Chapter 50. The Dress of Chains

The dress arrived in perfect silence. There was no fanfare to herald its coming, no knock on the door, no soft footstep in the corridor. One moment the room was empty; the next, there it stood, upright and still, on a polished blackwood mannequin placed just so by the tall window. Moonlight spilled in through the glass, brushing the curves of the fabric as if even the material longed for those pale beams.

It wasn’t simply clothing. It was a statement.

Lora stood on the cold stone floor, barefoot and unadorned, the roughness of the stones pressing gently against her soles. She had pulled a lightweight sleep shift around her—the kind that felt barely there, as though it had been woven from morning mist. Even so, the room seemed to demand something more substantial, and she shivered, crossing her arms as much to steady herself as to ward off the draft. Against the flicker of candlelight, the dress glimmered with a curious promise: not the sheen of silk or the whisper of spu