Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Where are you off to, Prince?” Arthur’s voice rang out across the training grounds, sharp with amusement.
I stopped mid-step and turned, giving him a flat look. “Arthur, must you? I know I wear the title, but you don’t have to keep throwing ‘Prince’ at me like it’s some sort of nickname.” I adjusted the strap on my sword belt, already halfway to the gate. “I’m just going to the meadow.”
Arthur grinned, leaning lazily on his spear. He had that smug, soldier-in-training look on his face again. “The meadow, again? You’re always vanishing out there. You’d think the heir to the throne might have a better hobby—or at least some friends.” He chuckled, clearly proud of himself.
I rolled my eyes. “Why don’t you get back to your drills? Don’t you have better things to do than follow me with your endless wit?”
He tilted his head, feigning thought. “Actually… yes. I do. So I’ll leave you to it. Try not to trip over your royal boots out there.” He gave a lazy salute, then smirked. “See you later, Hazen.”
Ugh. Arthur thinks he’s so clever. In reality, he’s just another military brat who spends too much time polishing his armor. Still… I suppose he means well.
Pulling my cloak tighter around me, I headed toward the meadow. Snowflakes drifted down from the gray sky, soft and endless, coating the world in pale silence. Snowfall was ordinary here, nearly constant in the northern province of the Citadel. My boots crunched against the frozen path, and at my side, my sword tapped lightly against the scabbard.
The blade was my own design, hammered in the royal forge with the help of a master smith. Its hilt bore the crest of my house, though sometimes I wondered if I even deserved to carry it. After all, what was a prince if not a warrior? And what would I be if I failed to live up to Father’s expectations? A disgrace—not just to him, but to the throne, to the court, to our very bloodline.
I pressed forward, trying not to drown in the thought. Before I knew it, the willow at the edge of the meadow loomed before me, its branches bowed with snow. I nearly walked into it, shaking my head at my distraction. Slipping beneath its sweeping canopy, I sat against the trunk, eyes tracing the slow, glittering ribbon of the river in the distance.
Arthur’s words echoed in my head. Friends. Did I need them? Perhaps. But what good were friends in the face of duty? I had myself. I had Father. I had… Arthur, in a way, though his company was mostly teasing. Wasn’t that enough?
A sudden rustle in the snow broke my thoughts. I froze. My hand shot instinctively to my sword. In one smooth motion, I unsheathed it, the steel gleaming in the gray light. My voice rang out, steadier than I felt:
“Who goes there?”
Silence. The meadow lay still, only the whisper of snow falling around me. My pulse quickened. I turned, scanning the trees, sword raised. Then—movement. Shadows slipping between the pines.
I spun around, and there they were. Four figures, all close to my age, cloaked against the cold.
“State your names and your business,” I commanded, trying to stand taller, to make my voice carry authority. My breath curled in white puffs, betraying the tremor I fought to keep out of my words.
They didn’t answer. Two of them exchanged a glance, brows furrowed as though they hadn’t even heard me. I took a cautious step back, blade still up. “I said—who are you? What are you doing here?”
Three of them were taller than me. Stronger-looking, too. My throat tightened. What if they were assassins? Spies? What if they struck at me here, alone, before I could even call for help?
Then, at last, one stepped forward. He was the tallest, with a mane of white hair and piercing green eyes. His expression was calm, almost disarmingly so. “We mean no harm,” he said evenly. “We’re travelers. Passing through. Nothing more.”
Travelers? Out here? It made no sense. My grip on the sword didn’t ease.
“And,” the boy continued, his lips curling into a small smile, “we wondered if you might join us.”
The words hit me like an arrow. “Join you?” I repeated, incredulous. What kind of trick was this? Who invited a stranger—let alone a prince—to just walk with them?
I lowered the sword a fraction, suspicion gnawing at me. Either this was an elaborate trap, or… they were truly just foolishly, naively kind.
“No,” I said sharply. “Thank you, but no. I’ll be on my way.”
Without another word, I stepped back, then turned on my heel and ran. My heart pounded as the meadow disappeared behind me. Why had I fled so quickly? Why hadn’t I pressed them for answers? Names, reasons, anything?
Failure. Again.
By the time I reached the Citadel gates, my lungs burned from the cold air. The guards bowed as I passed, but I barely noticed. Father was near the entryway, his cloak dusted with snow, no doubt just returned from a council or a campaign. I avoided his gaze and slipped past, taking the stairs two at a time until I reached my chambers.
Once inside, I shut the door and pulled out my leather-bound journal. I dipped the quill, hesitating only a moment before I began.
Dear Journal,
Arthur was insufferable as usual today. He mocks, but I know he doesn’t mean harm. After leaving him, I went to the meadow… and that’s where things became strange.
Four figures appeared from the trees. Strangers, young, about my age. They ignored my first demand for answers. Only one spoke—a boy with hair like snow and sharp green eyes. He said they were travelers. He even asked me to join them.
What kind of nonsense is that? A trap, surely… or else they are the strangest travelers I’ve ever seen.
I refused, of course. But I can’t shake it. Why were they there? What did they want? And why—why do I feel as though I’ve failed, simply by running?
I trained with the bow afterward. Serviceable, nothing more. Dinner will be soon, followed by chores and duties and endless expectations. Tomorrow, I will train harder. I must. For Father. For our name.
For myself.
—Hazen

Chapter Text

I wake before the dawn—earlier than usual. The chamber feels colder than it should, as though the stones of the Citadel have stored up the night’s frost and now release it back into the air, cruel and unrelenting. My breath curls white in front of me. By the dim light through the narrow slit of a window, I judge it must be close to the fifth hour of morning.
But I don’t care about the time. I don’t even care about the cold.
I care about them.
That strange group of youths in the woods yesterday. The way they seemed to appear out of nowhere, moving like ghosts through the snow. I can still see their outlines burned into my mind, but it is her I cannot stop thinking of.
The girl.
Her golden-blonde hair, pale as sunlight on ice. Her eyes—blue, soft, uncertain, as though she carried a secret she was too afraid to speak aloud. She stayed behind the others, almost hiding, as if she wanted to be invisible. She didn’t posture like a warrior. She didn’t draw steel like the white-haired boy who stood at their front. Instead, she clutched a satchel at her side, and at her belt hung a flask of some sort. Not a fighter’s blade, not a hunter’s tool. A healer’s flask.
That’s my best guess, at least.
There aren’t many healers in the North. Father tells me most true healers hail from Vanillin—the pale kingdom to the east. Looking at her, everything about her matched the tales: the skin like frost, the hair like wheat bleached by endless winter, the delicate, steady hands of one who mends instead of breaks.
Which begs the question—why would a Vanillin healer come here? Why would any of them come here, to our frozen Citadel on the edge of nowhere?
I should have asked more. I should have stood my ground. But instead… I faltered. I let them pass with nothing but suspicion gnawing at my chest. A true warrior—no, a true prince—would not have fled like I did.
Father would have expected better. He always does.
I clench my jaw. No. I can’t let my thoughts spiral again. I’ll get dressed. I’ll get breakfast. Routine will help.
I push myself from the bed and pull on my boots, tugging the leather tight around my calves. My cloak follows, heavy wool lined with fur, its clasp engraved with my family’s crest. The weight of it grounds me as I step into the hall.
The Citadel is quiet at this hour, its stone corridors still steeped in shadow. My footsteps echo faintly as I descend the spiral stairwell, fingers brushing against the cold walls. When I pass near the throne room, I hear voices.
I stop.
Low. Clipped. Familiar.
Father. And Grandfather.
I freeze in place, my pulse quickening. I know I should move on, but my feet betray me. I linger at the archway, half-hidden by shadow, listening.
They’re discussing the northern border. The supply caravans are late again. Scouts missing. Tensions high. Father’s voice is calm but firm, as it always is—steady as a drawn bow. But Grandfather’s voice… his voice slices through the stone like a whip. Cold. Commanding. Always belittling.
He treats Father as though every decision he makes is a mistake, as though every achievement is still not enough.
Rage curls in my stomach. I hate the way Grandfather talks to him. I hate the way he looks at Father like he’s nothing but a soldier gone astray. And I hate—gods help me, I hate him. I know I shouldn’t think that about my king. But it’s true.
To him, Father is a disappointment. And me? I’m nothing. Invisible. A shadow trailing behind their arguments.
A chair scrapes against the stone. Someone shifts. My heart lurches.
I bolt, slipping down the nearest stairwell before they can see me. My boots hammer against the steps, breath ragged, chest tight.
By the time I reach the dining hall, I’m already fully dressed and armed, though my stomach twists too much to enjoy the meal. Still, I force down a few bites of stale bread, cold eggs, and wash it with water before leaving.
But not for training. Not yet.
Outside the sparring yard, of course, I nearly collide with Arthur. He’s leaning against the wall like he has nothing better to do, spear balanced lazily in one hand. His grin spreads when he sees me.
“Morning, Prince Hazen,” he drawls, eyes narrowing in mock suspicion. “You look like you’ve either committed treason or seen a ghost.”
“Neither,” I mutter, tugging at the straps of my arm guard.
He studies me for a moment too long, then smirks. “So? Did you finally make some friends, or are you still the lonely meadow prince?”
I roll my eyes so hard I nearly give myself a headache. “Arthur, do you ever tire of your own voice?”
He chuckles, brushing past me toward the sparring circle. “Not when it gets under your skin.”
I let him go, ignoring his laughter as it fades behind me. Normally I’d push myself through drills, punish myself for yesterday’s failure by running the sword forms until my arms burned. But not today.
Would it really be so terrible to skip training—just once?
…Yeah. Probably.
And yet, my feet carry me toward the meadow anyway.
The snow crunches beneath my boots, crisp and loud in the silence of dawn. The willow looms ahead, its branches heavy with frost. The air feels different today. Charged. Waiting.
Then I see it.
Something hangs from the lowest branch.
A strip of yellow ribbon, bright against the white.
My breath catches.
I step forward cautiously, scanning the treeline for movement, for shadows, for her. But the meadow is still. Watching.
With careful fingers, I untie the ribbon. A folded piece of parchment slips into my hand. The paper is fine, smooth, the edges sharp and neat. Someone took care with this.
I unfold it, my pulse loud in my ears. Elegant writing flows across the page, looped and foreign. Not my tongue. Not any script I’ve studied.
Vanillin.
It has to be from her.
But why would she leave me a message in a language I cannot read? A note meant for me, but sealed in mystery?
I stare at the loops of ink until my eyes blur, frustration tightening my chest. Slowly, I refold it and tuck it—and the ribbon—into my cloak.
My hands are still trembling.
First the healer’s flask. Now a note.
I don’t know what it means yet. I don’t know why she’s reaching out.
But one thing is certain.
This isn’t the end.
I will see her again.

Chapter Text

The cold air bit at my cheeks as I hurried back toward the Citadel, the folded note burning like a brand in my pocket.
Each step crunched against the snow, sharp and brittle in the stillness of dawn.
I wanted to rip the parchment apart, scatter the pieces into the wind, and pretend it had never been mine to carry. Pretend I hadn’t seen it at all.
But something in me wouldn’t allow it.
A spark—tiny, unwelcome, but persistent—kept me from letting go. Curiosity, maybe. Or worse… hope.
At the bottom of the stone steps leading up to the gates, I nearly collided with Father.
“Hazen.” His voice was low but sharp, and though he said my name softly, it struck like a command. His dark cloak hung heavy with frost, and his eyes—those piercing steel-gray eyes I had inherited from him—searched my face with a soldier’s precision. “Where have you been this morning?”
My throat tightened. “Just walking. Clearing my head.” I forced my voice into something casual, steady, though my heartbeat betrayed me, pounding like a war drum.
Father narrowed his eyes. He could always see through me. “Don’t lie to me. You look… distracted.”
I tugged at the hem of my tunic, unable to meet his gaze. “It’s nothing. I’m just tired. That’s all.”
For a moment, his expression softened. His voice dropped, gentler, though still heavy with expectation. “You’re trying too hard to be perfect, Hazen. It’s all right to stumble. Even princes are human.”
The words should have soothed me. Should have been a balm to the guilt curdling in my chest. But they weren’t. They only made me ache more, because I knew I wasn’t stumbling. I was failing. Failing him. Failing the throne. Failing myself.
I tucked the note deeper into my satchel before he could notice it, and slipped past him, my boots echoing on the flagstones as I made for the training yard.
Arthur was already there, sparring with a soldier twice his size. He moved like water—quick, nimble, sharp with precision—but the grin that usually accompanied his strikes faded the moment he spotted me hovering at the edge of the circle.
“You skipping again?” he called, breaking away from his opponent. He jogged over, wiping frost from his brow.
I hesitated, fingers twitching at my side. “I… found something. In the meadow.”
Arthur tilted his head, eyes narrowing. “Found what?”
“A note,” I said finally. The word felt heavier than it should. I pulled the parchment from my satchel, careful not to reveal the ribbon it had been tied with. “But it’s in another language.”
Arthur’s brow furrowed. “Another language? What kind?”
“Vanillin,” I said quietly.
He stiffened. “You’re sure?”
I nodded.
For once, Arthur didn’t joke. His expression hardened, and he glanced around to make sure no one else was listening. Then he leaned closer. “That’s not good, Hazen. The Vanillin don’t just wander into Northern territory without a reason.”
“No,” I agreed, my voice low. “They don’t. And neither do I.”
Arthur’s jaw tightened. He glanced at the soldiers nearby, then lowered his voice even further. “Whatever you do, don’t tell anyone about this. Not your father. Not the king. If word gets out that Vanillin scouts—or whoever they are—have crossed into our borders…”
“They’ll send troops,” I finished grimly. “And maybe start a war.”
Arthur’s lips pressed into a thin line. He nodded once. “Exactly.”
My heart hammered harder. The last thing I wanted was to spark a war between kingdoms. And yet, here I was—holding the very thing that could ignite it, tucked against my chest like contraband.
I swallowed hard. The parchment suddenly felt like lead. “I won’t say a word,” I promised. “But… what do I do now? Just wait? Just watch?”
Arthur’s face was grim, far more serious than I was used to seeing on him. “Sometimes, waiting is the hardest part. But you have to be careful, Hazen. We don’t know what they want—or what they’re willing to do to get it.”
I nodded, but inside, the tension coiled tighter and tighter, like a bowstring ready to snap.
Every step I took back toward the Citadel after that felt heavier than the last. Heavier than my sword. Heavier than the crown I would one day wear. As though I was carrying more than just a folded note—I was carrying the weight of a secret that could break the fragile peace of kingdoms.
When I returned to the entrance hall, Father was waiting. He stood tall by the great doors, his expression unreadable but his eyes still sharp, searching.
“You look troubled,” he said, studying me.
I forced a small smile, one that felt more like a mask than anything else. “Just the weight of training and responsibilities, Father. Nothing more.”
He considered me for a long moment before giving a slow nod. “You’re stronger than you believe, Hazen. Even if you don’t see it yet.”
His words should have comforted me. Instead, they only deepened the ache. Because if he truly believed I was strong, what would he think if he learned I was hiding this from him?
That night, lying in bed beneath the heavy furs, I couldn’t sleep. My eyes traced the cracks in the stone ceiling, the flicker of torchlight casting restless shadows across my chamber. The note lay pressed beneath my pillow, hidden but never far, its presence gnawing at me like a blade against skin.
I realized then that the path ahead would not be about flawless sword drills or perfect honor, as Father had always taught me. It would be about shadows and secrets. About choices and trust. About holding my tongue when my heart screamed to speak.
And most terrifying of all—
it would be about whether I could carry this secret long enough not to break it…
or whether I would be the one to start the very war I feared.

Chapter Text

I didn’t sleep.
The note stayed beneath my pillow all night, its yellow ribbon glinting faintly in the lantern light whenever I turned my head. It felt like it was watching me, waiting for me to decide whether I would be brave enough—or foolish enough—to untangle its secrets. I pulled it out more than once, running my thumb along the careful folds, tracing the elegant curves of the script that meant nothing to me. Nothing—and everything.
By the time the stars faded outside my window, my eyes stung from lack of rest, and my thoughts were a tangled snare. Dawn crept in gray and cold, painting the Citadel walls like stone ghosts. I was wide awake, though my body ached for sleep.
At breakfast, the long dining hall was alive with its usual noise: armored boots scraping the floor, the clatter of knives against trenchers, the deep rumble of soldiers laughing too loudly at their own jokes. Smoke from the firepit curled toward the rafters, carrying the smell of roasting meat and spiced tea. Normally, that smell made me hungry. This morning, I couldn’t touch a bite.
I tore off a piece of bread and let it sit untouched on my plate. The words around me blurred into meaningless chatter—talk of patrol rotations, of icy weather thickening over the mountain passes, of which noble’s son had fumbled their sparring match the day before. None of it mattered. None of it reached me.
My mind was still in the meadow.
Still on the girl’s hand, brushing the tall grass. Still on the folded parchment pressed into my palm. Still on the letters I couldn’t read, letters that might hold answers—or disaster.
The Vanillin.
Even their name carried weight. They weren’t just another neighbor across a border, another kingdom to bicker with over gold or land. They were survival. Without their medicines, our kingdom would falter in weeks. Their healing tonics had saved our soldiers more than once; their fever draughts and wound salves kept entire villages alive when plagues swept through the valleys. We whispered that we were independent, that Chocokollis stood strong on its own two feet. But I knew the truth. Without Vanillin aid, we would collapse.
And if the King—or worse, the Council—learned that Vanillin travelers were roaming our woods without sanction?
It wouldn’t be seen as a chance for friendship. It would be taken as trespass. As insult.
It could sever a fragile alliance. It could drag us into war. It could kill.
I pushed my plate away, bile rising in my throat.
“Hazen?”
Arthur’s voice snapped me out of my spiral. He stood across the table, his dark hair mussed from training, his grin absent. His eyes studied me carefully, too carefully.
He dropped onto the bench opposite me and lowered his voice. “You look worse than yesterday. You didn’t sleep, did you? Still brooding about the note?”
I gave the smallest of nods. “Arthur… if the King thinks the Vanillin are spying—or worse—he’ll act before asking questions. He won’t risk weakness. He’ll cut ties.” My chest felt tight as I forced the words out. “If their medicine stops flowing…”
Arthur rubbed at the back of his neck. “We’d be ruined,” he said plainly. His eyes flicked down toward the satchel at my hip, then back to my face. “Which means we need to figure out what they’re doing here—fast. Before someone else does.”
I hesitated. My heart hammered. Finally, I leaned forward and whispered, “There’s something else.”
Arthur raised a brow. “More secrets already?”
I slid the folded parchment across the table. He picked it up gingerly, brow furrowing at the looping script.
“Look closer,” I said. “Not at the words. At the parchment itself. Smell it.”
Arthur frowned but did as I asked. His nose wrinkled almost instantly. “Mint. And something sharp—alcohol?”
“Sanitizing blend,” I said. “The Vanillin treat their medical scrolls with it to preserve them. And to stop disease from clinging.”
Arthur’s eyes widened. “So she’s a healer. You were right.”
I nodded, though it made my stomach twist tighter. “But why would a Vanillin healer be wandering our woods alone? And why send me a note she knew I couldn’t read?”
Arthur tapped the parchment against the table thoughtfully. “Maybe she doesn’t want you to read it. Maybe she wants you to find someone who can.”
The words sank deep. And then, slowly, a name rose in my mind.
“Professor Neris,” I breathed.
Arthur groaned. “Not him.”
“Yes. Him.”
“The translation tutor? He’s half-senile. Talks to his birds more than to people.”
“He worked in the embassy exchange before the Bitterlands war,” I countered. “He studied foreign scripts. Vanillin included. He might be the only one in the Citadel who can read this.”
Arthur shook his head. “He also tried to teach a goat to conjugate verbs.”
“He’s also alive,” I snapped, standing. “Alive means useful.” I pulled the parchment back into my satchel and adjusted the strap. “I’m going now, before the court gets wind of this.”
Arthur sighed but didn’t try to stop me. His gaze followed me as I left the hall, the warning in his silence louder than words.
The air outside bit colder than it had at dawn, sharp against my skin. The Citadel grounds stretched out beneath a pale winter sky, flags snapping on the high towers, soldiers clanging in the training yard. My boots struck the stone paths in quick, purposeful rhythm, but my heartbeat was faster.
The old wing of the Citadel waited on the far side, crouched like a forgotten relic. Its walls sagged with age, the stones darker, weathered by frost and centuries of neglect. Few people came here now; dust and silence clung to the corridors like ivy.
As I crossed into that wing, the scent changed—less smoke and steel, more parchment and cedar ink, mingled with the faint must of mold. My breath echoed in the empty hallway. Candles sputtered in iron sconces, shadows crawling long across the walls.
At last I found it: the crooked oak door tucked behind the broken observatory dome.
I knocked twice. Then once more, for good measure.
Nothing.
I knocked again, louder. “Professor? It’s Hazen. I need help with a translation—urgent.”
For a long moment, silence. Then, a scraping sound. A shuffle of feet.
The door creaked open.
Professor Neris stood there, blinking at me as if I’d woken him from a hundred-year dream. His robes hung in uneven layers, three deep, the outermost one unmistakably cut from an old velvet curtain. His beard tumbled past his chest, stained in patches of ink as though he’d dipped it by mistake. And on his shoulder, perched like a jeweled crown, sat a small yellow bird that blinked at me in perfect mimicry of its master.
“Ah,” Neris said slowly, peering through half-lidded eyes. “Prince Hazen. Or was it Harold? No, no—you’re the quiet one.” His gaze sharpened, suddenly alive. “Come in, then. Bring tea next time.”
The smell of must and parchment wafted out as I stepped past him into the chamber. Books lay in piles like toppled walls, scrolls unfurled across chairs and the floor. Strange diagrams filled the walls, constellations inked alongside letters I didn’t recognize. More birds flitted freely from perch to perch, their feathers a riot of colors.
I tightened my grip on the satchel. I had no idea if I was walking into wisdom—or madness.
But I knew I was already too far in to turn back.

Chapter Text

Professor Neris’s study smelled like burnt sage and chaos.
The air was thick with smoke from some brazier I couldn’t see, acrid enough to sting the back of my throat. Scrolls leaned in dangerous towers across every surface, precarious as if the slightest breath would send them cascading to the floor. Half the books I could see were upside down, some open to nonsense pages that suggested they hadn’t been touched in decades. Loose sheets carpeted the floor, scribbled over with symbols I couldn’t begin to decipher. The only patch of order was a thin strip of bare desk—cleared, I suspected, only because Neris’s bird insisted on roosting there.
The bird—smaller than my fist, a faded yellow with only one eye—regarded me like an intruder. Its remaining eye gleamed with suspicion, as though I’d committed some personal offense merely by existing.
Which, I supposed, I had. I was intruding.
“Unless you’ve brought ginger biscuits or forbidden knowledge,” Neris said without looking up from his parchment, “come back later. Preferably much later. Or never.”
His voice was low and dry, each word carrying that odd weight of someone who had lived too long with their own mind for company.
I drew a slow breath and unfastened my satchel. “I brought something better,” I said, letting the words hang.
That got his attention. His head lifted, and both his bushy brows shot upward with suspicious interest.
I withdrew the folded parchment carefully, holding it between two fingers so that the yellow ribbon glinted faintly in the dim light. “Vanillin,” I said. “I found it in the woods.”
Neris straightened so fast his robe sleeves slipped down his arms, revealing wrists inked with smudged notes. His eyes, still sharp despite his age, fixed on the parchment as though it were glowing.
“Vanillin,” he repeated, his tone suddenly reverent, like a priest naming a god. He stepped closer, his hand half-raised, then froze an inch from mine. His gaze flicked up to me. “Are you certain?”
“It was left for me,” I said. The words came out harder than I intended. “Not handed—left. No footprints. No sound. I didn’t even see who dropped it until they vanished.”
The bird squawked once at that, almost like it understood.
Finally, with deliberate care, Neris took the folded parchment. His hands shook, but his touch was gentler than I’d expected. He carried it toward the light of the oil lamp, angling it as if the parchment itself might reveal something hidden.
The paper wasn’t ordinary. It was thick, soft-edged, crafted with a smoothness that only came from the northern borderless technique—pressing pulp until the sheet seemed to grow of its own accord. When he tilted it, faint marks shimmered across the grain, like bruised shadows. I caught a whiff of its scent even from where I stood. Not just mint, as I had smelled earlier—but lavender. Chamomile. Something else beneath it, sharp and cold, like crushed juniper.
“Borderless parchment,” Neris murmured, confirming my thought. “Northern method. Difficult to smuggle here. Expensive.” His nose twitched, and he closed his eyes as though inhaling memory itself. “They treated it with herbs. Preservation blend. This was meant to last.”
He flicked the ribbon free and frowned. “Seal’s been broken.”
“It wasn’t sealed,” I said. “Just folded. Like they wanted someone to open it—but weren’t sure who would.”
That earned me a sidelong glance, sharp and assessing. “So it wasn’t addressed?”
“No name. No kingdom. Just… this.”
He smoothed the parchment open and began to read, his lips shaping the Vanillin script slowly, reverently.
“To the one who saw us,
I don’t know your name. I don’t know if you are friend or foe.
But you hesitated. You listened. That was enough.
If you wish to understand why we’re here, meet me where the river bends beneath the willow trees.
Come on the third night’s moon.
Come alone. Or not at all.
—A.”
When he finished, the silence in the room swelled until I thought it might split my chest.
“She doesn’t know who I am,” I said at last, my voice quieter than I intended.
“She doesn’t,” Neris confirmed. He folded the parchment back along its original creases with careful precision. “But she knows you saw her. That is enough to spark curiosity. Or fear.”
I swallowed. My throat felt dry. “She only signed it ‘A.’”
“Smart girl,” he murmured. “No title. No name. No trace. She’s trained to leave no weakness. Possibly noble.”
I nodded slowly. “There were others with her. I caught only glimpses, but… one had green eyes and olive skin. He looked like he’d walked straight out of a portrait. Another boy, silent, tall as the cedars. And a girl with braids—she didn’t trust me for a moment.”
At that, Neris’s head tilted. His good eye gleamed. “Olive skin and green eyes…” His lips pressed together thoughtfully. “That sounds like—”
“Prince Asher of Lillies?” I cut in.
Neris froze, his beard twitching as if he were trying not to grin. “I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
“And yet,” he said, “you didn’t recognize him on sight?”
“I’m not exactly invited to every treaty summit,” I shot back. “And they weren’t wearing crowns.”
A laugh rumbled in his chest, surprising me with its sharpness. “If that was Prince Asher—and if the others were who I suspect—then someone has pulled together a gathering of royals. Quietly. In our forests. That is no accident.”
The thought settled heavy in my gut. “And they don’t know they were seen. By another royal.”
“Which gives you an edge.” His gaze sharpened suddenly, cutting like a blade. “But not much of one. Do not mistake your title for armor. It could make you a target just as easily as a guest.”
The bird bobbed its head at that, as though agreeing.

