The receiver was cold against Ovoale's ear. She held it with both hands, her knuckles white, her breath coming in short, ragged bursts that she couldn't seem to slow. The dial tone had died the moment she'd picked it up—she didn't know how she'd known to do it, only that her father's office had a phone, only that her mother had shown her once, laughing, pressing the receiver to her ear and pretending to call the moon.

"Hello? Hello, who is this?"

Pond's voice came through the earpiece, sharp and urgent, crackling with distance. "Ovoale? Ovoale, is that you?"

She nodded before she remembered he couldn't see her. "Daddy—Daddy, there are men—they have Mama—they came through the gate—"

"I know. I know, baby. I'm coming. I'm coming, keep talking to me. Where are you?"

Xiana crouched beside the desk, both hands pressed flat over her ears, her shoulders shaking in small, violent tremors. The desk lamp's amber circle fell across her braids, across the silver ring on her thumb that she twisted and twisted, watching the floor like it might open and swallow her. Ovoale wanted to reach for her, but she couldn't let go of the receiver.

"We're in your office. The little one—the one with the books—we hid under your desk but Xiana said the guards would look there so we came out and I found the phone—"

"Good. That's good. You're so brave. Both of you. Is Imaria with you?"

Ovoale's throat closed. "I don't know. She told us to run. She told us to find somewhere dark and quiet and she would find us but she hasn't come and the guards—"

A half-empty inkwell sat at the edge of the desk, its glass rim catching the lamplight. Ovoale stared at it, at the dried crust of black along its lip, and thought of her mother's hands dipping a quill, writing something—a letter, a poem, a list of names. She couldn't remember. The memory felt like it belonged to someone else.

"Listen to me," Pond said, and his voice dropped, lower now, the way it got when he was trying not to be afraid. "I am riding. I have men with me. We will be there soon. But I need you to stay on this phone. Can you do that? Can you keep talking to me?"

"Yes." Her voice came out thin, a thread. "Yes, Daddy."

"Tell me what you see."

She looked around the office. The leather chair pushed back from the desk, its seat still warm from where her father had sat before the fighting started—before he'd ridden out to meet the northern army on the eastern front. A half-finished cup of tea on the windowsill, the liquid cold and dark. Scattered papers covered in his handwriting, reports and figures and names she couldn't parse. A map weighted down by a bronze paperweight shaped like a wolf's head.

"Your chair," she said. "Your tea. Papers."

"Good. Keep going."

"There's a map. With red marks. Like blood."

"Those are troop positions. That's the plan. We're going to use it to push them back. Keep talking."

Xiana's hands slid from her ears, and she looked up at Ovoale with eyes too dark, too still, too old. Her lips parted, and she whispered, "I hear her."

Ovoale's breath caught. "What?"

"Mama. I hear her."

And then she heard it too. Faint, distant, carried through the stone walls and the empty corridors—a scream. High and breaking, the sound of something giving way. Her mother's voice, but not her mother's, because her mother never screamed like that. Her mother laughed, and sang, and cried in quiet, muffled sobs that she thought no one heard. Her mother did not scream.

The sound cut off, and Ovoale's hand trembled against the receiver. Xiana's face had gone pale, her mouth open, her fingers frozen mid-twist on the silver ring.

"What was that?" Pond's voice, sharper now. "Ovoale. What was that?"

She couldn't answer. The scream was still echoing inside her skull, bouncing off the walls of her chest, and she couldn't find her voice to push it out.

Then through the earpiece, through the crackling distance, she heard something else. A voice, raw and desperate, torn from a throat that had been screaming—her mother's voice, but closer now, as if the phone had picked it up from somewhere else, from the air itself.

"—pregnant—get off—it hurts—Tarven, no—"

The words came in fragments, broken by wet, choking sounds that Ovoale didn't want to name. She pressed the receiver harder against her ear, as if that would make them stop, as if that would make them make sense. Pregnant. Her mother was pregnant again. Another baby. Another child her father had wanted, another body her mother had carried, another life that had started inside her while Ovoale was sleeping, while Ovoale was drawing, while Ovoale was watching the sunset and thinking about dinner.

And Tarven. Lord Tarven. The man whose name she'd heard whispered in the corridors, whose guards wore the wolf's-head sigil, whose shadow had been falling across her mother for months without her knowing.

"Mama?" Ovoale's voice cracked. "Mama, can you hear me?"

No answer. Just the hiss of the line, the static of distance, the sound of nothing breathing on the other end.

Then a gasp. Sharp, wet, cut short. A sound like water closing over a drowning thing.

And then silence.

Ovoale held her breath. The receiver pressed so hard against her ear that the edge of the plastic dug into her skin, a thin line of pressure that would leave a mark. She listened for breathing. For movement. For the rustle of fabric, the scrape of a boot, the whisper of her mother's voice telling her it was all right, it was a game, she was coming to find them.

"Mama?" she whispered.

The word hung in the air, unanswered. Unanswerable. A small stone dropped into a deep well, and no sound of it hitting the bottom.

Xiana's hand found Ovoale's sleeve, the fabric bunched in her small fist, and she pulled. "Ovoale."

"Not now."

"Ovoale."

"I said not now."

"The door."

Ovoale looked up. The office door was solid oak, carved with the imperial crest—a rising sun over crossed swords—and it was closed. She had closed it when they came in, had turned the heavy iron lock, had pressed her ear to the wood and listened for footsteps. She had done everything right.

But there was a shadow moving under the crack. Slow, deliberate, the darkness of a body standing on the other side, deciding.

"Daddy," she breathed into the receiver. "Daddy, someone's at the door."

