Gisela lay curled on the floor, her body still trembling with silent sobs. Then his shadow fell over her. He did not kneel or offer a hand. He bent, hooked his hands beneath her arms, and wrenched her up from the stones as one might lift a sack of refuse. In one violent, sweeping motion, he hurled her onto the bed. The impact against the mattress forced a shocked, airless gasp from her lungs.
"You are a fool, Gisela," he said, his voice low and smooth as a honed blade. "To stage such a performance. Did you think it would move me?"
"I was merely… expressing myself," she whispered, the words raw and frayed. "Giving voice to what your gift truly means. Is that not what you wanted? You delight in watching me break. You savor every… splinter."
A faint, cold smile touched his lips, devoid of any warmth. "Is that what you believe? That you have shown me pain?" He leaned closer, his voice dropping to a intimate, venomous pitch. "My dear, I have not yet even begun."
She stared up at him, her eyes swimming with tears but holding a strange, shattered lucidity. "Then tell me," she breathed, her voice trembling with a terrible clarity. "Which was the greater error? Your choice to marry me… or my mother's choice to ever bring me into this world?"
The question hung in the air, a quiet, devastating indictment.
For a moment, Henry was still. Then, without a word, he turned. He moved to the heavy post of the bed, retrieving a coiled length of silk rope that had been waiting there. His movements were methodical, precise. He did not look at her face as he took her wrist, looped the cord, and pulled it taut—not enough to bruise, but enough to eliminate all possibility of movement. He secured the other wrist, then her ankles, binding her to the four posters with efficient, dispassionate knots.
She did not fight. She watched him, her tears drying into cold tracks on her skin. With each loop of the rope, she felt the walls of her world contract, not into a cell of stone, but into a cage of his absolute will.
When he finished, he stood at the foot of the bed, surveying his work. She was spread before him, trussed in crimson silk and glistening rubies, bound and utterly subdued.
"Now," he said softly, his gaze finally meeting hers. "Now we have quiet. Now you can reflect on your… existence."
He turned and left, the door closing with a soft, final click. The only sound left was the faint, rhythmic strain of her breathing against the unforgiving silk, and the profound, screaming silence of her complete and utter capture.
The door had already closed behind him when her scream tore through the silence, raw and guttural, scraping the walls of the stone chamber.
"HENRY!"
It was not a name, but a shriek of pure, animal fury. She strained against the silken ropes, her body arching off the bed in a futile rebellion.
"You cannot leave me like this! I will not wear this… this skin you've sewn for me!" Her voice broke, ragged with revulsion. "Take this gown—this bleeding, suffocating shroud! And this necklace… this collar of frozen blood! I don't want your gilded cage! I don't want any part of this vile pageant!"
Her cries echoed, desperate and wild, but they met only the implacable silence of the locked door. She was screaming into a void, trussed and adorned like a sacrificial offering, her defiance itself becoming just another part of the exquisite torment he had orchestrated.
---
Henry stood at the mouth of the shadowed corridor, the royal tailor trembling slightly before him. From behind the heavy door at his back, Gisela's screams carved through the stone—a raw, tearing sound of his name, over and over, blending with sobs and the faint, thrashing creak of bed.
The tailor flinched with each wail. Henry did not.
He exhaled, a slow, measured breath that seemed to siphon what little warmth remained in the passageway.
"You will make another gown," he stated, his voice flat and clear, an island of calm in the sea of her anguish. "Red."
The tailor bowed, his forehead nearly touching his knees, a gesture of submission to the man who could give such an order while his queen unraveled just footsteps away.
Henry began to walk away, his boots silent on the runner. He paused after three steps, half-turning his head, his profile sharp in the torchlight.
"Have it ready for six. In the morning. Precisely."
He did not wait for a response. He continued down the corridor, the sound of her torment fading with each step, not because it grew quieter, but because he willed it into the background—just another part of the palace's nightly music. The new dress was not a replacement; it was a contingency. A lesson, it seemed, required more than one costume.
***
The night pooled like ink in the high windows of the dining hall. Henry sat at the head of the obsidian table, a single figure of stillness amidst the grotesque plenty. Suckling pigs, glazed fowl, and mountains of winter fruit glistened under the candlelight, untouched. He selected a single dark grape, its skin taut and perfect, and slid it slowly into his mouth, his gaze fixed on nothing.
"Henry—" Queen Caroline's voice was a needle, trying to pierce his silence from the far end of the long, polished expanse.
"Mother," he interrupted, his voice a low, emotionless drone that carried perfectly in the cavernous room. "Let us dine in silence. The noise of the day was sufficient."
She gave a soft, derisive exhale, looking away toward the shadows. "You grow more like your father with every passing hour."
"I am told I have his constitution," Henry replied, his eyes now on the ruby depths of his wine.
"I spoke of his heart," she muttered, the words sharp and low. "Or rather, the stone he kept in its place." She sliced into the breast of a roasted fowl, the sound of the knife on the porcelain plate unnaturally loud. "At least you seem to have finally positioned your own wife correctly. I thought her screaming would never cease. A fruitless creature. All that sound, and nothing to show for it but echoes."
Henry did not grace the remark with a response. He took another grape. "Her father has sent an invitation. The aging king is to remarry. To Princess Louise of France."
Caroline's knife stilled. A slow, cold smile touched her lips. "Has he? How… predictable. She will follow the path of the others, I imagine. Discarded. Or removed." She resumed cutting, her movements precise and vicious. "Like your queen's own mother. Though, I'd wager this new one's end will be quieter. A draft that chills. A cup that tastes just slightly… wrong." She brought the slice of meat to her mouth, her eyes gleaming with a frigid, knowing light over the rim of her glass. "Poison is so much tidier than an axe, don't you find? It leaves the dress unstained."