Chapter Text

The forest swallowed the last echo of their footsteps until even the sound of their passing seemed uncertain, as though the trees themselves disapproved of being disturbed.
Mist hung low between the trunks, catching the moonlight in thin ribbons. The air was damp, full of the wet, mineral tang of moss and the faint rustle of leaves disturbed by night creatures. Every twig that snapped underfoot felt sharper than it should have, each noise magnified in the hush.
Aurelia adjusted the strap of her satchel, her fingers tightening on the worn leather. Her eyes flicked over her shoulder for the fifth time in as many minutes. “He saw us,” she whispered at last.
“We let him,” said Prince Asher. His voice was calm, unhurried, but his gaze was not. His green eyes scanned the woods with the precision of someone trained never to look idle. He measured distance, shadows, and the direction of the wind as though each could hold a blade aimed at them. “There was no time for vanishing properly.”
“We didn’t vanish at all,” muttered Melina, tugging her braid tighter as though that small gesture might restore control. Her tone was sharp, her words clipped. “He was too close. He saw too much.”
Sawyer walked a few paces behind them, his posture heavy with thought. He had barely spoken since they left the clearing, but he hadn’t stopped seeing Hazen—the boy by the trees. The way Hazen’s eyes had fixed on them: not frightened, not slack-jawed in awe, but sharp. Searching. Measuring them in return.
Sawyer had been studied before, weighed like that by strangers, but rarely with such clarity.
“He didn’t raise an alarm,” Aurelia said. She adjusted her satchel again, the movement betraying nerves. “That means something.”
“Or it means he was too stunned to move,” Melina countered, quick as a lash. “Did you see his clothes? Worn, faded—nothing fit for nobility. Not a servant’s livery either. And his skin was darker than what you find in this region. He isn’t one of us.”
Sawyer stopped walking.
At first, none of the others noticed.
“He could’ve been a hunter’s son,” Melina went on, her voice rising slightly, like someone eager to prove their logic. “Or some half-wild wanderer who slipped through the cracks of their little mud-built kingdom. We can’t risk leaving notes for strangers in trees. That’s reckless—”
“Say that again,” Sawyer said, his voice low, cutting through her words like a drawn blade.
Melina paused and half-turned. “What?”
“Say what you just said,” Sawyer pressed, his tone quieter now, more dangerous. His dark eyes burned against hers. “The part about him being too dark to belong here.”
Aurelia’s breath caught. She slowed, glancing anxiously between them.
Sawyer didn’t move, didn’t blink. He just stood there, coiled with restrained anger, and his voice carried a weight that silenced the forest itself. “You don’t know anything about him. You saw him for five seconds, Melina. Five seconds, and suddenly you’ve decided he doesn’t belong? That he’s not ‘one of us’?” His lip curled. “Is that what Hollien teaches his heirs now?”
Melina stiffened, color rising in her face. “He startled us. He could’ve endangered everything we’re doing here—”
“He was alone,” Aurelia interrupted softly, though her voice trembled. “And he didn’t shout. Didn’t run. He just… watched. He looked more curious than anything.”
“He looked like he didn’t belong,” Melina insisted, her jaw tight.
“And maybe that’s why he saw us,” Sawyer snapped back. His voice was louder now, sharp enough that even the night birds went silent. “Maybe he knows how to move without being seen. Maybe he knows how to listen without drawing attention. That’s not weakness where I come from—it’s survival. It’s strength.”
Melina scoffed, though there was unease in it. “Of course you’d say that. You’ve always fancied yourself a rebel prince in your little desert kingdom.”
Something shifted in Sawyer’s stance—anger tightening, the air itself growing taut. He took a step forward, and for a heartbeat it seemed like he might close the space between them with more than words.
“Asher,” Aurelia whispered quickly, looking at their leader.
Asher finally raised his hand, palm outward, and the gesture alone carried enough weight to halt them. His tone was even when he spoke, but steel threaded through every syllable. “Enough.”
The word landed like a command, and silence followed it.
“We don’t know who he is,” Asher continued, gaze flicking between them. “That’s the point. He could be no one. He could be everything. What matters is that he hesitated. He did not betray us when he easily could have. That choice speaks louder than appearances.”
Aurelia nodded once, relief softening her features. “That’s why I left the letter.”
Melina exhaled sharply, almost a laugh. “You’re really hoping he comes? To the river bend? Alone?”
“I am,” Aurelia said. Her hand touched the satchel at her side, where her ink-stained fingers had folded the parchment with care. She looked toward the distant curve of trees, where silver mist gathered around unseen water. “Because he listened. No one listens anymore.”
Sawyer’s shoulders eased, just barely. He still looked at Melina like she’d crossed a line she had no right to approach, but his voice was steadier now. “If he comes, we treat him with respect. Whoever he is. Whatever kingdom stamped him with their crown. And if he doesn’t…” He shook his head once. “Then we move on.”
Melina said nothing this time, but the set of her jaw was stone.
Asher’s gaze lingered on each of them in turn, sharp and weighing. “This alliance will not survive if we tear each other apart before we even face the real threat. We need unity. Not judgment.”
The silence that followed was thick, carrying more weight than words could.
Behind them, the forest whispered and shifted, full of secrets too old and deep to care for royal quarrels. Somewhere in those shadows, Hazen himself still lingered in their thoughts—unknown, unnamed, but already woven into their fragile plans.

Chapter Text

The meadow wasn’t exactly forbidden—no one in Chocokollis ever called it that outright—but stepping into it felt like leaning against a door that Appa had already told me never to open.
He had warned me a dozen times, in that low, steady voice that always carried more weight than anger ever could.
You’re not a boy anymore, Hazen. You’re a prince. The wild edges of our border are not yours to haunt. You have a place, and it isn’t in the weeds and shadows.
And he was right.
At least, he was right in the way Appa was always right—about duties, about appearances, about the careful balance that kept Chocokollis standing when so many smaller kingdoms had been swallowed by stronger ones.
But none of that mattered when I was standing beneath the open sky of the meadow, watching the grass ripple like an ocean under the wind.
That place felt more mine than the throne room ever had.
In the throne room, my shoulders ached with the invisible weight of the crown I did not yet wear, my tongue pressed against words I wasn’t allowed to say, and my spine locked into a stiffness that belonged to a role, not a boy. In the meadow, the wind didn’t care if I bowed too shallow or stood too straight. It only carried the smell of wet grass and distant rivers, of soil and smoke, of something real.
But the river bend…
The river bend was worse.
That was uncomfortably close to the Vanillin line, the jagged cut in the land where border stones marked the difference between ours and theirs. And I knew what it would mean if a scout from their side spotted me.
I would not be Hazen, the boy in soft boots and a plain cloak. I would be Hazen of Chocokollis, son of the king, heir to the throne. And then every step I had taken out of the palace, every stolen moment of freedom, would turn into betrayal of duty.
And for what?
To meet strangers I didn’t know, who didn’t know me?
They hadn’t even spoken my language. Not all of them, anyway. The girl—Aurelia, though I didn’t know her name then—had said nothing. She had only watched me, her pale eyes fixed and unreadable, like frost that never melts. But the boy—the one with brownish hair and sun-warmed skin—he had spoken. His words had been brief, uncertain. But something in his tone had reached me.
He had sounded careful. Like someone testing a bridge to see if it would hold. Like he wasn’t sure I would understand, but still believed it was worth trying.
I remembered the way they all looked, standing there like they had stepped out of a storybook: cloaks too clean for the forest, boots too fine to have touched mud, faces pale as carved stone. All of them polished, untouchable.
Except him.
The boy with the desert sun still clinging to his skin. He had stood a little apart from the others, as if even among them, he didn’t fully belong. That small detail comforted me more than I wanted to admit.
But still—none of them had smiled. Not at me. Not even once.
And that thought lodged itself in me like a thorn I couldn’t pull free.
What if I went to the river bend… and they laughed?
What if they already knew who I was, and decided I wasn’t enough? Not royal enough. Not pale enough. Not polished into the gleaming shape their alliance demanded.
What if they looked at me and saw only the darker shade of my skin, the plain braid I wore when my attendants weren’t watching, the way my shoulders sloped not from grace but from always being ready to push back—and decided: not worth it?
The parchment crinkled between my fingers, edges curled from the heat of my hands. The words burned as I read them again, as if I could squeeze out some hidden truth if I pressed hard enough.
Come alone. Or not at all.
I wasn’t sure what scared me more—being foolish enough to go, or being coward enough to stay.
The air in my chamber felt heavy. I crossed to the wardrobe, the polished doors reflecting a dim version of myself. My fingers hovered over the cloaks.
The embroidered one I wore to council meetings glimmered faintly even in the dark, its gold thread catching the lantern light like a net of fireflies. That was the cloak of the prince—the one that told the world who I was before I even spoke.
But beside it hung the plain cloak, the one with a tear near the hem. The one that smelled faintly of smoke from the hearth fires, the one I wore when I wandered and wanted to be seen as no one.
I let my fingers brush the embroidery once, then pulled the plain one off the hook.
If I went, I could not go as Prince Hazen of Chocokollis. The boy bound to duty. The heir who was watched with sharp eyes, judged on every angle of his posture, every syllable of his speech.
No.
If I went, I had to go as just Hazen. A boy who had wandered into the woods. A boy who had been seen, and had not yet been condemned for it.
Maybe that was the point of the letter.
Maybe Aurelia had seen through the layers I carried, even in that brief moment—had known that the boy in the woods wasn’t a prince at all, but someone half-lost, standing at the edge of two worlds.
Maybe she had wanted to see him.
And that thought, fragile and reckless, was the one that carried me back to the window. The meadow stretched pale beneath the moon, the border stones beyond it a shadowed row of teeth.
I let the parchment fall against my chest and whispered, just once, to the empty room:
“Appa, forgive me.”
Then I tied the cloak at my throat.
And maybe—for the first time in years—I felt more like myself than I ever had on the throne’s cold steps.

Chapter Text

The trees thickened near the bend, weaving themselves into a tangle of shadow and whisper. Evening draped its silver shawl across the forest, strands of moonlight dripping through the canopy like threads from another world. Every branch seemed sharper, every rustle louder, as if the whole earth had drawn in a breath, waiting.
The river’s murmur reached Hazen first—a steady, low voice threading through the undergrowth. It was the kind of sound his tutors once told him to memorize: water marks boundaries. Boundaries mean consequence.
Appa had said it even more plainly: Borders are not playthings, Hazen. They are teeth. Sooner or later, they bite.
Yet here he was, moving toward those very teeth.
The plain cloak clung to his shoulders, smelling faintly of hearth smoke and horses. It was not the velvet cloak of a prince, but the kind of garment a stable boy might wear without anyone looking twice. Hazen had chosen it deliberately. He couldn’t bear to arrive wrapped in royal embroidery, jeweled thread catching the moonlight like a flare for scouts to follow.
And maybe… maybe he didn’t want these strangers to see a prince at all.
He wanted them to see him.
But would that be enough?
The letter had burned in his satchel since the moment he found it tucked into the bark—ink pressed careful and sharp, words both warning and invitation: Come alone. Or not at all.
No seal. No name. Only a command.
And Hazen, against every lesson, every warning, every sharp word from Appa’s lips—had obeyed.
On the other side of the willows, voices tangled with the sound of the current.
Aurelia walked at the front of the small party, her steps light, unhesitating, as if the river itself had whispered directions to her. Her pale fingers brushed the satchel at her hip more than once, like she was checking to make sure the parchment still lay folded inside—or perhaps reminding herself of the promise she had risked by leaving it.
“She’s not coming,” Melina said from the back, her arms folded across her chest like iron gates. Her voice was sharp enough to cut through branches. “This is a waste of time.”
“You don’t know that,” Prince Asher replied. His tone was calm, though wearied, as if this same battle had been fought on too many roads already.
Melina’s lips thinned. “She was just a meadow-walker. No crest. No court’s mark. Probably couldn’t even read the letter.”
“She read it,” Aurelia said without turning. Her voice was steady, even reverent. “She saw it. And she’s thinking about it. I felt it.”
Melina scoffed. The sound cracked the silence like splintering bark. She muttered something in Hollbein tongue—sharp syllables, too quick and jagged for the others to catch.
Sawyer, walking near her, stiffened instantly. His shoulders squared, his dark eyes narrowing. “You want to say that again in a language we all speak?”
Melina didn’t glance at him. Her smirk was all blade. “No. But I meant every word.”
“Then have the spine to say it properly.”
Her jaw tightened. This time, she spoke in the common tongue. “Fine. She doesn’t belong here. You all saw her. Wild hair. Rough cloak. He looked more like a border scout’s stray boy than anyone fit for court. What are we expecting—some secret scholar in disguise?”
“We’re not looking for a scholar.” Aurelia’s voice was calm, deliberate, as though she were naming something carved into the earth itself. “We’re looking for someone who watched instead of running. That means he was paying attention.”
“He was darker,” Melina muttered, softer now, as if speaking more to herself than to them. “Not from here. Definitely not one of us.”
That was the moment Sawyer stopped walking.
“You need to stop doing that,” he said, low and dangerous.
“Doing what?”
“Drawing lines based on who looks like you.”
Melina arched one pale brow, her smirk returning. “Spoken like someone who doesn’t look like anyone in your court either.”
The silence that followed was taut, like the instant before a bowstring snapped.
Prince Asher finally cleared his throat, though his eyes stayed sharp, measuring the air. “Enough. We didn’t come all this way to fight each other before we even know if he’ll come.”
“He’s late,” Melina said flatly, her tone like stone set in mortar. “That tells me everything I need.”
“It tells me nothing,” Aurelia answered. She had stopped at the edge of the riverbank. The willows here dipped low, their long green branches brushing the water, swaying like secrets waiting to be spoken. The current gleamed silver where the moonlight caught it, moving unbothered past human impatience.
Aurelia turned to face them, pale eyes bright as frost. “We give him until the moon crests.”
“And if he doesn’t come?” Melina asked.
“Then we decide if we’re brave enough to try again.”
From the cover of the trees, Hazen listened.
The words pricked at him—sharp, dividing, cruel. Not one of us. Stray boy. Doesn’t belong.
He had heard them before. Not from Aurelia’s mouth, never from her—but from courtiers, advisors, sometimes even from the tone beneath Appa’s silences. His skin, darker than most within Chocokollis. His hair, always too unruly for the crown’s weight. His manner, too restless, too wild for council halls.
Now he heard it again. And it made his chest tighten until it almost hurt.
He could turn back. It would be easy—one step into the shadows, one breath into the meadow’s safety, and no one would know. He would return before the gates closed, slip into the quiet of his chambers, and no one would suspect that he had stood here trembling, parchment burning in his satchel.
But the river’s murmur held him. The memory of Aurelia’s gaze—clear, sharp, seeing—anchored him. And beyond her, the boy. The one with sun-warmed skin who hadn’t stood like the others, who hadn’t seemed polished or perfect either.
Something about that steadied him.
Hazen adjusted the cloak at his throat, his hand pressing flat against the rough weave. He forced himself to breathe.
You are Hazen, son of Appa. You are more than what they expect.
A twig cracked beneath his boot, loud as a thunderclap in the hush.
The voices beyond the willows stilled.
Hazen froze, blood rushing like wildfire through his ears. Every instinct screamed: Run. Hide. Disappear.
But he was tired of vanishing.
So, with his heart hammering hard enough to bruise his ribs, Hazen stepped forward through the willows and into the silver glow of the riverbend.

Chapter Text

The cloak I wore was thinner than it should have been. The seams were frayed at the elbows, and a cold wind slipped through it with every step. But the fabric moved like silence, and silence was what I needed most. Let the court parade themselves in velvet and gilt—I wanted to vanish, to pass like smoke.
I had waited until the Citadel bells tolled ten, when the kitchens doused their hearths and the last servants filed to their dormitories. Past the stables, past the training yards where the guards played dice beneath a brazier, I slipped into the dark. They thought they knew every hiding place the prince favored. They didn’t know about the crawlspace behind the moss-cracked garden wall, or the root-path that tunneled beneath the herb terraces.
Appa never sealed it. Even after he stopped letting me wander into the meadow alone, even after his warnings grew sharper—Borders are not playthings, Hazen. Stay where you belong—the path remained open, like a secret he couldn’t bring himself to close.
But tonight, I wasn’t stopping at the meadow.
Tonight, I was going to the river.
And I didn’t even know why.
For hours I’d sat by the window of my chamber, the parchment spread on my lap, the words etched into me as if they had been branded: Come alone. Or not at all.
I had almost obeyed Appa’s voice instead of the letter’s. Almost stayed.
But the memory of their eyes—those strangers who had looked at me not with friendliness, but with that flicker of something colder, sharper—lingered. Fear, perhaps. Or surprise. And I realized I was tired of fear. Tired of being the prince who never left the Citadel walls.
So I went to the small wooden box beneath my bed, the one I’d never shown Appa. Inside lay the single relic of a life before palaces and politics. The red rune.
It was smooth, oval, the size of a river stone, threaded with a worn leather cord. My mother had carved it herself from a fallen branch. She had laughed as she whittled it with a knife she wasn’t supposed to have, wood curls gathering in her lap. It’s not for monsters, Hazen, she’d told me. It’s so you won’t forget. So you’ll always carry where you came from, even if the world tells you otherwise.
The rune still smelled faintly of pine sap and smoke. I looped it around my neck and tucked it beneath the cloak, the weight of it steadying me like a hand at my heart.
I remembered the forest years in fragments: her voice humming when the rains came, the smell of cedar oil, her calling me my stormlight. Then the leaving. Then her death. Then Appa’s arms gathering me up, telling me it was time to return to the city.
The forest was gone. But the rune remained.
I touched it once before stepping into the night.
The moon was high, silvering the forest, when I reached the willow-bend. The cloak clung to my legs, damp with dew. My fingers trembled under the fabric, every muscle coiled.
I had nearly turned back twice.
But then I parted the willow branches and saw them.
Four figures by the river. They stood like shadows waiting to be named. The river caught their outlines, glinting them in fragments—the girl with eyes like sharpened ice, the boy with olive skin and steady green gaze, the taller one with a quiet, watchful strength, and the copper-braided girl whose arms crossed tight against her chest, verdict already carved in her stance.
They saw me at once. Their posture changed, not with surprise—I was late, they had expected me sooner—but with the shift of people who had been holding a breath and had now let it go.
My throat tightened. I swallowed hard, then forced a voice past my lips.
“Здравствуйте. Я… эм… нашёл письмо.”
Hello. I… found the letter.
The words sounded fragile, too soft. My accent carried the forest years, the Cacaoian tongue Appa had told me to bury.
Four pairs of eyes fixed on me.
Aurelia’s brows furrowed, confusion flickering.
Melina’s narrowed, sharp as a blade.
Sawyer tilted his head, uncertain but listening.
Only Asher’s expression shifted toward recognition.
“That’s… Cacaoian?” he said slowly, the syllables awkward on his tongue. His accent bent the word, but I heard the effort. My chest eased, just a little.
“Да! Cacaoian,” I said quickly, my voice rising with hope. “Я… эм… из Чококоллис.”
I… from Chocokollis.
My grammar was tangled, clumsy, but Asher’s eyes lit faintly. He stepped forward, careful.
“Понимаю… немного,” he said. I understand… a little. His accent was poor, but the meaning was there. He turned back to the others. “He said he found the letter.”
“She speaks that?” Melina spat, as though the sound itself was poison.
“Apparently,” Asher answered evenly.
“That’s not even a diplomatic tongue,” Melina snapped. “Who speaks Cacaoian anymore?”
“He does,” Sawyer said quietly.
Melina muttered sharp syllables in Hollbein, words I couldn’t follow, but the tone was cutting enough. My shoulders stiffened. My hand went to the rune beneath my cloak, fingers curling around it like it could shield me.
“She’s trying,” Asher said suddenly, voice clipped, protective. “He came alone. He came late, but he came.”
“He doesn’t understand us,” Melina hissed.
“And we don’t understand him,” Asher replied. “That’s the point.”
I stood still, listening, reading what I couldn’t translate in their expressions—the tension in Melina’s smirk, Aurelia’s pale eyes torn between suspicion and something softer, Sawyer’s steady watchfulness. And Asher—Asher was the only one bridging the distance.
I took a breath, forcing the words from my tongue. “Я… не знаю вас. Я… просто хотел понять.”
I don’t know you. I just wanted to understand.
Asher’s gaze softened. He nodded slowly. “Понимаю,” he murmured again, and motioned gently toward a flat stone near the water. “You sit?”
I hesitated, then nodded. My legs bent stiffly as I lowered myself onto the stone, every movement deliberate, my hands visible. The river’s spray misted my cloak.
Sawyer sat too, though still alert.
Melina stayed standing, arms locked tight, glaring like I was a mistake carved into the night.
Aurelia settled last, her pale eyes still fixed on me, stitching pieces of me together like she was searching for a pattern.
For a long while, no one spoke. Not because there was nothing to say, but because there was too much.
The river filled the silence, whispering its own language.
I touched the rune through the cloak, grounding myself. The leather cord was warm from my skin.
I hadn’t spoken Cacaoian aloud in weeks. Not even to the stable boy who knew a handful of phrases. I missed the roundness of its vowels, the softness of its music. I missed my mother’s voice in it, bright as birdsong.
I risked a glance at Asher. “Ты… из Лилис?” I asked softly.
You… from Lillies?
His eyes widened slightly, surprised. Then he nodded. “Да. Я… Лилис.”
Not perfect. But enough.
I smiled faintly, relief loosening something in my chest.
Melina groaned audibly, rolling her eyes. “We’re just going to guess our way through this?”
“Yes,” Aurelia said quietly, steady as stone. “If we have to.”
The hush returned, fragile but real. Not peace, not yet. But something like the first stones of a bridge.
They didn’t speak my language. I didn’t speak theirs. But we had met, under the willows, when none of us had to.
And sometimes, that was how everything began

Chapter Text

The moon had climbed higher, stretching the shadows thinner across the riverbank. Its light poured silver over the willows, draping the clearing in a strange, quiet glow. The five of them sat in a loose, uneasy circle beneath the hanging branches, as if the trees themselves had lowered their veils to listen. For a long while, the only sounds were the restless whisper of leaves, the wind combing through them like fingers, and the river lapping gently at the stones.
Hazen sat a little apart, hands folded too tightly in his lap, knuckles pale. His cloak, damp with river-mist, clung to his shoulders, and the red rune beneath it pressed like a heartbeat against his chest. He kept his eyes low, not out of shame, but because every time he dared glance up, he caught the copper-braided girl staring at him with the sharp appraisal of someone who had already drawn her conclusion. Her gaze was not curious, not cautious—it was judgment, plain and unyielding, as if his very presence had stained the marble halls of her world.
Still, he stayed.
And so did they.
That, at least, counted for something.
Aurelia, seated closest to him, shifted slightly, her fingers grazing the edge of the satchel at her hip. She glanced toward Asher, who sat tall and composed at her right. He gave her a small, steady nod—just enough to say, go on.
Aurelia drew in a quiet breath and leaned forward. Her voice, when it came, was soft, careful, deliberate, the way one might speak to coax a sparrow to land on an open palm.
“I’m... Aurelia,” she said, her tone slow and clear. She pressed her hand gently to her chest. “Au-rel-ee-ah.”
Hazen’s eyes lifted, faint light sparking in them. He repeated the name slowly, his accent thick but not unkind, shaping it as best he could. “Aurelia.”
Her lips curved into a faint smile. One step.
Then Asher moved. His manner was calm, almost ceremonial, though there was warmth hidden beneath the formality. He touched his own chest with the back of his hand.
“Asher,” he said, speaking firmly, each syllable crisp. Then, after a small pause, he added, “Prince of Lillies.”
Hazen tilted his head slightly, brows pinching as though reaching into memory. His lips moved soundlessly before he murmured in a low, accented voice, “Лилис...” The word rolled strangely in his tongue, but his tone carried recognition. “Да... я помню.”
Asher caught the word—remember—and gave the smallest nod in acknowledgment.
The taller boy, the one whose shoulders were broad and presence steady as a stone wall, had not yet spoken. He had watched Hazen the entire time, not with suspicion exactly, but with something steadier. A kind of observation that felt heavier than words. Finally, after a moment, he lifted his hand in a small gesture of greeting.
“Sawyer,” he said simply. “Cephas Crood.”
Hazen studied him for a moment, then echoed carefully, his accent stumbling over the vowel. “Sah-yur.”
It was close enough. Sawyer gave him a short nod of approval, though his eyes never left Hazen’s.
And then came Melina.
She did not wait for permission, nor for an opening. With a sharp sweep of her cloak, she rose to her feet in one smooth, practiced motion. Her posture was perfect, her chin lifted, her every gesture steeped in the kind of grace meant to remind the world she was born above it.
“Melina of Hollien,” she declared, voice as polished as cut glass. “Princess. And clearly the only one here who remembers how to act like one.”
The words fell like frost between them.
Aurelia gave her a warning glance. Asher exhaled through his nose, closing his eyes briefly, as though preparing to weather a storm he’d seen coming. Sawyer didn’t even bother to look at her.
But Hazen... Hazen furrowed his brow faintly. He didn’t know her words, but he didn’t need the language to understand the tone. It was the tone of closed doors, of locked halls, of judgment delivered without appeal. He repeated her name quietly under his breath, more out of obligation than warmth. “Melina.”
There was no smile in it.
Melina lowered herself back into her seat with a predator’s grace, the sort that could cut even in silence.
At last, Hazen pressed a hand to his chest. His fingers trembled slightly against the worn fabric of his cloak, but his voice, when he spoke, was steady.
“…Hazen,” he said.
He didn’t give a title. Not because he wanted to hide, but because titles felt like armor—and tonight, armor felt like a lie.
“Hazen,” Aurelia repeated gently, her tone soft, welcoming.
Asher inclined his head, offering the smallest gesture of respect.
Sawyer tilted his head just slightly, as though weighing the boy before him. “Hazen,” he said, voice even, letting the name rest between them like a stone cast into still water.
Melina, of course, said nothing. Her gaze cut across the river, cold and disinterested, as though she had already dismissed him from mattering.
“She’s—he’s—brave,” Sawyer said at last, his voice low but carrying.
Melina scoffed, folding her arms across her chest with all the elegance of disdain. “Brave? He’s lucky we haven’t sent him back already.”
“He came alone,” Aurelia said firmly, her voice sharpened by something protective. “That should mean something.”
“It means he’s reckless,” Melina snapped, her tone slicing through the still air. “Or foolish. Or worse—lying.”
“Enough,” Asher cut in, his voice low, but its weight silenced even the crickets for a breath.
Melina’s jaw clenched. “He doesn’t speak the language. He doesn’t belong here.”
“And yet,” Asher said evenly, meeting her gaze, “here he is.”
The silence that followed rippled with tension.
Hazen shifted slightly where he sat. He didn’t know the words, but he knew the weight behind them. He had seen this before—in courts, at tables, in council chambers. People who balanced on the thin line between breaking apart and holding their fragments together.
Still, he didn’t run.
Instead, he pressed a hand to his chest again, firmer this time. “Hazen,” he repeated. Then, carefully, slowly, he pointed to each of them in turn.
“Aurelia. Asher. Sawyer. Melina.”
Melina’s lips thinned, clearly displeased to be included.
But Asher allowed himself the barest trace of a smile.
“He’s trying,” Asher said quietly.
Sawyer gave a single, steady nod. “And he hasn’t run.”
“Of course not,” Melina muttered darkly, her words slipping into Hollbein now, sharp as flint. “People like him never know when they should.”
The venom in her tone was unmistakable, even if the words themselves were foreign. Hazen’s shoulders drew in slightly, the rune beneath his cloak suddenly feeling heavy, almost suffocating.
Aurelia stiffened, lips parting as if to speak, but Sawyer was faster. His voice cut low, charged, and unwavering.
“Maybe you should think about why he came,” he said. “And why he’s still here—even with you throwing daggers from across the fire.”
Melina turned her face away, jaw locked, refusing to give ground.
The silence that followed was not empty. It was layered—thick with suspicion, bristling with curiosity, knotted with questions unspoken. But for the first time since Hazen had stepped from the willows, it also carried a thread of something else. Something tenuous, fragile, but real.
A thread of connection.
Hazen let out a long, unsteady breath. His hand slipped beneath his cloak, fingers curling around the rune. He didn’t draw it out—not yet. Not when the weight of their gazes pressed so heavily on him.
But just feeling its smooth surface beneath his fingers, the faint trace of pine still clinging to it after all these years, was enough. Enough to hold him steady when every part of him urged to rise, to flee back into the shadows of the wood.
He stayed.
They knew his name now. He knew theirs. And maybe—just maybe—that was enough to begin.

