The Overlooked

The old library smelled of dust and mould.

Ilyra had discovered it three years ago, when a fever had kept her bedridden long enough that the servants forgot to lock certain doors. A forgotten wing of the palace, its shelves sagging under the weight of texts no one seemed to read anymore: philosophical treatises, provincial histories, the private correspondence of long-dead ministers. She came here when the court’s noise grew too thick, which was often. No one looked for her. No one ever looked for her, though that was self-pity talking.

The book in her lap was bound in cracked leather, its pages brittle and brown at the edges. A chronicle from the founding years, written by someone who had been there, or claimed to have been. Most of it was dry recitation of battles won and territories claimed. But there were passages, here and there, that made her pause.

The Empress spoke of debts that could not be named, the chronicler had written, and of a bargain that purchased more than victory. The clergy who attended her in those final years would not speak of what they knew, and their silence was eventually made permanent.

Ilyra traced the words with her fingertip. The phrasing was odd: “made permanent.” It could mean death. It could mean something else. The chronicler seemed to be writing around something, leaving shapes in the negative space where truth should have been.

She had found several such passages in the older texts. Hints of something beneath the official histories, something the empire preferred to forget. She might be imagining patterns where none existed. Might have read too many tragic romances and was looking for mystery in mundane records.

Still. The crypts beneath the palace had always felt wrong to her: that heaviness in the air, the way servants avoided certain corridors. She had asked her tutors about it once, years ago. They had smiled indulgently and told her it was simply the centuries pressing down. She had not believed them.

A soft knock at the door made her flinch. She closed the book quickly, sliding it beneath a stack of agricultural reports.

“My Lady?” The voice was quiet, careful. Mira. “Your family is gathering for breakfast.”

Ilyra sighed. Of course they were. “Thank you, Mira. I will be there shortly.”

She heard the servant’s footsteps retreat, light, almost soundless. Mira moved like that, she had noticed. Like someone accustomed to not being seen. There was a kinship in it. Though Ilyra was a princess and Mira was a handmaid, they shared at least this: the art of passing through rooms without anyone noticing.

The book called to her, but breakfast with the family could not be avoided. Mother would send someone to drag her there if she delayed too long, and that would only draw attention to her absence. Better to appear willingly, to smile and nod and be forgotten among the more colourful personalities at the table.

She rose, brushing dust from her skirts. The mirror by the door showed her what it always showed: a thin face, light green eyes, pale skin that seemed paler in the library’s dim light. Her hair was the family brown, but duller than her siblings’, lacking the lustre that came from robust health. Sickly, the court physicians had called her as a child. Delicate, the kinder courtiers said now. Either way, the meaning was the same. Weak.

They were probably right. That was why no one listened.

Mira was waiting in the corridor, as she always was. The handmaid fell into step beside her without a word, her presence as familiar and unobtrusive as Ilyra’s own shadow. They walked together through the palace’s waking bustle: servants with armloads of linens, a minister muttering over dispatches, guards who looked through them both as though they were furniture.

The morning room was bright with autumn light, thin and golden, the windows cracked open to admit the chill morning air. Her siblings were already seated when Ilyra arrived, arranged around the long table in their customary positions. Her parents occupied the head and foot, though Father was already staring at nothing, his plate untouched.

“Ilyra.” Her mother’s voice was clipped, efficient. “You are late.”

“Forgive me, Mother.” She took her seat near the foot of the table, between Seraine and an empty chair. “I was reading.”

“Reading.” The Empress’s tone made the word sound like an accusation. “You spend too much time in those dusty rooms. It is not healthy.”

Ilyra did not argue. There was no point. She unfolded her napkin and focused on the breakfast before her: cold meats, bread, preserved fruits. Simple fare, though served on golden plates. The empire’s wealth, displayed in the cutlery if not the cuisine.

