It felt like something was staring.

  The awareness came without shape or direction, a pressure rather than a presence. Just enough to prickle at the back of her neck.

  For a heartbeat, Writ thought it might be the wards reacting to her movement. Or Knell’s attention, drifting from the living room the way it sometimes did, casual and unblinking. She kept her head down and continued washing, waiting for it to sharpen into something she could name.

  It didn’t. The feeling slipped away on its own, dissolving before she was even done with the dishes, while Knell was still humming cheerfully in the living room as if nothing in the world could possibly be amiss. The absence left no echo behind. That unsettled her more than the presence would have.

  She was certain she had felt it before. The same quiet pressure, the same sense of being observed without intent.

  Maybe when she mapped Kesherra. When her awareness had been stretched thin and threaded through unfamiliar paths. Or perhaps it had been Arkwyn’s doing, that faint, distant pull of the golden thread brushing against her senses. Or maybe it was neither. It had been too long. Her memory refused to settle on a single answer.

  Either way, it was gone now.

  So she told herself not to dwell on it and focused instead on the next chore Knell had assigned.

  Maybe it had been nothing after all. A trick of a tired mind. An imagination too accustomed to being watched. She no longer trusted her own perception enough to argue otherwise.

  Especially not now, when even her memories felt negotiable.

  The fairy had admitted it, after all. The wounds had been staged. Manufactured. She understood that, logically. She accepted the explanation.

  But understanding hadn’t chased away the feeling that followed. The lingering accusation, sharp and insidious, that her body might have been the one to betray her. That it might still be capable of doing so. Taking memories. Rearranging them. Deciding what she was allowed to keep without her consent.

  Her wrist throbbed, a dull pulse beneath the skin, as if responding to the thought. Writ tightened her grip on the broom and forced her attention back to the floor, guiding the bristles along the tile in steady strokes.

  Tiran’s house was nearly spotless. It always was. Knell kept it that way with a diligence that bordered on pride.

  There was barely any dust to collect, nothing that justified the task. But Knell had told her to sweep after the dishes, and so Writ swept. The rhythm gave her something to hold onto.

  More than an hour had passed since lunch. The tightness in her throat lingered, a faint echo of the earlier nausea, but the worst had subsided. Her body had kept the drink down. It hadn’t rejected it, hadn’t forced it back up despite the nausea that had shadowed every swallow. She still couldn’t quite believe that.

  A soft breeze slipped through the open window, stirring the curtains. Her fingers trembled as she adjusted her grip on the broom handle. She wasn’t sure if it was the cool air brushing her skin or the slow realization settling in her chest.

  It stayed.

  The drink stayed, despite the nausea that had threatened her every second while she swallowed it. Her body had accepted it. Taken it in. Held on.

  It wasn’t food, not really. But it counted. Knell never did anything without reason. If she’d gone to the trouble of preparing that drink, it had been intentional.

  Knell’s humming drifted in from the garden now. Bright, almost absurdly cheerful. The same tune she always hummed when she was relaxed. Writ couldn’t imagine why she’d chosen to trim weeds under the harsh midday sun, when the light was high and unrelenting. The heat pressed against the house, heavy and still.

  Knell had gone outside immediately after handing Writ the broom, telling her where the mop was stored as if it were necessary. Writ hadn’t needed the instruction. The mop was exactly where it had always been. Nothing in this house ever changed. Not really, not even after seven years.

  Except—

  maybe that room.

  Her old room.

  She hadn’t checked. Had no intention of checking.

  Knell had been very clear: it didn’t need to be cleaned. Writ wasn’t to open it. No explanation followed, there never was one, but Writ didn’t ask. She was quietly grateful for the boundary.

  The rest of the house already pressed too hard against her memories. She didn’t need to be threatened further by that room, by the locked boxes and dormant weight it would stir awake.

  She gathered the last sweep of barely-there dust into the pan and tipped it into the trash. The sound was soft, almost apologetic. Then she filled a bucket with water and set the mop beside it.