Chapter Text

The grass at the riverbend was damp beneath me, soaking slowly through the hem of my cloak until the cold crept into my skin. I didn’t move. If I shifted, I might draw attention. If I spoke—if I even tried—I was certain the words would crack in my throat.
So I stayed quiet.
The others spoke around me, their voices rising and dipping in rhythms I was still learning. Aurelia’s voice was the softest, careful as water poured into glass. Asher’s was deliberate, every phrase like he was clearing a space where I might set something down if I could ever find the right words. Sawyer barely spoke at all, but his glances—quick, steady—kept finding me, as though he wanted to check if I was still holding together.
And then there was her.
Melina.
She hadn’t stopped since I sat down.
At first, I thought perhaps she was trying to be polite, or translating for my sake. But no—her tone told me otherwise. Her words came sharp, fast, dripping with a sweetness that was too polished, too poisonous. I couldn’t make sense of all the syllables, but I didn’t need to. I felt them.
Her voice was a blade disguised as perfume. Every sentence found its mark, and every sideways glance of hers was a reminder: you don’t belong here.
The others didn’t interrupt her. Not right away. Aurelia’s pale hands rested still in her lap, her eyes downcast as though willing herself not to bite back. Asher shifted once, lips parting like he might speak, then closed them again, retreating into silence. Sawyer kept moving, though—his shoulders tight, arms crossing, uncrossing, fingers twitching restlessly against his knee like he was holding himself back from throwing something.
Melina’s copper braids gleamed in the moonlight as she turned her head toward me again. Her lips curled into a smile that didn’t touch her eyes.
“Look at her,” she said sweetly, too sweetly. “Not a word. Like a frightened fawn at the edge of the woods.”
I felt my stomach twist. I didn’t know all the words, but I knew enough. She had chosen “her.” Deliberately.
“She’s not a fawn,” Sawyer muttered darkly, not looking at her.
“Oh?” Melina’s brows arched in mock surprise. “Then what is she? Look at the cloak—ragged. Look at the hands—soft, unsure. Certainly not court-born. Not trained. Not even dressed for the company she presumes to sit with.” She leaned back, smirk sharp. “I’d say she’s someone’s daughter who wandered too far from her meadow.”
Heat climbed my throat. My chest burned, but the words to fight back weren’t in my mouth. Not in their tongue. Not in mine, either, not fast enough to matter.
Aurelia’s voice broke through, quieter but firm. “His name is Hazen.”
Melina tilted her head, all false innocence. “His name? My mistake. It’s difficult to tell, isn’t it, when he sits so small and silent?” She let the word he drip with disdain, like it was a costume I’d stolen rather than the truth of me.
The silence that followed was not kind.
Sawyer finally moved, rising to his feet so fast the branches above him shivered. His voice was sharp when he spoke, aimed like an arrow. “Enough, Melina.”
She looked up at him, entirely unbothered. “Did I strike a nerve, Sawyer?”
“You’re being cruel.”
“I’m being observant,” she said smoothly, brushing invisible dust from her sleeve. “Someone should be. You all sit here pretending as though this… child”—her eyes flicked to me again—“is the answer to anything. You can’t even tell what he is.”
“He is sitting right here,” Sawyer snapped.
Melina gave a soft laugh, the kind that curled like smoke in the air. “So defensive. Does she need a knight to fight her battles now? How touching.”
My hands clenched in my lap, nails pressing half-moons into my palms. I wanted to shout. I wanted to rise, to throw her words back, to demand she use the right ones. But my tongue felt heavy, tangled. The language refused to bend for me. And the truth was—I wasn’t sure if the others believed her. If, under all their silence, they were wondering the same things.
Maybe they saw me the way she did. Maybe I wasn’t what they wanted me to be.
I pulled my cloak tighter, shrinking smaller. I thought of Appa’s voice, stern as ever, echoing in my head: Borders are not playthings, Hazen. Stay where you belong.
But here I was. And Melina made sure to remind me of every reason I shouldn’t be.
Aurelia finally lifted her chin, her pale eyes sharper now. “She—” She caught herself, corrected firmly. “He. His name is Hazen. He came because the letter called him, just like it called the rest of us. That matters.”
Melina scoffed. “Or perhaps he stumbled here by accident. Some shepherd’s son who picked up parchment he couldn’t read. We’re wasting time.”
Asher, who had been silent the longest, finally spoke. His tone was low but iron-bound. “We don’t waste time on courage.” His gaze cut to Melina, steady and unyielding. “And he came alone. That counts for more than your posturing.”
Melina’s lips thinned, but she said nothing more—for now.
The air was thick, layered with all the things no one dared put into words. I stared at the ground, breath caught somewhere between gratitude and shame. I hated the way my chest ached, hated how heavy the rune at my throat felt, like it wasn’t a blessing but a weight dragging me down.
I shouldn’t have come. The thought beat against my ribs, louder with every heartbeat. I shouldn’t be here.
And yet—I stayed.
Even with Melina’s laughter curling like smoke. Even with her words sticking like burrs beneath my skin. Even with the river whispering that borders meant danger, and danger meant ruin.
I stayed.
Because something deeper than shame told me I had to.
And though I couldn’t name it yet, though I couldn’t explain it—not even to myself—I knew this mattered.
Even if all I could do, for now, was hold my name steady in my chest, ready to speak it again if they tried to take it from me.
Hazen.
That was enough.

Chapter Text

The trees looked different on the way back.
Colder. Sharper.
The same path that had felt curious and alive only hours ago now pressed in close, crowding him like it wanted to hold something back, like it wanted to keep secrets he wasn’t meant to know. The river’s voice had faded behind him, but its weight still clung to him like mist—like it had followed him, whispering things he couldn’t name.
Each step toward the Citadel dragged. His boots were soaked through. His hands were stiff, numb from cold—or maybe from clenching them too tightly at his sides. And his chest—his chest was heavier than all of it. A knot of things he couldn’t untangle: shame, anger, confusion. A raw ache that had no single name, only edges.
He hadn’t said a word the entire walk back. His throat wouldn’t have allowed it. Instead, he breathed too shallow, too fast, as though counting the rhythm might keep him upright. He counted trees instead of breaths. He counted stones instead of thoughts. Anything to keep from counting Melina’s words.
The wall of the city finally rose ahead, gray against the dark. Relief should’ve hit him then. It didn’t.
The guards didn’t see him. They never did when he slipped through the garden passage, head low, steps soft. Maybe they didn’t want to see him. Maybe that was easier.
His chambers welcomed him in silence. The latch clicked closed behind him, a hollow sound. The cloak slid from his shoulders, landing at the foot of the bed with a wet thud. He looked at it as though it had failed him—soaked and heavy, like it had been carrying the shame he couldn’t.
The rune at his throat still pressed into his chest, its cord damp with sweat and dew. It felt heavier now, not like protection but like proof he was failing at something sacred.
He crossed to the desk, lit the candle with hands that trembled too much, and sank into the chair. The flame wavered, its little circle of light holding back the shadows of the room. For a heartbeat, it almost looked safe.
Almost.
He reached for the journal. The soft-leather one, hidden behind his hairbrush, tucked away like a secret within a secret. The one only he knew existed. The one he only touched when the ache inside him was too big to hold any longer.
His fountain pen waited beside it, brass-tipped, polished to a shine his grandfather had once demanded. “A prince should have discipline, Hazen.” That’s what the gift had meant. But discipline felt far away now. His fingers wrapped around it anyway, like instinct.
The page opened to a blank spread. The emptiness of it made his chest squeeze tighter.
He dipped the pen into the inkpot.
Pressed the nib to paper.
The first words came small, hesitant:
“Not enough.”
A pause.
He swallowed, throat thick, and added:
“Too different.”
Then his grip slipped. The nib jerked across the page. A thick line of ink carved through his words, cutting them open like a wound. Black spread fast, blooming outward, seeping into the parchment, crawling into the lines of his hands.
Hazen froze.
The ink soaked into his skin, filling the grooves of his palms, blackening the crescents of his nails. His hands looked wrong. Stained. Contaminated. Too dark. Too messy. Too… wrong.
Just like at the river.
Just like when Melina’s smile curved, sweet and venomous, and her words slid into the air: She doesn’t belong here. She’s not one of us. Look at her. Not even a real—
His breath hitched.
He could still hear her voice—syrupy, deliberate. Could still see the way she looked at him, not with curiosity, but dismissal. That sideways glance like he was something dragged in with the mud, barely worth a word. She. She had said it over and over, watching the way the syllable landed. Watching him flinch.
His lungs stuttered. He dragged in air, but it wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough. The candle’s light blurred. His chest tightened, too tight, like ropes pulling inward.
Stop crying. Stop crying.
But he couldn’t. The tears broke hot and sudden, spilling past his eyes before he could stop them. Ugly, choking sobs tore out of him, ragged and raw. Not quiet. Not delicate. Sobs that scraped the inside of his throat raw.
The ink smeared with the tears, streaking down his hands, staining his robe, blotting his sleeves until it looked like he’d dipped himself in his own guilt. He pressed his palms to his face, but that only spread it further—across his cheeks, his jaw, his lips. He could taste the bitter tang of it. He could feel it sinking into his skin.
It felt like being unmade.
You don’t belong here.
You’re not one of them.
You never will be.
The words spun through his head until they weren’t hers anymore. They were his. They were truth.
His chest heaved, shallow and sharp. Breath wouldn’t come right. The panic clawed up, a bird trapped beneath his ribs, battering against the bone, trying to break free. He couldn’t stop it. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t—
“No,” he rasped, voice cracking. “No. Stop.”
But the walls didn’t stop pressing. The air didn’t come easier.
His body curled in on itself, knees drawn up, shoulders hunched, as though making himself smaller might make the storm pass. His hands shook against his chest, rune pressed hard into his skin.
Appa’s voice came to him then, unbidden. Stern, commanding, clear: A prince breathes. A prince stands tall, even when the air is thin.
The words weren’t comfort, not exactly. But they gave him something to hold onto. Something outside of Melina’s voice.
He forced himself to count. Not trees this time. Not stones. Breaths. In. Out. Again. Again. His body resisted, but he pressed harder, clutching the rune so tightly its edges bit into his palm.
Slowly—painfully slowly—the bird quieted. His chest loosened just enough to let air through. His hands still shook. His face was still wet and blackened with streaks of ink and tears. But he was breathing.
He wiped at his face with the corner of his sleeve, though it only smeared the mess further. The words on the page stared back at him, blurred by the ink spill.
Not enough.
Too different.
He didn’t cross them out. He couldn’t. They stayed, sitting on the paper like scars.
Hazen sat there for a long time, curled tight, letting the candle burn low beside him.
And when his voice finally returned, it was a whisper, cracked and raw:
“…I should’ve stayed in the meadow.”
But even as he said it, he knew it wasn’t true.
Because he hadn’t.
Because something—something he couldn’t yet name—had told him to come.
And even now, with ink dried on his skin and shame thick in his chest, he knew he would not turn back.

Chapter Text

The snow had started falling again.
Fine, slow flakes that drifted like ash—soft, soundless, dusting the stones near the river and catching in the threads of Sawyer’s cloak.
Hazen was gone.
The trees hadn’t even stopped swaying where he’d vanished, but it already felt like he’d never been there at all. The hollow where he’d sat was empty, a dark patch in the snow. Even the imprint of his boots was fading, the flakes filling it in grain by grain until the ground pretended he’d never touched it.
Sawyer kept staring at that place, the ghost of him.
He hadn’t said much. Barely anything, really. But he’d listened. He’d tried. And that—just that—was already more than Melina ever gave him credit for.
“Well,” Melina said at last, drawing the word out, sharp and glinting like a blade leaving its sheath. “That was about as awkward as I expected.”
Her voice broke the quiet like glass.
No one answered her.
Aurelia sat near the firepit, her hands cupped so tightly in her lap her knuckles showed bone-white through the skin. Asher stood with his back turned, watching the line of trees as though Hazen might still appear again if he stared hard enough. Snow gathered on his shoulders and clung to his hair, but he didn’t move.
But Melina kept going.
“I mean, what did we think was going to happen?” she asked, her voice syrupy with false sweetness, each syllable dipped in scorn. “You pluck some silent boy from the edge of the woods—one who doesn’t even know how to greet us properly—and expect him to… what? Join in? Sit by the fire like he belongs here? Propose a treaty?”
Sawyer’s jaw tightened. He didn’t move. Didn’t look at her.
Melina huffed when no one bit. She shifted her cloak, tossing snow from the folds with a casual flick. “He could barely sit still. I thought he was going to bolt the whole time.”
“He was nervous,” Aurelia murmured, not looking up.
“He was freezing,” Asher added without turning.
“He was a stranger,” Melina snapped, pouncing on the word. “A stranger who doesn’t belong here and doesn’t even try to—”
“That’s enough.”
Sawyer’s voice cut the air clean.
The snow kept falling. But something else seemed to stop, like the whole clearing had taken one breath and held it.
Melina blinked at him, her mouth still half-open. She was thrown—not by the words, but by how he said them. His tone was low, even, but there was something underneath it, sharp and tired and brimming with something he’d been swallowing down for far too long.
“No one invited him,” Melina said after a pause, testing her footing again. “He had no reason to come.”
“He had every reason to come,” Sawyer shot back, finally turning toward her. His eyes were lit hard, like steel catching firelight. “And he still didn’t belong. Isn’t that what you wanted?”
Melina narrowed her eyes. “Don’t twist this.”
“I’m not.” His voice rose a fraction, heavy enough to silence the night birds. “But you have been. Since the moment he stepped out of those trees, you’ve been twisting everything. Every word. Every look. Every silence you thought he couldn’t understand.”
“He doesn’t speak the language—”
“He tried.”
“He stared at us like he expected an attack—”
“Because he was attacked,” Sawyer snapped, stepping forward now. His breath came fast, steaming in the cold. “Maybe not with blades, Melina. But with every word out of your mouth. Every sneer. Every time you cut him down without even bothering to let him defend himself.”
Melina’s lips parted, her chin tipping up as if ready to unleash another retort. But this time Sawyer didn’t let her.
“I’m sick of it.” The words tore out of him, louder now, unshaking. “I’m sick of the way you talk down to everyone who doesn’t fit your perfect little mold. You treat people like they’re beneath you, and when they finally claw their way up high enough to stand beside you, you still find ways to remind them they’re not enough.”
His hands curled into fists at his sides. He felt the heat rushing through him, hotter than the fire, hotter than the shame in Hazen’s eyes when he’d sat among them.
“She’s not one of us, Sawyer,” Melina hissed, her face tightening.
“He,” Sawyer said, cutting her clean, his voice like iron. “He’s not one of us. And I know that. That’s the whole point. That’s exactly why he mattered.”
The words cracked through the clearing like lightning.
Aurelia flinched. Asher turned fully now, watching, silent but intent.
Sawyer didn’t stop.
“He came here alone,” Sawyer said, his voice climbing, ragged at the edges now with fury. “Into a place he didn’t know. With people he couldn’t understand. He sat down in good faith while you tore into him like he was dirt beneath your boots. And do you know what he did?” His breath steamed heavy in the night. “He stayed.”
Melina’s arms crossed, but too tightly now, folded in defense more than composure.
“He didn’t get angry,” Sawyer said, his voice breaking lower, quieter, but more dangerous for it. “He didn’t fight back. He just sat there… like he expected it. Like he thought that’s what people do. Like he’s used to it.”
Melina opened her mouth, but nothing came out.
And maybe that silence—that emptiness—was worse than anything she could have said.
The fire crackled, its sparks floating up into the night. The snow thickened, flakes spinning faster through the dark.
Sawyer dragged a hand through his hair, pacing once, his chest heaving with words that still burned like embers inside him. “You act like kindness is weakness. Like respect is something people have to earn by proving they’re worth breathing the same air as you. And I’m done with it. You don’t get to decide who matters, Melina. Not here. Not anymore.”
Melina’s jaw worked, but her eyes flickered. For the first time, she didn’t look sure of herself.
Sawyer turned from her, shoulders tense, fury still sparking through every line of him. He faced the snow, the trees, the emptiness Hazen had left behind. His voice, when it came again, was quieter, but no less sharp.
“He won’t come back,” he said.
And in the silence that followed—Aurelia’s bowed head, Asher’s clenched jaw, Melina’s tight silence—the guilt took root.
The snow kept falling, thick and endless, soft as ash.

Chapter Text

The fire was nearly out.
Its crackle had faded to a faint whisper, orange veins snaking through the last of the blackened wood, smoke curling upward in lazy threads that vanished into the skeletal arms of the trees. The snow came fine and constant, pale flakes drifting like ash over their shoulders, gathering in the folds of cloaks and boots, quieting the forest until even the river felt far away.
Aurelia pulled her cloak tighter against the wind. The chill pressed into her bones, but it wasn’t the cold that gnawed at her—it was the silence.
She hadn’t said much.
Not while Hazen was there.
Not when Melina began her usual cutting remarks.
Not even when Sawyer finally snapped.
But now, with Hazen gone and the night pressing heavy on their shoulders, Aurelia’s thoughts ran like a torrent she couldn’t dam.
He came.
He actually came.
The boy—Hazen—had walked through shadow and snow alone, with no promise of safety, no familiar face waiting for him, not even the right words to defend himself. He had sat among them—awkward, quiet, nervous—and somehow, Aurelia thought it had taken more courage than most of the nobles she had ever known.
And they had ruined it.
Not with steel.
But with looks. With silence.
With Melina’s tongue.
Her gaze flicked to Melina now. The girl sat stiff-armed and unyielding, arms crossed high on her chest, her face a mask carved from stubborn marble. No apology lingered there. No regret. No recognition of harm done.
Of course not. Melina never regretted anything unless it cost her directly.
Sawyer had been right to snap at her. Aurelia had seen the strain in him for days—his jaw set, his patience stretched taut. He had held back as long as he could. And when Hazen left, his restraint broke.
Still, Aurelia wasn’t sure the damage could be undone.
Sawyer had said, He won’t come back.
And deep down, Aurelia knew he was probably right.
But even as she accepted that truth, something else clawed at her thoughts. Something colder. Something more unsettling.
It wasn’t just the shame of sitting in a circle that had made a stranger feel so small. It wasn’t even the guilt of letting Melina’s venom pass unchecked until it was too late.
It was Hazen himself.
The way he had sat with his shoulders slightly curled, like someone taught that taking up too much space was dangerous. The way he had held his hands open on his knees, palms up, a posture of deliberate vulnerability—as though he had learned to show he carried no weapon before anyone even asked.
That wasn’t shyness.
That was training.
Or fear.
Or both.
Who taught you to do that, Hazen? Aurelia wondered, teeth pressing hard against the inside of her cheek.
His clothing hadn’t spoken of poverty, not really. His boots had been mended carefully, not hastily, the stitches neat and deliberate. His cloak had been lined with wool—not the extravagant velvet of courts, but sturdy, made for travel. Someone had ensured he’d be warm. Someone had cared.
And then there was the rune.
He had reached for it, again and again, fingers brushing the carved stone at his neck as if it were the only tether keeping him from slipping away entirely. That wasn’t a trinket bought in a market stall. It was old, smoothed by years of use, its edges worn not by weather but by touch. It had meaning. It had history.
He wasn’t nobody.
He was someone.
Someone important.
Maybe not in the way Melina would recognize—titles and lineages, jeweled seals and gilded chains—but in the way that mattered more. The kind of importance that came not from birthright, but from survival.
Aurelia could feel it.
Across the dim firelight, she caught Asher’s gaze. He hadn’t spoken for a long while, hadn’t looked at anyone, but now their eyes locked, and she knew.
He was thinking it too.
They had missed something.
Hazen wasn’t just some boy who found a letter. He wasn’t an accident.
He was meant to find it.
The snow thickened, flakes gathering on Aurelia’s lashes until she blinked them away. She rose slowly, brushing frost from her cloak, her knees stiff from sitting too long in the cold.
“I’m going in,” she said, her voice low, almost hesitant.
Melina didn’t move. Her jaw tightened, but she offered no response. Sawyer sat hunched forward, hands clasped tight, his face shadowed, his anger still burning under his skin. Asher only gave the smallest nod, his breath clouding in the air between them.
But as Aurelia turned toward the path, her thoughts stayed behind.
With Hazen—
the boy who had sat in silence.
The boy who had left without a sound.
The boy who had carried something in his eyes that she couldn’t name, but that gnawed at her like recognition.
And the longer she repeated his name in her mind—
Hazen—
the more it resonated, sharp and undeniable, like a word she should have remembered all along.

Chapter Text

The snow outside Hazen’s window had crusted along the edges of the glass. Thin, delicate. A brittle white line that divided his chamber from the rest of the world—a boundary that somehow felt thicker, colder, than the walls of stone surrounding him.
He lay still beneath the blankets, though they gave him no warmth. The cold clung stubbornly to his skin, seeping in as though it had taken root in his bones. His clothes—yesterday’s tunic and trousers—still clung to him too, wrinkled and damp with sweat where he had tossed and turned. He hadn’t meant to fall asleep in them. He hadn’t meant to fall asleep at all.
But at some point in the long, hollow stretch of night, after the shaking had slowed and his sobs had burned themselves dry, he had curled into himself like something forgotten, something left behind. Sleep had come not as mercy, but as surrender—his body too exhausted to fight anymore.
The light now was cruel. Morning sunlight spilled across the chamber floor, striking the edge of the desk where his journal lay open. The page waited there, blank and accusing.
Hazen did not look at it. He didn’t need to. The words he had scrawled hours earlier still haunted the inside of his skull: not enough, too different. They hung behind his eyes like smoke, impossible to blink away.
And his hands—
his hands were worse.
He pushed himself upright, moving stiffly, as though every joint had been bound in iron. His arms ached, his skin pulled tight where the cuts had crusted over. They weren’t deep. They weren’t dangerous. He told himself that again and again: not bad, not bad enough for anyone to notice. Not if he kept his sleeves long. Not if he was careful.
Still, they stung.
Dried blood clung stubbornly along the lines of his forearms, seeping into the faint creases of his wrists. He had tried to wipe it away in the night with a towel, but the smudges remained, faint and damning.
His legs trembled as he stood. Slowly, he crossed the chamber to the washbasin set beneath the narrow window. The water inside had frozen into a film at the top, thin ice that cracked when he pushed it aside.
He didn’t care.
He dipped his hands in.
The pain was immediate, biting and bright, like knives under the skin. His breath caught sharp between his teeth, but he didn’t pull away. He couldn’t.
He grabbed the cloth and began to scrub.
The blood came off slowly, dark tendrils unfurling through the icy water. His skin reddened, raw against the freezing cloth, but still he kept going. Scrubbing at his arms, at the soft skin beneath his nails, around his wrists, as though he could scour away more than stains. His body shook with the effort, but he pressed harder, harder, until the cold left his fingers numb and his arms burned with the effort.
It wasn’t just blood he was washing away.
It was last night.
It was the fire.
It was the looks.
It was Melina’s eyes on him—those sharp, measuring eyes that had cut him down as though he were nothing more than dirt clinging to her silks.
It was the silence that had followed, thick and strangling.
It was the way Sawyer had looked at him—like maybe, for just a heartbeat, Hazen had been worth defending. And that, somehow, had only made the shame worse. Because now he had failed him, too.
The water shimmered with the shape of his reflection. A pale face stared back: eyes rimmed red, shadows carved deep beneath them, lips pressed together as though to keep from splitting open.
This is what they saw.
This is why they stared.
He dropped the cloth into the basin with a soft splash and braced himself against the edges, knuckles white against the wood. His breath fogged the glass, quick and shallow.
He remembered, faintly, what his mother used to say—before she was gone, before the court had swallowed every piece of her memory except the crown she left behind.
There is no shame in being different. Wild things are not meant to apologize for their thorns.
But she was dead.
And Hazen had learned the truth of court life on his own: that different was only tolerated if it could be hidden beneath velvet and gold. That thorns were trimmed, not cherished.
A knock sounded faintly at the chamber door. Too soft to be urgent. Likely a servant, bringing morning tea or laying out clothes for him to wear.
Hazen didn’t answer.
He waited until the footsteps retreated, until silence returned, then turned from the basin and sank back into the chair by his desk.
His arms still throbbed.
His eyes still burned.
But at least, on the surface, he was clean.
The journal still lay open before him, a pen resting across the blank page. His fingers twitched. He thought about reaching for it, thought about filling the silence with words that could not leave his throat. But the weight of it was too much.
He did not write.
He only bent his head low, voice breaking into the stillness, and whispered in Cacaoian:
«Мне жаль.»
I’m sorry.
The words trembled from him, so faint they barely disturbed the air.
And he did not even know who they were for—
himself, his mother, his people.
Maybe all of them.

Chapter Text

The Vanillin Castle library held its breath.
Aurelia had been sitting in the same high-backed chair for over an hour, though her heartbeat hadn’t slowed since she first pulled the book down from the top shelf—the heavy one bound in stiff green leather with a spine of gold letters that caught the firelight like a blade.
Treaties and Lineages of the Five Border Courts.
The sort of volume noblemen left open on desks to look wise, though few ever bothered to read beyond the titles. A book meant to impress, not to be touched.
But Aurelia wasn’t here for display. She wasn’t here for performance at all.
She was here because of Hazen.
Not just Hazen—the boy with the careful smile and the quiet voice that seemed to fight itself into silence—but Hazen Dusk Kakao.
His name was there in the register, inked in a column she had never thought to examine until now.
Prince Charles Kakao of Chocokollis. Princess Velvet of the Southern Wildlands.
Their son, Hazen Dusk Kakao.
Born midwinter, Year 832.
Recognized by court decree, though never presented before the realm.
Recorded with the hereditary white-streaking of the Kakao bloodline.
Aurelia read the entry three times, her pulse sharp in her throat.
The words said nothing of what she remembered from her own lessons—that Velvet had not been born a princess at all. That she had been a peasant girl, taken in during a southern expedition, her name half-lost to old maps and trading ledgers. That she had married Charles Kakao despite the protests of nearly half the Chocokollan court.
Not everyone had accepted her.
Not everyone ever would.
And when Velvet died—too young, too quietly—it had been all too simple for the court to fold her memory away. A wrinkle pressed out of royal linen. A story whispered once, then buried.
The boy she left behind had been hidden, too.
The gates had closed. The records sealed. The court silent.
Hazen had been reduced to a footnote in a kingdom that should have been his.
But the mark remained.
Aurelia could see it as clearly as if he were sitting in front of her now: his dark hair streaked with white, a path of pale brightness like moonlight across midnight.
She had thought it strange when she first noticed it. Startling. Almost beautiful. But now—seeing the lineage etched in old ink—she realized what it meant.
It was no accident. No mere quirk of birth.
That streak was the Kakao inheritance itself—once hailed as a mark of divine favor, a sign that the gods had touched the bloodline, that its heirs were chosen. A birthright, passed firstborn to firstborn.
But what had once been holy had soured into scandal.
A reminder of a union the court had never approved.
A scar. A stain. A visible truth they had spent years trying to forget.
And yet Hazen had walked into Vanillin lands carrying it openly—whether in ignorance, or in defiance, Aurelia could not tell.
Did he know who he was?
Did he know what it meant, that streak in his hair?
Did he know what others would see if they looked closely?
Her gaze dropped again to the page, her hands curling tightly against the desk’s edge.
The timing was too sharp to ignore.
The Winter Trade Gathering would begin within days. For the first time in two years, all five border kingdoms—Vanillin, Chocokollis, Lillies, Hollien, Cephas Crood—would gather under one roof. Treaties would be redrawn. Alliances questioned. Secrets exchanged like coin.
If Hazen appeared there, unannounced—
If he were recognized before she could reach him—
If the wrong voice laid claim to his name and twisted his story—
It wouldn’t be diplomacy anymore.
It wouldn’t even be politics.
It would be war.
Aurelia’s chest tightened. She rose too quickly from her chair, the legs scraping across the floor with a sound that startled even the shadows.
Hazen Dusk Kakao.
He wasn’t merely some wandering youth with unsure words and a streak of white hair.
He was a forgotten prince, carrying southern blood in his veins, the half-buried grief of a kingdom in his eyes, and a truth powerful enough to fracture the fragile peace between realms.
And whether he was bold, or naïve, or both—whether he wanted it or not—
Hazen was going to be seen.

