middle of the night.
As if someone had needed to wash blood out of it.
Finn didn't know he was thinking this. He was six. He didn't have words for forensic analysis or suspicious behavior. But he had instincts. And his instincts were screaming.
Stay away from the princess.
He didn't know why.
But he listened.
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Liora – Two Weeks After Mira
She noticed that the boy was avoiding her.
It was subtle. He didn't run when he saw her—that would have been obvious, suspicious. He simply drifted. Toward doorways. Toward crowds. Toward anywhere she wasn't.
Interesting, she thought.
Most adults couldn't read her. But a six-year-old boy—hungry, scared, alone—had somehow sensed something wrong. Not consciously. He didn't know what he was sensing. But he was sensing it nonetheless.
That makes him more dangerous, she realized. Not less.
An adult who suspected her would gather evidence. Build a case. Confront her with proof. That took time. Time gave Liora room to maneuver.
But a child who felt something was wrong—a child who couldn't articulate it, couldn't prove it, couldn't even name it—that child was unpredictable. That child might tell someone without meaning to. Might mention the princess's too-clean dress to a guard. Might say "she scares me" to the wrong person at the wrong time.
She needed to handle him carefully.
Not kill him. Not yet. A second disappearance so close to the first would raise questions she didn't want to answer. But she couldn't let him keep avoiding her, either. Avoidance meant suspicion. Suspicion meant risk.
She needed to charm him.
The way she had charmed Mira.
The way she charmed everyone.
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Finn – Three Weeks After Mira
The princess started being nice to him.
It began with a piece of bread.
He was sitting in his corner of the kitchen, eating yesterday's crust, when she appeared in the doorway. No footsteps. No warning. Just there, like a ghost in a white dress.
"Hello, Finn."
He froze.
She knelt down. Her dress touched the dirty floor, and she didn't seem to care. Her eyes were soft. Her voice was soft. Everything about her was soft.
"I heard you were friends with Mira," she said.
He nodded. His throat was too tight to speak.
"I was her friend too." The princess's lower lip trembled. Just a little. Just enough. "I miss her very much."
Finn didn't know what to say. He missed Mira too. He missed her every day, every hour, every time he woke up from the nightmare and reached for her and found nothing but empty sacks.
The princess held out the bread.
"I brought this for you," she said. "I thought you might be hungry."
He took it. His hand shook. She noticed—he saw her notice—but she didn't mention it. She just smiled and stood up and walked away, leaving him alone with the bread and the smell of her perfume and the strange, sick feeling in his stomach.
The bread was good.
He hated himself for eating it.
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Liora – The Same Evening
He's suspicious, she thought, climbing the stairs to her chamber. But he's hungry. Hungry people eat kindness like bread. They can't help it.
She had seen it in Mira. She would see it in Finn. It was only a matter of time.
But time was something she had.
She was seven years old. She had decades—centuries, if her plans succeeded—to perfect her craft. There was no rush. No deadline. No hero waiting in the wings to stop her.
She could afford to be patient.
The boy would come around. They always did.
And when he trusted her—when he smiled at her without flinching, when he took her bread without hesitation, when he forgot that he had ever been afraid—
Then she would decide what to do with him.
Not yet.
But soon.
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Finn – One Month After Mira
He didn't know when it happened.
One day, he was afraid of the princess. The next day, he wasn't. Or maybe he was still afraid, but the fear had gotten tangled up with something else—gratitude, maybe, or loneliness, or the desperate hunger for anyone to be kind to him.
She brought him food every day now.
Bread. Cheese. Sometimes meat, when the kitchen had extra. She never asked for anything in return. She just smiled and knelt and handed him the food and said "I hope you're doing well, Finn."
She remembered his name.
No one else remembered his name.
The cook called him "boy." The guards called him "you." The other servant children called him nothing at all. But the princess—the princess—said his name like it mattered.
Finn.
How are you today, Finn?
I brought you something, Finn.
I'm here if you need to talk, Finn.
He started looking forward to her visits.
He started waiting for them.
And slowly, quietly, without noticing it was happening, he stopped being afraid.
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Liora – Six Weeks After Mira
There, she thought, watching Finn smile at her from across the kitchen.
The fear was gone. She could see it in his eyes—the way they had softened, the way they no longer darted toward doorways when she appeared. He trusted her now. Not completely, not yet, but enough.
Enough to be useful.
She still didn't plan to kill him. Not immediately. He was more valuable alive—a witness who would swear she was kind, a voice that would counter any future accusations. "Princess Liora? No, she's wonderful. She brought me food when I was hungry. She remembered my name."
That was the genius of her mask.
She didn't just hide her darkness. She built proof of her innocence. Brick by brick. Kindness by kindness. Everyone who knew her had a story about her goodness. A gift. A soft word. A moment of unexpected warmth.
By the time anyone thought to accuse her, there would be too many voices saying "she could never" for the truth to be heard.
Finn was another brick.
She would keep him alive.
For now.
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Finn – Two Months After Mira
The nightmares hadn't stopped.
He still dreamed of Mira in the forgotten garden. Still heard her calling his name. Still woke up with his heart pounding and his cheeks wet.
But during the day, things were better.
The princess came almost every afternoon. Sometimes she brought food. Sometimes she brought small gifts—a ribbon, a polished stone, a drawing she had made. She sat with him in his corner of the kitchen and asked about his day and listened like she actually cared.
No one had ever listened to him before.
She's my friend, he told himself. The princess is my friend.
He didn't notice that she never let him touch her. That she always sat just out of reach. That her smile never quite reached her eyes.
He was six.
He didn't know what to look for.
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Liora – Three Months After Mira
She had him now.
Fully. Completely. The boy would do anything she asked. She had tested him—small requests first ("Can you fetch my cloak?"), then larger ones ("Can you keep a secret for me?"). He had agreed to everything. Eagerly. Desperately.
He was hers.
She felt something almost like satisfaction.
Not pleasure. Not joy. Just… confirmation. Another experiment successfully concluded. Another person added to her collection of masks.
She would not kill him.
He was too useful alive.
But she would use him.
For information. For alibis. For the day—inevitably, eventually—when someone asked questions about Mira.
When that day came, Finn would tell them the princess was innocent.
He would believe it.
That was the beauty of the mask.
It fooled everyone.
Even the ones who had felt the truth, once, before she buried it under bread and kindness and soft words.
Even the ones who dreamed of gardens.
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Finn – Four Months After Mira
He stopped having the nightmares.
Not because Mira stopped visiting. She still came, every night, standing in the overgrown garden with tears on her face. But Finn had stopped being afraid of her.
"Why didn't you come?" she asked.
"I was hungry," he said in the dream. "And she gave me bread."
Mira's face changed.
She looked sadder than before. Not angry. Just… tired. Like she had expected this. Like she had known, even at the end, that bread would be enough to buy his silence.
"You'll forget me," Mira said.
"No, I won't," Finn said.
But even as he said it, he knew she was right.
He was already forgetting.
The princess's face was the one he saw when he closed his eyes now. Her smile. Her soft voice. Her remembered kindness.
Mira was fading.
And Finn—hungry, lonely, six-year-old Finn—let her.
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End of Chapter Three