𝟷 | 𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝙵𝚘𝚛𝚝𝚢 𝙵𝚒𝚛𝚜𝚝

"I'm not done with you yet, Dove. Not even close."

His voice came low and unhurried, the kind of tone that expected obedience without needing to demand it. Warm honey over steel.

Then, the boy beneath the willow tree laughed like he had stolen something and had not yet been caught.

Low. Easy. Unreasonably pleased with himself.

It was the sort of laugh that belonged to someone for whom this particular afternoon had become the finest one he had been granted in months. His fingers traced idle shapes along the inside of his lover’s wrist, slow enough to be absentminded and deliberate enough to be dangerous. Their heads bent close together beneath the willow’s hanging green, so close the sunlight sifted through the leaves and stitched their shadows into one.

The girl murmured something against his shoulder.

Whatever she said made his grin tilt crookedly at the edge. He lowered his chin, brushing his nose against her temple with a fondness that looked practiced only because it had been repeated too often to be accidental.

“You’re terrible,” he said.

His hand settled at the small of her back and drew her nearer.

“Only for you,” she whispered, the words soft enough to vanish into the leaves before the rest of the garden could hear them.

Arienne was mid-step when she noticed them.

One foot hovered over the cobblestones for half a breath before she set it down again with deliberate care. She did not stop. Princesses did not gawk. But her pace slowed by the smallest, most incriminating degree, just enough to catch the boy’s thumb slipping beneath the edge of the girl’s sleeve, and the girl’s breath hitching softly in answer.

Birdsong threaded through the morning around them, bright and indifferent, mingling with the distant stir of the city below.

Arienne’s mouth twitched.

Their interaction was sweet, if a little reckless.

Sylvaris had seen worse.

Corina walked half a pace behind her, close enough that Arienne did not need to turn to know she had noticed too. Her handmaiden would be trying very hard to look composed: hands folded, chin level, gaze fixed politely ahead.

Trying, however, was not the same as succeeding.

Corina’s face always told the truth a moment before duty could catch it. There would be a slight widening of her eyes, perhaps, or the careful press of her mouth as she forced herself not to react. The rest of her would remain proper, but the effort would show.

They were only meant to be walking down to the market district, following the ordinary shape of a Princess and her given duties of the morning.

This, at least, was something new.

The boy's fingers wandered further now, pressing beneath the fabric that lay against her stomach. The linen bunched as his knuckles brushed the tender skin just beneath the soft peak of her chest.

Arienne’s spine straightened as if tugged by a wire.

She knew that motion. Knew, in the abstract way you know things you've never actually done, exactly where it led.

Heat climbed the back of her neck before she could command it down.

She turned her gaze aside too quickly and found Corina suddenly, profoundly absorbed in the climbing roses along the garden wall. The pale blossoms trembled in the morning breeze, perfectly innocent and apparently deserving of her handmaiden’s full scholarly attention.

Arienne pressed the inside of her cheek between her teeth.

Traitor.

A rustle of fabric, too loud, too intimate, pulled her attention back. The lovers had shifted. His other palm now cupped the curve of her waist under thin linen. The fabric stretched tight across her ribs. The girl arched into him with a sigh that carried farther than she had meant. It was a soft, breathy sound.

Arienne’s pulse jumped.

This was no longer murmuring.

This was…

She flicked two fingers toward the nearest Warden, the gesture clipped and a shade sharper than she intended.

He pivoted at once.

Polished. Prompt. Terribly prepared.

Maybe too much.

His shoulders squared with the immediate readiness she had seen him bring to three separate council ceremonies, the sort of readiness that suggested he would approach two lovers beneath a willow tree with full protocol, address them by family name, and possibly cite the relevant article of public conduct.

Arienne’s stomach dropped.

Gods no.

Her hand shot out and caught the back of his cape. The fabric snapped taut between them.

The Warden froze.

For half a second, everything existed in perfect, awful stillness: Arienne with one arm extended, the Warden halted mid-step, and the cape stretched between them like the only thing standing between youthful indiscretion and bureaucratic catastrophe.

Behind her, Corina made a sound that was almost certainly not a swallowed laugh.

Arienne cleared her throat, released the cape, and smoothed it back into place with both hands as though she had only paused to correct an unfortunate wrinkle.

“Apologies, Lasky.” Her voice arrived a fraction higher than she would have preferred. “The other one, I think.”

She gestured toward Warden Orion, who was already moving.

His stride was easier, his expression neutral in a way that suggested he had handled this sort of thing before and had long ago learned the mercy of not looking impressed by himself for it.