Chapter Text

Hazen hadn’t meant to hear them.
He had only gone to the north wing to clear his head—to slip into the narrow servant corridor that wound behind the old kitchens, where the stones still sweated with cold and snow lingered in the cracks like ghosts of winter that refused to melt.
It was quiet there. Forgotten. A place where no one expected a boy with royal blood to wander.
He liked that.
He needed that.
The walls here didn’t demand anything from him. They didn’t care about his name, or his posture, or the way his words sometimes slipped into the southern cadence his mother had taught him. In the north wing, Hazen could simply be.
Until the voices started.
Two guards. He didn’t know their names, but their laughter carried—low, sharp, the kind of laughter that tried to disguise cruelty as amusement.
“Did you see him this morning? That one—Hazen. The prince, supposedly.”
Hazen froze just before the turn in the hallway. His breath caught, sharp in his throat.
The other guard chuckled under his breath. “Prince? That’s generous.”
“Right?” the first scoffed. “I mean, sure—he’s got the streak. No one’s saying he’s not his blood. But that doesn’t mean he belongs.”
The words landed like stones in Hazen’s chest.
The second guard gave a grunt of agreement. “He looks more like a traveler’s son than a royal. Always skulking about. And that accent—did you hear it? It’s not even clean Cacaoian. There’s something… off.”
“Peasant blood,” the first muttered. “Plain as day. His mother wasn’t even from here. Southern lands, wasn’t she? Velvet—some tailor’s daughter from the coast?”
“Not even a noble,” the other replied, with that inflection that turned truth into insult. “Married in for pity, if you ask me.”
Hazen pressed his back to the wall. His cloak bunched beneath his fists, knuckles whitening before he even realized how tightly he was gripping it. His stomach twisted hard, cold and hot all at once.
He shouldn’t have been surprised.
He wasn’t.
He’d heard whispers like this his entire life—at court, in corridors, when people thought he was too young to understand, too far away to hear.
But hearing it here, now, when he was trying so hard simply to stand upright among them—hearing it as careless laughter, as if his blood were nothing more than a jest—split something raw inside him.
The guards kept talking.
“Still don’t get why he’s here now. The Gathering’s only days away. What does he think he’s doing? Reclaiming his title?”
The other gave a short, ugly laugh. “He’s just a ghost with a name.”
A beat of silence followed. Heavy. Smug.
Then more laughter.
“He doesn’t even look like one of us.”
Hazen’s breath turned sharp in his chest. He wanted to step out from behind the wall, wanted to shout, to remind them who his father was, to bare his name like a blade and cut their laughter short.
But he didn’t.
He couldn’t.
Instead, he turned away and left. Slowly. Quietly.
Not crying.
Not yet.
He counted his steps until the sound of their boots faded behind him. Until his heartbeat slowed from a roar to a drum. Until the blood in his fists stopped burning so hot he thought it might break his skin.
Two corridors away, in the shadow of an archway, he stopped.
And he let himself feel it.
Not just their words. Words he could ignore. Words he could bury.
But the truth beneath them.
They saw him.
Not for the man he wanted to be.
Not even for what he was.
They saw only what he couldn’t control—the streak in his hair, the mother he had lost too young, the southern blood in his voice, the half of him that had never been welcome in Chocokollis or anywhere else.
Half, always half.
And in this place, half was never enough.
His throat tightened, his jaw ached from holding it shut. His chest stung with something dangerously close to tears.
But he would not cry here.
Not in these halls.
Not where the stone walls might echo with his weakness.
Not where they might see him and think they’d won.
He swallowed hard, pressing his tongue against the roof of his mouth until the taste of iron cut through. He straightened his shoulders, dragged the folds of his cloak back into order, and kept walking.
His father had once told him that a Kakao prince could carry fire in his silence as well as in his sword.
So Hazen walked in silence.
The fire burned inside him.

Chapter Text

The throne room of the Lillies’ winter estate had never been built for warmth.
It was built for light.
Pale stone columns stretched high, ribbed like the stems of lilies in bloom, until they met a ceiling of flowering glass. Petals of emerald, citrine, and gold arched overhead, drinking in what little winter sun managed to break through the gray skies. Beneath, the marble floor reflected fragments of those colors—like broken jewels scattered across ice.
The gardens outside lay buried under snowdrifts, asleep until spring, but their white expanse only made the room feel brighter. The throne room glowed, a cold brilliance that revealed everything, concealed nothing.
Prince Asher stood before both thrones, posture straight, not stiff. His boots were planted firmly, but there was a carefulness in his stance—the way one stands when they know every word may tip the balance.
His mother, Queen Lily, sat with her chin resting lightly against her hand, her dark eyes watchful, sharp, patient. She had the look of someone who had weighed kingdoms before breakfast.
His father, King Azure, did not sit. He never sat when troubled. He paced before the dais, robes whispering against the marble, his hand occasionally brushing the hilt of the ceremonial sword he still carried even in court.
It was rarely a good sign.
“Asher,” the king said finally, his voice even but edged. “You’re certain it’s him?”
“I didn’t say I was certain,” Asher replied, careful, measured. “But Aurelia is. And I trust her instinct.”
Queen Lily’s eyebrow lifted a fraction. “Aurelia has good instincts. She also has a temper when someone has been wronged.”
Asher allowed himself the ghost of a smile, though it did not last long. He stepped closer to the thrones. “I’ve seen the boy myself. He has the streak—the white through his hair, exactly as the lineages recorded. He speaks Cacaoian, at least in part, though softened by another accent. And he carries himself like someone trained to vanish in plain sight.”
“Or like someone with something to hide,” King Azure muttered, turning sharply on his heel.
Asher met his father’s gaze evenly. “You would hide too if no one ever gave you a place to belong.”
That earned him a glance from both his parents—brief, sharp, like a candle flame catching against glass.
Queen Lily’s fingers tapped gently against the arm of her chair. “Hazen Dusk Kakao,” she murmured, speaking the name aloud as though tasting it. “Son of Prince Charles of Chocokollis, and Velvet of the Southern Wildlands.”
“Not of the Wildlands,” King Azure corrected with a scowl. “From them. Velvet was no princess. She was a tailor’s daughter plucked from obscurity—no court training, no alliances. Charles married her against the wishes of half his kingdom.”
“She was also clever,” Queen Lily countered softly. “And brave. And hated for both.”
Asher inclined his head. “Which is why Hazen is being ignored now. It’s easier to pretend he doesn’t exist than to face what he represents.”
For a moment, silence fell heavy in the room. The only sound was the winter wind rattling a snow-laden branch against the stained-glass window, tapping like a warning.
King Azure stopped pacing and turned fully toward his son. His voice was colder now, deliberate.
“The Trade Gathering is in two days, Asher. The eyes of all five kingdoms will be fixed upon this summit. You ask me to acknowledge a half-hidden royal child of a rival house, with a disputed bloodline and no official title? To take that risk, with Vanillin already circling like hawks and Cephas Crood looking for any crack in our walls?”
“I’m asking you to see him,” Asher replied firmly, stepping forward despite the weight of the king’s words. “Really see him. Hazen hasn’t made a claim. He’s barely spoken to anyone. He didn’t arrive with banners or escorts—he came alone. That means something.”
“Or it means he was sent,” Azure snapped. “What if this is a ploy? What if Chocokollis wants him recognized at our expense? What if Vanillin twists him into their pawn before we can lift a hand? You think a boy like that walks into our halls without consequence?”
Asher’s jaw tightened, but his voice did not falter. “Then let us be the ones who treat him like a person, instead of a liability. If chaos comes, we will already be standing where honor placed us.”
Queen Lily’s gaze softened faintly at her son’s words, though her face remained composed. She shifted, leaning forward slightly.
“He’s about Emery’s age, isn’t he?”
Asher blinked. “Who?”
“Your cousin,” Lily said, with a faint smile. “The one you sparred with every morning until your arms gave out.”
A snort escaped him despite the tension. “Emery? Emery would’ve challenged Hazen to a duel in the first hour.”
Lily’s smile faded, her eyes distant for a moment. “And Hazen would have let her win. Then disappeared before anyone could praise him for it.”
Asher’s chest tightened. He nodded once. “Exactly.”
King Azure exhaled, folding his arms, the weight of his crown visible in the slope of his shoulders. “I want eyes on him,” he said at last. “Quiet ones. If he is who you believe, then we cannot afford to be caught flat-footed when the court begins to whisper.”
“I’ve already set someone to the task,” Asher admitted. “A rider I trust. And Aurelia has been watching him as well. She won’t let him vanish without being seen.”
“Good,” Lily murmured, her tone quieter now. Almost sad. “Because if the court does recognize him publicly at the Gathering…”
She did not finish the thought.
She didn’t need to.
They all knew what it would mean.
It would not merely shift the balance of power.
It would crack it wide open.
And Hazen Dusk Kakao, whether he wished it or not, stood at the fault line

Chapter Text

The halls of the Cephas Crood palace were carved from pale stone that drank in the desert sun and held it like a secret. Light poured in through lattice-cut windows, broken into shifting patterns that painted the floor with gold and shadow. The walls hummed faintly with heat, as if the very stone remembered the forge that had shaped them.
But despite the sun’s fire, the inner sanctum of the royal residence always felt cold.
Not in temperature—never that—but in its silence. Every step Sawyer took echoed against the polished marble floors, a sound too loud, as though even walking here was an intrusion. The air pressed in, heavy with the stillness of servants who did not speak and guards who did not breathe unless commanded. The heat lived in the stone, but the people were made of stillness.
Sawyer passed beneath an archway carved with flame sigils and entered the council chamber without knocking.
The chamber was large but strangely bare, its only ornament the central fountain that poured endlessly into a shallow mosaic pool. The scene at the bottom depicted the founding of Cephas Crood—men rising from sand and stone, fire cupped in their hands, rivers carved from nothing but dust. A reminder that power here was forged, never given.
King Joshua stood near the fountain, his hand braced on its rim as he studied a sand-worn scroll. His dark skin caught the light of the water, making him look carved from basalt, sharp-eyed and unyielding. His desert robes, pale linen embroidered with lapis thread, rustled faintly in the draft.
He did not look up.
Queen Richess was seated beneath the shaded archway, her posture so precise she seemed sculpted there. She had draped herself deliberately where the sunlight stopped short of touching her, her jewels gleaming in the half-light. Her eyes were sharper still, harder than any blade.
“Sawyer,” she said, voice cool as the marble.
“Mother.” He bowed his head once, then looked toward his father. “Father.”
Joshua’s voice was calm but distracted as he read. “You were with the others. By the Vanillin river.”
“I was,” Sawyer confirmed.
“And?”
“She was there.”
“The boy.” Richess’s lip curled faintly, as though even the name left an aftertaste. “Hazen.”
“He introduced himself. Barely,” Sawyer said, remaining near the entrance. “But it was him.”
Joshua’s eyes flicked up at last, narrowing. “And he bears the Kakao streak?”
Sawyer nodded once. “White through the hair, like the records. But there’s something else.”
Richess’s brow arched, interest sharpened. “Which is?”
“Quiet,” Sawyer said slowly. “Watchful. He speaks only when necessary. He doesn’t try to pretend he belongs—because he knows he’s not permitted to.”
Joshua exhaled through his nose, finally rolling the scroll and setting it aside. “Because he does not belong. His mother was no more a princess than the girl who cleans the sand from my sandals.”
“Velvet of the Southern Wastes,” Richess added, her voice edged with disdain. “A tailor’s child. Married for love, not duty.”
“A mistake,” Joshua finished, his tone flat.
Sawyer’s jaw clenched, though he kept his voice even. “Maybe. But that doesn’t change the blood he carries. You cannot erase the Kakao line.”
Richess’s eyes narrowed, flashing like obsidian struck against steel. “Others have tried. Quietly. Effectively.”
“You’re suggesting he should be erased?” Sawyer asked, his voice low, dangerous.
“I am suggesting he was,” Joshua said bluntly. “And now some fool has allowed him to walk into the open again.”
“He didn’t come to stir trouble,” Sawyer shot back. “He didn’t demand notice, didn’t flaunt his name. It was your courtiers who whispered first. It was your guards who stared.”
“That is the nature of power,” Richess said smoothly, tilting her head. “Even those without it draw attention when they carry a name others fear.”
Sawyer shook his head. “No. It’s more than that. He has more than a name. He has… presence.”
The word hung there.
Joshua’s gaze sharpened, narrowing. “That sounds dangerously close to sympathy.”
Sawyer did not flinch. He did not look away. “I didn’t say I pity him. I said I respect him. That is different.”
The chamber fell silent but for the fountain’s steady burble. Its waters spilled into the mosaic pool, dancing over stone men who had once claimed fire from the earth. Sawyer’s eyes lingered on the image—the taming of flame, the carving of rivers—and the irony weighed heavy. His ancestors had carved power from nothing. Hazen had been given power in blood, and yet the world pretended it did not exist.
Finally, Joshua turned fully toward his son, his expression unreadable. His voice was low but firm. “The Trade Gathering is in two days. Every crown, every council, every knife hidden behind a smile will be there. You are to remain neutral. Your loyalty is to this house, to Cephas Crood—not to a boy with half a claim and foreign blood.”
Sawyer stepped back once, his hands clasping behind him in a soldier’s rest. He bowed, crisp, controlled. “Of course, Father.”
But when he lifted his head, his eyes betrayed what his words did not.
A desert wind had already risen in his mind, tugging at his convictions, whispering of something larger than loyalty alone.
He left the chamber without another word, the heavy silence swallowing his footsteps until the sun-scorched corridor opened before him again. Heat pressed against his skin, thick and suffocating, as though the palace itself wanted to burn the doubts from him.
He stopped for only a moment, looking out through the lattice-cut windows at the blazing sands beyond. The desert stretched, endless, merciless. And yet, it had always been the place where those cast out learned to survive.
Hazen Dusk Kakao.
The boy who should have been forgotten. The boy who wasn’t supposed to stand in any kingdom’s story.
And yet, Sawyer thought, perhaps that was why he was destined to rewrite it.

Chapter Text

The breeze through Hollien’s western windows always smelled faintly green—like mint, or crushed pine, or a field that had just been brushed by rain.
It wasn’t cold. Not exactly. But cool enough that Melina pulled a second wrap around her shoulders and tightened the silk ribbon in her braid.
Everything here was quiet, polished, and fine.
The palace silence wasn’t peace. It was pressure. Heavy. Expectant. Like the marble halls were holding their breath, waiting for someone important to decide something behind doors she wasn’t allowed to open.
Melina hated it.
She hated waiting.
And more than anything, she hated not being seen.
She sat by the tall window, glaring down at the sand-colored path that led toward the lower courtyard—where the royal carriages gleamed like jewelry as the servants polished them for the journey to Cephas Crood.
Two days until the Trade Gathering.
Two days until the five kingdoms gathered under one roof, measuring every glance and weighing every word.
She had been preparing for this all year.
Her Hollien vowels now carried song instead of stone. She had memorized every noble crest, every trade law, every bloodline that mattered. She had bent her spine into perfect posture, rehearsed smiles until her cheeks ached, trimmed every imperfection until she gleamed.
She had done everything right.
And then came Hazel.
Quiet, strange Hazel with the white streak in her hair and that dark, woodsmoke stare. A peasant-blood child who barely knew how to bow, who stumbled through words like a stable boy at his first feast—and yet somehow, somehow, people looked at her.
Melina’s arms locked tight around her knees. Her nails dug crescents into her sleeves.
She had seen the way Sawyer looked at her.
And worse—the way Aurelia defended her, as though she had any right to be shielded.
It didn’t make sense. She wasn’t trained. She didn’t even know how to hold a knife at table properly. She didn’t belong.
She wasn’t one of them.
And yet—whispers rose in every corridor Hazen passed. Heads turned. People watched.
Like she mattered.
Melina’s stomach churned. Her lips curled before she even realized the words had slipped past them in a bitter hiss.
“Stupid little…” Her voice dropped to a mutter, ugly and sharp. “…half-thing.”
The word was quiet, but venom carried in it all the same.
She stiffened at the sound of voices below. Slowly, she moved to the stairwell railing, careful not to be seen.
Her father’s tone rose from the gallery—King Hansen, clipped and practical:
“We can’t afford another shift in Vanillin’s loyalty. If they lean toward Lillies or Crood, our sea contracts collapse.”
Her mother, Queen Aliyah, answered with polished certainty:
“Velvet’s son being seen this close to Vanillin’s border changes everything. Whether Chocokollis claims him or not, he unsettles the perception of stability.”
Melina’s lip twitched. Son. They kept calling him that. As though repeating it made it true.
Hansen muttered, “We’ll lose leverage if we treat her like a true royal. But if we ignore her and he’s recognized—”
“She’s already being watched,” Aliyah cut in smoothly. “The court will turn the moment his name is spoken aloud.”
A pause.
Then Hansen again, gruff: “She’s just one girl.”
“She’s a girl with a name. And a mark,” Aliyah said coldly. “If you don’t account for names, Hansen, kingdoms fall.”
Melina stepped back, her pulse hammering.
So even they—her own parents—were caught up in Hazel.
Not her training. Not her speeches. Not her flawless performance at last week’s garden forum.
No. Only him.
Only Hazel Kakao.
The half-wild brat with peasant blood and peasant manners. The boy who didn’t even stand straight in court, who didn’t even belong in these halls.
Melina stormed back to her room, silk skirts whispering like knives. Her lips pressed into a thin, shaking line.
She wasn’t afraid of Hazel.
She wasn’t threatened.
But if Hazen Kakao thought he could just appear and let the world fold around him, if he thought all her years of preparation would simply be forgotten in his shadow—
He was about to learn.
Melina would see to that.

Chapter Text

They had gathered under the orange canopies near the west courtyard of Cephas Crood’s outer palace—a shaded enclave where the students of the royal academies often met during diplomatic summits.
Today, the heat was mild, tempered by a restless breeze. The wind carried the tang of dried citrus and something metallic—iron, perhaps, from the smithy smoldering below the terrace.
Asher, Sawyer, Aurelia, and Melina sat in a rough circle on the carved stone benches. Coral, the quietest of their year, perched just behind Melina’s shoulder—back straight, gaze lowered, hands folded neatly in her lap like an obedient servant who had somehow been misplaced among nobility.
Hazen wasn’t with them.
Of course she wasn’t.
“She’s going to be there,” Asher was saying, his voice tight with something between warning and reluctant awe. “You all know it. The delegation from Chocokollis arrives at dawn, and if she’s not hidden before then—”
“She doesn’t have to be hidden,” Aurelia cut in, her eyes flashing with that unbearable righteousness she was known for. “He’s not making a claim. He’s just existing. That shouldn’t be a threat.”
Melina rolled her eyes so hard it almost hurt. “Oh, please. Spare us the saintly speeches. You know how this works. She walks into that hall with that ridiculous streak in her hair, one noble gasps, another bends a knee—then what? Suddenly Hazen Kakao is a prince again? Suddenly his name is back on every ledger as though centuries of protocol mean nothing?”
“She’s not a rumor, she’s a living person,” Sawyer said flatly.
Melina turned on him with a tight smile. “She’s an embarrassment to the crown. You saw it—she couldn’t even follow the simplest forms of address. Doesn’t know our customs. Doesn’t even try.”
“She’s not trying to be you,” Aurelia snapped. “That’s what you hate, isn’t it? That he doesn’t bend to your rules.”
Melina’s jaw clenched. She didn’t respond—she didn’t need to. Aurelia’s words were childish, as if obedience wasn’t the price of survival here.
Still, the silence that followed dragged long and sharp, prickling against Melina’s skin.
And then Coral leaned forward.
Coral, who almost never spoke, who had risen from nothing through silence, courtesy, and her ability to make herself small. A peasant-born Wildlander who had earned her place by vanishing behind bowing and correct dialects. Melina had always, in some private corner of her mind, respected her for that.
Now, Coral’s voice slid through the air—soft, sly, and dangerous enough to prickle Melina’s spine.
“What if we just cursed his kingdom with a plague?” Coral whispered. “Nothing grand. Just small enough to keep them from traveling. Chocokollis misses the Gathering, Hazen misses the hall… and the problem takes care of itself.”
The words landed like poison poured beneath a doorframe.
Melina blinked.
It had been said like a joke—crooked, almost lazy. But something about the evenness of Coral’s tone… the way her lips barely moved… told Melina there was more beneath it.
Asher and Aurelia were still bickering—arguing about Hazen’s “rights,” as if a crown was a child’s toy to be shared—but Melina barely heard them.
Her mind drifted, cold and calculating.
A plague.
A delay.
An inconvenience severe enough that Hazen wouldn’t appear in the hall at all.
Ridiculous. Of course it was ridiculous.
And yet…
Her fingers curled slowly against her skirts as the thought unfurled in her mind, sharp and gleaming. It didn’t have to be real. That was the beauty of it. Illness didn’t have to spread; it only had to be whispered.
A handful of letters written in the right hand. A few murmurs by trusted mouths. Words like “fever” or “cough” dropped in the wrong corridors. A convoy delayed at the border for “precaution.” A noble envoy wringing their hands, murmuring that perhaps Chocokollis should wait another season before appearing in public.
It didn’t need to be a plague. It only needed to look like one.
And Hazen?
Forgotten again. As he should be.
Melina’s throat hummed with something halfway between a scoff and a laugh. She almost spoke aloud, but caught herself—though a mutter slipped free under her breath, so low Coral might have been the only one to catch it.
“Stupid little mistake.”
Ugly words, sharp with the weight of an implied slur, dragged with venom.
Her heart beat faster. For the first time since Hazen had arrived, she felt not only anger but a dangerous, thrilling possibility.
If Hazen thought she could just stumble into their court and let the world fold around her, if she thought years of Melina’s work could be undone by one accident of blood and a streak of hair…
Well.
Melina smiled faintly, eyes narrowing.
What if Coral was right?
What if it could be done?

Chapter Text

Melina couldn’t stop thinking about it.
The words Coral had whispered slithered at the edge of her mind like smoke she couldn’t wave away:
“What if we just cursed their kingdom with a plague?”
She had pretended to laugh at the time—tilting her head, letting her voice lift in that polished, condescending way that made peasants think she was amused. A joke, nothing more. Just backwoods humor.
But now, alone in her chamber with only the low hum of the palace lanterns for company, the idea refused to leave her. It wasn’t the plague itself that clung to her. It was the possibility.
The space the idea opened—
—where Hazen never showed up.
—where Hazen never had the chance to stand in the great hall and be seen.
—where Hazen never received the floor, the crown’s attention, the flicker of sympathy from the masses.
Melina’s fingertips traced the edge of her rose-gold sleeve, the silk gleaming in the candlelight. Her stomach twisted—not with fear, but with sharp, electric irritation.
She rose and paced to the open window.
The night wind came warm, scented with crushed sage and iron-rich dust from the hills. From this vantage, she could see the distant gates of Cephas Crood. Already, wagons painted in the colors of foreign courts wound their way toward the city, flags snapping in the dusk light.
Two days. That was all.
Melina’s jaw tightened.
It shouldn’t matter. Hazen was no one. Nothing.
A bastard child of a royal fool who had thrown away his crown for a wild woman from the forests. A half-trained, soft-voiced little—Melina exhaled sharply through her nose—mistake.
He had no alliances. No crest. No sense of protocol. Hazen didn’t even speak properly—fumbling dialects, tripping over court idioms as though the words themselves refused to belong to him.
He had no palace, no banner, no right.
And yet…
People looked at him.
Even when he was silent. Even when he sat wrong at table or mangled a greeting. Even when he stood in the corner, awkward as a servant boy, he pulled eyes. Drew whispers. Tilted the room.
Like gravity.
And that—that was dangerous.
Melina pressed her lips into a thin line and turned from the window. Slowly, deliberately, she lowered herself back into her chair. Her skirts rustled around her like restless birds.
She didn’t want Hazen dead. That wasn’t the point.
This wasn’t cruelty—it was order. Balance. A reminder that bloodlines mattered. That centuries of alliance and ceremony couldn’t simply be brushed aside because some half-wild child had a streak of white hair and a face people found… intriguing.
Coral’s suggestion had been crude. But the spirit of it—oh, the spirit of it was clever.
A whisper.
A delay.
Not a plague, exactly. Something softer. More elegant.
A warning of illness. A suggestion of contagion. Enough to stall Chocokollis at the border. Enough to make the other kingdoms wary. Enough to smudge Hazen’s already fragile image with a hint of shame, of weakness.
People would talk.
They always did.
And if Melina was careful—if she chose the right mouths to whisper through—the doubt would spread faster than any fever.
Hazen wouldn’t have to be harmed. Not physically. Just… sidelined. Detoured. Removed from the center of the stage that was never meant for him in the first place.
Melina let her tongue press against the back of her teeth, and a low murmur escaped, half-thought, half-spite:
“Poor little thing. Doesn’t even know which table to sit at.”
The words tasted like an insult, like something worse she dared not say aloud, though her mind supplied it anyway.
She reached for parchment in the drawer of her desk. The seal pressed into its edge bore her family’s secondary sigil: a curling vine tangled with a mirrored thorn. Not her official crest—never that.
But that was the point.
She dipped her pen into ink. Her hand was steady.
She didn’t write Hazen’s name. She didn’t have to.
Instead, she set down a few well-placed lines, smooth as a blade slipped under the ribs:
“Concerns have arisen regarding reports of illness in the eastern quarter. Several from the Chocokollan unit show mild symptoms. Precaution urged. Caution advised. Discretion requested in further correspondence.”
So clean. So careful. So utterly believable.
She would not send it through Coral—no, Coral had played her part already. Someone lower. Disposable. Someone who would never think to question the words they carried.
Melina sealed the parchment with wax, the mirrored thorn gleaming faintly red in the candlelight.
It was only a message.
Only a hesitation.
And if Hazen Kakao never appeared in the Gathering hall—
Well.
That wouldn’t be Melina’s fault.
That would be fate.