"Ovoale. Listen to me." His voice was different now. Calm in a way that felt like glass about to shatter. "I need you to put Xiana behind the desk. I need you to find something heavy. A paperweight, a candle holder, anything. And I need you to stay on this phone."

The door shook. A heavy thud, the wood groaning in its frame, the lock rattling but holding. Xiana let out a small sound, a whimper she swallowed before it could grow, and Ovoale reached out and pulled her sister against her side, the receiver still pressed to her ear, her other arm wrapped tight around Xiana's shoulders.

"I'm here," she whispered to her sister. To her father. To herself. "I'm still here."

The door shook again, and this time the wood splintered, a crack running down the center like a vein in marble. The lock wouldn't hold. It was never going to hold. And somewhere in the silence of the phone line, her mother's last breath was still waiting for someone to answer it.

Ovoale's free hand closed around the inkwell. The glass was cold, the dried ink rough against her palm. She hefted its weight—heavy enough to break skin, to crack bone, to buy a moment.

"I love you, Daddy," she said, and her voice did not shake. "Tell Mama I love her."

The door splintered inward.

The door didn't burst open all at once. It came apart in stages—first the lock splintering with a sound like a bone breaking, then the wood cracking along the grain, then the heavy oak groaning as it swung inward, scraping against the floor. Ovoale watched it happen as if from very far away, as if she were standing at the end of a long tunnel, watching someone else's life unfold.

The inkwell was cold in her hand. Heavy. Real. She could feel every ridge of the dried ink crust, every imperfection in the glass, and she held onto those details like a rope thrown to a drowning girl.

Xiana pressed herself against Ovoale's side, her small body trembling, her breath coming in shallow gasps that she tried to muffle against her sister's shoulder. The silver ring on her thumb caught the lamplight, glinting once before she curled her hand into a fist and hid it in the folds of Ovoale's dress.

The receiver was still pressed to Ovoale's ear. She could hear her father's voice, thin and tinny through the distance, calling her name—"Ovoale? Ovoale, answer me, baby, answer me"—but the words sounded like they were coming from underwater, from another world, from a place that had nothing to do with the door swinging open and the shadow filling the frame.

The guard filled the doorway. A man she didn't recognize, broad-shouldered and bearded, his tunic marked with the wolf's-head sigil that she had seen on the men in the corridor, on the men who had taken her mother. His hand was still raised from where he had struck the door, and he let it fall to his side as his eyes found them—two girls huddled behind the desk, one with a phone pressed to her ear, one with her face buried in her sister's shoulder.

Ovoale's thumb traced the edge of the inkwell. The dried ink flaked off under her touch, black dust settling on the papers scattered across the desk. She thought of her mother's hands, the way they moved when she braided hair, the way they fluttered when she laughed, the way they had pressed against her belly in the last months of each pregnancy, cradling the life inside.

She thought of her mother pregnant again. A baby that would never be born now. A baby that had been inside her mother while Tarven's hands were on her, while her mother screamed, while the phone line went silent.

The guard took a step into the room. His boots were heavy, steel-toed, and they left dark marks on the polished floor. "The emperor's daughters," he said, and his voice was flat, almost bored, as if he had expected more resistance. "Come with me. Quietly. Your mother is waiting."

Ovoale's grip on the inkwell tightened. The glass bit into her palm, a sharp edge of pressure that kept her anchored to her body, to this room, to this moment. She could feel Xiana's fingers digging into her arm, her sister's nails leaving crescents in her skin, and she did not pull away.

"Mama is dead," Ovoale said. The words came out flat, hollow, like stones dropping into water. She didn't know if they were true. She didn't know if she believed them. But she needed to say them, to hear them spoken aloud, to see if the world would crack open when they landed.

The guard's expression didn't change. "Your mother is waiting," he repeated, and the repetition felt like an answer, like a confirmation of something Ovoale didn't want to name.

The receiver crackled. Her father's voice, still calling, still desperate, still miles away. She wanted to tell him she was sorry. Sorry for not being braver. Sorry for not hiding better. Sorry for being the kind of daughter who couldn't save anyone.

The guard crossed the room in three long strides. His hand closed around Ovoale's wrist, the one holding the inkwell, and he squeezed until her fingers went numb and the glass slipped from her grip, clattering against the floor and rolling under the desk. Xiana screamed—a high, thin sound that cut through the air like a blade—and the guard's other hand shot out, grabbing a fistful of Ovoale's hair, pulling her up and out of the chair.

The receiver fell. It hit the edge of the desk, spun once, and landed on the floor with a clatter that echoed through the earpiece, through the distance, through whatever remained of her father's voice. Ovoale's scalp burned, her neck wrenching as the guard dragged her across the floor, her feet scrambling for purchase on the polished wood.

"Daddy!" she screamed, the word torn from her throat, raw and desperate. "Daddy! Daddy!"

A blade flashed. Cold steel catching the lamplight, a thin line of silver that arced through the air and bit into her cheek. The pain came a second later—sharp, precise, a line of fire drawn across her face—and she felt the warmth of blood sliding down her jaw, dripping onto the collar of her dress, staining the fabric a dark, spreading red.

The receiver lay on the floor, still live, still connected, still carrying the sound of her crying to her father's ear as he rode through the dark, as he pushed his horse faster, as he tried to close a distance that was growing wider with every second.

The guard pulled her through the broken door, and the last thing Ovoale saw before the corridor swallowed her was the phone on the floor, the amber light of the desk lamp falling across its curved surface, the inkwell rolling to a stop beneath the chair, and Xiana's face—pale, tear-streaked, her mouth open in a scream that had no sound—as another guard reached for her.