Lasky, to his credit, did not flinch, comment, or raise an eyebrow. He simply nodded and fell back into formation, as though being seized by the cape by the Princess of Sylvaris was a perfectly reasonable hazard of palace service.

Across the garden path, the lovers had become even less aware of the world than before. The boy's hand slid fully beneath his lover's blouse, his fingers visibly kneading the swell of her breast through the fabric.

Orion cleared his throat.

Not loudly.

Just enough to split the air between them.

The girl startled. Her elbow knocked a willow branch, and a scatter of leaves drifted down, catching briefly in her hair.

“Crown’s business,” Orion said, with the mild inflection of someone commenting on the weather. “Move along, would you?”

The boy blinked, still half-curled toward the girl as if the interruption had reached him several seconds later than it should have. “We’re not—”

“Now,” Orion added, and this time the word carried a rougher edge, low enough to make clear that politeness had reached the end of its usefulness.

There it was.

The steel under the silk.

The lovers separated with hurried gracelessness, seeming to just now remember the world had other people in it. The girl’s top slid back into place with a whisper of fabric. The boy’s grin had gone lopsided, half embarrassed and half delighted, as if he had been caught stealing sweets rather than his sweetheart in broad daylight.

They muttered something to each other as they slipped away beneath the willow. Arienne caught only one word.

Later.

It was said with enough promise to make her eyes close for half a breath.

Then they were gone, ducking down the garden path with the practiced ease of locals who knew exactly which turns led away from Wardens, princesses, and consequences.

Orion did not watch them go.

He turned neatly on his heel and resumed his post, his face as unreadable as silverstone.

Arienne exhaled through her nose.

A leaf spiralled down from the willow above her, brushed her shoulder, and landed near the toe of her slipper. Green, heart-shaped, slightly crumpled from where the girl had knocked it loose. The sort of thing a poet might press into a love letter.

Arienne nudged it aside with the tip of her shoe.

Beside her, Corina had finally returned to facing forward. Her expression was serene enough to satisfy a portrait painter. But Arienne did not miss the way her hand pressed flat against her thigh, fingers spreading once before drawing neatly back in.

The small, treacherous tell of someone holding back laughter with both hands.

“Crown’s business,” Corina murmured, low enough that only Arienne could hear. “That is one way to word it.”

Arienne’s gaze cut sideways. “Please do not tell my father about this discovery.”

“Discovery, Your Highness?”

“If he learns the willow trees have become a civic hazard…” Arienne lifted both hands in front of her, palms facing outward, then spread them apart as if revealing a freshly painted notice suspended in the air. “Do not loiter amorously beneath royal landscaping.”

Corina’s mouth softened before she could stop it. She lowered her gaze, but not quickly enough to hide the small, knowing warmth there, and gave a dutiful little nod.

“Of course, Your Highness.”

Arienne lifted her chin and resumed walking, every step measured, every inch of her posture arranged into flawless royal composure.

Corina followed half a pace back and said nothing more.

The damage, unfortunately, had already been done.

For several steps, the willow remained behind them in accusing silence.

Then the path bent, the garden wall gave way to the lower road, and the city began to gather itself around them. wheels over stone, shutters lifting, someone laughing from an upstairs window before being hushed from within. The palace receded by degrees, its pale gates and polished quiet giving way to awnings, foot traffic, and the first warm breath of the Meridian Ring.

It smelled of fresh bread and canal water.

At that hour, the two scents always folded into one another: warm yeast drifting from the ovens tucked behind the stall-houses while the cold mineral scent of the canals rose with the morning mist. Arienne had known that combination for most of her life. Somewhere along the way, it had become inseparable from the feeling of the city itself.

Not the palace.

The actual city.

The palace carried the scent of polished silverwood, incense, and freshly pressed linens. Its halls were wrapped in the sort of cultivated stillness maintained by servants who moved through them like ghosts.

The world outside those halls, by contrast, felt alive before one even stepped fully into it.

She preferred it.

Sylvaris had been built in descending tiers around the palace at its heart, each ring spilling lower than the last like a staircase built for the sea to climb.

Closest to the castle stood the residential quarter reserved for those who served it: messengers, attendants, cooks, Wardens, all housed near enough to answer the palace at any hour. Beyond that rose the Upper Ring, where nobles and wealthy merchants kept elegant homes overlooking the city below.

Then came the middle tier.

The loudest part of Sylvaris.