Chapter Text

The royal pavilion of the Kingdom of Lillies stood like a jewel of white and gold on the sandstone ridgeline above Cephas Crood’s gathering courts. No structure in the desert summit grounds was ever placed without intent, and the Lillies had claimed the high ground as they always did—politically, visually, symbolically. Their tent looked less like cloth and more like a risen temple, its canopy staked into the stone itself, its silken walls heavy with embroidered lilies blooming upward in threads of silver.
From within, the desert sun filtered through the pale canvas as diluted gold, casting the chamber in a light that was both warm and weightless, as though the walls themselves were breathing. The desert wind rolled over the ridges in rhythmic hushes, occasionally stirring the flaps and letting the scent of sagebrush and distant market fires drift inside.
But for all the beauty and power the pavilion projected, Prince Asher felt only heaviness pressing down on his chest.
He stood near the center of the chamber, posture tall but tense, while before him, King Azure and Queen Lily sat across from each other at a low stone table. Between them was spread a parchment map of the Trade Routes, inked coastlines gleaming faintly in the dappled light. His father’s rings clicked against the stone each time he shifted his hand. His mother’s dark fingers glided softly over the lines, searching for something that wasn’t marked there.
Neither spoke for several long breaths. The air thickened, the silence deliberate.
Finally, Azure raised his eyes and gestured Asher forward.
“Sit, Asher,” his father said, his tone both command and invitation. “This concerns you.”
The words stirred a deeper unease. It was never a good sign when his parents spoke in tandem—Azure all iron logic, Lily all sharpened grace, two halves of the same blade.
Asher lowered himself onto the bench, shoulders squared but restless. His mother did not look up. Only the faintest flex of her jaw betrayed that she was listening.
“We’ve received word,” Azure began, voice smooth but heavy, “that Chocokollis may delay their arrival.”
Asher’s brows furrowed. “Delay? Why?”
“Rumors of sickness,” his father replied. He tapped one finger on the map near the southern road. “Whispers, nothing more. Nothing dangerous.”
At that, Queen Lily’s eyes flicked up, their dark depths gleaming like oiled stone. “But enough,” she said evenly, “to cause hesitation.”
Asher’s chest tightened. “Rumors? From where?”
Azure’s silence said more than words. He folded his hands, leaning back as if to test his son’s patience.
It was Lily who finally answered, her voice measured and exact. “We are not the only ones who have noticed Hazen’s presence here, Asher. And we are not the only ones calculating what it means.”
The name landed between them like a stone in still water.
Hazen.
Asher’s throat tensed. His mind flickered—too quickly, too vividly—to the image of him: a boy standing alone in the outer courts, white streak in his hair catching the light, uncertain but refusing to bow.
His gut twisted.
“So we’re relying on gossip now?” Asher asked, struggling to keep the edge out of his voice. “Letting whispers carry the weight of policy?”
Azure’s gaze sharpened. “We did not start the rumor,” he said. “We have simply chosen not to correct it.”
Asher’s jaw tightened until it ached. “Because it benefits us.”
Lily finally folded her hands atop the stone table, fingers laced like a net. “Asher. Listen to me carefully.” Her tone softened, but only slightly. “If Hazen Kakao walks into that chamber—if Chocokollis acknowledges him, embraces his name again—it shifts everything. The board redraws itself overnight. We lose leverage. Vanillin will retreat into paranoia. Hollien will recalibrate its alliances. And Cephas Crood—” she let the words fall heavy, “—he will be watching.”
“He’s one boy,” Asher said, his voice cracking sharper than intended.
“He’s not one boy,” Lily said, with rare force. “He’s a symbol. Of lineage. Of defiance. Of foreign blood braided into a crown that should have remained pure. He complicates everything.”
The words stung, even though they weren’t directed at him. They carried a disdain that Asher had heard in other voices these past weeks, always circling Hazen, never touching him directly.
And yet, it was true—Hazen complicated things simply by existing.
Asher’s gaze drifted toward the side of the pavilion where the flap stirred against the breeze. Beyond the ridge, the palace stretched in pale sandstone tiers, alive with banners and servants and soldiers. Somewhere down there, Hazen was probably walking alone again, avoided in the corridors, doubted in every glance, targeted in every whispered aside.
He didn’t ask for this, Asher thought.
The words slipped out before he could stop them.
“He didn’t ask for this.”
Azure’s eyes softened, though his voice remained steady. “No one ever asks for power, son. They inherit it. Or they threaten it.”
The sentence lingered like a drawn blade.
Lily rose gracefully to her feet, brushing her silks as if sweeping away invisible dust. Her shadow stretched long in the golden light. “We will not move against him directly,” she said. “That is not our way. But we can shape the narrative. If enough parties believe Chocokollis compromised, their delegation enters the court already weakened. If Hazen is advised—quietly—not to appear, then no one loses face.”
“No one,” Asher said bitterly, “except him.”
Silence swelled like heat.
His father stood, crossed the short distance, and laid a heavy hand on Asher’s shoulder. His grip was firm, grounding. “We admire your heart,” Azure said quietly. “Truly. But there is a time for compassion—and a time for clarity.”
“And what about honor?” The words tore out before Asher could restrain them.
Lily’s gaze flicked to her son, softer now but unbending. “Honor does not live in words, Asher. It lives in outcomes. If Hazen’s presence leads to war, to broken trade, to famine—what honor will we have preserved then?”
Asher said nothing. His throat burned.
Because deep down, he knew their argument held weight. Politically, it was sound. Tactically, it was sharp. The Kingdom of Lillies thrived on foresight, on seeing the line of consequence before others stumbled into it. His parents weren’t wrong.
But still—
It didn’t feel right.
And in a world where everyone wove their own versions of truth, that was the only compass Asher still trusted: his gut, his conscience, and the memory of Hazen’s eyes the first time they had met by the river. Not defiant, not frightened. Simply steady.
“I won’t betray him,” Asher said finally, his voice low but clear.
“We’re not asking you to,” Lily said smoothly. But there was steel beneath her calm. “What we demand is this—you will not protect him at the expense of your crown. Do you understand?”
The pavilion held its breath.
Asher nodded once. Slowly.
Not in agreement.
But in understanding.
Because there were more moves coming.
Because the board was shifting faster than anyone realized.
And because somewhere down below, Hazen Kakao walked unknowing into the center of it.

Chapter Text

The palace archives room in Vanillin Castle always smelled like pressed parchment, lemon wax, and frost.
Even in the height of summer, when the valley air outside was thick with honeysuckle and buzzing with bees, the archives remained untouched by warmth. The white-stone walls seemed to drink in every draft, every whisper of winter, until the air inside held a permanent stillness—a chill that pressed against Aurelia’s skin and made her spine itch with restlessness.
She sat perched on the edge of a velvet bench, her slippered feet swinging just slightly, though she would never allow her mother to notice. The rugs beneath her were too neat, too symmetrical, too suffocatingly proper, and Aurelia had to bite back the childish urge to scuff one askew with her heel, just to see what would happen.
Beside her, Queen Sylvia ruled her little dominion of parchment with the same sharp grace she ruled the realm. The long table was lined with files in fastidious order, each one stacked in ranks according to tier: nobles first, merchant-blooded second, foreign-born third. As always. It was a ceremony in itself, this review of the Vanillin Academy intake, and Sylvia presided over it with gloved hands as precise as a jeweler’s, lifting each application and setting it down as though she were folding fabric into a chest.
She didn’t ask Aurelia’s opinion. Not really. She never did.
But the invitation to sit in the archives meant something: Sylvia wanted her to watch. To see the order of things. To learn.
For a time, Aurelia stared blankly, her chin propped in her palm, her eyes following the identical, cream-white pages as her mother skimmed through them. But boredom has its own way of sharpening the senses, and soon Aurelia noticed the rhythm falter.
Halfway through the merchant-born tier, a document surfaced that didn’t belong.
It was wrong in small but glaring ways. Cream-colored parchment instead of crisp white. Ink that looked a little older, edges blurred where time had bled into the fibers. The seal on it had cracked and flaked at the corners. It hadn’t been part of the stack originally.
Sylvia’s hand stilled. Her fingers lifted the parchment delicately, as though it were a fragment of fragile glass. A faint crease appeared between her brows.
Aurelia leaned forward, curiosity breaking through the stillness.
The header was stamped in uneven ink:
Chocokollis Royal Academy Application
Submitted for: Hazen Dusk Kakao
Year: Junior (transfer)
Language proficiency: Limited in Central Dialect, fluent in Cacaoian
Family ties: Prince Charles Kakao (paternal); Lady Velvet, née unknown (maternal)
Aurelia’s chest tightened. The name pulsed against her vision, strange yet electric, like something half-remembered from a story she wasn’t supposed to read.
Her mother’s tone, when it came, was flat, unreadable.
“Well. That name didn’t take long to surface.”
“You knew about this?” Aurelia’s voice was sharper than she intended, cutting through the hush of the archives.
Sylvia looked up at her daughter, her lips pressed into a thin, bloodless line. “It wasn’t confirmed.”
Aurelia’s pulse quickened. She leaned closer, her eyes raking over the uneven scrawl of handwriting, the desperate tilt of the letters.
“So why is his application here? He’s not from Vanillin. He didn’t attend our prep schools. He shouldn’t even be on this list.”
“Because his mother was born on our soil,” Sylvia replied, her voice carrying the cool certainty of a verdict. “Before marrying into Chocokollis, Velvet lived in Vanillin three years under merchant protection. She applied for dual status before her death. That status extends to the child—if the right threads are pulled.”
The words landed heavy in Aurelia’s chest.
The child.
Not just a name. A boy. A prince.
“So Hazen…” Her throat worked around the syllables. “He’s one of us? Legally?”
“Not quite.” Sylvia set the page down, folding her hands over it like a keeper caging something dangerous. “But legally enough for someone in Chocokollis to have tried submitting him through our system. Likely to gain legitimacy. Or protection.”
Aurelia rose from the bench, unable to stay still. Her steps carried her to the arched window, its glass latticed with iron in perfect diamond shapes. Beyond, the palace gardens sprawled in pale lavender lines, the hedges clipped to geometric precision, as if nature itself had been scolded into obedience.
“Why didn’t anyone say anything?” she asked, her voice thinner now, caught between anger and disbelief.
“Because his name complicates things,” Sylvia said simply. “Especially now. Especially with the Gathering so near.”
Aurelia turned sharply. “Are we really pretending he doesn’t exist?”
“We are not pretending,” Sylvia said. “We are choosing timing.”
“That’s a nice word for stalling.”
Sylvia’s expression didn’t shift. She was a statue of elegance, carved in white marble, smelling faintly of lilac ink and winter air.
“I am protecting our people, Aurelia. The other kingdoms are circling already. Crood is watching him. Hollien is whispering. Even Lillies calculates in silence. If Vanillin steps forward now—openly—we lose the neutrality that keeps us safe.”
“But he belongs somewhere,” Aurelia pressed, her hands curling at her sides. “He’s trying.”
“He,” Sylvia corrected softly but firmly, “is a political matchstick. And you—” her eyes cut like shards of ice “—will not strike it.”
The words lodged in Aurelia’s chest. She stared at her mother: beautiful, cold, relentless. A queen who measured loyalty in risks avoided rather than lives acknowledged.
Her gaze fell again to the page.
Hazen’s name wasn’t even centered. Whoever had written it had done so with a shaking hand, letters slanting unevenly, ink pooling too dark in places. There was no crest, no proper seal of Chocokollis, no endorsement. Just a boy’s future sent across borders in a fragile plea.
Hazen Dusk Kakao.
Aurelia whispered the name, as though speaking it might tether it to reality.
“He’s in our year.”
Sylvia’s brow lifted faintly. “What?”
“Hazen,” Aurelia said again, stronger this time. “He’s the same age as us. This would have been our cohort. If he had grown up here, like we did.”
Silence stretched. The kind of silence where a hundred thoughts tangled beneath the surface, none of them permitted to rise.
But Aurelia understood her mother well enough to read what the silence meant.
It meant yes.
It meant danger.
It meant don’t you dare.
That night, after the castle had gone still and the frost returned to the windows, Aurelia crept back to the archives. Her heartbeat echoed against the stone halls as she slipped inside, the moonlight painting pale lines across the floor.
The parchment still lay on the desk where her mother had left it. Unmoved. Untouched. Forgotten, or perhaps deliberately ignored.
Aurelia’s fingers closed around it, trembling slightly. She folded it, careful not to damage the brittle edges, and slipped it into the lining of her travel cloak.
Because whatever the court wanted to ignore…
She wouldn’t.

Chapter Text

Melina had always understood the art of leverage.
You didn’t have to like someone. You didn’t even have to respect them. Respect, after all, was for equals—and Melina didn’t believe in equals. The world turned on need, not on affection. As long as someone needed something from her—and she could extract something in return—then the balance of power tilted neatly into her hands, as natural as a scale finding its weight.
That was the beauty of her carefully cultivated arrangement with Coral.
Coral was nothing remarkable on the surface. A quiet little thing—peasant-born, with a plain face and a meek voice that never carried above a whisper unless pressed. She was background. Forgettable. That was precisely what made her useful. Never loud, never ambitious, never stupidly visible like Hazen. Coral knew her place and stayed there—obedient, small, but sharp in her own way. She gathered whispers like dust on a windowsill, and when Melina asked, she delivered them with trembling precision.
And in return? Melina threw her scraps. A recommendation here. A false smile and half-praise before a tutor there. Once, she’d even arranged for Coral to be moved into slightly better quarters—barely an improvement, but Coral had looked at her as though she’d been gifted the crown itself.
Melina was not generous by nature. But she rewarded loyalty when it suited her.
And Coral remembered every single crumb.
They sat now in one of the long-abandoned astronomy towers of Vanillin Castle, high above the lavender gardens and the white-bricked courts. Once, scholars had charted the heavens here. Now the place reeked of damp stone, rotting beams, and moth-eaten tapestries—a forgotten room for forgotten business. Perfect for Melina’s purposes.
She sat in the tallest-backed chair, her hands folded neatly on her lap, her chin tilted high in a way that forced Coral to look up at her when she spoke. Across from her, Coral sat hunched, twining a loose thread around her finger until it cut into her skin, her eyes darting anywhere but directly at Melina.
“You understand,” Melina said at last, her voice smooth as lacquer, “that this is not about cruelty. This is about necessity. I have worked my entire life to be flawless for the Gathering—every lesson, every debate, every bow. And now some half-blood boy with bad posture and an accent dares to wander in and breathe the same air as us, as if that crown were meant for him? I will not have it.”
Coral’s gaze flicked up, nervous. “You want him… gone.”
“Not gone forever.” Melina’s lips curved into the faintest smile. “Don’t look so horrified, Coral. I’m not plotting murder. I want him delayed. Removed. Out of sight, at least for the Gathering. Let him reappear the next day, wide-eyed, disheveled, and desperate with some ridiculous excuse about being lost in the corridors. But the moment will have passed. The spotlight will be mine—and his little stunt of existing will be nothing more than a footnote.”
Coral hesitated, then said softly, “I know someone.”
Melina’s brows arched. “Do you now?”
That “someone” arrived before dusk.
His name was Coriolanus Flour, though Melina thought the name far too grand for such a shabby creature. He slunk into the tower like a stray dog—faded jacket patched at the shoulders, greasy hair slicked into something that might have been called a style decades ago, and a smile that came far too quickly, far too easily. Even his shadow seemed dishonest.
But Coral, for all her shaking hands and wide eyes, nodded stiffly in his direction. “This is him.”
Melina let her gaze sweep over him like she was inspecting livestock. Finally, she said, “You bow poorly.”
Coriolanus stiffened, dipped lower. “Princess.”
“Spare me the charm,” Melina cut in, sharp as glass. “Charm is wasted when I can already smell desperation on you. I assume Coral has told you what I require.”
“She has.” His smile tightened, but he held his ground. “You’re not the first royal to request a… disappearance.”
Melina laughed softly. “What a quaint way to phrase it. Don’t play coy with me, Flour. You’ll do precisely as I say, or you’ll never again find work within a mile of this court. Am I clear?”
Coriolanus inclined his head stiffly. “Crystal.”
“You will not hurt him,” Melina continued. Her voice was silken, but her words cut. “No bruises. No blood. Not a hair out of place when he reemerges. I don’t want rumors of cruelty following me. Do you understand? This isn’t about Hazen—it’s about me.”
“I pride myself on discretion,” Coriolanus said quickly, raising his hands in mock-solemnity. “A little sleep draught if he struggles. Seclusion. Panic. Nothing lasting. I’ve got a cellar beneath the Crood grain quarter—abandoned, dry, untouched for years. He’ll be quiet. He’ll be invisible. And no one will think to look.”
Melina’s nose wrinkled faintly at the idea of Hazen—a prince, technically—tossed into some vermin-infested cellar. The image was undignified. But then again, wasn’t that the point? Strip away the false dignity. Show him what he really was: an outsider playing at royalty.
“Payment,” Coriolanus added, rubbing two fingers together.
Melina’s smile sharpened. “You’ll receive recommendation enough to ensure your name is whispered for future contracts. The off-record kind, where payment is heavier and the questions are fewer. That’s worth more than coin.”
“I like coin better,” Coriolanus said with a crooked grin.
Without breaking eye contact, Melina reached into her pouch and flicked a single gold coin across the table. It spun, clinked, and stopped with Hollien’s crest gleaming in the dim light. “There. Incentive. But do not mistake me, Flour—if you fail, if you leave even the faintest trace that could be tied to me, I will see to it that you are dragged into the courtyard and hanged for treason. Slowly.”
Coriolanus’ grin faltered. “Message received.”
“Good.”
When the meeting ended, Coral and Coriolanus slipped away into the stairwell, shadows retreating into shadows. But Melina remained at the window of the tower. Below, the Courtyard of Oranges shimmered in the last of the light, the tilework blazing gold as the sun bled into dusk.
She told herself she wasn’t cruel.
Cruelty was clumsy. Cruelty was for children with sticks and ants, for peasants who screamed when they kicked. She was not cruel.
She was careful.
She was protecting what was hers, what she had built, what she deserved.
Hazen Dusk Kakao might have been born with the wrong crown-blood in his veins, but he would not ruin her Gathering. He would not eclipse her, not with his quiet, lost eyes and his tragic little backstory.
He did not belong here.
And Melina would make sure the world remembered it.
Not this time.
Not ever.

Chapter Text

The palace walls felt thinner that day.
The Gathering was tomorrow, and already the air inside Hollien’s fortress buzzed with invisible threads—servants hurrying faster than usual, guards polishing their boots until sparks flew against the tile, pages slipping down corridors with sealed scrolls in hand, whispering in corners they thought no one noticed.
Hazen noticed. He always noticed.
He had been trained to.
Eyes down. Hands folded. Steps light. That was what Father had drilled into him for years. Move quiet, watch everything, make them forget you’re in the room until it’s too late.
He tried. He really did. But lately… the stares followed him anyway. Half-glances that flinched when he returned them. Conversations that ended just before he entered. Doors that shut with a little too much care, as if to keep him on the outside.
He had grown used to being watched.
But this wasn’t watching.
Now they were waiting.
For something.
And Hazen did not know what.
He lingered in the side courtyard near the citrus grove, where the trees glowed with fat gold fruit and the air smelled sweet, sharp, alive. His fingers brushed the carved balustrade, stone warm from the afternoon sun. He found the edge of his mother’s pendant—the red rune, small and steady against his chest. He rubbed his thumb across its surface until it heated beneath his skin.
He wished Eomma were here.
She would know why his stomach felt like it was filling with sand.
Why the sunlight itself seemed too heavy.
Why even the wind whispered wrong.
Hazen turned, intending to head back into the palace—straight into the corridors Father insisted he stick to.
And nearly collided with a stranger.
“Oh,” Hazen said, sharp with surprise. His shoulders squared instantly, half a step back, instinct tensing his muscles.
The man bowed quickly, too smoothly for someone who claimed accident. “Forgive me. Didn’t mean to startle.”
He was older than the pages, younger than the palace guards. His hair, a dark blond, curled neatly at the nape of his neck. His jacket was plain but well-stitched, and conspicuously free of crest or banner. He looked like someone who belonged everywhere and nowhere.
Hazen frowned, but dipped his head politely.
The man smiled—too readily. “I don’t believe we’ve met. Coryo. Records clerk. Assigned to the delegation wing.”
His Central Dialect was practiced. Polished. Not quite native.
“…Hello,” Hazen said slowly. His voice was measured, careful the way Father always told him. Give away nothing.
Coryo didn’t look suspicious of him. Didn’t look whispering, hostile, dismissive like the others. Instead he radiated an easy calm that pressed too neatly against Hazen’s unease, like silk draped over a knife.
“You dropped something,” Coryo said suddenly. He crouched, plucking something from the stone path between them.
Hazen’s chest tightened.
The rune.
His mother’s rune.
It must’ve slipped free when he turned.
“Thank you,” Hazen said quickly, reaching for it.
But Coryo didn’t give it back right away.
Instead, he rolled it lazily between his fingers, admiring it with a low whistle. “Striking piece. Old make, too. Almost looks like it carries weight.”
“Give it here.” Hazen’s voice dropped, firm, almost dangerous despite the tremor in his gut.
Coryo’s eyes flicked up—sharp now, not kind at all. “Of course, of course.” He extended it, and as Hazen grabbed it, Coryo’s fingers brushed his hand. Not a fleeting touch—longer, deliberate.
And then the world tilted.
It was like being dragged backward into deep water. A sudden lightness in his chest, then weightless, then weak. The courtyard blurred around the edges, sunlight smearing into gold streaks.
Hazen staggered, fighting to keep upright. “What—” His voice broke off, thick on his tongue.
Coryo didn’t smile this time. His lips curved just enough to show he’d won. “It’s quick. Don’t fight it. Waste of effort.”
The dizziness swallowed him fast. His legs buckled under his own weight, heavier than he realized. He grabbed the balustrade, muscles straining, but it was useless—his strength drained as if the stone itself leached it away. His knees struck the ground hard, jarring pain flashing bright in his chest, but already the edges of the world were dimming.
“You’ll wake,” Coryo said, crouching near him. His tone was quiet, almost conversational, but there was no softness in it now. Only calculation. “A little headache, a little confusion. Nothing worse. You’re valuable, after all. Can’t have value if you’re broken.”
Hazen tried to push back, to lunge, to do something, but his arms obeyed too slow. His body betrayed him.
The last thing he registered was the sound of his body hitting the stone with a thud that felt too unceremonious for a prince.
Darkness.
When Hazen woke, there was no courtyard. No golden fruit. No sun.
Only the smell of rotted grain and damp stone.
He lay on cold floorboards, wrists bound rough, the air so still he could hear his own breath echo.
A cellar. Hidden, silent, nowhere near the palace walls.
And no one would even know he was missing—
—until the Gathering began.

Chapter Text

The banners of Chocokollis rippled in the wind—deep brown threaded with scarlet and gold, stitched with the double-crescent cacao bloom.
They were beautiful.
They were commanding.
They were deceptive.
Prince Charles Kakao stepped down from the lead carriage into the stone-floored arrival court of Cephas Crood, his shoulders square, chin lifted, his robe draping flawlessly against polished boots. His gloves were spotless. His presence, immaculate.
He looked every inch the seasoned diplomat his enemies feared and his allies envied.
But his hands told the truth.
The tremor was slight—just at the fingertips, hidden beneath his sleeves—but it was there.
Because his son was missing.
And no one could know. Not yet.
The arrival procession pressed on with flawless ceremony.
Vanillin’s delegation watched from the balcony draped in ivory banners, Lillies in pale silk fluttering their fans, and Hollien, ever precise, with their golden sigils hung like polished suns over the court. Courtiers stood in little clusters on marble terraces, whispering from behind jeweled masks and embroidered sleeves.
They were waiting.
Waiting for the final piece.
The royal bloodline of Chocokollis.
But Hazen was not there.
Charles glanced once, sharp and fleeting, at the carriage behind him. The second carriage door had remained sealed the entire ride since crossing the border. It should have opened now. Hazen should have stepped out—shoulders squared, dark hair pinned neatly to reveal the white streak with dignity, wearing the ceremonial envoy uniform: a deep brown jacket lined with red trim and a belt bearing the rune crest.
It would have been his first public appearance in years.
Instead, the carriage stood silent. Empty.
Just as it had for the entire journey.
They had searched through the night.
Discreetly.
Desperately.
No one in the palace had reported seeing Hazen after sunset. His mother’s red rune pendant had been discovered in the orchard courtyard, abandoned on the stone path like a coin tossed carelessly aside.
Hazen would never have discarded it. Not willingly.
There had been no struggle in his chamber. No footprints. No broken locks. No shattered glass. His bed remained smoothed, his desk neat. His boots aligned at the corner. The room was intact.
But he was gone.
Vanished like smoke from a snuffed candle.
“Your Highness,” murmured an aide, tugging at his sleeve, voice quiet as a knife against the storm building in Charles’s chest. “The court is watching. We must proceed.”
Charles nodded once. Mechanically. Like a puppet in fine silk.
His throat ached with the silence he had forced down for hours. His lungs felt starved of air though the breeze was cool. Sweat clung to his back beneath the heavy diplomat’s robe.
If he admitted Hazen was missing, it would send the Gathering into scandal.
If he claimed Hazen was ill, someone would demand to see him.
And if Hazen reappeared—staggering, shaken, confused, gods forbid scarred—it would mark Chocokollis as weak. Vulnerable. A family who could not even keep its own heir safe.
So Charles had no choice but to pretend.
Hazen Kakao was not missing.
He was simply… unavailable.
Charles stepped forward onto the receiving platform, his boots striking the stone like blows of a hammer.
Queen Aliyah of Hollien regarded him with restrained curiosity, her head tilted the way one studies a riddle.
King Hansen of Vanillin said nothing, but his gaze lingered too long, too sharp.
Queen Lily of Lillies smiled faintly—too soft, too knowing.
And Aurelia, standing near her parents, furrowed her brows as though she could see through him, though her expression gave nothing away.
Charles bowed low to the gathered court.
His voice was steady. His words formal. His back never bent further than dignity allowed.
But inside—inside something old and fragile cracked a little deeper, like a fault line splitting.
Please, he thought, the prayer breaking unbidden across his mind. Please let him be safe.
It was the first prayer he had dared to speak since Velvet died.
And it felt like speaking into a void.

