Season 1: Awakening the Viliness

  Ch 6: The White Veil

  The salon was radiant.

  Sunlight spilled through high windows and caught the gold-thread embroidery of the curtains just right, turning the whole space into something soft and opulent—like stepping into a portrait of taste and restraint. The tea service gleamed across three low tables, id out with bone china, silver tongs, delicate lemon slices carved into roses.

  Mira walked in with her spine like steel and her lungs full of stolen calm. The gown they’d dressed her in—milk-white with sleeves like floating parchment—did half the work. She didn’t feel like herself in it. That helped. Mira could wear a mask better when she didn’t have to feel like the woman underneath.

  The first women were already waiting.

  They stood when she entered.

  Not all at once. Not dramatically. But one by one—graceful, precise, rehearsed. A ripple of silk and ivory gloves. Heads bowed. Curtsies dipped to matching depths.

  “Viscountess Nysera,” one murmured. Another echoed the name like it was a title meant to be prayed. “Lady Nysera.” “My dy.”

  Mira nodded, just once, letting her gaze pass slowly over them without lingering too long. Not cool, not warm—measured. She didn’t know their names. Didn’t know if she was supposed to. That helped, too.

  The senior housemaid led her to the head of the long table and pulled out the chair for her. Mira sat without hesitation. The seat was slightly elevated. A subtle trick of the room’s design. From here, she could see everything. And they could see her.

  The women followed suit, seating themselves with elegant precision. No one asked where to sit. No one waited to be directed. They knew their pces, as if the table itself whispered it to them.

  Highborn daughters to her right. Widows to her left. A minor princess at the far end, eyes downcast, too lovely to be ignored but not important enough to be central. A pair of cousins in matching veils sat nearest the window, whispering behind their teacups already.

  No one ughed. No one fidgeted. Everything moved like clockwork. And Mira realised, with a quiet jolt of awareness, that it wasn’t just the clothes or the rituals that gave Nysera power.

  It was this. The way every woman in the room deferred to her without question. The way no one spoke until she did. The way fear had been transformed into elegance, until no one even noticed it anymore.

  Nysera hadn’t needed to shout. She had built a system where even silence obeyed her.

  Mira adjusted her posture, folded her hands just so, and let her gaze drift from one perfect woman to the next. She let the silence stretch, just long enough to feel purposeful. It wasn’t hostile, exactly. Just… taut. Anticipatory. The kind of quiet that only existed in rooms where everyone had something cruel or clever to say but waited to be given permission. She remembered this moment in the book—not in detail, but in shape. Nysera always opened her salons the same way: a comment on the weather, delivered like scripture, followed by a veiled observation about someone else’s ck of taste. The room would thaw, and the performance would begin.

  All right, she thought. Let’s see how long I can wear your crown without choking on it.

  She looked out toward the garden, the light slipping in through rose-stained gss. “The sun’s come too early this year,” she said evenly. “It’s not polite to arrive before the frost has left.” A few women gave soft, murmured noises of agreement. The veiled cousins nodded, one delicately tilting her head as if Mira had just confirmed something she’d suspected all week.

  A server poured her tea—bck, spiced, perfectly steeped. Mira didn’t thank them. She didn’t flinch. She picked up the cup like she’d done it a thousand times and took a measured sip.

  “Have you seen Lady Vivian’s silhouette this season?” one of the younger women asked from two seats down, voice airy, innocent. Mira didn’t recognise her, but the tone was familiar—bait wrapped in velvet. “It seems the bloom of her hem has... spread.”

  Laughter didn’t follow, but there were sharp little smiles. Mira’s mind fumbled through what she was supposed to say—something cold, dismissive, vaguely cruel. Nysera wouldn’t ugh. She’d tilt her head and arch one perfect brow and murmur something that made the girl shrivel and thank her for the lesson.

  Instead, Mira said, “Ah. Fashion as repentance. So brave of her to apologise in ce.”

  There was a pause. Then—soft, stifled ughter. Real. Delighted. The cousin nearest her snorted before spping a hand over her mouth. Someone near the window murmured, “Saints,” in a tone of breathless, giddy horror.

  Mira blinked.

  The ice didn’t crack. It melted. Just a little.

  Eyes turned toward her—not wary, not reverent. Curious. Interested. A flicker of something passed between the women at the table. The power in the room didn’t weaken. It shifted. Tilted slightly toward her like something drawn to heat instead of gravity.

  And Mira understood something very quickly, very clearly.

  She had just broken the first rule of Nysera’s court.

  She had made them like her.

  Not fear her. Not obey her.

  Like her.

  And that was far more dangerous than anything she'd pnned for.