Markets, workshops, trade houses, smithies, bakeries, and vendor stalls were the living pulse of the city itself. Along its outer edge, the Mireline Gardens stretched in pale-green terraces, threaded with flowering vines and reflective pools that overlooked the canal below. Stairways and suspended walkways descended toward the water, where fishing boats and trade barges moved steadily through the canal routes curving around the platform districts.

Beyond that, the city lowered once more into the Outer Ring, where most of Sylvaris’s common citizens lived beneath the shadow of the silver walls and the great front gates guarding the world beyond.

The Market District was already alive despite the early hour.

Its atmosphere had thickened since dawn. Voices rose from the stalls in a warm, uneven hum, broken now and then by laughter, the scrape of crates against stone, the call of a vendor carrying over the rows. Roasting nuts sweetened the air near the braziers, tangled with crushed herbs, damp flowers, and the metallic steam of dye vats working farther down the street.

Striped awnings stirred in the morning breeze while shopkeepers pushed open shutters and arranged goods beneath lanterns not yet extinguished from the night.

The crowd registered her the way it always did.

A brief hush moved outward from her like a ripple. Then the familiar sounds of the market resumed, voices lifting again as people returned to their business. Arienne had learned early not to mistake that resumption for ease. They were still watching. They simply had the courtesy to do it sideways.

She had been making this circuit since she was old enough to insist on it. Back then, however, the experience had involved considerably more Wardens.

At one point, they had surrounded her so tightly during a market walk that Arienne had privately compared the formation to being transported through Sylvaris inside a defensive wall of armoured sardines.

Today, only two Wardens followed at a respectful distance, silver-trimmed blue cloaks shifting lightly behind them, hands resting near ceremonial sidearms. Beside her, Corina struggled to keep pace with a delicate parasol in one hand and an empty woven basket hooked over her elbow.

Ahead, the market was waking in earnest.

“Princess Arienne!” a voice called out.

Arienne turned at once, warmth already touching her expression.

A fruit vendor stood several stalls away beneath a striped awning overflowing with sun-heavy citrons and pale orange glowpears. His face settled into place a breath before she could fully name him.

“Marek,” she greeted.

The man bowed quickly enough that he nearly took a basket down with him, though he hadn’t seemed to notice.

"The first of the southern harvest, Princess," he said proudly, selecting one of the citrons from the display before pressing the cold, fragrant fruit carefully into her hands. "I remembered these were your favourite."

Arienne didn’t pass it to her maiden; she held it, feeling its texture. “Thank you.” Her gaze lifted back toward him. “And how is your daughter settling into her apprenticeship with the resonance engineers?”

Marek’s entire face brightened at once.

“Oh, she loves it,” he said, visibly trying, and failing, to contain his excitement. “They’ve got her working down near the lower canal chambers already. Says she spends half the day learning conduit maintenance and the other half listening to old engineers complain about pipe pressure.”

A fond smile tugged at Corina’s mouth, amusement flickering through her eyes.

“She still talks about the good word you put in for her,” Marek continued warmly. “Master Barlowe wouldn’t even have looked at her petition otherwise. She’s determined to prove you right for insisting he should.”

Arienne’s expression softened visibly, quiet pride and fondness warming her features until even her eyes seemed to brighten with it.

“She proved herself,” she said gently. “I only made certain someone noticed.”

Marek lowered his head again, this time with more sincerity than ceremony, his voice roughening slightly at the edges.
"Well," he said, "my family won't forget it, Princess."

Arienne inclined her head in return. “Then make certain she keeps working hard enough that I don’t regret giving her a good word.”

The man barked out a startled laugh, loud enough to turn a few nearby heads. “Oh, she’d sooner collapse into the canal than embarrass herself in front of Master Barlowe.”

“That is both admirable and mildly concerning,” Corina murmured from just behind the Princess, her voice perfectly level.

One of the Warden escorts abruptly became very interested in adjusting the strap around his wrist guard while the other turned his head away entirely, both men failing rather spectacularly at pretending they had not heard the quip.

Marek was still grinning broadly as Arienne turned to continue walking. She lifted one hand toward him in parting, easy and unhurried.

“Enjoy the harvest, Marek.”

“And you enjoy the citron, Princess!” he called after her, waving one sun-darkened arm enthusiastically above the crowd.

Arienne kept hold of the bright orange citron for a few lingering moments as they walked, her thumb brushing absently across the cool, textured peel before finally turning to drop it into Corina’s waiting basket.

At the next crossing, the maiden instinctively angled herself toward the narrower pathway that cut directly through the center vendor rows.