Chapter Text

The formal introductions had ended.
Courtiers spilled into the glass halls for midday refreshments, their jeweled hands clutching silver goblets, their painted mouths stretched into brittle smiles that hid whispered worry. The marble echoed with the sound of polite laughter that rang too thin, too fragile, as if no one dared speak above the silence gathering underneath.
Music floated faintly from the atrium—flutes and lutes weaving together in a cheerful pattern. But even that melody faltered, holding its notes a fraction too long, as if the musicians themselves sensed the unease threaded through the palace.
Everyone had noticed.
Everyone had seen the empty second carriage.
But no one dared say the word aloud.
Aurelia slipped away as soon as her mother turned her attention to a Vanillin diplomat. Her crimson skirts swished softly against the polished floor as she threaded through the corridors, her heels clicking in a steady rhythm that betrayed her practiced calm. Every so often she glanced over her shoulder, checking that no page or servant shadowed her steps.
The lesser wings of Cephas Crood were quieter. Less gilded. The air smelled faintly of stone and jasmine, carried from the open courtyard fountains that dotted the inner halls. The carved ceilings here were lower, the chandeliers simpler, the marble floors less polished—but Aurelia preferred it.
It was harder for spies to lurk in places where no one important was supposed to wander.
Sawyer was already waiting.
He leaned against a carved column near the jasmine fountain, arms crossed over his chest, his expression cut sharp with worry. His posture was so rigid, he looked more like a statue abandoned in the sun than a living boy—every line of him pulled tight with restraint.
The moment Aurelia stepped into view, his gaze snapped toward her.
“You saw it too,” she said quietly.
His jaw tightened. “I did.” A beat. His voice was lower the second time. “And you know something.”
Aurelia hesitated. Her hand twitched toward her sleeve, then away, before she finally exhaled and reached into the inner lining of her gown. She drew out a folded parchment, its edges slightly creased from being hidden against her arm.
Sawyer pushed off the column, unfolding it carefully, his eyes darting over the words once, then again slower, like he couldn’t believe what he was reading.
Hazen Dusk Kakao. Junior Year. Application to Vanillin Academy.
Sawyer’s lips parted in shock, but his voice was steady. “He applied to be one of us?”
Aurelia’s expression darkened. “He already is. He’s our age. Our cohort. He was supposed to join this year’s class.”
Sawyer blinked, stunned, then shook his head slowly. “And your mother never said a word.”
“No one did,” Aurelia replied bitterly. She glanced around the corridor before lowering her voice. “He was meant to be introduced today. His father kept looking behind him as if waiting for him to appear. But the second carriage…” Her voice thinned. “…was empty.”
Sawyer’s mouth pressed into a hard line. His fingers curled around the parchment, crinkling the edge. “Something happened to him.”
Aurelia nodded once. “And it wasn’t just bad luck.”
Sawyer exhaled through his nose, running a hand across his forehead, his shoulders stiff. “Asher thought it was nothing. A rumor, maybe. Or that he was delayed.”
“That doesn’t explain the pendant,” Aurelia cut in. “The one found in the orchard.”
Sawyer froze. “…The pendant?”
“His mother’s,” Aurelia said. Her voice softened, just for a moment. “The rune. He never took it off. Ever.”
Sawyer swore under his breath, glancing down the empty hall. His chest rose and fell with the kind of breath that sounded more like a growl.
“And Melina?” Aurelia added. Her voice hardened again. “She hasn’t stopped smiling since the introductions.”
Sawyer flinched at that. He turned toward the fountain, gripping the stone edge until his knuckles blanched. “…You think she had a hand in it.”
Aurelia’s eyes narrowed. “She wanted him out of the way. He’s the only junior envoy with a direct blood claim. If Hazen appeared, she’d lose the stage she’s been clawing for.”
They let the silence stretch. It wasn’t comfortable. It was coiled, wound so tightly that it hummed in the air like a string on the edge of snapping.
Eventually, Sawyer spoke again, his voice lower now. “There’s a boy. A clerk, or maybe just a hanger-on. Friend of Coral’s.” His brow furrowed. “Coriolanus. I’ve seen him in the back halls. He doesn’t move like an official servant.”
Aurelia’s eyes flickered. “You think Coral brought him in?”
“I think Coral always wanted a better spot,” Sawyer said darkly. “And Melina knows how to promise favors she doesn’t intend to keep.”
Aurelia’s lips pressed together in thought. Then she straightened. “I’ll ask Coral. She’s not clever enough to lie well. If Hazen’s missing because of something they did—”
“Then we fix it,” Sawyer finished. His voice was steady now, sharpened like a blade.
For a long moment, their eyes locked—Vanillin steel against Lillies fire.
For once, no politics stood between them. No rivalry. No games of posture or promise.
Only clarity.
And the growing, crushing understanding that Hazen Kakao—heir of Chocokollis, the boy who should have stood beside them in the hall today—might already be suffering.
Suffering because they had waited too long.

Chapter Text

They found Coral near the side gallery, where the sunlight made the stained glass shimmer against the polished floors. She was alone for once, her posture neat, hands folded, her entire presence like something practiced and small.
Aurelia stepped in front of her before she could slip away.
Sawyer flanked her left.
“Coral,” Aurelia said lightly, “may we speak with you?”
Coral looked up, surprised—but not stupid. She smiled carefully. “Of course, Princess. Prince Sawyer.”
“You’re not in trouble,” Aurelia added, voice gentle. “We just have a few questions.”
Something flickered behind Coral’s eyes. She nodded slowly, glancing around to make sure no one watched. “Here?”
“Here’s fine,” Sawyer said, tone flat.
They stood in a quiet corner framed by stone and light. Coral waited, lips pressed into a diplomatic line.
Aurelia wasted no time.
“We know Hazel’s missing.”
Coral blinked. “I… I heard something. That she wasn’t feeling well—”
“We both know that’s not true,” Aurelia said sharply. “She never would’ve missed the Gathering. Someone made sure she couldn’t come.”
Coral hesitated. Then: “That doesn’t have anything to do with me.”
“It does if you helped,” Sawyer said.
The words dropped heavy between them.
Coral’s posture shifted—barely, but enough to show a crack. “I didn’t do anything,” she said quickly. “I just—”
“What?” Aurelia cut in, stepping closer. “You just passed a message? You just made an introduction?”
Coral swallowed hard. Her gaze darted toward the corridor. “It wasn’t supposed to be serious. He said he’d just… slow her down.”
“Who?” Sawyer snapped.
Coral froze.
Then, in a whisper: “Coriolanus Flour.”
The name settled like dust.
“He said he wouldn’t hurt her,” Coral added, almost defensively. “Melina said—”
“Melina,” Aurelia echoed. “So it was her idea.”
Coral looked like she wanted to shrink into the stone wall. “Not exactly. I told her something as a joke—she thought about it. Asked me if I knew anyone. I just… connected them.”
“She’s gone, Coral,” Sawyer said. “Hazel’s gone.”
Coral’s lips parted slightly. “I didn’t know they’d really— I thought maybe she’d get scared and run. Not—”
“Where is he keeping her?” Aurelia asked, voice like glass. “Tell us. Now.”
Coral flinched. “I don’t know where. But he mentioned the Crood grain district. Something about a cellar he used to squat in during the summer. He said it was sealed off now—quiet, nobody checks it.”
“Do you know how to get there?” Sawyer asked.
She nodded slowly.
Aurelia’s voice was soft, but razor-sharp: “Then you’re going to take us.”
Across the hall, Melina smiled from her place near the royal dais, radiant in silk and subtle arrogance. She had no idea that her perfect plan was fraying—one loose thread at a time.
And Hazel Dusk Kakao was no longer forgotten.
She was being hunted for—
By those who would not let her disappear quietly.

Chapter Text

The first thing he felt was the cold.
Not the noble, brisk kind that swept through the high halls of Chocokollis—freshened by mountain snow and softened by the perfume of burning cedarwood—but a damp cold. A low, crawling kind. It slithered beneath his skin, seeped into his bones, and pooled in his chest until each breath steamed faintly in the dark. It wasn’t the cold of winter. It was the cold of stone. Of basements. Of places meant to forget sunlight.
The second thing was pain.
A raw, drilling ache behind his eyes, as though his skull had been cracked open, its pieces pressed together again by rough hands that didn’t care if they fit properly. Every thought that tried to surface was snagged, splintered, muffled by that ache. He swallowed, and it only seemed to pulse harder.
The third thing—panic.
Not all at once, not a screaming burst, but a slow suffocation. Like smoke curling into a chamber, filling corners and stealing air before the flames could be seen. His chest tightened. He tried to move, to sit up, but his wrists refused him. Bound. His ankles too. Not cut-deep tight—but fastened with the precision of someone who knew their knots, who had tied captives before. Rope burned into his skin whenever he tugged.
Hazen blinked hard against the murky dark.
The room came into shape in fragments. Stone walls mottled with damp patches. Ivy roots breaking through cracks. The sour musk of burlap sacks—grain, stacked and forgotten in far corners, half-split, spilling rot-dry kernels across the dirt floor. And a single square window, barely wider than his palm, almost swallowed by earth. The light that managed to squeeze through it was thin and golden, so fragile it seemed afraid to touch him.
A cellar.
He was underground. Hidden.
Taken.
His pulse stuttered, hard and ugly in his throat. Drugged, too—he could feel it in the heaviness of his limbs, in the sluggish way his veins obeyed him. Someone had planned this. Someone had thought of every detail, down to how to keep him pliant and weak.
His lips parted. A sound escaped—half whimper, half growl—before he snapped his teeth shut. No. He couldn’t afford panic. Not now.
Think.
What’s the last thing you remember?
The orchard. The faint lantern glow. The rune pendant warm against his chest. A voice behind him. That smile. That name—
“Coryo.”
The whisper came rough, his throat sanded raw. It bounced against the cellar walls and came back to him thinner, like the place itself was mocking him.
He shifted, testing the ropes again. His wrists were slick—sweat, maybe blood. His palms stung, tiny cuts reopening with each pull, splinters lodging deeper. His side ached too, sharp and dull at once. Dropped? Dragged? He could almost feel the ghost of rough hands under his arms.
A sting of helplessness threatened to choke him. His eyes burned, but no tears came—just a sour pressure building, demanding release.
He shook his head violently. No. He would not break down here. He was not some nameless child to be swallowed by shadows.
You are not weak, he told himself, forcing the words like iron into his chest. You are Hazen Dusk Kakao. Son of Velvet. Son of the throne.
The rune.
His heart lurched. Where was it? The red pendant—the bloodstone. His tether, his proof, his weapon if he needed it. He twisted, scanning frantically. Nothing. No faint gleam. No comfort against his skin. Only emptiness.
Panic clawed again. For a moment it nearly overtook him. His breaths came short, jagged. He pressed his forehead to the dirt floor until the grit bit his skin, until he could hear his pulse thudding steady in his ears again.
Daylight.
There was enough of it bleeding through the cracks to tell him it wasn’t night anymore. That meant hours had passed. That meant the Gathering.
Father.
His father was there now—standing tall in front of the world, alone. Pretending nothing was wrong while his son, his heir, was bound in a cellar like some caged animal. Hazen bit down on the thought until copper filled his mouth.
A noise cut through his fury.
Boots.
Above him. The floorboards creaked with weight. Two pairs, maybe three. Slow. Deliberate.
He froze, every muscle coiled tight.
Were they coming for him? To move him? To finish it? Or had someone stumbled close, unaware that a prince lay beneath their feet?
Didn’t matter.
He would not wait like prey.
Grinding his shoulder into the grain sacks, Hazen twisted, forcing friction against the rope at his wrists. Each drag seared his skin, left him raw and bleeding—but he didn’t stop. Steady. Patient. Ruthless.
Because if they came for him now—
He was going to fight.
With fists. With teeth. With blood, if he had to.
He was Hazen Kakao.
And he would not vanish quietly.

Chapter Text

In the vaulted side chamber reserved for sovereigns, the air was thick with florals and false peace. The ceilings arched higher than the eye wished to follow, painted with gold-thread constellations that gleamed faintly in the lantern glow. Velvet curtains draped over every window, filtering the light into a honeyed rose-gold, the sort of light that looked gentle, forgiving—though the people beneath it were anything but.
A tray of candied petals sat untouched on the center table, the sugar beginning to soften under the weight of the perfumed air. Only four thrones lined the dais, carved from different timbers to represent their respective kingdoms. Each throne faced a mirror wall, an old diplomatic tradition meant to make rulers “see themselves” as they spoke. In reality, it simply made the chamber more unsettling, reflections catching every angle, every twitch of an eye, every hesitation in breath.
On the throne of Lillies sat Queen Lily, pale and pristine as the flowers her land bore. She had not spoken since the delegation of Chocokollis arrived, her silence carrying the kind of gravity that forced others to fill it with nervous conversation. She sipped occasionally from a glass of lavender cordial, her posture perfect, her eyes veiled.
Beside her, King Azure did not bother with pretense. He leaned forward, broad hands folded loosely over his knees, his stare fixed upon one man alone: Prince Charles of Chocokollis. Azure rarely blinked. He didn’t need to. His stillness itself was a form of pressure.
And Charles…
Charles was missing his son.
Hazen wasn’t here.
The boy who should have been presented—introduced formally to the courts, to his peers, to the world—was absent. No explanation was given. No name mentioned. Not even the faintest acknowledgment of his empty place. Charles sat tall, proud, but it was a pride too rigid, too brittle. The silence around Hazen’s absence had been carefully built. And the King of Chocokollis was walking straight into the snare.
It was working.
Their rumor had done its job.
Three weeks ago, it had only been a seed, slipped into merchant mouths, whispered through innkeeper back rooms. A fever, some said. Strange, clinging coughs in the border villages of Chocokollis. Officials spotted wearing gloves in the warmer months, even when the sun was high. Not bold declarations, but breadcrumbs. Subtle enough to be believed. Subtle enough to let imagination do the rest.
And imagination was a crueler weapon than truth.
Queen Lily set her glass down at last, the sound a delicate click against silver. Her voice, when it came, was soft, almost musical—but her words cut clean through the velvet hush.
“He didn’t come.”
Azure’s head tilted, the faintest nod. “He’s protecting him,” he said. “Or hiding him. Either way… he’s already on the defensive.”
Lily’s gaze shifted toward the mirrored wall, her reflection gazing back at her with that same flower-petal serenity. “He was the hinge,” she murmured. “The boy. Hazen. If the kingdoms were ever to support a permanent border alliance with Chocokollis, it would have been through him. Young enough to be shaped, old enough to be useful. A diplomat bred to charm.”
Azure’s voice was a low rumble. “And now?”
“Now,” Lily said, her words flattening into something sharp, “he is a liability.”
Silence fell again, heavier this time. The mirrored walls caught it and multiplied it. In the glass, Lily could see Charles’s reflection—a father trying very hard not to appear diminished while an empty place yawned at his side.
She allowed herself a slow inhale, let the silence swell a heartbeat longer, then spoke the thought that had been circling both their minds.
“Do we make it real?”
Azure turned to her, slow, deliberate. His eyes—dark as midnight pools—studied her as though to measure whether she meant it. “What?”
“The plague,” Lily said plainly. “The one we only hinted at. They already believe it. All it needs is a shape. A name. A few coughing peasants where the right travelers can see them. A body, perhaps. And the story will no longer be rumor.”
For the first time, Azure did not answer immediately. His gaze slid across the mirrors, lingered on the reflection of the Vanillin king frowning faintly, on Hollien’s queen whispering to her advisors. He leaned back, exhaling through his nose.
“If we do,” he said finally, “we control the story. We could choke their borders without ever laying siege. Quarantine trade routes. Demand inspections. Stall their commerce until their merchants lean on us instead. Dependency would grow. And when they beg for aid, we set the price.”
Lily’s painted lips curved the faintest fraction. Her fingers tapped idly against the stem of her glass, each click a slow drumbeat. “And in two years, no one will even remember it was us who lit the match.”
Azure’s expression darkened, though not with disagreement. “They’ll remember only the smoke,” he murmured. “And what it blinded them from seeing.”
Her eyes—those strange, rose-petal-pink eyes that had made courtiers wax poetic and generals whisper unease—caught his. And though her face was calm, still, her gaze burned with something far more dangerous than beauty.
“The boy already disappeared,” she said. Each word was careful. Weighted. “The world just needs a reason why.”
Outside, faint strains of music shifted—harps swelling, the sign that the Gathering’s next phase had begun. Open diplomacy. The time when princes and princesses would take their seats before the assembly.
Hazen’s chair would remain empty.
And in this chamber, behind curtains that smelled of lilies and velvet that smothered sound, the King and Queen of Lillies prepared to transform a whisper into history.
Prepared to turn a lie into a legacy.

Chapter Text

Prince Charles stood beneath the Great Hall’s arched ceiling, where shafts of morning light filtered through honeyed stone and stained glass, fracturing into colors that bled across the marble floor like spilled jewels. Musicians played somewhere in the balcony above, but the sound might as well have been silence.
He couldn’t feel any of it.
He was trying—gods, he was trying—to stand as a prince should stand, to let the weight of Chocokollis’s centuries settle squarely on his shoulders without bending him. To keep the panic from creeping up his spine, from leaking through his carefully measured breath. To keep his chin lifted, his composure intact.
But Hazen wasn’t there.
And every second that passed without him, another pair of eyes found the empty place at Charles’s side.
The boy should have walked in beside him. Not as heir—Chocokollis did not bind its crowns by blood—but as symbol. As Velvet’s son. As proof that the wild and the ordered could coexist in one body, in one name, in one future that was neither foreign nor fragile but stronger for its roots.
Instead, all that remained was absence dressed in finery: a velvet-lined seat conspicuously empty, with his son’s name etched in gold leaf across a delicate card.
Hazen Dusk Kakao.
The name echoed louder for not being spoken, louder for not being embodied, louder for being missing.
The first to notice was King Hansen of Hollien. Just a twitch of the brow, but Charles saw it—because he was looking for it, dreading it. Then Queen Sylvia of Vanillin, lips tightening against some unspoken remark. And finally—Lily of Lillies.
Her gaze was not questioning.
It was expecting.
Like she had been waiting for this silence all along.
Charles’s stomach knotted.
The rumors. Sickness at the border. Strange coughs, “contamination.” Murmurs of weakness. Whispers about the half-wild boy who wore dirt on his hands and his mother’s eyes in his face. Hazen, child of Velvet—beloved by some, distrusted by more.
Those whispers hadn’t sprouted from nowhere.
Someone had planted them.
And he, in his careful diplomacy, had let them grow.
He should have spoken. Should have torn the lie out by its roots, should have named it venom and crushed it under his boot before it found fertile ground. But diplomacy makes men into cowards. Into calculators. Into fathers who convince themselves that silence is safer than truth.
And now his son was paying the price for his cowardice.
Or worse.
His gaze drifted across the chamber, catching on Melina, laughing lightly beside Coral and the Hollien scribes. Too clean, too poised, too unbothered for someone who always seemed to find herself in the shadow of trouble. He had no proof. Not yet. But the weight in his gut told him she knew more than she should.
Something had happened to Hazen.
And if the Gathering ended without a single word from him—without the boy himself stepping forward—the court would write its own version of the story. One that Charles would not be able to rewrite.
A page appeared at his elbow, bowing low, whispering quickly into his ear. Charles bent just enough to listen, every muscle stiff. His face did not change. His posture did not falter. But inside, something coiled tight.
A disturbance in the outer city.
The grain quarter.
An abandoned cellar.
Unconfirmed reports of movement. Guards dispatched.
Not official. Not yet.
But enough. Enough for hope to pierce through the despair that had been gathering in his chest like stormwater.
Hazen might still be alive.
Charles rose from his chair, each movement measured to hide the trembling in his hands. He excused himself from the council table with the calm courtesy drilled into him by decades of rule. His voice was steady, his bow exact. No one could see that his palms were damp inside his gloves, or that every step he took away from the dais felt like treading a blade’s edge.
But in his mind—where no one could intrude—another voice rang clear. Velvet’s voice. A memory blurred by time, by grief, by guilt.
“You can’t keep him safe by keeping him quiet.”
He had kept her quiet, too. Velvet, with her fire and her fury and her wildness that made courts uneasy. He had tried to shield her by softening her edges, by teaching her silence, by making her palatable to men who would never love her kind. And in the end, he had failed her.
Now he had done the same to Hazen.
Gods, what kind of father buried his own son in silence?
His jaw clenched as he left the chamber, ignoring the whispers that trailed behind him. He would not let the court write Hazen’s story. He would not let his son be reduced to a rumor, to a liability, to a blank space where a name had once been written in gold.
Not if there was still time.
And he would find him.
Even if he had to tear the city stone by stone.

Chapter Text

It took everything Hazen had just to force himself upright.
The ropes had loosened around his wrist—not by mercy, but by mistake. Coryo hadn’t tied them poorly, not Coryo. No, the man had tied them with cruel precision, the kind that came from practice, from repetition. The only reason Hazen had gotten free at all was because he’d worked at them in the dark while half-conscious, grinding skin against rope until something snapped or frayed.
The price of that freedom dripped warm and wet down his arm. His wrist was bleeding, deep grooves pressed into his skin where the fibers had chewed him raw. His elbow throbbed, swollen from where he’d slammed into stone earlier when Coryo dragged him. His head spun too—not a dizzy, drunken spin, but a wrongness that clawed at his balance.
He pressed his shoulder against the damp wall, grit clinging to his tunic, and tried to breathe steady.
In. Two. Three.
Out. Four. Five.
Again.
And again.
The air was thick—older than breath should be. It carried the staleness of dust and rot, the tang of iron, the sour sting of mold. Beneath it, something faintly chemical lingered on the back of his tongue, sharp as bitterness. Whatever they’d dosed him with hadn’t fully bled out of his veins.
Sweat slid down his temples. His dark hair clung to his neck. His lips were cracked, dry, though the damp cellar should have made them damp.
But the dizziness—that was worst of all. His body felt like it had been disassembled and poorly put back together, like his bones no longer knew which way to hold him. Every blink shifted the world. Every breath felt slightly delayed.
Still.
He had to move.
Hazen ground his teeth and planted his free palm against the stone wall, using its roughness to anchor himself. His knees trembled beneath him, refusing at first. When he tried to push to his feet, his legs buckled, folding like paper. He dropped to the floor with a crack of bone against stone, a sharp grunt escaping his throat before he could stop it.
Pain radiated up his shins, sharp enough to bring water to his eyes—but he did not cry out again. He bit down hard, swallowing the sound, forcing his breath steady.
Noise could kill him.
If Coryo was near, even a whimper would cost him dearly.
He clenched his jaw, tasting iron, and tried again.
This time, slower. One palm to the wall. One knee pressed beneath him. His shoulder grinding into stone for leverage. His muscles shook, but he willed them steady, dragging breath through his teeth. His body threatened collapse, but his will shoved it upright.
And finally—he stood.
He swayed, unsteady, but his feet held him. His vision blurred at the edges. The room tilted once, twice—but he stayed standing, head bowed, hair shadowing his eyes.
Not yet.
He wouldn’t fall yet.
Ahead of him loomed the cellar’s door. Thick oak, hinges rusted but still solid. The kind of door designed to keep things out—or in.
He moved toward it, step by step, dragging his hand along the wall for balance. His legs carried him stiffly, his boots scraping the stone floor in uneven rhythm. The wall was cold, damp with condensation, and his fingertips left streaks of blood as he went.
Every inch of him hurt. His arms were scraped raw, his throat burned, his back ached from being carried like a sack of grain. His mouth felt as though he’d swallowed sand, and his lungs carried the weight of smoke that wasn’t there.
But worse than all of that—
The rune.
His mother’s rune.
It was gone.
He fumbled for it at his neck even before his mind caught up. His fingers scraped bare skin where the pendant should have rested. No cord. No stone. No warmth.
His chest hollowed. His stomach twisted cold.
The rune was Velvet’s gift, the one tether he had left to her. Without it, the air felt thinner.
Panic threatened again.
But he strangled it.
You are Kakao blood, he told himself. You are not broken. Not yet.
He reached the door, chest heaving, sweat beading along his spine. His hand closed over the iron handle, trembling. He pressed his forehead to the wood, breath shallow, and twisted.
Locked.
Of course it was.
He exhaled slow, forcing the curse down his throat before it reached his tongue. His forehead stayed pressed to the wood, its coldness biting against his skin. For a moment, just a moment, he allowed his knees to slacken, his body begging him to sink to the floor.
But he didn’t.
Not yet.
Tears didn’t come, though they burned behind his eyes. His body had sweated out all softness, all ease. What remained was ache, deep and gnawing, filling every hollow place inside him.
He curled his fists. Dug his bleeding palm into the handle again. Tried to wrench it, once, twice. The door rattled in its frame, the hinges screeching faintly.
And then—
A sound.
Not from the door. From the wall.
Boots.
Distant, muffled, but moving.
And voices. Low, blurred by stone, but voices all the same.
Hazen froze, heart hammering. His body wanted to collapse, to slide back to the floor and curl into the dark. But instinct burned hotter.
Were they coming to help him?
Or to finish what Coryo started?
He didn’t know.
Didn’t care.
Every nerve in his body screamed for him to act. His throat rasped, voice raw and torn—but he forced it out anyway, pressing his forehead against the door and whispering as loud as his battered body would allow:
“Here…”
It cracked out of him like glass breaking. Not loud. Not strong. But real.
His knees finally gave, buckling, dragging him down until he slid against the door, spine hitting wood, legs folding beneath him. His arms wrapped tight around his knees, chest trembling with exhaustion.
Not because he gave up.
Never because of that.
But because his body had nothing left to give—
except breath.
except blood.
except waiting.
Waiting to fight again the moment the door opened.
Even if it meant using teeth.
Even if it meant dying.
Because he was Hazen Kakao.
And he was not prey.

Chapter Text

The grain district smelled like dust and rot and heat trapped too long inside stone.
The kind of heat that suffocated instead of warming—dry, stale, clinging to the throat like chalk. Even the air felt old here, as though it had been breathed and exhaled a hundred times too many.
Aurelia’s boots crunched over gravel and shattered tile. Every step seemed to echo louder than it should have, bouncing down the long, silent rows of storehouses.
Quieter than expected.
Much quieter.
Her heart hadn’t stopped pounding since they’d crossed into the district, but the stillness made it worse. Made it feel like someone was listening. Like every sound she made was being measured by an unseen ear.
Most of the warehouses weren’t used anymore—hadn’t been, not since the trade routes had shifted south. What had once been the beating heart of Chocokollis’s grain wealth was now a graveyard of stone shells. Crumbling storehouses stood shoulder to shoulder, iron-banded doors sagging on rusted hinges. The mortar was splitting, vines had wound their way through cracks and up into the ledges like green veins. The ground was littered with scraps of old burlap sacks, splinters of barrels, husks of wheat ground to powder.
It all looked the same.
Too much the same.
And that sameness made it the perfect place to hide something.
Or someone.
Aurelia swiped her sleeve across her forehead, dragging the sweat away, her pulse hammering in her throat.
“How many cellars did you say?” she demanded, voice cutting through the stillness like a blade.
Coral flinched. Her hands, wringing against each other, had gone red and raw. “I—I thought there were three. Maybe four. It’s been years since I—”
“You said you knew.”
The words came from Sawyer, his voice low but searing. The kind of quiet fury that burned colder than shouting. His eyes fixed on Coral like a flame trapped between his palms—controlled, but dangerous. “We brought you here because you said you knew exactly where.”
“I thought I did!” Coral snapped, her tone breaking in half between anger and panic. “I swear I thought I did! It’s this stretch—I know it’s this block. There was a rusted green door, or blue, I think. And a barrel outside. I don’t—” Her breath hitched. “It’s all the same now.”
Aurelia pulled back half a step, scanning the rows with her whole body tense.
Six buildings on one side.
Six on the other.
All of them yawning open like mouths.
All of them potential graves.
Her chest felt like it was lined with lead. “Then we check them all,” she said flatly, forcing the words out as though they were orders from her bones. “Every single one.”
Sawyer didn’t hesitate. His shoulder slammed into the nearest door once, twice—wood splintering on the second blow until the lock gave with a shriek of metal. He slipped inside like a shadow, not waiting for either of them.
Aurelia went to the next door, fingers clenching on the iron handle before shoving hard. The door groaned, then swung inward with a puff of dust.
The first warehouse was empty. Only sagging barrels, a few broken crates, and spiderwebs thick enough to choke on.
The second was the same.
The third reeked of mildew and damp rot, mold crawling like green bruises up the walls. She kicked apart a pile of discarded grain sacks, heart in her throat—but there was nothing beneath.
By the fifth, her hands were shaking.
Not from exertion.
From fear.
Fear that every door opened and found empty meant Hazen was slipping further from them, his trail cooling in the dark. Fear that with each warehouse dismissed, she could feel the sands in the hourglass pouring out.
Her throat tightened, breath snagging. He’s not here. He’s not here.
What if they were too late?
What if this wasn’t rescue at all, but a trick? A misdirection meant to pull them far from the truth?
Her eyes flicked back to Coral, who stood near the edge of the alley, hugging herself as though she could hold her ribs from caving in. She looked like a girl about to bolt—guilt flashing raw across her face.
“If you’re lying to us,” Aurelia said, her voice as cold as a blade unsheathed, “you’re going to regret it.”
“I’m not lying!” Coral cried, eyes brimming. “Why would I lie now? I didn’t know he was actually going to—” Her voice cracked. She clapped her hand over her mouth, shaking her head violently.
Aurelia’s pulse thundered louder.
Sawyer emerged from the sixth warehouse, dust clinging to his coat, face grim as a drawn blade. His jaw was set, his eyes dark. “Empty.”
The word hit harder than a blow.
Aurelia’s hand flew to her lips, pressing hard as though she could hold back the ache clawing up her throat.
They were losing him.
Hazen—the boy who carried his stubbornness like armor, who had always risen when others faltered. Hazen, who laughed like the sun burned only for him. Hazen, who didn’t know how to bend, even when bending might have saved him. The thought of that fire snuffed out in the dark—her stomach lurched.
Her vision blurred for a moment. She forced herself to breathe. Forced herself not to fall apart.
Then—
Thud.
Faint. Muffled.
A sound, deep and low, like wood striking stone.
Aurelia’s head snapped toward the far end of the block. Her whole body went still, listening, every nerve alight. “Did you hear that?”
Sawyer’s gaze had already shifted, his shoulders taut as bowstrings. He nodded once.
And then they were moving—no hesitation, no pause—boots pounding down the cracked stone alleyway, hearts surging with the first fragile thread of hope.
Not because the sound promised safety.
But because it promised something.
And right now, something was enough to keep them running.