  Mira tried to school her face back into neutral elegance. The kind of expression that made people second-guess whether you were bored or pnning their ruin. But it was too te. The ughter had happened. And worse—she liked it. Not all of it. Not the attention. But the moment. The absurdity. The simple truth that no one here was used to being spoken to like a real person.

  She sipped her tea again. Let the quiet settle back around the table like silk dropped over something sharp. A few of the women were still watching her, closely now, eyes glinting behind ce-trimmed veils. Measuring.

  Lady Cerynne—she had to be Cerynne; Mira remembered the name vaguely from the book, the woman with the diamond-sharp tongue and a salon full of secrets—lifted her cup and said, “You’re in rare form today, Viscountess.”

  The tone was polite. The eyes were not.

  “I find it keeps people on their toes,” Mira said smoothly. “And some people could use the exercise.”

  Another ugh. Tighter this time. Polite, but uncomfortable. A few women gnced at one another over their rims.

  “You’ve grown sharper,” Cerynne said after a beat. “Most would blunt themselves with age.”

  “Then I’ve been aging backwards,” Mira replied before she could stop herself. “Terrible curse, really. So much poise to unlearn.”

  That earned a snort from one of the veiled cousins. The minor princess at the far end of the table blinked like she wasn’t sure she’d heard right.

  Mira kept her expression carefully serene, but inside, panic had begun to spark like static under her skin. She was spiralling. Not visibly—but she could feel the performance tipping from cool control into something else. Something worse.

  Or better.

  She couldn’t tell yet.

  Across the table, one woman whispered something behind her hand. Her companion leaned in, whispered back.

  “She’s different tely,” someone murmured, just loud enough to be heard.

  Mira’s breath hitched.

  The divine current in the room stirred. Not violently. But distinctly. A ripple, soft and tingling, like the brush of silk across bare skin. One of the teacups trembled faintly in its saucer. Another stilled it with two fingers and didn’t speak.

  Mira sat straighter, feeling suddenly, acutely, watched. Not like prey. Not like a queen. Like a variable. Like something the room couldn’t account for.

  I just made a joke. They ughed. I think I might have just undone a year’s worth of strategic repression by saying the word “ce” with tone.

  The thought almost made her smile again, but she caught it in time. Nysera didn’t smile. Not without intention.

  Mira lifted her cup with care and sipped. Let them wonder. Let them worry.

  It was Lady Iveline who brought it up, as if she’d been waiting for the ughter to die down so she could slip the knife in without ruining the ce.

  “I heard,” she said lightly, swirling her tea, “that the Church has officially confirmed a new Saintess. Some slip of a girl from the Roseward, apparently. Quite provincial.”

  The table stilled.

  Mira didn’t move, but something inside her snapped to attention.

  Another woman sniffed into her cup. “Of course they have. And no doubt they’ll parade her around like a spring blossom. As if piety can be cultivated in dirt.”

  A chorus of quiet, disapproving hums followed. Lady Cerynne dabbed at the corner of her mouth with a linen napkin and said, “They’re always so eager to crown innocence. You’d think they’d learn what becomes of soft things, left in the open.”

  “It’s not the innocence that bothers me,” someone else murmured. “It’s the ck of discipline.”

  Mira heard the words, but they nded underwater. A Saintess. Already chosen. That was too soon. Too close. The book hadn’t said how long before Fae’s rise—but it hadn’t felt this fast. She was supposed to have time. Time to prepare. Time to change things. Time to not die.

  She set her teacup down. Carefully. Quietly.

  A few women gnced at her, then quickly looked away.

  The warmth she’d summoned earlier—dry wit, easy smiles, the brittle camaraderie of women who knew the rules of the court and pyed them well—had drained out of her so quickly it left the air cold.

  Lady Cerynne studied her for a beat too long. “You seem troubled, Viscountess.”

  Mira turned her head slowly. She didn’t need to fake the coldness in her voice.

  “The Goddess pys games,” she said. “And she always chooses new pieces before discarding the old.”

  That shut them up.

  Someone exhaled softly. Another reached for a tart she didn’t eat. The current of conversation began to shift back toward pleasantries, but it never recovered. The divine ripple that had stirred earlier went still again. The room felt heavy, not with judgement—but with understanding. Nysera is in a mood again. The sharpness had returned. The jokes had been… a moment. A fae mood. And now the Queen had settled back into her throne of chill and shadow.

  One by one, the women began to excuse themselves.

  They left as they’d arrived—graceful, nodding, carefully avoidant. No one wanted to press too hard against whatever edge they sensed had surfaced. The only thing more dangerous than a charming Nysera was a silent one.

  Mira remained seated until the st veil passed through the doorway.

  Only then did she let her hands tremble, just once, beneath the table.

  The story was starting.

  And she was still in the first five chapters.