Weeks passed.
That was the first cruelty.
Not days. Not a single turning of the moon—but weeks, long enough for hope to curdle into calculation, and calculation into quiet dread.
Zafira sat before her mirror as she did every morning, spine straight, chin lifted, fingers resting lightly against her lap. Her reflection was unchanged—still beautiful, still composed, still dressed in silks others would have begged for.
Yet something was missing.
She had learned to feel it the way desert dwellers sensed water beneath the sand. A subtle wrongness. A silence where certainty should have been.
No morning sickness.
No delayed cycles.
No signs.
The night she had forced upon the emperor had borne nothing.
Her hand curled slowly into the fabric at her side.
Impossible.
She had prepared carefully. The timing, the draught, the law itself bent neatly into place. Even if he had been distant—cold, even—the body did not lie. Conception did not require affection.
And yet—
Nothing.