Chapter Text

The negotiation chamber had no windows.
That was intentional.
Here, beneath the public halls of the Council House, where the air pressed heavy with stone and secrecy, weakness could not be seen. Not from across the room. Not across the borders. Not unless someone wanted it seen.
The chamber had been built to discourage humanity. Its ceilings stretched high enough to swallow torchlight, but the sconces burned low, forcing shadows to gather in the corners. The long table of polished obsidian reflected every ripple of candle flame, every tremor of hands. Crystal decanters gleamed like waiting teeth. Silks whispered as the rulers shifted in their carved seats, expressions sharpened into masks of diplomacy.
And behind those masks, there were always teeth.
Prince Charles of Chocokollis sat at the western side of the table. His chair, though just as ornately carved as the others, felt harder than stone. The scroll before him lay open but unread. The ink bled together when he tried to focus.
Steady. Keep steady. Do not falter.
To falter here, among them, was to bleed into the water. And the other kingdoms—Lillies, Vanillin, Hollien, Cephas Crood—were not his allies. They were sharks circling, all polite smiles and sharpened fins.
Queen Lily of Lillies sat tall in her vine-carved chair, as serene as carved marble. Her fingers rested lightly on the rolled parchment of proposed border realignments, as if she could wait centuries for her demands to be met. Across from her, King Hansen of Hollien was muttering irritably about salt tariffs, his jeweled rings clicking against the edge of the table. King Joshua of Cephas Crood, ever deliberate, was speaking slowly as he traced lines across the sand-drawn maps spread beside him.
And beside Charles, Queen Sylvia of Vanillin flipped through her stack of trade updates, her manicured fingers tapping in an impatient rhythm that set Charles’s teeth on edge.
The rustle of papers, the clink of glass, the occasional sigh—all of it blended into the same hollow noise. Charles’s ears roared with another sound entirely: the memory of Hazen’s voice.
“Father, let me attend. I need to learn.”
“Father, the people will trust me more if they see me at your side.”
“You always keep me hidden away when things matter.”
And Charles, foolish, indulgent, had let him go into the city that morning. Just as he had let him slip further and further into responsibility, the boy—no, young man—pushing himself into places Charles had thought he could protect him from.
And now he was gone.
Where are you, Hazen? What have they done to you?
The chamber shifted.
It was King Joshua who spoke first, his slow, deliberate voice cutting across the low hum. “Prince Charles.” His gaze lifted, steady as sand. “I noticed your delegation arrived one seat light this morning. Are we to assume your son’s absence is… symbolic?”
Charles’s spine stiffened. His throat went dry. He forced his jaw not to clench. “Hazen was detained by illness.”
The lie burned.
Queen Sylvia looked up at that, the flick of her gaze like a needle. Her tone was smooth as glass. “And has this illness spread, as your previous border reports suggested?”
Her words slithered into the space between them. Neutral in tone. Laced in steel beneath.
Charles’s heart hammered. “No,” he said evenly, though his voice carried a grain of strain. “That was a misunderstanding.”
Sylvia’s eyes narrowed. Not cruel. Worse—calculating. “Mmm. An extraordinary coincidence, then. That Chocokollis should be both missing its junior representative and facing reduced exports of refined coal. In the same month that Vanillin began rationing medicine dependent on your mineral reserves.”
The room shifted.
Lily set down her cup, her smile faint but cold.
Joshua arched his brows, lips curving in thought.
Hansen tilted his head, muttering silenced.
Charles’s silence was its own kind of confession. He could feel it, the weight of it dragging at him.
“The mines are… slowing,” he admitted, the words tasting like ash.
A hush fell. The kind that didn’t soothe. The kind that cut.
Queen Lily leaned forward, her voice light as frost, dangerous as thin ice. “How unfortunate. For such a valuable material to become unreliable.”
Sylvia’s lips curled the barest fraction, satisfaction glinting like glass catching sunlight. “And if Vanillin were to lose its entire seasonal reserve,” she murmured, “our healers would be unable to distill medicines by winter. It isn’t only trade that would suffer, Prince Charles. It’s lives.”
Charles’s pulse thundered in his ears. Hazen’s name rose in his throat like a prayer, like an apology he couldn’t voice. Forgive me, son. I should have kept you from this. I should never have let you out of my sight.
“Then we’ll renegotiate,” he said quickly, the words sharper than he meant. Desperation cracked through the mask he’d been clinging to. “Chocokollis still produces more refined coal than—”
“But not enough,” Lily cut in, her silk-wrapped steel sliding neatly through his argument. “Not if even Vanillin is waiting for shipments.”
“And where is your son?” Sylvia asked softly. Her question slipped like a dagger beneath the ribs. “The one meant to oversee this transition, yes? The one your people voted to train for diplomatic succession?”
Charles’s mouth went dry. His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth.
No one mentioned the truth—that Hazen had not been seen in days. That he had vanished into the grain district, into rumor, into shadows. That the future of Chocokollis might already be broken.
But they knew. Every one of them knew.
And in their silence, Charles could feel his kingdom’s fragility laid bare like a raw, exposed nerve.
It’s my fault. I should have kept him closer. I should have—
Queen Sylvia rose, gathering her scrolls with the easy grace of someone already anticipating victory. “If Chocokollis cannot guarantee reliability,” she said, her voice a polished blade, “then Vanillin may need to pursue alternate supply chains for its medicine. I’m sure Lillies or Hollien could… improvise.”
Queen Lily’s smile was perfect, practiced. “We’re always happy to collaborate.”
The walls felt as though they were pressing in.
The shadows seemed darker.
Charles couldn’t breathe.
He did not move. He could not move. But inside, he felt everything shifting—the weight of the kingdom tilting beneath his feet, crumbling out of his grasp.
And at the center of it all, the absence of Hazen.
His son. His heir.
The one he had already failed.

Chapter Text

Thirty-four hours.
Thirty-four hours since Hazen’s chair at the Gathering table had been left vacant, its polished wood gleaming like a wound. Thirty-four hours of false smiles in front of monarchs who already smelled weakness, who already calculated how quickly they might pick apart Chocokollis if they pressed.
And in all that time—no word.
No ransom letter slipped beneath the guardroom door. No messenger with trembling lips whispering of sightings in the city’s lower districts. No trace in the countryside beyond. Nothing.
Charles Dusk Kakao, Prince of Chocokollis, sat in his chamber with the map spread wide before him, the candlelight bleeding gold over its edges. His hands braced against the table until the wood groaned. His thoughts reeled.
He should be here.
He should be beside me.
What kind of father loses his son inside his own walls?
Every failure of his reign, every misstep, seemed to collapse into this singular absence.
Hazen was not only his heir. He was the breath of continuity, the promise his people clung to. Velvet had told him as much one winter’s night, when snow rimed the palace windows and Hazen was still a boy studying late into the dark.
“He’s our proof,” she’d whispered, half-asleep against Charles’s chest. “Our people’s proof that they belong. That they will last.”
But now Hazen was gone.
And without him, Chocokollis looked fractured. Disorganized. Weak.
The other monarchs saw it. He could see it in the way Queen Sylvia’s gaze lingered on him at the council table, in the tilt of Queen Lily’s smile, in Joshua’s slow, deliberate questions about “continuity of leadership.” They were circling. Wolves at the edge of torchlight.
His pulse thundered in his temples.
He closed his eyes. Thirty-four hours. Two days left in the Gathering. If Hazen does not appear tomorrow… they will devour us.
A sharp knock broke the silence.
Charles straightened, heartbeat kicking. “Enter.”
The heavy door creaked open.
General Ilka stepped inside, her steel-gray hair drawn into its severe braid, her expression carved of stone. She bowed faintly, then shifted aside.
And behind her stood a young man.
Giovanni.
He was taller than Hazen by a head, with shoulders squared and posture sharpened by discipline. His dark hair fell in an unbroken sheet from crown to nape, no streak to mark Velvet’s bloodline, but his eyes—almond-toned and cool—were steady in a way that made Charles’s chest tighten.
Different. But… enough.
Enough to convince a room that already wanted to be convinced.
“Giovanni,” Charles said, forcing his voice into calm despite the storm inside. “Do you understand what I am asking of you?”
The boy stepped forward, every motion deliberate. “You want me to take Hazen’s place.”
“Not only take it,” Charles replied, words clipped. “You must be him. For the next two days, you are Hazen Dusk Kakao. The Vanillin Queen is already prying into our medicinal reserves. If Hazen’s absence becomes obvious—if your chair sits empty again tomorrow—we lose the coal negotiations. We lose leverage. We lose everything.”
Giovanni’s gaze did not waver. “And when Hazen returns?”
Charles froze.
The silence stretched, thick and suffocating.
Finally, he managed: “Then you step aside. Quietly. This is temporary. It has to be.”
But he did not say if.
He could not.
Giovanni’s jaw tightened, but he nodded once.
An hour later, Charles sat before a silvered mirror, his hands trembling despite years of training them not to. A fountain pen dipped in chalk pigment scraped faintly as he painted a pale streak into Giovanni’s hair, one lock at a time. It was not perfect. The strands resisted the white, bleeding dark beneath. But under the council’s high lanterns, none of the monarchs would look closely.
They would see what they expected to see.
In the mirror’s reflection, Giovanni adjusted the ceremonial sash Charles had given him. The movement was stiff, but his bearing—gods, his bearing was practiced. He stood straighter than Hazen ever had, every line of his body announcing poise and control. And for a moment—an agonizing, uncanny moment—Charles could almost believe.
Almost.
But when Giovanni turned his head, it was not Hazen’s smile that flickered. When his eyes narrowed, there was no spark of Velvet’s blood in them. When he breathed, Charles’s heart stuttered, because no disguise could mimic the weight of a son lost.
General Ilka waited by the door, arms folded. “He’ll pass,” she said. Her voice was steady, but Charles caught the shadow of doubt in her eyes.
“He must,” Charles said softly.
Giovanni looked into the mirror, his voice low. “Tell me what he would say. Tell me how he would walk into that chamber.”
Charles’s throat closed. Memory clawed at him—Hazen in the stables with ink smudged on his wrist, Hazen at the council’s edge listening too intently, Hazen laughing, rare but bright.
How did one reduce a son into lessons?
He forced himself to speak. “He listens before he answers. He meets their eyes, even when it burns. He never admits ignorance. And—” Charles’s hand tightened against the table’s edge. “—he carries the weight of Chocokollis as if it is his birthright. Even when it crushes him.”
Giovanni nodded once, sharp. “Then I will carry it.”
Charles stared at him, at the boy in Hazen’s role, and felt the lie harden around his chest like iron bands.
When Giovanni left with Ilka to rehearse, Charles remained behind.
The mirror still reflected the streaked hair, the sash, the posture that might just survive a council’s scrutiny. It reflected an illusion that might protect Chocokollis from collapse.
And yet—Charles knew what was missing. He knew the hollow where Hazen’s voice should have been. He knew the fragility of a kingdom balanced on a lie.
His breath shuddered. His lips moved in the silence.
“I’m sorry.”
To Hazen, wherever he was.
To Velvet, whose legacy he had stained with chalk and shadows.
To himself—for choosing deception over faith.
But there was no room left for regret.
Two days. That was all.
And if the kingdom demanded Hazen Dusk Kakao—
Then by morning, they would have one.

Chapter Text

The cellar door was hidden near the far end of the crumbling courtyard, almost swallowed by the ivy that had climbed unchecked over warped stone and rusted hinges. Coral stopped short, her breath quick and uneven, pointing with a trembling hand.
“There,” she whispered. “I—this might be it. The moss, do you see it? I remember this. The wall curves in, and… yes, yes, that’s the mark.”
Her voice wavered, but Sawyer didn’t wait for confirmation.
He strode forward and drove his boot into the wood. The blow echoed through the narrow passage, a hollow crack that reverberated like a drumbeat of urgency. The door jolted but held fast, shuddering against the frame.
“Locked,” Sawyer hissed, setting his jaw for another strike.
But Aurelia was already crouching, her fingers scrabbling across the ground until they closed around a jagged stone half-buried in moss. Her eyes glinted in the dim light. “We break it,” she said flatly. “Now.”
Together they attacked the door—Sawyer with the force of his kicks, Aurelia hammering the stone against hinges corroded with rust, Coral pressing close, hands hovering as though her will alone could pry it loose. The air filled with the sound of splintering wood, cracking iron, and the sharp gasp of old nails straining against their sockets.
The cellar door groaned. It sounded almost alive, like something that had been sealed for longer than memory itself, resisting their intrusion with a wounded cry. Then—suddenly, violently—it gave way. The hinges tore, the wood sagged, and with a final snap, the door lurched inward.
A rush of stale air burst forth. Dust and mold surged out like a breath released after years of suffocation. The scent of grain long rotted filled their lungs, bitter and choking.
And within—
Darkness.
The space yawned wide and black, a cellar hollowed of warmth, thick with damp.
Coral coughed into her sleeve. “Gods,” she whispered.
Sawyer lifted the lantern higher, its thin light trembling against stone walls coated with mildew. Shadows jumped and stretched, spilling into corners that seemed to recoil from illumination. And then—
A figure.
At first only a shape, a pale outline huddled against the far wall. Limbs drawn close. A body folded in on itself like a child hiding from monsters.
Hazen.
Sawyer’s grip on the lantern nearly faltered. His chest seized, as if the name had lodged there and refused to let air pass.
Aurelia froze mid-step, the stone falling forgotten from her hand.
Even Coral stopped breathing, her hands flying to her mouth.
There he was—Hazen Dusk Kakao, crumpled and small in the vast suffocating dark. His arms wrapped tight around his knees, chin pressed to his chest, shoulders trembling with each shallow breath. His hair hung in snarls over his face, but even beneath the tangle, the familiar streak of white cut through like a scar of moonlight.
He did not move at first.
Only the shadows shifted as the light crept toward him. For one heart-stopping moment, it seemed he was a corpse, some cruel echo of the boy they had sought.
Then, slowly, his head jerked up.
The lantern’s glow caught his eyes—hollowed, bloodshot, disoriented. He blinked against the brightness, as though the light itself burned. His lips parted, trembling, caught somewhere between the beginning of a smile and the breaking of a sob.
Aurelia was the first to break from the spell. She stumbled forward, her hand outstretched, fingers shaking like she wasn’t sure whether she wanted to touch him or just prove he was real.
Sawyer’s voice cracked, raw with urgency and relief all at once. “Hazen.”
The name echoed in the cellar, filling the silence with its weight.
At the sound, Hazen tried to rise. His hands braced against the ground, pushing, struggling—but his body betrayed him. His legs quivered, then buckled, and he collapsed back against the wall with a harsh gasp.
Sawyer swore under his breath, moving quickly, but Aurelia was already kneeling before him, her hand brushing dirt from Hazen’s face. “It’s us,” she whispered fiercely, her voice breaking. “You’re safe, you’re safe now.”
But even as the words left her lips, she knew they weren’t true.
Because Hazen could barely stand. His skin was pale, waxy beneath the grime, his hands shaking uncontrollably. And his eyes—haunted, darting toward the open door as though expecting something, someone, to follow.
The darkness beyond the cellar groaned again, settling. The scent of mold thickened, clinging.
And in that moment, they all realized—
Finding him had not ended their danger.
It had only begun.
Because Hazen was alive. But he was broken. Weak. And whatever had dragged him into this place, whatever had left him curled in the dark like a forgotten thing—
It was still out there.
And they were not safe.

Chapter Text

The cellar door creaked open with a groan that echoed like thunder in the dark.
The air inside was heavy. Damp. Stagnant.
It reeked of grain rot, mold, and something metallic—something that made Aurelia’s stomach twist before she’d even stepped inside.
“Hazen?” she called softly, her voice barely more than a whisper.
No answer.
Sawyer pushed past her, shoulders tight, lantern raised in one hand. His boots scraped against broken straw, stirring up stale dust.
And then—
He froze.
The light wavered as Aurelia hurried to catch up, and in the trembling glow she saw him.
Hazen.
He was curled on the stone floor near the back wall, arms clutched around his knees like he was trying to disappear into himself. His cheek pressed against the damp stone. His hair—normally tied or brushed back—hung loose and wild, strands falling into his face. In the pale light, the streak of white glowed stark against the rest.
He didn’t stir when they entered. He barely looked alive.
“Hazen,” Sawyer said, voice rough, kneeling beside him.
His hand hovered, trembling just above Hazen’s shoulder, but he didn’t quite touch him. His breath caught in his throat. “Hey. We found you. You’re okay now. You’re okay.”
At the sound, Hazen blinked. Slowly. His eyes were red-rimmed, unfocused, as if he hadn’t seen light in days. His lips parted, cracked and pale, and moved soundlessly before a rasp emerged.
“You’re… real?” His voice was so weak it scraped like sandpaper. “You’re really here?”
Sawyer gave the smallest, strained laugh, but there was no joy in it. “We’re real,” he said softly. “It’s us.”
Aurelia knelt on Hazen’s other side, lowering her face to his level, speaking steady even though her chest felt like it was being crushed. “Hazen. Look at me. Do you know who we are?”
His gaze drifted, unfocused at first, then finally fixed on her. His eyes widened the faintest fraction, before slipping back to Sawyer as if clinging to him as an anchor.
He swallowed hard. His lips trembled.
Then, at last, he tried to move.
The attempt shattered him. Hazen sucked in a sharp breath, trying to push himself upright, but his body crumpled almost immediately. A hoarse sound of pain tore from his throat. Sawyer caught him before he could collapse fully forward, easing him back with a hand on his shoulder and another at his spine.
“Easy,” Sawyer whispered, voice breaking. “Don’t push it. You’re hurt.”
His hands shook, though he tried to hide it.
Aurelia’s heart clenched as her eyes swept over Hazen’s body. He was thinner than she remembered—alarmingly so. His wrists were little more than bone wrapped in pale skin, rope-burned and raw. Fresh bruises darkened his arms and collar, layered over older ones. This wasn’t neglect. This was cruelty.
Her throat closed.
They’d been too late to stop it.
But not too late to get him out.
“Come on,” Sawyer muttered, sliding an arm beneath Hazen’s shoulders. “We’re not leaving you here.”
Aurelia moved to Hazen’s other side, slipping under his arm carefully. Even then, the effort of standing drew a broken sound from his lips. Every step was agony, his body trembling violently against theirs. Sweat dampened his hairline, his jaw tight with the effort of holding back groans. He didn’t complain once—but his silence hurt more than words.
Together, they half-carried him through the door.
The night air outside hit Hazen’s face like a wave. His eyes fluttered, adjusting, his lips parting as if he couldn’t quite believe he was free.
Coral was waiting in the alley, pacing in nervous circles. When she saw him, she froze—then her hands flew to her mouth.
“Oh no—oh no no no,” she whispered, shaking her head as if denial alone could erase what she saw.
Aurelia turned on her sharply, her voice cold enough to cut stone. “You said he’d be tied up, Coral. Not broken.”
“I—I didn’t know,” Coral stammered, her face pale. “He didn’t say what he’d do—I just thought—just thought he’d keep him hidden, that’s all, I didn’t—”
“Save it,” Sawyer snapped without even looking at her, his attention fixed on the boy leaning against him. His jaw was set like iron. “Just shut up and walk ahead.”
There was no time for excuses.
Every step across the crooked stones of the alley was a battle. Hazen leaned heavily into Sawyer, though he tried not to, ashamed of the weight he placed on them. His breathing was shallow, quick. Sweat glistened at his brow. And with each street they crossed, his trembling grew worse.
Finally, his hoarse voice broke the silence.
“I… I can’t—” He faltered, gasping, as though even speaking took everything out of him. “I can’t go back… like this. They’ll see.”
Sawyer slowed, tightening his hold. His expression softened with something close to despair. “Hazen…”
Aurelia bit her lip hard. She couldn’t look him in the eye as she answered. “They’re already seeing someone else.”
Hazen’s eyes cracked open wider, dazed, fever-bright. “What?”
For a moment, neither Sawyer nor Aurelia spoke. Then Aurelia turned her face away, staring hard into the shadows of the alley so he wouldn’t see the guilt written across her expression.
She couldn’t tell him. Not now. Not when he could barely stand.
So instead, she forced her voice steady. “You’re not going back to the court. Not yet. We’ll take you to the garden quarter. There’s a healer’s house there. They won’t ask questions.”
Hazen exhaled a long, ragged breath, too weak to press further. His eyes closed again, his weight sagging between them.
And for now—he didn’t ask anything else.
But as they slipped into the dusk-lit streets, carrying him toward safety, none of them knew that inside the Gathering Hall, Giovanni was stepping into Hazen’s seat.
And the room was clapping for him.

Chapter Text

The doublet was too tight across the shoulders.
He didn’t say anything, of course—he’d been trained not to complain. But every breath Giovanni took felt like it came with a price.
And now he was walking toward royalty in velvet he hadn’t earned, beneath chandeliers whose firelight made him sweat.
His boots clicked gently against the polished stone as he entered the throne chamber.
A hush followed.
Eyes swept toward him like a tide.
Dozens of lords and queens and delegates from six kingdoms turned—searching his face, judging his gait, weighing his soul like gold on a scale.
He kept his shoulders high.
Just like he’d been taught.
You are Hazen Dusk Kakao.
You are Prince Charles’s son.
You are back from illness. You are steady. Composed. Grateful.
His hands trembled inside the folds of his sleeves.
Prince Charles stood at the far end of the long table.
His expression was unreadable—but his eyes were fixed on Giovanni like a thread keeping fragile cloth from unraveling.
He gave a single nod.
Giovanni walked to the seat with Hazen’s name—gold leaf catching on the corners.
He sat down.
The room stayed silent for one beat longer than necessary.
Then Queen Sylvia of Vanillin gave a thin smile.
“It’s good to see you on your feet again, Lord Hazen.”
Giovanni dipped his head. “Thank you, Your Majesty.”
The words came out clean.
He had practiced that phrase fifty times.
King Joshua followed. “Recovered so quickly. You must be quite strong.”
Giovanni smiled faintly, the way the real Hazen would, according to Charles.
“I had help. I’m lucky.”
Queen Lily’s voice was the sharpest.
“And will you be staying for the remainder of the Gathering? No further episodes, I hope?”
Giovanni met her gaze.
Held it.
“No, Your Majesty,” he said quietly. “I’m here until the end.”
Until Hazen comes back.
If Hazen comes back.
As the chamber settled and the scribes resumed their work, Giovanni allowed himself a glance to the side wall—where a series of decorative shields hung in ascending order of each kingdom’s founding.
The Chocokollis shield was third from the left.
Etched with cocoa vines and rivers. Stained deep red from polished wood.
Below it, just out of sight, was a carved inscription:
May Our Truth Never Be Forgotten.
Giovanni swallowed hard.
Too late, he thought.
Far across the room, Queen Sylvia leaned toward her advisor, whispering behind a fan.
“He doesn’t speak quite like the boy I remember from last year’s letter,” she murmured. “But grief and fever change the tongue.”
Her fan fluttered once.
And the lie passed—
for now.

Chapter Text

They’d told him this might happen.
“If they return before he does—hold your ground. You’re him. You’re Hazen Kakao. Let them think what they want.”
But no amount of preparation could soften the moment when Sawyer and Aurelia stepped through the carved arch of the Great Hall and spotted him.
Their eyes locked on him like drawn blades.
Giovanni’s throat went dry.
He lifted his chin, just as he’d been taught.
Smiled like Hazen would—small, polite, measured.
But neither of them smiled back.
Not even close.
Aurelia leaned toward Sawyer as they walked forward, her words too soft to carry—but her posture said everything: her shoulders tight, her steps cautious, her gaze sharp as glass.
Giovanni folded his hands in his lap to keep them from trembling. His palms were slick. His heartbeat felt loud enough to echo against the vaulted ceiling.
“Welcome back,” he said gently, voice pitched just a little lower, trying to catch Hazen’s exact cadence. “You were gone long.”
Neither of them answered.
They stopped just short of his table.
Aurelia’s eyes flicked over him with the precision of a blade. She lingered on his hair. The painted streak of white—Hazen’s telltale mark—was beginning to smudge where sweat had loosened the powder. She noticed. He knew she noticed. But she didn’t say it aloud.
Instead, Sawyer moved first. He stepped closer, boots striking the stone with deliberate weight. His expression didn’t shift. His mouth curved, but it wasn’t a smile—something taut, sharp, testing.
And then—
He spoke.
“Vena ka’tesh lilisar dunik vahl, kora?”
Guildloin.
The mercenaries’ tongue, born of trade routes and knife-duels, carried on the harsh syllables of borderlands. Hazen had begged to learn it last year, just to keep up with Sawyer and Aurelia when they switched tongues. He’d practiced by the riverbank until his throat cracked. Giovanni remembered. He remembered being told—If they test you, answer in short words. Keep it clipped, like Hazen does.
But he had never been taught this.
Giovanni blinked.
Froze.
Smiled again—wrong.
“I’m sorry?” His voice cracked on the second word.
Sawyer’s face didn’t change.
“Zirin sal vorrak. Kesh na’thaal.”
The words hit the air like a hammer. Giovanni didn’t understand them, not entirely. But the tone—the tone told him enough. He swallowed. His gut sank.
Aurelia’s lips curved, just slightly, but it was no smile. She leaned forward, her fingers brushing the table’s edge. Her voice came out cold, steady, precise.
“That’s funny. Because Hazen does.”
The silence was suffocating. The great chandeliers above seemed to fade. Giovanni’s vision tunneled until only Sawyer and Aurelia existed, standing like judges at the edge of his world.
They knew.
They knew.
Giovanni’s pulse roared in his ears. He opened his mouth, desperate. “I—I don’t speak—”
Sawyer cut him off. This time, he spoke in the plain tongue, slow and steady, like he was laying down a verdict.
“We just left him,” Sawyer said quietly. “He’s safe. And you’re not him.”
Giovanni’s chest caved inward. He felt the words like a blade drawn across skin. His gaze dropped, his practiced posture crumbling. “I was told he was gone,” he whispered. “Missing. That this would protect the court. That we couldn’t risk letting Vanillin—or the others—know…”
“You’re not protecting him,” Aurelia snapped. The heat in her voice shocked even him—he flinched. “You’re protecting the lie.”
Giovanni’s hands tightened against his knees under the table. His throat stung. He wanted to defend himself, to insist that he hadn’t wanted this—that he’d been ordered, pressed into it—but the words withered.
Sawyer’s eyes softened just slightly, though his jaw was still hard. He studied Giovanni like one might study a splinter, deciding whether to dig it out or leave it to fester. His voice was quieter now, almost tired.
“What’s your name?”
Giovanni hesitated. Every instinct screamed at him to keep pretending. To lie again. To protect the mask. But his tongue faltered. He couldn’t summon Hazen’s name anymore. Not with both of them staring into him like that.
“…Giovanni.”
The word dropped between them like a stone into deep water.
Another beat of silence.
Then Aurelia straightened, her presence sharp as steel. “You’re going to keep sitting here until we say otherwise.”
Giovanni blinked, confused, breath catching. “…Why?”
Sawyer’s gaze flicked briefly toward the high dais, then back to him. His answer came soft, deliberate, and frightening in its weight.
“Because if someone out there wanted Hazen gone badly enough to do this—we need to know who. And they still think you’re him.”
Giovanni’s throat tightened. He felt the full noose of it now—the trap, the game, the danger that pressed on every breath. He wasn’t just a substitute anymore. He was bait.
And across the Great Hall, Prince Charles was watching.
He couldn’t hear the words.
But he saw the tension in Sawyer’s jaw. He saw Aurelia’s deadly stillness.
And deep in his chest, he knew—
The illusion was breaking.