Arienne noticed. “Not that way today,” she said.

Corina glanced sideways at her, stopping in her tracks as she saw Arienne striding straight on without a pivot. “The long route again?”

“The scenic route,” Arienne corrected.

Taking the alternate route would add several unnecessary minutes to the walk.

But Arienne didn’t mind.

The eastern path opened onto something the market rows never could: the city at a distance, laid out in its own logic.

Silver bridges arched between tiers in elegant curves, their undersides glowing faintly where resonance veins pulsed beneath the stone. Below, the Mireline Gardens were still half-swallowed by morning mist, pale green bleeding into white at the edges, the root-vines nothing but soft dark shapes threading through it.

Farther along the canal line, the Barlowe Bureau rose from the lower district in pale stone and blue slate, its roof catching a clean strip of morning light. Even from here, Arienne could pick out the broad windows facing the water, the narrow service bridge behind it, the little spill of working yards where survey carts were usually left in disciplined disorder.

Her eyes lingered on the architecture and stayed a breath longer than necessary.

Then, she managed to swiftly looked past it.

Several Verdant Undynes rested throughout the gardens themselves, their moss-dark forms half-hidden amongst the greenery they tended. One lifted its head briefly from a bed of flowering vines as a Hunt waltzed past it. Pale green resonance flickered faintly beneath its antler-like horns, while fresh ivy slowly curled across the stone beneath its paws.

Arienne’s gaze then lifted, almost without meaning to, toward the palace roofs beyond the garden terraces.

There was no flash of a blue-white coat moving along the higher ledges. No silver eyes watched from the archways. Soko was absent again, then.

That was not unusual.

The Aether Undyne came and went as she pleased, belonging to the castle in the same impossible way weather belonged to the sky. Some mornings she appeared above the eastern windows without warning, luminous and silent, her small useless wings folded against her flanks as if she had arrived there by ordinary means and expected no one to question it. Other times she vanished for days, then returned with leaves in her fur and river stones in her mouth as gifts for the crown.

“Looking for Soko?” Corina asked softly.

“Habit,” Arienne replied, lowering her gaze back toward the path.

Corina glanced toward the roofs as though she might somehow spot what the princess had missed. “Is she gone again?”

“For now.” Arienne’s mouth warmed faintly. “She’ll return when she decides the castle has become interesting enough to deserve her.”

Corina considered that as she shortened her stride to match the princess's pace and fell back into step behind her once again.

From this angle, which was half-paced and slightly to the left, she had an unobstructed view of Arienne moving through the morning light.

The dawn had turned everything pale gold, and it had found the princess first.

Light caught in her hair as she walked, brightening the white strands until they seemed almost luminous against the waking city. It was white from the roots through most of its length — not quite silver, not quite cream, but something that lived between the two. Only near the ends did traces of her natural tawny brown remain. The breeze drifting up from the canals had already stolen a few loose strands and carried them across her face.

Her skin held the cool undertones of someone more accustomed to shaded halls and candlelit chambers than long afternoons beneath open skies, though the morning had begun coaxing faint colour into her cheeks.

Corina watched her navigate the terrace path ahead and found herself studying the same thing she always did.

Arienne never seemed to hurry, yet people somehow ended up matching her pace instead of the other way around.

She moved with quiet certainty, each step placed as though she'd already considered where it ought to fall before taking it. When the incline steepened, her gloved fingers brushed the silver railing running alongside the terrace. A brief touch. Barely a moment. Then her hand was gone again.

Her gaze drifted toward the lower streets unfolding beneath them instead. Market awnings fluttered in the breeze below. Morning light scattered across the canals in ribbons of gold. Somewhere farther ahead, merchants were already calling to one another as new goods found their places on newly opened stalls.

The season had just turned.

And that was what Arianne had come to see.

Whenever the seasons shifted, the markets changed with them. Vendors who spent the year rooted in Sylvaris suddenly found themselves sharing the streets with traders arriving from beyond the city's borders, their carts heavy with goods not seen in months. New shipments from the Nourthern trade routes had begun filtering into the city over the last week: dried spices Arianne didn't immediately recognize, bolts of cloth in colours not yet fashionable within Sylvaris, and small mechanical curiosities from Morrathis that always seemed to arrive several days before the official trade convoys themselves.

And with new stock came new opportunities.

The seasonal changeover was also quietly one of the easiest times for contraband to slip into the city unnoticed, tucked between legitimate cargo by merchants who understood that familiarity bred trust. Especially traders who had followed the same routes for years.

