Exotic birds sang beyond the hedge, their calls bright and insistent. The garden breathed sweetness—jasmine heavy on the trellises, something citrusy and sharp near the fountains, and an undercurrent of green life, dense enough to taste.

  Elowen lay back in a large cushioned chair that was entirely too soft for her liking and rubbed at the arch of her foot through the thin silk of her stocking.

  “I’m sleeping in tonight,” she announced, tipping her intricately braided head in theatrical surrender, as if she were yielding a battlefield.

  Across from her, Alenya narrowed her eyes. “Aayan said the tumblers are coming.”

  Elowen didn’t open hers. She continued to massage her foot as if her bones had taken personal offense to marble floors. “There are always tumblers. Or musicians. Or dancers. Or poets. Or a parade of people who want to be applauded for existing.”

  “Aayan would call that ‘culture.’” Alenya’s mouth quirked.

  Elowen exhaled and let her head fall back against the cushion. Sunlight warmed her forehead. Warmth here wasn’t earned. It was simply… given. Like the city had decided winter was embarrassing.

  “Since I got here,” she said, “it’s been a never-ending chain of you-can’t-miss-this events.”

  “You can say no,” Alenya said, too casually.

  Elowen cracked one eye open. “As if anyone can refuse Aayan.”

  Alenya’s expression turned into the look she wore before letting an arrow fly—mildly amused, already certain of impact. “No, you can’t. And I heard he already sent you a dress for tonight.”

  Elowen sat up a fraction. “He did not.”

  “He did.” Alenya leaned forward, conspiratorial. “Even more beautiful than the last one.”

  Elowen groaned and let her head drop into her hands. The sound came out dramatic, but her stomach still did that small dip it had learned to do here—half dread, half a ridiculous, inconvenient spark of curiosity.

  “I told him,” Elowen muttered into her palms, “that I did not need gifts.”

  “And he heard, ‘Please send something impractically expensive.’” Alenya lifted her goblet as if toasting the truth. “He promised he’d send me dresses as beautiful as yours, but I am yet to see them.”

  Elowen’s gloved fingers drifted absentmindedly to her earring—one delicate drop of sapphire ringed with tiny diamonds, too refined to belong to her history. Too easy to forget once it was already on her body.

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  “As I said,” Elowen murmured, “it’s hard to say no to Aayan.”

  “Or to all those dance proposals.” Alenya’s gaze slid over Elowen as if taking inventory. “If Roderic could see you now, I wonder if he’d recognize you.”

  The name landed warmer than it should have.

  Elowen’s hand stilled on her earring. Her expression softened before she could stop it. “It’s been a while since I’ve written,” she said, a little too quickly. “I still have an unfinished letter sitting on my desk.”

  Alenya’s eyes sharpened, caution creeping in. “Does he still write often?”

  “Less so.” Elowen stared at the rim of her glove as if it might offer answers. “He used to write as if replies were optional. I’d receive a letter and then another, and another, before I even decided whether I deserved to answer.” She swallowed. “Mine became scarcer. And I imagine his did too, in response.”

  Alenya’s gaze flicked around the garden—servants passing at a distance, hedges tall enough to hide eavesdroppers, fountains loud enough to swallow softer words. Still, she waited until a pair of maids rounded the far path before she spoke again.

  “Aurendal is under pressure,” she said quietly. “The storms are getting worse.”

  Elowen’s spine tightened. The word Aurendal didn’t belong in this garden. It brought with it salt wind and dark seas and the way the sky could turn on you without warning.

  “The shores are almost uninhabitable,” Alenya continued. “The Houses are pushing the King for a solution. They’re… asking for your return.”

  Elowen’s brow knit. “Roderic hasn’t said that.”

  “He wouldn’t,” Alenya said, and something like sympathy edged her tone. “Not directly.”

  Elowen stared past the fountain to where the garden gates opened onto white stone pathways and soft-gold buildings beyond. Miralys loved space. It loved the illusion that nothing could corner you.

  “He’s been partial in his letters,” Elowen admitted. The word tasted bitter. “Always careful about what he reveals. He insists I remain here for the time being.” She glanced at Alenya, suspicion prickling. “He never says it outright, but I think he’s trying to understand what place I’m meant to take.”

  Alenya nodded once. “I’ve been doing research of my own.” A grim little smile. “There isn’t much to find in Miralys’ library. They catalog poetry and silk patterns with devotion. History is… less fashionable.”

  Elowen huffed, more sound than humor. “Would you come with me tomorrow, then? To the library. Or—” she hesitated, because it sounded too much like wanting something, “—after we go hunting?”

  Alenya squinted. “There is no world in which I go hunting after tonight.”

  Elowen leaned forward, all stubbornness. “You promised. I want to practice my archery.”

  “You’re already good,” Alenya said, but her voice held that familiar heat—pride, even when disguised as complaint. “And with you cheating by guiding your arrows with the wind, it has truly lost all appeal.”

  “I do not—” Elowen started, then stopped because the denial wasn’t clean. She could feel the wind. She could nudge it. She could pretend she didn’t, and the lie would sit between them like a third person.

  Elowen widened her eyes into her best imitation of innocence. Then, when that failed, she deployed what Alenya called her wolf-puppy stare, the one that said please while pretending it wasn’t begging.

  Alenya sighed as if the world itself exhausted her. “You are learning quickly from Aayan. Between him keeping me up with parties and you dragging me out at dawn for hunting, it will be the end of me.”

  “You’ll survive,” Elowen said sweetly.

  Alenya pointed her goblet at her like a threat. “Speaking of survival—tell me what necklace you’re wearing tonight.”

  Elowen’s mouth curved despite herself. “You’re impossible.”

  “And yet you adore me,” Alenya said, entirely unbothered.

  It was too easy to laugh here. She wondered what it was meant to make her forget.