Chapter Text
Silence was the only thing Pansa had ever learned to tend carefully. She spent her nights listening to the creak of wood, the chorus of crickets along the canal's edge, the scratch of quill on paper. The oil lamp trembled with the breeze slipping through the cracks in the wall. That night, however, the silence shifted before any sound arrived. A change in the humid air — an instinctive warning that raised the hair on her arms.
She set down the quill. Her hand went straight to the sword at her hip — a gesture as automatic as breathing. Her steps made no sound on the floorboards as she approached the door.
When she opened it, she found the King.
He was not wearing his ceremonial robes. The hem of his cloak was caked with mud and his face was that of a man defeated by something no sword could wound. Two guards stood a few paces behind him, eyes cast downward. Neither dared look at Pansa's house.
She bowed with her palms pressed together.
The man entered without asking leave, moving through the small space with an urgency that made the house feel smaller still. He stopped near the lamp. In its light, Pansa saw how much he had aged. When he placed his hand on her shoulder, it was trembling.
— Today I am not a king — he said, his voice rough and low. — I am here as a desperate father.
Pansa knew that look. It was the look of someone willing to trade their own soul. Before she could answer, one of the guards entered carrying a bundle wrapped in silk. Pansa's heart lurched when she recognized the pale face between the folds of fabric.
Pattranite.
The skin Pansa remembered as full of life now held a sickly transparency. Her lips were ashen, her breath so faint it barely stirred the silk over her chest. And yet, even so, Pansa could feel every drop of blood still struggling to remain in that body. She felt the princess's vital force trembling like the flame of a candle about to go out.
A memory crossed her mind uninvited: the palace gardens, the heat of the sun, Pattranite running circles around her with jasmine flowers in her hands, laughing, insisting on tucking them into Pansa's straight hair that never held anything. "You're far too serious, Pansa!", she would say. "Promise you'll never leave me alone?"
The King's voice pulled her back to the cold of the early hours.
— The physicians have given up. The monks prayed for three days — he said, the words falling like a lament. — There is nothing more anyone can do.
Pansa stared at the wall. The dull indifference of bamboo was preferable to the sight of that small body lying on the sleeping mat.
— I don't know how I can help you, my lord — she lied.
The sound that came in response was not words. The King pressed her against the wall, his fists closed around the collar of her shirt.
— Don't lie to me. I know what you are. I know what your father went to seek in the forest that night. I know why you don't age.
Pansa held his gaze without flinching.
— Then you know I cannot condemn her to this. — A pause. — My father thought the same as you when he decided to condemn me to this nightmare I can never wake from.
The King released her collar. He fell to his knees beside the mat where the princess lay, his fingers moving slowly through her dark, lifeless hair. A king on his knees was a sight Pansa had never expected to witness.
— I would rather she live as a creature of the night than watch her rot beneath the earth. Please, Pansa. I will be in your debt. But do not let her go.
Pansa looked at Pattranite. She remembered the day she left the palace without saying goodbye — without being able to say goodbye — and the hurt in the princess's eyes months later, when the two crossed paths in the audience courtyard and Pattranite looked at her as one looks at a stranger. Pansa's debt was not to the King. It was to the girl who had once trusted her promise.
— Leave — said Pansa. — You and all your men. If I do this, no one can be near.
The King nodded and left with his men. The heavy wooden door shut behind them with a sound of finality.
Pansa was alone with the princess's near-lifeless body.
She walked to the mat slowly, as one approaches something that might come undone. Her fingers touched Pattranite's face with a gentleness she rarely allowed herself. The skin was cold — not the coldness of sleep, but of someone beginning to leave.
— You shouldn't be here, little princess — she murmured.
She picked up the small knife she used to sharpen her quills. With a quick, unhesitating motion, she cut her own wrist. The blood welled up dark and thick, heavier than human blood. She felt the dizziness — not from blood loss, but from the gravity of what she was about to do. From the price Pattranite would pay without having chosen it.
At first, the blood trickled from the corner of the princess's mouth without response. Pansa felt panic tighten in her chest. But then — an involuntary swallow reflex, faint as a newborn's.
Pattranite was drinking.
Pansa watched as color returned slowly to her cheeks. It was a hypnotic and terrible process. With every swallow, something died between them — a trace of innocence, a piece of the world that had existed before. When she felt it was enough, she withdrew her wrist and pressed a cloth against the wound.
She was exhausted. She walked to the chair by the lamp, opened her book of memories and tried to read. Her eyes kept returning to the mat.
The damp heat of the early hours weighed on everything and, in that half-darkness, Pansa understood that her life of isolation was over. She had saved Pattranite from death. But at what cost? She had condemned the purest creature she had ever known to the same eternal exile she herself inhabited.
It was the sound of a scream that pulled her from her thoughts. It was not human. Pattranite writhed on the mat as if the blood in her veins were liquid fire, her eyes wide and fixed on Pansa, brimming with tears.
Pansa's first instinct was to cross the room. She threw herself onto the mat, pulled the small trembling body against her own, her fingers running through Pattranite's dark, damp hair. She did not know where that impulse came from — to contain, to hold, to keep the other from losing herself inside whatever was happening.
— It's all right, princess. I'm here.
They were nearly useless words. But they were all Pansa had. And so she stayed — holding Pattranite against her chest, feeling every spasm, every sob — because there was nothing more she could do except not let go.
That promise, at least, she would not break.