A trusted trader carrying forty perfectly ordinary goods could often hide a forty-first, surprisingly well.

That was precisely why Arianne liked to walk the markets herself during weeks like this. She was here to look, to remember what she saw, and to note what did not belong.

“The Vethaway Haven's spice trader,” Corina murmured close to Arienne’s ear, her voice lowering into a particular alert tone. “Second stall from the left. She’s got something new on the top shelf.”

Arienne let her gaze drift subtly in that direction without turning her head outright.

The trader in question was a spindly woman with tight shoulders and a mouth that hadn't quite decided whether to smile. She had arranged her newest stock with careful hands. Small ceramic jars sealed with dark cloth instead of standard merchant wax. New containers for new goods, which in itself was not unusual.

The placement, however, was.

The jars sat above eye level and angled slightly inward. Not hidden. Not openly displayed either.

Interesting.

Arienne adjusted course fluidly toward the stall. “New season,” she remarked lightly as she stopped before the woman.

The trader straightened immediately and performed a bow that was slightly more elaborate than the occasion required. “Your Highness. Yes, just in from the Northern pass. Arrived two days ago.”

Arienne’s gaze lifted toward the jars positioned along the upper shelf. “And those?”

“Medicinal blends,” she replied. “Traveller’s varieties. Not commonly available here, but nothing restricted.”

She said it quickly. Too quickly.

That alone meant very little; people almost always spoke too quickly around her once they became nervous. But the combination of nervous speed and precise legal phrasing was worth remembering.

‘Nothing restricted’.

A very specific reassurance to volunteer before she had accused the trader of anything at all.

Arienne did not respond right away. The silence that followed remained perfectly polite, perfectly composed, and just long enough for the trader’s confidence to begin thinning around the edges. Her expression was wavering faintly at the corners of her mouth.

Finally, at last, the princess smiled pleasantly.

“I’ll have someone from the Sanctum stop by and log them,” she spoke, articulating each word slowly as her fingertips brushed once against the wooden edge of the stall before she stepped back. “Standard procedure for new medicinal stock during the seasonal turnover. You understand, right?”

The trader’s expression held admirably for exactly half a second.

Then something in it gave way.

“Of course, Your Highness,” she replied, drawling out the words slowly as her tone carried careful resignation. Behind the counter, her hands had gone completely motionless.

Arienne inclined her head once in acknowledgment, already turning away before the woman could attempt further explanation or offer a hurried plea.

Corina fell back into step beside her, already pulling the small notebook from the basket and uncapping her pen without breaking stride. She made a quick notation as they walked, the pages already crowded with observations and the assortment of gifts vendors kept pressing upon her while Arienne was occupied, all forming idea the items would eventually end up with the princess — folded cloth, jars of honey, wrapped pastries, bundles of herbs.

“The jar blends,” Corina murmured after a moment, glancing up briefly from the notebook.

Arienne adjusted the folded cuff of her sleeve with perfect composure while pretending not to notice the ginger-bearded baker several stalls down who had, within the last thirty seconds alone, repositioned the same tray of pastries three separate times in an increasingly desperate attempt to attract her attention.

The pastries now sat directly beneath a shaft of golden morning light like holy artifacts receiving divine revelation.

Arienne held out admirably for another three seconds. Then a soft, defeated sigh escaped her. Her feet were already turning.

"Possibly nothing," she said serenely. "Note it anyway."

“Already documented.” Corina tilted the parasol a fraction as the angle of the light shifted, a small adjustment made without ruining their flow.

Arienne had taken perhaps three steps when something caught her eye.

A stall she didn't recognize arranged its display with the earnest precision of someone new to the seasonal market. Every bowl sat perfectly aligned. Every cloth had been smoothed flat. A hand-lettered sign rested at the front of the counter.

Her gaze moved across the frame of the stall and caught on a diamond pattern painted along the wooden border in faded dark purple, repeated at even intervals from one end to the other. The sort of decorative detail a carpenter added carefully and intricately.

Northern Specialty. Limited Stock.

The produce itself was what intrigued her.

Small fruits sat clustered in shallow wooden bowls, their skins a muted ash-purple that looked strangely out of place among the vibrant colours surrounding them. Around the stall, southern citrons glowed gold in the morning light. Glowpears burned orange beneath striped awnings. Even the berries stacked nearby carried rich, familiar hues.

These seemed almost drained by comparison.

Not spoiled, that was evident. Yet something about the colour unsettled her.

It was difficult to explain.