Along the wall, Mira stood with the other attendants, hands clasped, eyes downcast. What did the servants make of these family breakfasts? The performances, the tensions, the things unsaid. They had probably learned not to think about it. Safer that way.

Dorian was holding court about something, a race, she thought, or perhaps a card game. He spoke with the easy charm that came to him so naturally, his gestures broad and inviting. Across from him, Cassian listened with the faint smile of someone who considered himself above such frivolity but enjoyed it nonetheless.

“The favourite broke its leg in the third furlong,” Dorian was saying. “Can you imagine? All those wagers gone in an instant. Lord Harwyn looked as though he might weep.”

“Lord Harwyn can afford to weep.” Cassian’s voice was smooth, cultured. “His family’s salt monopoly generates more in a month than most nobles see in a year.”

“Money isn’t everything, brother.”

“Says the man who lost three hundred crowns last week.”

Dorian’s laugh was easy, untroubled. “I won it back the next night. Besides, what is wealth for, if not to enjoy?”

Ilyra watched them. The twins, so alike in appearance, so different in their chosen masks. Dorian played the charming wastrel so thoroughly that she sometimes wondered if there was anything else beneath the performance. Cassian hid behind culture and refinement, patronising artists and hosting salons that lasted until dawn. The court adored them both, in their separate ways. The court found them entertaining.

Did the court know about the debt collectors who visited Dorian’s apartments, or the strange shipments that arrived at Cassian’s townhouse in the small hours of the night? Probably not. Or they knew and simply did not care. The court saw what the court wanted to see. At least, that was what it looked like from the edges.

“Sister.” Seraine’s voice cut through her thoughts. “You look unwell.”

Ilyra turned. Her elder sister was watching her with those pale eyes, the ones that seemed to see straight through pretence. Seraine’s beauty was severe: high cheekbones, lips that rarely smiled, hair so light it was almost silver. She carried herself with the certainty of someone who had never doubted her own righteousness.

“I slept poorly,” Ilyra said. “Nothing more.”

“Poor sleep is often a sign of spiritual unrest.” Seraine set down her knife and fork with precise movements. “You should attend the morning prayers more regularly. The Light of the Crown illuminates all shadows.”

“I will consider it.” The words came automatically. It was easier to agree with Seraine than to argue. Argument only led to lectures.

At the head of the table, their mother was reading dispatches, her brow furrowed. Their father had not moved since Ilyra arrived. He sat like a statue carved from exhaustion, his eyes fixed on some middle distance that held no interest for anyone else.

“Alistair.” The Empress’s voice was sharp. “The Marshal requires your signature on the garrison orders.”

Ilyra’s eldest brother looked up from his plate. Where Dorian was charming and Cassian was refined, Alistair was simply present, a force that filled whatever room he entered. Tall, muscular, with a voice that could command attention without rising. The army adored him. The court feared him. Ilyra had learned, years ago, not to draw his notice.

“The garrison orders can wait.” His voice was flat. “The eastern provinces are the priority.”

“The eastern provinces have been the priority for three months.”

“Then perhaps we should have addressed them three months ago, Mother, instead of letting them fester.”

There was an edge in his words that made the table go quiet. Even Dorian stopped mid-gesture, his easy smile fading into something more careful. Cassian found his wine suddenly fascinating. Seraine’s lips pressed into a thin line.

The Empress set down her dispatch. “Do not presume to lecture me on priorities, Alistair.”

“Someone must.”

The silence stretched. Ilyra held her breath, watching the invisible lines of power drawn across the table. Her father, she noticed, had not reacted at all. He simply sat, staring, as though the confrontation were happening in a different room entirely.

Then the Empress smiled, a cold, precise expression that reached nowhere near her eyes. “We will discuss this later. In private.”

Alistair inclined his head, the barest acknowledgment. The moment passed. Dorian resumed his story about the horse race, his voice a little too bright, and the family pretended nothing had happened.

