5. What the Bird sees beyond Bars

"Have the tea, Cessalie."

I nodded, lifting the porcelain cup just the way the women around me always do with graceful fingers, no slouching, soft wrists. Like drinking tea was a performance in itself.

The tea tasted like jasmine, but it could’ve been poison and I wouldn’t have blinked.

Davian watched me quietly, the corners of his lips curved into that faint smile. He was dressed in deep green and gold today, the colors wrapping around him like he was born to carry them. His white gloves stayed on.

He didn’t speak right away, just sipped his own tea slowly, gaze never leaving mine. Like he was studying a painting that kept shifting every time he looked again.

"You look calmer today," he said finally.

I shrugged. "I’ve accepted my fate,"

He smiled more fully now, still maddeningly gentle. "You’ve accepted the tea. I’ll settle for that today."

I didn’t smile back. But I drank.

Davian set his cup down gently. "I thought perhaps," he began, voice smooth like silk stretched tight, "you’d like to know more about the duchy. Your future home."

No I don't want to. I glanced toward the tall windows draped in velvet, counting seconds in silence like I always did when I didn’t want to engage.

But he continued anyway, unbothered. "The palace is older than most of the estates in the east. Marble halls. A winter garden with crystal-glass roofing. The gallery houses about four hundred paintings, most of them older than Alderwyn itself." He chuckled softly, like any of that meant something. "People there are kind. Educated. They’ll answer to you."

I sipped the tea again. "And if I don’t want them to?"

His brows lifted slightly, like my defiance wasn’t new to him. "Then they won’t," he said, calm. "I don’t want a puppet. You’d be the lady of the house, not my shadow."

That was supposed to win me over, wasn’t it?

He leaned forward just slightly. "Whatever you want, library, your own study, horses, tutors, music, I’ll provide it. It’s yours."

Yours.

I looked down at my lap, fingers gripping the cup tighter than necessary. "I’m not interested in palaces," I said finally. "Or silks. Or whatever’s ‘mine.’"

He didn’t look disappointed. "Then what are you interested in, Cessalie?"

"Freedom."

A pause.

"I’ll give you as much of it as I can," he said softly.

But that was the thing. As much as he can. That’s how it always starts. The illusion of choice. The slow, suffocating kindness that binds tighter than chains.

I didn’t answer.

I just kept drinking the tea.

Davian didn’t push. He just sat back with that quiet kind of confidence, like he already knew what I was thinking but wasn’t going to call me out on it. That made me trust him even less.

My fingers twitched slightly, resting against the rim of the teacup.

"You don’t know anything about me."

"I don’t," he nodded, lips pressing together. "But I’d like to. Not as the Duke’s daughter. Not as a Draevin. As Duchess Cessalie Aurelthron. As you."

I scoffed under my breath. Right. I, as a person, always came after the title I was forced to bear. Duke's legitimate daughter. Duchess of Davian Aurelthron. I didn't desire a title. I desired freedom, power.

"I don’t want to trap you, Cessalie," he said. "I’m not offering you a perfect life. I’m offering... something better than what you’ve been given so far. And I won’t lie to you, yes, we’re getting married. Yes, I agreed to it. But I’m not asking you to fall in love with me. I’m asking you to feel safe with me. That’s all. The rest, if it happens, happens."

I stared at him for a long time.

Men didn’t say that. Men didn’t mean that.

I looked away first. "Fine," I muttered. "Show me your palace. Your horses. Your books. Whatever."

His smile was faint, but warm. "As you wish, Cessalie."

And for the first time in a long time, I didn’t feel like I was about to suffocate in a room with a man.

Still didn’t trust him.

He tilted his head slightly, his voice still calm. "So, what do you like, Cessalie? What makes you feel… alive?"

I blinked at him.

They told me what I should like. Embroidery, grace, behaving. They never asked. And even if they did, it was rhetorical.

So I didn’t answer right away. I just watched him. Waited for the moment his mask would slip. The moment he’d laugh or say something condescending.

But he just waited.

So finally, I said it, quiet and a little bitter, "Books."

His eyes lit up a little, like I’d said something rare and valuable.

"I like reading," I added, looking away, rubbing my arm. "Not just romances and fairy tales like they push on girls. History. Military theory. Philosophy. Finance. Real things. Things with blood in them."

A beat passed.

"Interesting," he said, as if he meant it. "Any favorites?"

