The silence was colder this morning.
Not the kind of chill that ran through the halls of the mansion on a stormy night—but the kind that clung to your soul, like the breath of something watching.
Monise stood at the window, sleeves rolled halfway up her slender arms, her fingertips wrapped around the iron handle of a brass tray. Steam spiraled from the silver teapot nestled between two black porcelain cups—cups she wasn't sure anyone would ever drink from.
Her reflection in the glass stared back at her—a pale, sleep-touched girl with wide brown eyes too alert for the hour. A loose strand of hair curled against her cheek, damp with morning dew she didn't remember walking through.
"You're shaking again," she muttered to herself.
Not from cold.
From last night.
The fall.
The arms that caught her.
The warmth.
The disappearance.
Who had saved her? Or what?
She hadn't slept, not really. She kept replaying it. The sound of the wind as she fell. The way time warped for a heartbeat. The feeling of being held.
And then that voice again—distant and familiar—pulling her back.
"Wake up, Monise…"
The corridor stretched before her like a throat—long, narrow, waiting to swallow.
She walked slowly, balancing the tray with measured grace. She had learned early that the walls of this mansion were sensitive. One wrong step, and the air would change. The chandeliers would tremble. The paintings would turn to watch.
Her fingers tightened on the tray's edges.
The Night King's quarters were ahead.
A tall obsidian door with carved roses. A silver serpent curled around the handle. It was the only room she had never been asked to clean. Until now.
Yesterday, a servant named Anwen—sharp-cheeked and shadow-eyed—pressed a single note into her hand and whispered, "You're to bring tea. Morning hour. Nothing else."
Nothing else.
The moment she stepped into the room, the world slowed.
The air was thick. Luxurious. Heavy with spices and something deeper—like old parchment and midnight flowers. Velvet curtains hung like bloodied shadows. Books lined every surface. Candles flickered low, their flames twitching as if aware of her.
And then—
A voice.
Low.
Silken.
So quiet it scraped across her spine like the breath of fate.
"You returned."
She turned—slowly, like a puppet caught in a dream.
He stood by the grand piano, untouched light falling through stained glass to crown his figure in violet and crimson. He didn't move. Just watched her.
The Night King.
Skin like carved moonstone.
Eyes—not red, not gold, but a storm between worlds.
Lips too still. Shoulders too perfect. Not of this century. Not of this earth.
Monise swallowed hard, realizing her tray was trembling in her hands.
"You caught me," she whispered.
"Last night. From the fall."
His gaze lingered on her for a moment longer than comfort allowed.
"I did."
"And I shouldn't have."
The words struck her like snow.
"Why?" she asked, barely breathing.
He took one step toward her. Slow. Controlled. Like a shadow stepping into flame.
"Because I am not kind."
"And I do not save things I wish to destroy."
Her knees weakened. The tea tray lowered between them like a shield.
"Then why didn't you?" she dared.
He didn't answer.
Instead, he reached up and pulled a glove from his hand. Pale fingers. Sharp veins. Hands made for endings.
He touched a single candle near the edge of his desk. Flame hissed higher.
"You smell of warmth," he said suddenly, without looking at her.
"You burn through this place like a torch in snow."
Monise stared at him, frozen.
She could hear her heartbeat. She was sure he could too.
"What do you want from me?" she asked, voice a whisper of linen.
His eyes flicked to her lips.
"I haven't decided."
Monise stood still. The words I haven't decided clung to the space between them like fog.
She didn't know whether to run or bow. Something inside her—a fluttering bird she couldn't name—refused to do either. Instead, her fingers tightened around the tray, grounding herself in the one thing that still made sense: this was a job. She was just the help. She was supposed to pour tea and disappear.
So she moved.
Not with grace, but with determination—the kind you find when everything inside you is chaos and you have to pretend it's not.
She stepped toward the small table near the window and gently lowered the tray. The teapot's handle was warm beneath her touch. She lifted it carefully, fingers trembling just enough for a small splash to escape. The liquid hissed as it met the porcelain.
Behind her, the floorboards creaked—not from her movement, but his.
He was closer now.
She didn't dare turn.
Do not look back. Do not look into his eyes. Do not ask questions you don't want answers to.
Still, she felt the pull. Like gravity bending around him.
"You're frightened," he said, voice low and curved like velvet.
"That's good."
Her breath hitched.
"But I wonder..." He was close now. She could feel the cold of his presence behind her neck. "Is it only fear I sense?"
She turned then—too fast, too wide-eyed.
Their faces were inches apart. The glint in his gaze was unreadable, dangerous, curious.
> "What else would it be?" she asked, voice husky from unshed sleep and swallowed dread.
A pause.
The kind of pause that makes seconds feel like sins.
"Curiosity," he said.
"Defiance."
"Desire."
Her lips parted, but no words came.
How could he speak like that? With so much knowing in his tone—as though he had peeled back the veil of her soul and sifted through her secrets like pages in a diary.
"I should go," she breathed.
"You won't."
It wasn't a command.
It was prophecy.
He turned from her, walking to the far side of the room where a tall shelf stood—filled with vials and old scrolls, feathers and books with no titles. He picked one without looking and tossed it on a nearby chair.
"You've seen more than I intended," he said, voice detached again.
"You weren't meant to fall. You weren't meant to be touched."
Monise folded her arms, heat returning to her cheeks. "Then maybe you shouldn't have saved me."