  Her body moved on its own, guided by habit rather than thought. It remembered these motions from past stays. How to wring out the cloth, how much pressure to apply, how to move efficiently without splashing water where it didn’t belong.

  At one point, she paused and stretched, easing the stiffness from her wrists and shoulders. It wasn’t pain, exactly. Just a dull complaint, like her body reminding her it hadn’t been used. That it had been waiting. It felt wrong.

  Two days of barely moving had finally taken their toll. She shouldn’t have let herself go so still. Shouldn’t have allowed weakness to settle in just because motion felt wrong. She knew better than that. Not eating, not moving. It made her vulnerable. It made her easier to kill.

  Her mind had warned her. Her body understood. And yet, the quiet voice that asked for stillness had been louder. Persuasive. She hadn’t known how to argue against it without a reason strong enough to force her hand.

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  Knell’s command counted.

  So now she moved. Immediately after she’d eaten. Because that was what Knell required of her. It was the only reason that small, insistent voice had agreed to pause the stillness at all.

  Yet the the voice didn’t leave. It only stepped aside.

  Knell let her return to her room after the mopping was finished.

  The nausea lingered with its quiet aftermath, a dull, clinging presence that refused to leave. There was nothing left for her to throw up now. Nothing but water, and even that felt pointless. Her body had already taken what it was going to take.

  The door closed behind her. Writ let out a long breath and slid down the wood until she was curled on the floor, her shoulder pressed into the frame, her knees drawn in tight.

  The command was done. There was no reason to move.

  The thought settled heavily, final as a sealed order. Her body accepted it at once, slackening into stillness. She felt... stuck. Not trapped. Stuck, like something set in place and left to harden.

  She didn’t dare let her mind wander. Too many things lay just beneath the surface, things she had carefully pressed down and sealed away. Touching them felt dangerous, like brushing against a buried wire.

  She didn’t dare move her body either. Motion still felt wrong, as if it would trigger something she couldn’t afford to wake.

  So she stayed curled where she was, returning to the same position she had folded herself into for days now. She focused on small, manageable sensations instead: the dull ache in her shoulder, the faint rattle of the windows as the wind shifted, the pale bar of light creeping across the floor as the curtain swayed. Anything that would let time pass without letting thought take hold.

  She didn’t know how long she stayed like that.

  The knock startled her badly enough that her breath caught.

  She hadn’t heard Knell’s footsteps approach at all.

  “I brought fresh sheets,” Knell said through the door, her voice clean and sharp as pressed linen. “Let me in.”

  Writ stood immediately. No hesitation. She turned and lowered the door handle without a sound.

  Knell entered carrying neatly folded sheets, white and precise in her arms. She took two steps in, and stopped.

  Her gaze went to the bed. She blinked, slow and deliberate.

  Not rumpled. Not slept in. The sheets lay flat and pale in the muted room, corners sharp enough to cut. Exactly as they had been when Writ first entered the room. Untouched and still.

  Writ felt her shoulders draw inward before she could stop them. Her breath thinned as she waited. Her chin dipped without her meaning to. She caught it and corrected herself at once, forcing her gaze back up.

  She watched Knell closely, tracking every shift of her expression, every minute adjustment that might signal an instruction she hadn’t anticipated.

  She should have used the bed. Or at least made it look like she had. She should have thought of that. Prepared for it. She should have known Knell would notice. Would check.

  Knell’s tone, when she spoke, was neutral, purely factual, but it landed like a verdict.

  “You’re not sleeping in it,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

  Her gaze moved to Writ, slow and assessing. Writ nodded once, as if confirming something already decided. “Where did you sleep?”

  Writ stood near the desk, her hands curled tight. When she answered, her voice barely rose above breath. “The floor.”

  Knell turned fully toward her. “Why?”

  There was a pause. Not long enough to argue. Not long enough to invent something better.

  “It’s cooler.”

  Another slow blink, this one directed squarely at Writ.

  Writ stayed very still. She controlled her breathing, holding herself carefully, making sure nothing leaked through. No flinch or tension she hadn’t been ordered to show.

  “Oh.”