Ilyra ate without tasting anything. This was how it always was: the simmering tensions, the careful performances, the truths no one spoke aloud. Her siblings circling each other like predators uncertain of their prey. Her mother trying to hold it all together through sheer force of will. Her father absent in all the ways that mattered.

And Ilyra, watching from the edges, invisible.

The moment Ilyra rose from the table, Mira detached herself from the wall of attendants and fell into step beside her. Silent, unobtrusive, as always. They walked toward Ilyra’s chambers, leaving the morning room’s tensions behind them.

“My Lady slept poorly again?” Mira’s voice was soft, barely above a murmur.

“How can you tell?”

“You did not finish your bread. You always finish your bread when you have slept well.”

Ilyra almost smiled. Mira noticed things. It was why they understood each other: two people trained by circumstance to observe from the margins.

“There were dreams,” she admitted. “Strange ones. The crypts, I think… that heaviness. I kept feeling as though something was watching me.”

Mira’s step faltered, just slightly. “The crypts are not a place for dreaming, my Lady.”

“I know.” Ilyra sighed. “I am sure it means nothing. Too much time with old books and my own thoughts.”

They walked in silence for a moment. The palace corridors were busy with the morning’s traffic: servants carrying linens, ministers hurrying to appointments, guards standing at attention as the princess passed. None of them really saw her. She was furniture to them, part of the palace’s expected landscape.

Or perhaps she was imagining that too. It was hard to tell, sometimes, what was real observation and what was her own loneliness colouring everything grey.

But she did notice, or was she imagining it, that the servants seemed more hurried than usual today. More whispers in clusters that broke apart when she passed. A tension running beneath the familiar routines.

“Mira.” Ilyra slowed her pace. “How is your brother?”

The question seemed to catch the handmaid off guard. Her eyes flickered, surprise, perhaps, or something more guarded. “My brother, my Lady?”

“Tobias. He works in the bread district, does he not? At one of the bakeries.”

“Larsen’s bakery, my Lady. Yes.” Mira’s voice had gone careful. “He is… well enough.”

“I have heard rumours.” Ilyra kept her own voice low. “About shortages. Unrest. Is it true?”

Mira did not answer immediately. They had reached a window that overlooked the city, and for a moment she stood very still, gazing out at the sprawl of rooftops and spires. The bread district was somewhere out there. Ilyra could not have pointed to it, had never been there, but she knew it existed. A world beyond the palace walls that she had only read about.

“There are always rumours, my Lady.” Mira’s tone was neutral, but something in her posture had shifted. More guarded. More afraid. “The common folk talk. It does not always mean anything.”

“And when it does mean something?”

Mira looked at her then. A direct gaze that lasted only a heartbeat before the handmaid remembered herself and dropped her eyes. “Then the common folk pray, my Lady. And hope those above them are listening.”

The words hung in the air between them. Ilyra wanted to say something, that she was listening, that she cared, that she would do something if she could. But what could she do? She was the fifth child of a dying dynasty, overlooked and ignored, with no power beyond the books she read in secret.

“I am sorry,” she said quietly. “That is not much of an answer, I know.”

Mira shook her head, a small movement. “It is more than most would offer, my Lady.”

They continued walking. Ilyra tried not to think about the bread district, about the families there who might be going hungry while her family ate cold meats on golden plates. She tried not to think about how little she knew of her own empire, the one she had been born to serve, in theory, though no one had ever asked her to serve anything but as a spare heir in case disaster struck.

She could speak to her parents. Raise the matter formally, in council, the way she had seen Alistair do with military matters. Someone might listen.

But she knew, even as she thought it, that they would not. She had tried before, in smaller ways, and been dismissed. Why should this time be different?

Still. She had to try. If she did not, she was no better than the rest of them.

Mira helped her change into more formal attire for the council. It was a process that involved more buttons and laces than Ilyra thought strictly necessary. The handmaid’s hands were deft but distracted, her gaze flickering to the window more than once.

“Is something wrong?” Ilyra asked.