Arienne slowed.

Her gaze settled on the bowls and remained there perplexingly.

"Veilfigs," the trader supplied immediately, straightening when he noticed her attention. He was young, eager, with the windburned complexion of someone who had spent more time on open roads than behind a market stall. "Highland variety, from the upper northern routes. Rare this far south, the vines don't travel well. These are the first I've managed to bring down intact."

"The colouring," Arienne said.

"Altitude." The answer came without hesitation, delivered with the practiced confidence of a man who had already explained it several times that morning. "The upper highland varieties run darker. Different soil composition. Shorter growing season. They're sweeter than they look."

Perhaps.

Arienne leaned slightly closer.

The scent reached her a moment later. Sweet at first. Resinous. Like pine sap warmed by mountain sunlight.

Then something beneath it.

Faint.

Metallic.

Not strong enough to identify. Not even strong enough to trust.

Her gaze lingered on the fruit.

Everything appeared as it should. The stems remained green. There were no visible blemishes, no signs of spoilage, no obvious reason for concern.

And yet, something about them felt subtly misaligned, as though a familiar detail had been shifted half a step from where it belonged.

"How long have you been selling these?" she asked.

"First season bringing them south." He gestured toward a leather satchel tucked beneath the counter. "I have documentation from the northern pass merchants if you'd like to—"

"That won't be necessary."

Arienne straightened, her expression easing back into pleasant neutrality.

"Note them."

She didn't need to turn. Behind her, Corina's pen moved softly across paper.

The trader's smile held for a beat too long before his shoulders loosened. Relief, carefully contained.

Arienne's brow rose in recognition.

She gave him a curt nod and continued down the row, letting the market fold around her again.

The explanation was reasonable. Northern fruit could darken with altitude. Unfamiliar soil could change scent and colour. The documents were likely legitimate, and nothing about the stall, taken alone, was enough to justify concern.

Taken alone.

That was the part that mattered.

So she left the stall behind.

But she did not forget it.

As they continued along the market row, Arienne's attention drifted back toward the destination she had originally intended to visit before the veilfigs had interrupted her.

The baker a few stalls down was Perren, though Arienne privately preferred Old Tart, and he had indeed set out a fresh tray of something suspiciously flaky and glazed.

She caught sight of it beneath the striped awning: golden edges, a shine of sugar, the delicate collapse of pastry layers that had no honest reason to look so inviting before noon.

Perren noticed her noticing.

His shoulders tightened at once. His hands slowed where he had been dusting flour from his apron, and the look that crossed his face was not alarm, exactly. It was preparation.

Arienne’s eyes brightened.

Corina followed her gaze.

The reaction was immediate.

“Oh no.”

Arienne glanced sideways at her. Not fully. Just enough to catch the tiny falter in Corina’s step before her handmaiden recovered and resumed her place beside her.

“Corina—”

“Your Highness,” Corina said carefully, already lowering her voice, “perhaps we might continue on. Just this once.”

“We have not even reached him yet.”

“That is precisely why there is still hope.”

Arienne’s laugh slipped free before she could stop it.

They continued down the row together, weaving around a merchant pushing a cart stacked high with Melon crates. The scent of fresh bread grew stronger with every step, warm and buttery beneath the sharper brightness of orange peel.

By the time they reached the awning, Perren was waiting for them with a paper-wrapped parcel tucked beneath one arm and an expression of unmistakable triumph.

He had been selling bread from this corner since before Arienne was born.

The awning had changed several times over the years.

Perren had not.

He still carried flour on his sleeves before sunrise. Still complained about his knees while hauling sacks twice the size of himself. Still maintained that the palace kitchens were fundamentally incapable of feeding anyone properly.

And every single week, without fail, he handed Arienne the same dark salt-crusted roll with the soft center she liked best.

She stopped in front of him.

Perren immediately presented the parcel with both hands and all the solemnity of a man offering tribute to the crown rather than baked bread. For Perren, this was roughly equivalent to a formal bow.

“Salt roll. Still warm,” he announced proudly. “I told my wife you'd be by early. She said I was imagining things.”

Arienne accepted the parcel, already feeling the lingering warmth through the paper.

“Tell Ms. Sterling you were right.”

“I tell her that every day,” Perren replied without missing a beat.

“Does it help?”

“Not once.”

Beside Arienne, Corina made a small choking sound.

It vanished almost immediately into a careful cough, one hand lifting to her chest as she turned her face aside with admirable speed.