  Knell looked back at the bed, then down at the faint scuff near the wardrobe where fabric had brushed against the wood. The arrangement of the room assembled itself quietly in her mind, pattern forming without comment.

  “Then I’ll take these,” Knell said, adjusting the folded linen in her arms. “Wait here. I’ll be back.”

  She left the room without another word, moving down the banister and out of sight toward the first floor. She didn’t close the door.

  Writ didn’t move. She stood exactly where she was, her weight balanced carefully, as if the floor itself might notice if she relaxed. From below came the sound of water being wrung from cloth. Wet fabric twisting, liquid pattering back into a bucket. The sound carried up the stairwell in slow, repetitive rhythms.

  She stayed standing, listening, waiting.

  Knell returned not long after, carrying the broom and mop Writ had used earlier. The bristles whispered softly as Knell set them down inside the room.

  “Wait on the bed,” she said, already turning toward the far corner. “Don’t step on the floor.”

  Writ froze.

  It wasn’t refusal. Just the brief, sharp recalibration before obedience took hold. Her mind shifting, reorienting around the new rule.

  After several heartbeats, she moved.

  Carefully, she perched on the very edge of the mattress. The bed dipped under her weight and she stiffened at once, spine straight, hands folded neatly in her lap. She tucked her feet up, heels lifted clear of the floor.

  She didn’t look down.

  She watched Knell instead, waiting for the next instruction. Her breathing thinned. Counted.

  The broom swept across the floor in long, even strokes. Dust lifted and vanished. With each pass, the floor seemed to change. Becoming something temporarily forbidden, marked as unsafe by instruction alone.

  Knell worked without hurry. When she reached beneath the desk, the broom nudged something soft and heavy. Coins clinked inside the leather.

  Knell paused. She bent and picked it up. The pouch rested in her palm. The one Writ couldn’t bear to look at for too long.

  “Why is this here?” Knell asked.

  Writ’s throat tightened. She kept her voice level. “Must have fallen.”

  Knell tilted her head. The pause stretched, heavy with quiet.

  “I see,” she said at last, without comment.

  She set the pouch on the desk. Not where it had been hidden, but squarely in the open. The leather made a small, final sound as it met the wood.

  Writ looked away at once, fixing her gaze on the door instead.

  The mop followed. Water glistened across the tile, the clean scent rising into the air. Time slowed to individual movements: the lift of the mop, the press, the soft drag of water. Each sound landed too clearly.

  Her breathing stayed shallow. She counted strokes. Counted breaths. Counted nothing at all.

  Knell finally straightened and looked at her.

  “You’re allowed to use everything in this room,” she said. Then, after a measured beat, “In fact, I expected you to.”

  The stare held Writ in place until she nodded in acknowledgment.

  Only then did Knell gather the broom and mop and leave.

  The door closed. Footsteps faded down the hall. Silence returned, heavier than before.

  Writ stayed where she was, perched and rigid. The bed pressed under her, unfamiliar, asking for more of her weight than she was willing to give. Her breath remained shallow until it began to ache.

  Slowly, carefully, she lowered one foot toward the floor.

  The tile was still wet. She pulled her foot back at once. Instead, she leaned back a fraction. Not enough to lie down. Just enough to acknowledge the mattress without surrendering to it.

  Her gaze drifted to the desk.

  The coin pouch sat exactly where Knell had placed it. Impossible to ignore. It pulled at her attention, her focus snagging on it as if it were asking something of her she refused to name.

  So she closed her eyes. The only way she knew to deny what it implied.

  She kept herself still on the bed, until the floor dried and the room no longer smelled of water. Until stillness felt like the only thing she could keep.

  Then she stood and walked to the desk, eyes still closed.

  Blindly, she reached into the pen holder, grabbed the first piece of stationery her fingers found, and pushed the pouch off the edge.

  The clink as it hit the tile was loud. Heavy.

  Quietly, not in anger or spite but in careful containment, she nudged it with her foot until it slid beneath the desk and into shadow.

  Where she wouldn’t have to look at it.

  Out of sight. Not gone.

  The Sky That Lied.