There are three rules of the court:
1. Don't touch the threads unless you're told to.
2. Don't speak your true name aloud.
3. And no circumstance should you make eye contact to the Fallen Spinner currently watching you across the Sartrix with the intensity of a curse.
I've broken all three.
Technically, the first one was an accident. The second one... I was thirteen and thought I was clever. The third? That one is happening right now, and I hate how much I can't look away.
He still has the same eyes—gilded and radiant.
And the same mouth that speaks in silk and cuts like shears.
"You look like a sin," He says, tilting his head.
"You still talk like a bad poem." I mutter, smoothed down my own skirt.
The silk gloves on my hands are enchanted. Not to protect me, no. To protect them. Because if I touch a thread of fate with bare fingers, it frays. Unravels. Screams.
I should leave. I should go back to my little attic room and the quiet hum of old spools and whispering fabric. But something in his look tells me tonight is not just silk and song.
It's blood.
It's memory.
It's him.
And I—I don't want to forgive him.
Phoibus, son of Cealustus. He was known as the "Spinner of All Threads". Everyone in Fatum knows his name—third son of the King of Clothos and the only one who holds the power of *Preastes*.
He and I had... history. A really long one. Pretty tragic if you ask me. It involves alot of broken threads and discarded fabrics.
"Reminiscing?" he asks, his voice low with a strange, unrecognizable lilt.
He adjusts his cuffs with his usual confidence, then sends me a look—a gentle one.
"... There is nothing worth remembering."
He hums softly. The rustle and whisper of threads fill the silence between us. His hands, delicate and deliberate, weave new strands into the fabric. The tension in the room thickens with every motion.
"May I ask," he continues, his eyes never leaving the threads, "Why, Daphni of Iluyto, are you visiting the Sartrix?
When you yourself declared, years ago, that you would never set foot in it again?"
He weaves a final thread, his tone shifting—more pointed. More knowing.
I drew in a shaky breath. The fabric of my gloves muffled the warmth rising in my palms—heat threatening to bloom, to betray me.
"I've been sent here," I said quietly, "to become your apprentice."
Then I dipped into a curtsy—measured, precise.
The kind reserved only for those who bear a royal crest.
His loom stops.
Just… stops.
I don't dare raise my head. When a Spinster—especially one with royal blood—suddenly halts their loom, it only means one thing.
Something serious has happened.
And that "something" is currently in a curtsy and sweating through her gloves.
Imagine this:
Your former apprentice, who loudly declared before an entire court that she would never, ever step foot in the City of Fatum again… walks back into your domain and says,
"Yeah, about that. Take me back. Please."
Yeah.
Seriously though, can he respond already?
Maintaining a curtsy is starting to feel like slow torture.
A chair creaks behind the loom. Measured footsteps follow. A pair of shoes stop just in front of mine.
"Rise."
I lift my head—and meet his eyes.
Golden. Bright. So very unreadable.
"Daphni of Iluyto," he says softly. "Why did you choose to work with the one they call the Fallen Spinner?"
"I didn't choose—"
I stopped—just before his gaze could harden.
Cleared my throat. Straightened my spine.
"Fallen Spinner or not, you still hold the power of Preastres."
I pause. Let the weight of it settle. Let him wonder how much of that was praise—and how much was reminder.
"And as the one who will soon rule Clothos… well, anyone would accept an apprenticeship under that."
Phoibus chuckles. Amused? Probably.
I was always good with words.
"Is that so?" His smile never wavers, dimples deepening like wells you shouldn't fall into.
"And oh, dear Daphni—why must I accept you as mine if you already rebuked it back then?"
That was past me. Not me-me. This is me. Now.
I keep my spine straight, keep the gloves from twitching.
"That was then," I say. "And this is now."
Phoibus walks back to the loom with reverence and grace—
the kind only a royal prince could master.
I wished he'd trip.
He didn't.
Of course he didn't.
He settles into his chair with practiced ease and begins to weave, fingers precise and unforgiving.
"Then as an experienced apprentice," he says, "you already know how the Third Prince of Clothos tests his?"
He hooks a new thread, guiding it through the reed with elegant detachment.
"Grab me a thread, Iluytri."
Ah. There he is.
The annoying, pesky, sharp-tongued Yarn Brain.
I might've stood still a little too long—because just as I finally moved to calmly retrieve a thread, I heard that voice again, smooth and screechy all at once:
"Can't?"
The flames nearly erupted in my palms.
"If His Royal Highness could… perhaps practice silence while I attempt my test—"
"Ah-ah."
He doesn't even look up.
"Apprentices should learn to hold their tongues and follow orders."
If we weren't surrounded by sacred threads, I would've singed his eyebrows off until there wasn't a single golden hair left.