The Last Strokes Of Divine

The servants' dining hall was louder than usual.

Wooden bowls clattered against stone counters. Ladles sloshed with thin vegetable broth, and tired maids murmured over crusts of bread and dried fruit. Soleil kept to the farthest corner of the hall, where no one ever sat, a sliver of sunlight breaking through a high slit of a window just enough to illuminate the uneven grains of the bench beneath her.

She preferred the silence here. The others didn't bother her, didn't speak to her unless duty demanded it. Some turned their faces away. Others whispered when they thought she couldn't hear. It didn't matter. She had long grown used to the quiet of being unwelcome.

Let them ignore her.

Let them turn their eyes away.

She chewed slowly, almost mindlessly. The soup had cooled hours ago, and the bread had the softness of old brick, but it was something warm in a place that felt otherwise carved from chill and silence.

That was when she heard it.

A name.

Not just any name. Her name.

"Soleil."

It was quiet. A whisper from a table two rows across. But it cracked through her peace like the sudden snap of a string.

Her spine stiffened.

She hadn't heard that name aloud since she first arrived. Not from the other maids. Not from the head steward who assigned her chores. Not from the guards she carefully avoided. No one was supposed to know it. She had never written it down. Never signed anything with it. When asked, she'd always given her role, not her name.

And yet—

"Soleil," the voice repeated, low and uncertain. "That's what he said."

She didn't dare look up immediately. Just shifted her posture enough to see the source from under her lashes.

Two younger servants, both in patched aprons and eating fast. One looked anxious, the other curious.

"Why's the steward looking for a maid that doesn't exist?" the first muttered. "That's what confused Martha. she triple-checked the lists. No Soleil anywhere."

Her heart thudded.

Steward?

Was someone looking for her?

The soup soured in her mouth. Slowly, deliberately, she set her spoon down.

She turned, quiet as breath, and began to listen with everything she had.

"Someone said it was the lead Sanctum steward himself," the second maid whispered. "The pale one with the strange eyes. Auren."

That name slid into her like a shard of winter.

Of course.

She closed her eyes for half a beat. The memory of him flickered back cool, precise gaze, the way he'd noticed her hesitation, how he'd called out to her when she wandered too close to the Sanctum arch. That brief, tense conversation. The linen basket hiding her face. The weight of his attention.

She had slipped by, but only barely.

She should have known he wouldn't let it go.

But why now?

She hadn't done anything since that encounter, nothing but mop floors and scrub columns and try not to fall apart. She hadn't returned to the Sanctum, atleast not yet.

She still hadn't figured out a way.

The security was tight and she had to be careful not to draw attention to herself.

Had he seen something? Felt something? Was it suspicion that drove him, or

Fear curled at the edge of her thoughts.

What if this wasn't just about her wandering too close?

What if he had sensed what she really was?

Her appetite had vanished.

If Auren was searching for her, she couldn't afford to sit still. She had seen the Sanctum. She had looked too long at its sealed doors. That was enough to draw suspicion, even in a palace steeped in silence.

Her name wasn't meant to exist here.

So who was she, really, in the eyes of those who served the divine?

A maid?

An intruder?

A threat?

The last thing she wanted was attention. And yet, it had found her again, like a string attached to fire.

And Auren was pulling it.

She tucked behind her ears the little hair sticking out of the mob cap she wore ,keeping her head down as she rose quietly and slips away from the mess hall, heart pounding. She keeps to the side corridors, eyes lowered, trying to vanish into the backdrop of bustling servants and heavy-footed guards.

Arriving at a quiet garden she had stumbled upon while doing her duties, she had grown found of the place, as it was always quiet and gave her a enough room to hide and think

But this time it was different, as someone had followed her here .

Princess Saphielle.

Cold grace incarnate. Her robes were sheer violet layered with silver thread, her hair twisted into a crown of glass-pinned coils. Her beauty was flawless, calculated like a sculpture made to remind others they would never measure up.

Saphielle's pale eyes narrowed as she looked Soleil over, lips curling in something like disdain.

"Not so radiant now, are we?" she said, voice velvet-smooth. "Scrubbing floors. Carrying linens. I almost didn't recognize you."

Startled, soleil turned around.

Soleil couldn't recognize this person, but one glance and she could tell she was a person with status, a royal member perhaps.

And she had been in this world long enough to know royals spelt trouble.

How was she even supposed to address her?

She was confused, berating herself silently for pushing aside all history books when she came in contact with them.

Your highness she said , offering a short nod.

No out of respect. She didn't even know this person, she just didn't want any troubles.

Not like she wasn't already in one with the head steward of the sanctum.

She had a headache just thinking about that.

Saphielle brows lifted.

Is that it? She asked.

She saw through that flimsy nod and she wasn't going to settle for that.

Azeriah was now beneath her, nothing more than a lowly maid. And she needed to make that sink into her head.

The princess's voice dipped lower, honeyed and cruel. "Do you even remember how it felt? Being revered? Being worshipped for every little line your brush touched? All gone. Forgotten. You're nothing now. And yet, you still carry your chin like someone who matters."

Bowing a little bit more, soleil replied "I'm just a maid now , you need not waste you energy on a lowly maid"

She needed to dismiss this person fast, even if it meant telling her what she wanted to hear, she thought to herself.

But she should've known better.

Saphielle wasn't here for obedience.

She was here for humiliation.

Then you should go on your knees, the princess demanded. Like the servant you are.

A gust of wind stirred the branches above them. Petals fell between them like fading stars.

Soleil met her gaze. And for the first time, the unease flared in the princess's eyes. Brief, but real.

Because what looked back at her… was not quite Azeriah.

Not the light she knew.

Something cold.