“No, my Lady.” But the answer came too quickly, and Mira’s fingers fumbled on a clasp. “Forgive me. I am… merely tired.”

Ilyra did not press. But she filed the moment away, another thread in the pattern she was beginning to see. Or imagining she saw. It was hard to know which.

She tried anyway.

The afternoon council was nearly finished when Ilyra slipped into the chamber, taking a seat along the wall where observers sat. Her mother glanced up with a frown but said nothing. Her father did not notice her at all.

They were discussing taxes: adjustments to the provincial levies, collection methods, penalties for shortfalls. The Minister of the Treasury droned on about yields and projections, his voice dry as the parchment he read from. Ilyra listened, trying to follow the threads of logic, but the numbers blurred together.

When the minister finished, there was a pause, the moment when new matters could be raised before the council adjourned.

Ilyra stood. “If it pleases the council.”

Every eye in the room turned toward her. Their attention pressed against her like a physical thing. The ministers, the advisors, her mother’s sharp gaze, her father’s distant confusion.

“Princess Ilyra.” The Chancellor’s voice was carefully neutral. “You wish to address the council?”

“I wish to raise a matter of concern.” She clasped her hands before her to stop them from trembling. “Reports have reached me of unrest in the bread district. Shortages, I am told. Families struggling to obtain basic provisions. I wondered if the council might consider measures to address the situation before it worsens.”

Silence. She could feel her mother’s stare boring into her, but she kept her eyes on the Chancellor.

“Reports,” the Empress said finally. “What reports? From whom?”

“From… servants, Mother. Those with family in the affected areas.”

“Servants.” The word dripped with dismissal. “You bring servant gossip before the council as though it were intelligence?”

“It is not gossip if people are going hungry.”

The temperature in the room dropped. Ilyra saw several ministers exchange glances, the kind of looks that said the princess is making a scene and this will not end well for her.

Something flickered in her mother’s expression, not anger, not yet. Worse: dismissal. The look one gave a child who had said something foolish at an adult gathering.

“The grain stores are managed by officials with decades of experience.” Her mother’s voice was measured, patient, the tone used for explaining obvious things to those too slow to grasp them. “The markets are regulated by the guild. If there are shortages, the proper channels exist to address them.”

“The proper channels-” Ilyra heard her own voice rising, felt the heat climbing up her neck. “Mother, the proper channels are failing. People are hoarding grain while families starve. There are warehouses full to the rafters and-”

“And you know this how?” The Empress’s eyes were cold now. “Because a handmaid told you? Because you overheard servants whispering in corridors?”

“Because I listened. Because someone should-”

“Enough.” The word cracked across the chamber like a whip. Her mother rose from her chair, slowly, deliberately. “You have interrupted a council of state to repeat kitchen gossip. You have spoken out of turn, raised your voice, and demonstrated precisely why children are not permitted in these chambers.”

Ilyra’s face burned. “I am not a child. I am trying to-”

“You are trying to help.” The Empress gathered her papers, her movements precise and unhurried. “How earnest. How naive.” She looked at Ilyra then, briefly, not with anger, but with something almost worse. Weariness. “Return to your chambers.”

It was not an invitation for discussion. It was a command.

The ministers were already rising, murmuring to each other, filing out with careful haste. No one met Ilyra’s eyes. She stood frozen, her face burning with humiliation, as the council chamber emptied around her.

Her father passed her without a word. He might not have seen her at all.

Only when the room was empty did Ilyra allow herself to breathe. Her hands were shaking now, the trembling she had suppressed rising to the surface. She had known this would happen. She had known, and she had tried anyway, and it had changed nothing.

How utterly useless.

Her mother might be right. She might be naive, a child playing at politics, seeing problems where none existed. The bread district might be fine. The rumours might be gossip. She might be making something out of nothing.

But.

But Mira’s hands had shaken when she spoke of it. And servants did not shake over nothing.

