V The First
1.1
Scene: 1.1.3

1.1.3
"At least she is pretty"
"Someone will take her"

The Fall
6 years earlier
The manse, the land, the gold, the titles—gone. Expropriated by the Crown. Thus fell the House of Nováková.
“At least she’s pretty,” said one of the nuns who took her in. “Someone will take her.”
And so she waited, like all the other girls who learned to disappear before they were missed.
Orphan and Homeless

Six years went by

She was 12
6 years went by.
Then came Lady Nerissa

Nerissa
And the daughter she never had
Six whole years passed—years of whispered prayers, bread too hard to chew, and nightmares woven with cruel whispers in the dark.
Then came Nerissa.
Barren, bitter, and well past her prime, Nerissa was tall for a woman and thin as a whip. Her attire was elegantly austere—not made to seduce, but to command. Her face was all angles and judgment, yet vaguely familiar.
The woman claimed Janna as a daughter. She said it like a gift, but the word rang false in her mouth—like spoiled wine. Her arms were cold, her smiles strained, her body tight with things unspoken.
A performance was made, before the nuns and the girl, but it fell fruitlessly under the shadow of a lie.
The carriage ride home was thick with silence. No effort was made—then or ever after. It didn’t matter. By then, Janna was already numb to life.


