The words slipped before she could trap them.
He paused.
He turned.
And there—there it was.
The hint of a smile. Barely-there. Ghostly. Dangerous.
"Spoken like someone who doesn't yet know what it means to be spared."
A knock shattered the tension.
Three short taps on the heavy door.
The Night King didn't move, but his mood changed. Instantly. His face fell back into its smooth, unreadable expression. A statue again. A shadow.
"Enter," he called, without volume—but the voice carried like thunder down a tunnel.
A young boy slipped inside. Pale, freckled, holding a folded piece of parchment. He avoided Monise's eyes completely.
"A message, Your Grace."
The Night King took it. Read it. Then dismissed the boy with a flick of his wrist.
When the door closed, he looked at Monise again—but this time, something had changed.
"Your service is no longer required this morning."
He said it like it meant more than it did.
Monise didn't argue.
She turned. Walked to the door. Didn't run. Didn't look back.
But just before she stepped out, his voice came again.
"You're not safe here, Monise."
She froze.
"Why?" she asked softly.
"Because I don't want you to be."
(Later that evening…)
The sky outside the servant quarters was cloaked in bruised purples and deepening reds. The kind of sky that warned of storms—of things crawling beneath the earth, hungry for movement.
Monise sat at the edge of her small bed, a worn quilt tucked beneath her fingers. She hadn't been called again. All day, she had scrubbed corridors and wiped down ancient doors that whispered her name through the dust. No one mentioned the Night King. No one asked about her.
But something had changed.
Every time she closed her eyes, she saw him.
His voice. His gaze. That stillness wrapped around fury.
And—above all—the arms that had caught her.
What was he?
And why did it feel like he'd seen her long before last night?
Later that night, the halls were quieter than usual.
Too quiet.
Even the wind dared not whistle through the cracked panes or whisper along the ancient tapestries that hung like wilted skins across the walls.
Monise shouldn't have been out of bed. The rules were clear: no wandering after dark. But something pulled her. Not a voice, not a sound—but a thread tugging deep in her chest. An instinct. A need.
She padded softly across the corridor, lantern in hand, flame low. The shadows moved like silk around her, but none threatened. Not yet.
She passed the kitchen. The library. The door to the eastern wing.
Then, the hallway curved. A place she had never been. And there it stood—
An iron door.
Taller than any other. Etched with strange marks that pulsed faintly in the dark. Almost like veins of light beneath skin.
Something told her to turn back. But she reached forward anyway, fingers brushing the handle.
Cold.
Burning cold.
And yet… welcoming.
> "Don't," came a voice behind her.
She gasped and whirled around, the lantern almost slipping from her grip.
> It was him.
Again.
The Night King stood barefoot, shirt unbuttoned at the throat, silver strands of hair tousled like he'd just woken from a restless sleep. But his eyes—his eyes were blazing with something she didn't recognize.
Fear?
Anger?
Desperation?
> "What's behind it?" she whispered.
> "Something you're not ready for."
> "Then why does it call to me?"
Silence.
The kind that stretched thin like the last breath before a scream.
> "Because," he said at last, stepping closer, "you are not what you think you are, Monise."
Her heart skipped.
> "What do you mean?"
> "I mean," he murmured, eyes darkening, "you weren't brought here by mistake."
---
His hand reached up, brushing her hair back from her face. His touch burned and calmed all at once.
> "They told me to keep you out of this wing."
> "Who's 'they'?"
> "The ones who would rather see you drowned than awakened."
A shiver crept down her back.
He looked at her for a long moment.
> "You dream, don't you?" he asked.
> She nodded slowly. "Too vividly."
> "You fall in those dreams."
Her breath caught.
> "You fall, and something catches you."
Her knees nearly buckled.
He saw it.
> "How do you know?"
> "Because I've been catching you for centuries."
Suddenly, the door behind her groaned—without being touched. The carvings pulsed harder, like a heartbeat accelerating.
Monise turned to look, but the Night King gripped her wrist.
> "No," he said sharply. "Not tonight."
She looked at his hand on hers, and then at his face.
> "Who am I?" she whispered.
> "Someone they fear."
> "Why?"
He released her slowly.
> "Because you remember."
Scene Break
(Sometime after midnight…)
Monise sat at the edge of the old greenhouse.
Vines snaked through broken glass. The moonlight flooded in through the shattered dome above, and the air smelled of crushed lavender and wet stone.
She was shaking.
Not from cold. Not entirely.
From everything.
> "You remember."
"You weren't brought here by mistake."
"I've been catching you for centuries…"
She ran a hand through her hair, pulled her knees up, and wrapped her arms around them.
Suddenly, a flutter of wind—though the air had been still.
She looked up.
He was there.
Of course he was.
> "You never sleep?" she asked.
He gave a half-smile, standing just at the edge of the moonlight.
> "Not in the way you do."
> "You're not like the others."
> "Neither are you."
He moved closer. The floor didn't creak under him. The plants didn't flinch. He was part of this night, this place.
> "If I'm not who I think I am…" she said, voice low, "then who was I?"
He crouched in front of her now, level with her gaze.
> "You were a queen once."
Her laugh cracked through the greenhouse like a glass pane shattering.
> "That's not funny."
> "I'm not joking."
"Queens don't scrub chamber pots."
"They do when they've been cursed."
Silence.
> "And who cursed me?"
His eyes burned.
> "I did."