Evening came, and with it the familiar rhythms of the palace, from the dinner in the great hall, to the music in the gallery, the soft sounds of a court settling into night. Ilyra took her meal in her chambers, claiming a headache. No one questioned it. No one noticed, or so she assumed.

Mira brought her food on a tray: bread, cheese, sliced fruits. Simple fare. The handmaid set it down with hands that were not quite steady, her eyes red-rimmed. From crying, or just the lamplight playing tricks.

Ilyra found she had no appetite.

“Sit with me,” she said, gesturing to the chair by the window. “Please.”

The handmaid hesitated. It was not proper, a servant sitting in the princess’s presence, but something in Ilyra’s expression must have convinced her. She perched on the edge of the chair, hands folded in her lap, spine very straight.

“Tell me about the bread district,” Ilyra said. “The truth this time. Not what you think I want to hear.”

Mira was quiet for a long moment. Outside, the city lights flickered in the gathering dusk, candles and oil lamps, the distant glow of gas lighting in the wealthier quarters.

“The mills are running,” she said finally. “The harvest came in well enough. But the grain…” She paused, choosing her words carefully. “It reaches the city but never makes it to the markets. There are warehouses, they say, stacked to the rafters. And guards at the doors.”

“Hoarding?”

“Some say nobles. Some say guild masters. Others say worse… that they are in league, waiting for prices to rise high enough to break families.” Mira’s voice dropped. “I do not know what is true, my Lady. But my brother writes that the bakeries are rationing what little flour trickles through, and the lines grow longer each day, and there are men gathering at night to talk of…”

She stopped abruptly, as though catching herself.

“To talk of what?”

Mira shook her head. “It is not my place to say, my Lady.”

“Mira.” Ilyra leaned forward. “I am asking. I want to know.”

The handmaid looked at her, really looked, the way she had in the corridor that morning. As though seeing something she had not expected.

“They talk of rising, my Lady,” she said quietly. “Of demanding what is owed. Of making the palace hear them, since asking has done nothing.” She paused. “They are frightened and angry and hungry, and frightened angry hungry people do not always make wise choices.”

Ilyra sat back. Rising. Riots. The sort of thing she had read about in histories: popular uprisings, mobs in the streets, the violence that came when the compact between rulers and ruled finally broke.

“When?” she asked.

“I do not know. Soon, I think. Tobias does not say much in his letters, he is careful, but I can read between the lines.” Mira’s hands twisted in her lap. “I am afraid for him, my Lady. He is not a fighter. He is just a baker. But if he is caught…”

She could not finish the sentence. She did not need to.

“Thank you for telling me,” Ilyra said. “I know it was not easy.”

Mira nodded, a small sharp movement. “What will you do, my Lady?”

What would she do? What could she do? Her mother had dismissed her concerns with contempt. The council had looked through her as though she were not there. She had no power, no influence, no way to make anyone listen.

“I do not know yet,” she admitted. “But I will think of something.”

It was not much of a promise. But it was all she had.

Later, after Mira had cleared the untouched dinner and left her alone, Ilyra stood at her window and watched the city sink into darkness.

Somewhere out there, in the bread district, people were hungry. Families were worrying about tomorrow, about next week, about whether there would be enough to eat. And here in the palace, her family ate cold meats on golden plates and argued about tax yields and garrison orders, never once looking at the smoke that was surely beginning to rise.

She thought of the book in the old library, the hints of secrets, the silences made permanent. She thought of her mother’s words, sharp and dismissive: How earnest. How naive.

Perhaps that was true. But she understood something else. She understood what it felt like to be invisible, to speak and not be heard, to watch from the margins while those in power made choices that affected lives they would never see.

The bread district was made of people like Mira. Like Mira’s brother. People who worked and struggled and hoped for better, and who were told that their concerns were gossip, their fears were foolishness, their hunger was simply the natural grumbling of common folk.