Perren, meanwhile, remained entirely serious. He reached for a tray of cooling pastries, turning one a fraction as though the conversation required no more attention than that.

“Marriage isn't about being right, Princess. That's the first thing you learn.”

Arienne lifted a brow.

“And the second?”

“That eventually you'll be right anyway.”

Arienne's mouth curved despite herself. “I'll make a note of it.”

“You should. I've been married thirty-two years. That's not wisdom speaking. That's experience earned through repeated defeat.”

The princess inclined her head and tapped her free hand lightly against the parcel in a mock display of applause.

“ Truly an inspiring philosophy,” she emphasized her words in dramatics.

Perren nodded solemnly as though the recognition were entirely deserved. “Thank you, I've spent decades refining it.”

His amusement dimmed slightly after those words left him, though it did not disappear entirely.

He picked up a flour cloth from the worn wooden table and turned it over in his hands once. Then twice. His gaze then drifted toward the city's front gate beyond the market, as if he expected something that wouldn’t come. When he looked back at Arienne, the lingering humour in his expression had softened into something quieter.

More solemn.

“Haven farmers up near Tanglewood haven’t been writing back,” he said slowly.

The words came out too casually. Too light. The careful sort of lightness people used when they had been carrying a worry around alone for long enough that speaking it aloud suddenly felt foolish.

“Letters used to come twice a week,” he continued, rubbing one flour-streaked hand absently against the side of his apron. “Regular as sunrise.”

His throat bobbed once before he cleared it roughly. “Thought maybe someone ought to know.”

Arienne leaned a hip against the counter, careful not to disturb the trays of honey cakes still cooling. “You think they’re just busy? Harvest season’s rough.”

“Could be.” Perren scratched at his beard, flecked with cinnamon. “Could also be they’re knee-deep in something worse. Just- send a couple morans up that way, would you? Just to check.”

Arienne studied the way Perren’s fingers twitched toward the ledger under his counter, the one she knew tracked every grain, every barrel of cider traded between the city and the forest farms. His knuckles were white.

"I'll send a patrol up that way," she said. "They're due for a Tanglewood circuit anyway."

Perren exhaled, shoulders dropping half an inch. Then, with a deliberate shift in tone that didn’t quite land as simple, he asked, “Speaking of patrol, how’s the frontier recruitment looking?”

She smirked. “Like a pack of overeager puppies. Cassian has them drilling till their hands bleed.” A pause. “You’re angling for something, aren’t you? You know you can tell your dearly beloved Princess .”

He grinned, sudden and bright. “My nephew’s in the new cohort. Wants to impress you.” Arienne groaned, but Perren barreled on, undeterred. “Kid’s got hands like a bear trap. You’ll see. He’ll be running patrols by next winter.”

“Tell him to stop aiming at my windows with his sling, then,” Arienne muttered, flicking a crumb off the counter. “Twice last week.”

Perren's grin widened, but she caught the way his eyes kept darting toward the outer wall again where the gate hung open. The humour lingering in his expression softened as the shape of the baker's worry settled more clearly on his face.

Arienne pushed off slowly from the counter, straightening the silhouette of her skirts. "The patrol leaves tomorrow at dawn. If your farmers are just buried under apple harvests, I'm charging you for the wasted trip in Silverfin Cakes." A weak joke, but Perren huffed a laugh, allowing the tension around his stall to unspool like frayed thread.

"Silverfin Cakes," he repeated, shaking his head exaggeratedly. "While we're on the subject, I offered to send a batch over for the new cohort. Do you know what your sentinel said? Said it was bad for discipline." He pointed at her passionately with the cloth. "Pastries are not a discipline exercise, Princess. They are a morale exercise. There is a difference."

Perren set the cloth down with more force than was strictly necessary.

“He even had my nephew drilling until his hands went blue. The boy came home last week and couldn’t hold a bloody spoon,” he barked, loud enough that Arienne’s Warden escorts shifted at once, hands tightening near their weapons.

Arienne lowered her head slightly, trying her best to suppress the grin threatening at the corners of her mouth. Perren looked far too sincere for her to risk laughing outright.

Behind her, Corina exhaled once through her nose. Quietly. The sound of an attendant who had tried to prevent exactly this and had been overruled.

"I'll be sure to pass that along to him, he definitely can be a bit harsh sometimes," she said.

Though she suspected harshness had very little to do with it. Perren and Cassian had been conducting their particular brand of warfare for several seasons. Neither of them would ever acknowledge their pointed remarks as anything other than mild professional disagreement.