"Do you actually want to know, or are you just humoring me?"

He didn’t flinch. "I actually want to know."

I studied him again. Then, still testing him, I said, "There’s this one book… The Tides of Revarim. It’s banned in most duchies. Talks about revolution and what power does to kings. I’ve read it six times."

His brow arched in what looked like surprise.

"You’re bold."

"Or stupid."

"Sometimes they’re the same thing."

I huffed a small breath, half a laugh, half disbelief.

"And you?" I asked suddenly, like I was catching him off guard. "What do you like, Duke Davian? Or do you just collect wives and charm girls into cages?"

That got a twitch of a smile from him.

"I like order," he admitted. "Clean systems. A well-run city. Laws that protect people instead of crushing them. I like fencing too. And art, though I can’t paint to save my life."

"Of course," I muttered. "You sound so noble."

He just smiled. "I said I like those things. Doesn’t mean I’m good."

For a second, I didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t giving me anything to hate. And that was more confusing than if he’d slapped me.

So I turned back to my tea, eyes narrowed.

The rest of the conversation blurred into talk of his duchy, of trade routes and the gardens his late wife adored, of the chapel with sapphire windows and the library that stretched three floors high.

He said I’d be its lady soon, free to do whatever I pleased within its walls.

As if freedom and walls belonged in the same breath.

They dressed it up nicely, this gilded illusion. Yours to command, they said, as though a throne in a cage was anything but confinement. But I never asked for keys, I asked for a world without locks. They kept handing me rooms.

Everyone seemed to believe freedom came with velvet curtains and choices inside stone. But a bird isn’t free because you let it choose which perch to sing from.

No, freedom was sky. Not walls pretending to be mercy.

Eventually, he stood up, smoothing the front of his coat, the green and gold fabric catching the late afternoon light. "I’ll be away for a few days. Royal court matters," he said. "But I’ll return as soon as I can."

I didn’t answer. Just gave a small nod and turned back to my half-drunk tea.

He left like a ghost.

And then I was summoned.

To his office.

The halls felt colder as I walked, guarded again, maids trailing behind like I might throw myself out a window if left alone for too long. When I entered my father’s study, the air was smelling of that spice and old smoke he always kept burning in the fireplace.

He didn’t look up at first, just kept scribbling something.

Then finally, without lifting his gaze, "You’ve met him twice now. Right?"

I didn’t respond.

He looked up, the usual cold amusement in his eyes.

"He likes you," he said, leaning back in his chair, folding his arms. "Imagine that. Even after turning out to be such a unlady-like girl."

My jaw tightened.

His smirk grew crueler. "Are you behaving so well because you like him too? Hmm?" He cocked his head. "Is it first love, Cessalie?"

I didn’t answer, because there was nothing to say.

What do you say when the man who beats you for speaking, now teases you for being silent?

My fingers curled into my dress. He waited, like a cat playing with its prey, just to see if I’d twitch.

I didn’t give him the satisfaction.

"I asked you something," he said, voice low, casual. That tone he used right before it snapped into something dangerous. "You’re not mute, are you?"

"No," I said, stiffly.

He raised an eyebrow. "So?"

"So what?"

"The boy," he said. "Davian. Do you like him? Should I start planning your wedding already or wait till you start writing his name in the margins of your books?"

My chest burned, but not with embarrassment. With that slow, curling anger that never left me anymore.

"I’m behaving," I said through clenched teeth. "Because you told me to."

His smile vanished in a blink.

"So you’re doing it out of obedience. Not affection."

"I don’t even know him."

"You’ve spent time with him."

"And you want me to fall in love in two meetings?"

He stood. And I instinctively stepped back.

But he didn’t come toward me this time.

"Just don’t embarrass me," he said, finally. "He’s one of the youngest Dukes to be appointed to the High Court. Well-mannered. Disciplined. Loyal. Something you could’ve been if you weren’t born a girl with too much mouth and no magic."

He sat back down like he hadn’t just gutted me with words.

"You’ll continue meeting him," he said. "And you’ll continue behaving."

"And if I don’t?"

He didn’t answer. Didn’t need to. His silence said enough.

I turned to leave before he could change his mind and remind me the hard way.

But the worst part?

It wasn’t the threat.

It was that even in that office filled with power and cold and the stench of burned incense, I still couldn’t figure Davian out.

And that made me feel like I was walking blindfolded into a trap laced with honey.

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