Ilyra’s chest had hardened during that council meeting, or so it felt. Not anger, exactly, though there was anger in it. Something colder. Clarity, maybe. Or just the numbness that came from being dismissed one too many times.

If no one would listen, then perhaps she needed to find another way.

The crypts called to her again. That strange heaviness, that sense of something waiting beneath. She pushed the thought away. Foolish. The crypts were just crypts. The feeling was just atmosphere. There was nothing down there but the bones of her ancestors and the dust of centuries.

Still. She had read passages that spoke of bargains and debts. Of powers that could be invoked, if one knew the words. Of the first Empress, who had purchased more than victory.

Foolish thoughts. Desperate thoughts. She was not so far gone as that.

Not yet.

She stood at the window a long while, watching the city lights wink out one by one as households settled into sleep. All day she had sensed something building. The whispers in clusters. Mira’s trembling hands. The tension that seemed to run beneath the palace floors like a current.

A soft knock at her chamber door. She knew, somehow, before she opened it, that the news would not be good.

Mira stood in the corridor, her face pale in the lamplight, her hands clasped together so tightly the knuckles showed white. The handmaid who moved like a shadow, who had learned to pass through rooms without being noticed, she was trembling now, and made no effort to hide it.

“My Lady.” Her voice was barely a whisper. “I was passing the servants’ hall just now. There was talk, hushed, but I heard…”

“What did you hear?”

Mira swallowed. When she spoke, the words seemed to cost her something. “They say it will be tomorrow. The bread district. They say the people have decided they cannot wait any longer.”

Tomorrow. The word settled into the silence between them. Ilyra felt her suspicions crystallise into certainty. All the hints she had glimpsed throughout the day, all the signs she had half-dismissed as imagination, suddenly resolving into a single, terrible truth.

“Are you certain?”

“As certain as servants’ talk ever is, my Lady.” Mira’s eyes were wide, frightened. “Tobias did not write this. He could not have known in time. But if the whispers are right, if they are rising tomorrow…”

She did not finish. She did not need to.

Ilyra thought of her mother’s dismissal, her father’s absence, the council that had looked through her. She thought of Dorian laughing about horse races, of Cassian discussing wealth with idle amusement, of Seraine and her prayers that illuminated nothing. She thought of Alistair and his cold certainty, his armies waiting for orders, his methods for dealing with unrest.

If the bread district rose, the Crown would respond. And the response would not be mercy.

“I want to see it,” she heard herself say. The words surprised her even as she spoke them. “Tomorrow. I want to watch.”

“My Lady,” Mira’s voice cracked. “It will be dangerous. If you are recognised…”

“Then I will not be recognised.” The words came quickly, before she could think better of them. Before the sensible part of her could point out all the reasons this was foolish. “I will dress simply. I will find a safe vantage. I only want to see, Mira. I need to understand what is happening. What my family will do.”

She was not sure, even as she said it, whether this was courage or desperation. Maybe there was no difference.

Mira stared at her. In her eyes, Ilyra saw something shifting, fear warring with something else. Hope, perhaps. Or simply the recognition of someone who had finally been seen.

“I could show you a place,” Mira said quietly. “My brother’s building has a roof that overlooks the square. If we go early, before the crowds…”

“Yes.” Ilyra reached out and took Mira’s hands in hers, an impulsive gesture, unusual for her. The handmaid’s fingers were cold. “Thank you, Mira. I know you are risking much to help me.”

“My Lady has always been kind.” Mira’s voice was barely audible. “It is more than I have known from others.”

They stood together in the doorway, two overlooked women in a palace full of people who never noticed them. Outside, the city slept, dreaming of tomorrow.

Ilyra did not know yet what she would see tomorrow. She did not know how the bread district’s desperate cry would change her, or what choices she would face in its aftermath. She was not even sure, in her heart of hearts, that she was doing the right thing.

But she could not look away any longer. That had to count for something.

The empire was rotting. And tomorrow, she was going to watch it happen.