Cassian's choice to wage the latest battle through Perren's nephew was, if anything, impressively committed.

"Please do." Perren snorted, flicking the cloth over a tray of almond twists. "And listen, if you need anything for the recruitment feast when the new lot are confirmed, say the word. I'll do a dozen of those sugar-dusted ones the young ones lose their minds over. No disciplinary action required."

"I'll remember that," Arienne said warmly.

Perren opened his mouth again, drawing in the sort of deep preparatory breath that suggested an entirely new rant was already gathering momentum.

At the same moment, Arienne felt a light but increasingly urgent grip close gently around her elbow.

She looked over.

Corina was looking at her with silent desperation; her wide eyes pleaded for rescue before the conversation expanded into a third inescapable subject.

Arienne turned back to Perren, raising one hand in a parting gesture and inclining her head with a smile that was both genuine and apologetic.

“Forgive me, Perren. Corina has developed an urgent interest in the flower stall at the end of the row. Apparently, the season’s new blooms are not to be missed.”

Beside her, Corina stared straight ahead, determination pressed tightly into the line of her mouth, and began guiding Arienne back into the flow of the market before Perren could summon another word.

By the time the old man blinked, the princess was already several steps farther away than she had been a moment before.

His gaze moved from Arienne’s retreating wave to Corina’s fixed, purposeful stare, then back again. After a brief silence, he appeared to arrive at the only conclusion available to him.

Never get between a woman and her flowers.

He shook his head with the fond bewilderment of a man who had long since accepted there were simply certain things in life he was never meant to understand.

“Of course, of course,” he called after them, waving the flour cloth dismissively through the air while already beginning to chuckle to himself again. “You come back when you’ve got more time, Princess. I’ll have something waiting.”

“You always do,” Arienne called back, already being swept farther into the waking current of the market.

Corina didn't release Arienne's elbow until they were three stalls down, weaving through the growing crowd. The heat of the day had begun to settle in, thick between the awnings, close with the smell of bodies and the faint sourness of spilled cider drying on stone.

Warden Lasky, who had been nothing but silent the entire time, cleared his throat. “The textile inspection is next, Your Highness. Unless you’d prefer to—”

Arienne held up a hand, silencing Lasky mid-sentence as her gaze snagged on something beyond the dye stalls. Corina followed her line of sight and saw Warden Orion leaning close to a breathless messenger boy in travel-stained linens. The boy’s fingers twisted around the strap of his satchel like he was anchoring himself to the spot.

Orion nodded once, sharply, then broke away to stride toward them, his armour catching the sunlight in jagged streaks.

“Your Highness,” Orion murmured, bending close enough that Corina caught the scent of leather and steel. “There’s a situation at the eastern gate. Verdant Undynes.”

He placed an absent hand on the pommel of his sword. “A large hunt of them, freeborn ones, not city-bonded, moving into the settlement territory out past the northern tree line. Not attacking. Just… encroaching. Closer every day, the Haveners at the gate say. They don’t seem to know why.”

He paused. “They want somewhere to wait it out. They think it’s a shift in migration. They’re hoping it resolves on its own.”

Arienne’s smile didn’t falter, but Corina saw the way her fingers clutched the embellishments of her skirts. “How many?” the princess asked, her voice low enough that only Orion and Corina could hear.

“Twenty-three. Mostly families.” Orion shifted his weight, the plates of his armour whispering against each other. “The stationaries at the gate requested that Frontier Commander Rhodes come handle the matter, but he's been pulled to the Meridian Ring. There is a disturbance near the third canal bridge, so your presence is requested if not occupied.”

“Then I suppose the market walk will have to wait,” Arienne’s gaze flicked to the young messenger boy, who stood rigid three paces away, pretending not to eavesdrop. “Tell the gate captain to admit them, but keep them in the courtyard until I arrive. And send word to the kitchens: bread and cheese, at least.”

Orion bowed and left at a near-jog, the messenger boy scrambling after him.

This was supposed to be the Captain of the Wall’s responsibility.

Corina knew that much with absolute certainty.

If commotion serious enough to reach the palace had broken out at the gates, then one of the wall captains should have already resolved it long before word ever reached the Crown. Having Arienne herself come down to mediate frightened refugees at the entrance to Sylvaris felt, frankly, embarrassing for everyone involved.

But Corina bit her tongue as Arienne swept away from the stall regardless, her skirts snapping behind her like banners caught in a sudden gust of wind. The parasol in Corina's hand nearly wrenched from her grip as she hurried after the princess, the basket jostling against her hip with every step.