Chapter Text

The chamber was too warm.
Summer heat crept in through the great stained-glass windows, drenching the stone floor in slanted beams of ruby and gold. The air inside clung heavy, perfumed faintly by incense meant to smell holy, though to Melina it only added a layer of sweetness to the sweat already gathering on the back of her neck.
She dabbed the corner of her mouth with a lace-trimmed kerchief and leaned back in her carved chair, eyes trained on the round table where the junior delegates sat.
And more precisely—on him.
Hazen Kakao.
Or rather, the boy who was supposed to be Hazen.
Melina’s nails tapped, slow and deliberate, against the stem of her goblet. The steady rhythm carried her judgment.
Because something was off. Very off.
The prince she remembered from previous councils was many things: clever-tongued, irreverent, and irrepressibly alive in a way that made every meeting teeter between laughter and scandal. Hazen never once sat quietly for twenty minutes straight. Hazen never sat that straight at all. He slouched, he sprawled, he lounged like every chair in the kingdom was his birthright to ruin.
This boy?
This boy sat too properly. His back was stiff as though tied to a board, his hands folded so neatly on the table it almost seemed rehearsed. His face was calm, still, even pleasant.
And Hazen Kakao had never been pleasant.
Melina’s eyes narrowed.
Aurelia sat beside him, her posture all tension, arms crossed tightly as though keeping herself from exploding into words. Sawyer, on the other hand, was quiet, his hawkish gaze never once straying from Giovanni—not even to acknowledge the plates or goblets or half-whispered conversations around them.
Even Asher looked unsettled. He kept flicking glances back and forth between the boy at the table and Aurelia, like he was trying to add two numbers that simply refused to equal the same sum.
They see it too, Melina thought, tapping her nails again against the glass. They feel it. They know this isn’t right.
The silence, already strained, begged to be cut open. Melina smiled to herself. She was very good at cutting.
She leaned slightly forward, her tone airy but sharpened at the edges. “So, Hazen,” she said. “Recovered, have we?”
The boy lifted his head, nodded once. “Mostly. The healers worked fast.”
“Hmm.” Melina tilted her head, studying him like a jeweler examining a flawed gem. “That is rather funny. You never liked healers before, did you? I seem to recall you saying they were all gossips, whispering about every bruise and cough you brought them.”
A pause. A flicker of hesitation.
The boy blinked once, then answered too carefully: “I was probably just tired.”
Melina’s lips twitched. Too slow. Too polished. Hazen would have laughed, or made a face, or called the healers worse names than I could repeat in polite company.
She sipped her tea leisurely before speaking again, voice dripping with casual disdain. “Well, perhaps nearly dying taught you manners. Who knew all it took to turn you into a polite little statue was a fever and a few weeks of bed rest?”
Asher stiffened at her tone, but Melina ignored him.
The boy gave a thin smile. “I’ve had time to reflect.”
“Reflect?” Melina let out a light laugh, one that sounded sweet but carried venom beneath it. “How astonishing. Only last winter you were throwing figs at the scribes during prayer readings. And now, suddenly, you’re the very image of composure.” Her eyes sharpened. “Almost like a different person entirely.”
The table grew still.
Asher’s frown deepened, his confusion tipping toward unease. Sawyer didn’t blink, his gaze cutting into the boy like a knife seeking marrow.
Aurelia, finally, moved. With deliberate slowness, she folded her napkin and set it neatly on the table. Then, without a word, she rose and excused herself. The scrape of her chair echoed far louder than it should have in the hushed chamber.
Melina followed her with her eyes, a sly satisfaction curling through her chest.
She didn’t need Aurelia’s words. She didn’t need Sawyer’s scowl. She had already seen what they had seen.
She turned back to the boy—Giovanni, though she didn’t yet know his name—and offered him one final dagger wrapped in silk.
“Still, I must say,” she purred, voice syrup-sweet, “you wear discipline well. It almost suits you. Almost. But forgive me for saying so…” She leaned forward, letting the light from the windows slice across her smile. “…I can’t decide if this new Hazen is an improvement—or simply a very poor imitation.”
The words lingered like smoke in the air.
The boy stiffened. His fingers tightened around his goblet. But he didn’t answer.
He couldn’t.
And that was answer enough.
Melina leaned back, dabbing her lips with her kerchief once more. She had the truth she needed.
That boy was not Hazen Kakao.
And someone, somewhere in this court, was playing a very dangerous game.

Chapter Text

At first, Asher thought maybe Hazen was just… tired.
It wouldn’t have been the first time. The prince had a way of burning himself out like a lamp left too long in the wind—bright, bold, and always threatening to flicker. Hazen had been sharp-witted since the day Asher met him, clever to the point of cruelty sometimes, but always in that way that made the sting worth remembering. He was restless, sarcastic, unpredictable—sometimes a menace to order, but never once dull.
That was what made it strange.
Because across the polished oak table in the junior council chamber, “Hazen” sat upright, back perfectly straight, hands folded neatly in his lap, eyes lowered in some studied display of composure.
And Hazen Kakao had never been composed a day in his life.
Asher caught himself staring, waiting—almost willing—for the familiar crooked smirk to appear, for some irreverent quip to break the silence, for the prince to slump sideways in his chair and mutter about how boring these meetings always were.
But it didn’t happen.
The boy across from him—his prince, supposedly—kept his shoulders stiff, his chin lifted at a perfectly practiced angle. His teacup sat untouched before him, steam fading into the stale air.
When Asher offered him a quiet greeting at the start of the session, he hadn’t even looked up. Not once. Just nodded vaguely, like someone performing manners they’d read about but never practiced.
That alone was strange enough.
But it wasn’t what caught him.
It was his eyes.
Hazen’s eyes had always been red. Not the garish, glowing scarlet of old storybook demons, no—but something richer, deeper, almost earthy. A red with warmth to it, like dark cherries in a basket at harvest or clay pulled fresh from the riverbed at dusk. Red that could flash with fire when he was amused, or smolder like coals when he was angry.
But now?
Now, sitting across from Asher, those eyes were violet. A deep, hushed purple—striking, yes, but wrong. They gleamed with unfamiliar polish, like glass beads rather than living fire.
Asher blinked once. Then again. He shifted slightly, tilting his head, telling himself it had to be the light slanting through the stained glass. Surely that was it—the glass turned things, after all. The floor glowed red and gold where the sun struck it. Maybe it was tinting Hazen’s face too.
But no.
He remembered too well. He remembered the way Hazen’s eyes had caught the sunlight at the training fields, glinting like wine. He remembered those eyes watching him during sparring practice, gleaming with mockery every time he slipped in the dust. He remembered them narrowing with dry amusement when he spoke too long, and brightening—once, only once—when Asher made him laugh.
They had been red. Always red.
And now they were not.
He tried not to stare, but it was gnawing at him, hollowing out his stomach as the session dragged on. The boy across from him was nodding at Melina’s pointed remarks, smiling blandly at Sawyer’s clipped observations, answering only when spoken to. The voice was Hazen’s voice, yes—but the cadence was different, smooth where it should have been jagged, empty where it should have carried some hidden spark.
Hazen was chaos in a velvet coat. Hazen was alive, messy, impossible.
This was… nothing.
Finally, Asher leaned forward slightly, lowering his voice in a cautious attempt at normalcy. “Are you alright?”
The boy blinked once, too carefully. Then: “Of course.”
Just like that. Flat. Easy. Dismissive.
But wrong.
Always, Hazen’s words carried something beneath them—sarcasm, restlessness, irritation, amusement. Even when he lied, he lied with fire. This was empty.
The chamber session bled on, every minute weighted with the strangeness of it. Asher forced himself to participate, though his mind was elsewhere, circling the details like a hawk over prey. The wrong posture. The careful words. The strange eyes.
By the time the meeting adjourned, his chest felt tight. He needed air.
Outside the carved double doors of the council chamber, he caught up with Sawyer.
“She’s different,” Asher murmured, still catching his breath from nerves. Then he corrected himself automatically—“He’s different. Hazen.”
Sawyer didn’t turn. His broad shoulders remained fixed, his arms folded. Only his jaw tightened.
“You noticed?”
“I mean—yeah. At first I thought maybe he was sedated, or still recovering, or… I don’t know, having some kind of spell, an episode or whatever. But then—” Asher glanced behind them, making sure no ears lingered. His voice dropped further. “…his eyes, Sawyer. Hazen’s eyes were red.”
That made Sawyer turn. Slowly. His expression was carved from stone.
“I know.”
Asher swallowed. “They’re purple now.”
“I know,” Sawyer repeated, and this time there was something heavy in the words.
A silence stretched between them.
Finally, Asher pressed, voice raw. “That’s not Hazen, is it?”
Sawyer’s arms crossed tighter. His eyes slid toward the far end of the hall, away from the stained glass and the chatter of lingering nobles. Away from Asher, too.
“We found the real one yesterday,” he said, his voice low, almost reluctant. “In the western grain cellar. He was tied up. Drugged. Barely conscious. He hasn’t been able to stand on his own.”
The words landed like a strike to Asher’s chest. He froze, mouth parting soundlessly.
When he finally spoke, it came out hoarse. “You—you found him? The real Hazen?”
Sawyer nodded once. “He’s in the healer’s ward now. Weak, but alive.”
Asher’s head spun. He pressed a hand against the cold stone of the corridor wall, grounding himself. “Then… then the boy in there? The one we’ve been calling Hazen all morning—”
“His name’s Giovanni.” Sawyer’s tone was flat, edged with disdain. “One of Charles’s soldiers.”
The name hung between them, foreign and bitter.
Asher swore under his breath, raking a hand through his hair. He couldn’t stop replaying it: the eyes, the posture, the empty words. He should have seen it sooner. He should have known.
“I didn’t realize,” he admitted, voice raw. “I thought he was just… out of it. Distracted. Gods, I thought I was imagining it. But—”
Sawyer cut him off, cold as a blade. “He wasn’t out of it. He was locked in a cellar while his father paraded an obedient imitation in his place.”
The venom in the words struck Asher silent.
He turned slowly, gaze sliding back toward the double doors they had left behind. Through the wood and glass, he could picture Giovanni still sitting there at the table, wearing Hazen’s clothes, borrowing Hazen’s voice, nodding politely like some painted doll.
And the worst part?
He hadn’t noticed the truth until now.

Chapter Text

The first thing he felt was air.
Not damp. Not sour. Not crawling down his throat with the weight of mold.
Fresh. Cool. The kind that carried a faint whistle through unseen windowpanes, almost like freedom itself.
Hazen’s chest heaved as he drew it in—too fast, too shallow. His ribs ached at once, stabbing heat across his side.
He forced his eyes open.
The ceiling above him was paneled in dark wood, arched gently like a chapel’s roof, clean lines instead of the cellar’s cracked stone. Pale linen curtains framed the walls, glowing with early light. The air smelled faintly of rosemary and soap.
For half a second, he almost convinced himself it had all been a nightmare.
The cellar.
The ropes.
The raw-boned cold.
The blows that turned every inch of him purple and swollen.
The bitter tang of blood in his mouth, over and over again.
A dream.
Maybe.
But when he shifted, pain flared sharp under his ribs. His wrists throbbed, each pulse dragging the memory of coarse rope with it. His skin was bound in clean white linen.
No dream.
He swallowed hard, throat too dry, and let his gaze drift sideways.
A simple nightstand stood beside him. On it: a vase of white blossoms, their stems dark against the water. A folded towel. A basin half-filled with pink-tinged water—blood thinned out until it looked almost innocent.
And there, resting neatly between the blossoms and basin—
A slip of parchment, folded once.
His hand trembled when he reached for it. The effort made his shoulder scream, but he managed to bring it close enough to read.
To Hazen. From someone who owes you a better world.
His mouth went dry. The words blurred until he blinked them clear again. He didn’t know if it was anger or relief that made his chest twist. Maybe both.
He tried to sit up.
His hands shook. His arms gave out halfway. Pain lanced across his chest and down his back like fire. He ground his teeth, forced himself upright inch by inch until he was breathing like he’d climbed a mountain.
Every breath scraped raw.
His hair fell loose across his face, greasy and tangled, but the familiar white streak curled stubbornly against his cheek. He caught sight of it in the morning light—pale as bone against the rest of him.
Still me, he thought, weak and bitter at once. Still me, no matter what they tried to do.
Footsteps creaked on the floorboards. Hazen’s whole body tensed before he could stop himself. His nails dug into the blanket, every nerve screaming cellar, cellar, cellar—
But the figure who entered wasn’t Charles or one of his men.
A woman, gray at the temples, wrapped in a healer’s plain robe. She wore soft slippers, her steps hushed, and the faint scent of rosemary clung to her hands. Her lined face was neither cruel nor prying, only cautious, wary in the way of someone who had tended too many wounded to trust the silence around them.
“You’re awake,” she said gently. Her voice had the softness of cloth against skin. “You shouldn’t be sitting yet.”
Hazen’s throat rasped when he spoke. “Where am I?”
“A healer’s lodge. South of the Garden Quarter.” She adjusted the curtain slightly, letting in a stripe of sun. “You were brought here two nights ago. By two very nervous friends.”
His heart jumped. “Sawyer?”
The woman nodded.
“And Aurelia.”
Hazen’s chest tightened at the names. He looked down at his hands—bandaged, stiff, but still marked faintly beneath with the ghost of ink stains. A ridiculous, ordinary reminder that he still existed.
They found me.
I’m not dead.
But then, like ice: Then why do I feel like I don’t exist at all?
He swallowed against the thought. His voice cracked when he forced words out. “I—I need to get back. They’ll be looking for me.”
The woman’s expression shifted, not pity, not exactly—something graver. She hesitated before speaking.
“They already are,” she said softly. “But not the way you think.”
Hazen stilled. His eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”
The healer met his gaze, steady but careful. “Someone is wearing your name.”
The words hit harder than any fist in that cellar.
A cold dread threaded through his spine, knotting itself tight beneath his ribs. “What?” His voice was barely air.
“She looks like you,” the woman continued, cautious as though each word were a blade. “Close enough to pass in a crowded room. They’re calling her Prince Hazen. And no one’s questioning it—yet.”
For a moment, Hazen couldn’t breathe. The pulse in his ears roared so loudly the rest of the room dissolved.
Someone. Pretending to be me.
Someone taking my place.
And worse—being accepted.
His fists twisted the sheet. His ribs screamed, but he shoved his legs toward the edge of the bed anyway. “I have to get up,” he whispered.
The healer put a firm but gentle hand to his shoulder, holding him still with more strength than he expected.
“You have two broken ribs. A healing fever. Bruises from your collarbone to your knees. You will get up—but not yet.”
Not yet.
He hated those words.
Not yet meant powerless. Not yet meant invisible. Not yet meant Giovanni sitting at the table in his seat, speaking in his stead, wearing his face.
His jaw clenched hard enough to ache. His voice came out tight, almost a growl. “Does my father know?”
The woman didn’t answer immediately. Her silence stretched, heavy, damning.
And in that silence, Hazen knew.
Of course his father knew.
The king wasn’t the victim of this deception. He was the architect.

Chapter Text

The room was still, except for the steady ticking of the healer’s wall-clock and the soft rustle of wind slipping against the shutters.
Hazen lay on his back, eyes fixed on the pale wooden ceiling beams above him, though he wasn’t really seeing them. The pattern of grain blurred in and out, meaningless compared to the whirlwind inside his head.
He should have been thinking about the Gathering. About the trade agreements he was supposed to be helping oversee. About the fact that Giovanni was out there right now, sitting in his place, speaking with his voice, holding his name as if it had always belonged to him.
He should’ve been furious.
And maybe part of him was. Maybe the rage was there, buried deep, simmering like coals under ash. He could feel it sometimes when he thought about his father’s hand guiding Giovanni into the council chamber. He could feel it every time he remembered the cellar, the ropes, the drugged food, the silence of no one looking for him.
But that wasn’t the ache that hollowed his chest right now.
What pulled at him—what burned in him—wasn’t anger.
It was Aurelia.
The thought of her had come uninvited, as it always seemed to.
At first, it was just a flicker: the quick image of her braid falling over one shoulder, dark against the paleness of her tunic. The way she crossed her arms when irritated, that sharp-eyed defiance she wore like armor.
Then came her voice—low and measured, a little dry, always edged with confidence. Sometimes it was arrogance. Sometimes it was humor. Sometimes it was the strange in-between space that made Hazen want to laugh and argue at the same time, just to see which way she’d lean.
And now?
Now Aurelia wasn’t a flicker. She was a flood. She filled every corner of his mind until it was difficult to breathe without her name brushing against the back of his teeth.
I miss her.
The thought rang inside him with the same force as his heartbeat.
Hazen rolled his head toward the pillow, pressing his cheek against the cool linen. His chest felt too tight. His eyes were burning before he realized tears had threatened. He clenched his jaw hard.
It didn’t make sense, not logically. He and Aurelia had barely known each other—if knowing someone required years or layers of secrets shared. They had no years, no long history between them. What they had were fragments. Stolen moments.
A walk by the river when he was certain no one was watching. A glance across a meadow when silence was safer than words. A shared stillness that, somehow, meant more than a hundred conversations could have.
And yet… it mattered. She mattered.
There had been something about Aurelia’s presence that stilled the storm inside him. Not by quieting him into something smaller, not by pushing him into silence like so many others did, but by standing inside it with him, unflinching.
She had never asked him to explain himself. Never treated him like a riddle, or a consequence, or a wound to be hidden. She looked at him and didn’t flinch. She listened without demanding.
She treated him like a person.
Like someone worth seeing.
And Hazen, whose whole life had been shaped by fighting to be recognized as himself, could not stop aching for that.
His fingers twitched beneath the blanket, curling as though they longed for something—someone—to hold.
Before he could stop himself, his lips shaped her name.
“Aurelia.”
The sound was soft. Fragile. Half-memory, half-prayer.
He remembered the way she had stepped between him and Melina’s venom, her posture so sharp with protection it cut. The way she had looked at him the first time she realized he didn’t understand the court’s hidden tongue—not with judgment, not with superiority, but with something almost like anger on his behalf.
He remembered how her head tilted slightly when she was thinking too hard, but she tried to hide it—how she chewed on the inside of her cheek like she was afraid of revealing too much.
Did she know he was awake?
Would she come back if she did?
The questions tore at him until he pressed the heel of his palm against his eyes, forcing the tears back where they came from. He hated crying.
Not because it was weakness. Not anymore. He knew better than that. Tears had been his body’s rebellion long before anyone taught him they could be shameful.
No—he hated crying because it opened him. Because it left him raw. Because it dragged all the feelings he had shoved down, screaming, into the open.
Feeling meant remembering too much.
His father’s voice thundering down a marble hall, not in anger but in the terrible, cold disappointment that Hazen could never quite shed.
The ache in his chest every time he looked at his hands, ink-stained and shaking, wondering if they would ever be steady enough to carry a crown.
The lullabies his mother used to sing when he was small, in a language no one here remembered but him. A language he feared was dying with him, syllable by syllable.
Feeling meant admitting that he wasn’t fine. That he wasn’t unbreakable. That, right now, he wasn’t even whole.
It meant admitting that he needed someone.
And that someone—for reasons Hazen could never speak aloud, not to his father, not to Sawyer, not to the mirror—was Aurelia.
“I miss you,” he whispered.
The ceiling heard him. The ticking clock heard him. His own body, battered and stitched together, heard him.
But Aurelia didn’t.
And Hazen hated how much that hurt.

Chapter Text

The healer told him to rest.
But Hazen had long since learned that “rest” meant something different for him than it did for everyone else. Sleep wasn’t gentle. It wasn’t a soft fading into quiet or a clean break from waking life. No — sleep for him came jagged, full of shadows and voices that scraped against the edges of his mind.
It came with half-memories folded into hallucinations so vivid they followed him into daylight. Dreams that bled into reality until he woke with his pulse racing, his hands shaking, his chest tight with grief he couldn’t name.
So he didn’t try. He lay still instead, eyes on the ceiling, waiting.
Waiting for the ghosts to come.
He had no idea how long he’d been in this bed. A day? Two? Longer? Time blurred here in the healer’s lodge. The clock ticked, but it felt like it belonged to someone else’s life.
His ribs were bound so tight he could hardly draw a full breath without wincing. His wrists burned under the gauze. The cuts stung if he shifted too quickly, the raw edges pulling against cloth. But none of that compared to the ache buried deeper — the weight in his chest that had nothing to do with broken bone or bruised skin.
That weight was silence.
It was quieter now. Too quiet. Not the comforting kind of silence, the kind you’d find in the forest with birds nesting above and water slipping gently over stone. No — this silence was emptiness.
The kind that didn’t feel peaceful. The kind that felt like erasure.
Like he’d been forgotten. Like no one had missed him at all.
Sunlight cut through the curtains just enough to lay stripes of gold across the floorboards. For the briefest second, the sight pulled him somewhere else.
It looked like home.
Not the palace. Not marble and silk, not vaulted ceilings and painted halls.
But the little house in the woods.
The narrow one with the crooked roofline and the mossy stones that crept halfway up the walls. The one where eucalyptus grew in a wild tangle at the edge of the trees, and its scent carried through every season, sweet and sharp at once.
He could almost smell it now.
That home had broken stairs. A hearth that smoked too much in winter. Windows that didn’t quite close. And laughter that bounced between walls that somehow never felt too small.
That home was where his mother sang lullabies in Cacaoian. Soft, round words that clung to him long after she stopped singing. That was where his father’s smile was still wide and unbroken, a smile Hazen hadn’t seen in years.
That was where Hazen wasn’t alone.
He had siblings, once.
Two.
But no one at court knew that.
Their names had never been carved into lineage scrolls. Their faces had never been painted by royal artists. Not a single advisor or noble tongue had ever spoken them aloud.
Harvey.
Petunia.
They were his. His mother’s. The forest’s.
Not the crown’s.
And when they died, they were buried quietly. Like secrets. Like they’d never lived at all.
Harvey was the oldest. Ten when he drowned. Hazen was only four.
He remembered Harvey’s boots by the riverbank. Muddy, one tipped on its side. He remembered a splash — though he was never sure if that was memory or just his mind filling in the gaps of a story too terrible to tell without images.
What he remembered most clearly was Eomma’s scream. It was a sound so loud it scattered birds from the trees, so sharp Hazen’s ears rang with it long after she went hoarse.
And Appa — his father — running. Running as though if he just moved fast enough, he could rewind time.
They found Harvey’s body three days later, caught downstream in reeds and silence.
Hazen had sat by the window all that time, a carved wooden ox clutched in his lap, waiting for his brother to come back.
He didn’t.
He never did.
Two years later, Petunia died.
Hazen was six.
She’d found the berries behind the house. Purple-skinned, shiny, tempting in the sunlight. The kind of beautiful that whispered danger if you looked close enough. But Petunia never listened to warnings. She was stubborn, fearless, alive in a way Hazen envied.
“Try one,” she’d teased, holding them out in her little palm.
He’d shaken his head. Said no.
She shrugged, popped them in her mouth, and laughed.
By sunset she was coughing blood into her hands.
By dawn, she was gone.
He remembered her small body laid still beneath the blanket Eomma had crocheted the winter before — purple flowers stitched into its edges.
He hated purple after that. Still did.
They buried Petunia beside Harvey, beneath the willow in the meadow.
First Harvey.
Then Petunia.
And years later — Eomma.
Hazen was twelve when his mother faded. Not an illness anyone could name. Just a quiet undoing. A breath slipping away one at a time until there was none left.
He’d held her hand at her bedside. Barely breathing himself, afraid if he did, she’d let go.
Before she died, she pressed a red rune into his palm. Her voice was thin, almost gone, but the words came steady in Cacaoian:
“Don’t lose yourself, baby. Don’t let them tell you who you are.”
He had promised her he wouldn’t. And he had kept that promise — but at a cost. Because now he wasn’t sure who he was at all.
After that, it was just Hazen and his father.
But even his father had changed.
Appa returned to the court when Hazen was fourteen, swallowing old grudges, reconciling with his own father. And Hazen had been dragged with him.
Dragged from the forest into the palace. From soil into stone.
Dragged into silk that didn’t feel like his. Into halls that echoed with languages that cut his ears. Into dinners where eyes lingered on his face, on his skin, before they even asked his name.
No one ever mentioned Harvey. Or Petunia. Not once.
There were no portraits. No stories. No evidence they had lived.
Only Hazen.
Only the strange prince with the forest on his tongue and no noble mother to anchor his bloodline.
Only the one who never fit.
He thought of the willow often.
He used to lie under it for hours, staring up through the green-silver canopy, letting the wind turn the leaves into music.
That was where he went when his mind grew too loud. Too sharp. Too haunted.
Because that was where the hallucinations came clearest.
Harvey — older now than he ever had been. Broader shoulders, taller frame, a voice Hazen didn’t recognize but felt was his brother’s.
Petunia — barefoot, laughing, hair tangled with little red flowers Hazen couldn’t name.
Sometimes they spoke to him. Sometimes they didn’t. Sometimes he spoke back, forgetting they weren’t there.
Sometimes he forgot they were gone at all.
Schizophrenia didn’t care about grief.
It sharpened it. Distorted it. Made time collapse, made death a suggestion instead of a truth.
There were days Hazen couldn’t rise from bed because he didn’t know if the figure sitting at the foot of it was real. There were nights he screamed himself hoarse because Petunia’s voice begged from the doorway for help he couldn’t give.
He never told the court. They would have locked him away.
He barely told Appa.
Only the meadow knew everything.
And one day, he knew, he would lie there too.
The fourth stone. The blank one, already waiting.
Not in the crypts, among the royals who had never wanted him. Not in any gilded hall.
He wanted to be with them.
Where the soil knew his name.
Where he could finally rest.
Hazen opened his eyes. His breath caught in his chest.
He whispered their names to the ceiling, almost afraid of how they’d sound after so long unsaid.
“Harvey. Petunia.”
The words trembled into the air.
He hadn’t spoken them in months. Maybe years.
The room chilled around him, like someone had blown out a candle.
He wasn’t alone. Not really.
Not ever.

Chapter Text

The shadows in the room had shifted again.
Late afternoon light crept through the curtains, thick and golden, painting the healer’s walls in streaks that looked too much like memory. Hazen hadn’t moved. He didn’t want to. His body still throbbed with a dull ache beneath the bandages, but it was nothing compared to the heaviness in his chest. Every breath felt like it had to claw its way through years he’d tried to bury.
He thought he heard birds outside. Just one—its reedy, uneven song carried through the shutter cracks. It reminded him of spring in the woods, of damp earth and green moss, of afternoons when the world had felt wider, kinder.
He closed his eyes.
Don’t. Don’t do this. Don’t let it start.
Not today. Please, not today.
But when he opened them again, he wasn’t alone.
Across the room—just beside the wooden frame of the window—stood a boy.
His shoulders were narrow but tall, held in that uneven, growing-too-fast way that spoke of years cut short. His hair was short and black, but streaked with flecks of white at the temples, soft as snow on coal. Eomma’s hair. And his eyes—
Hazen’s breath caught.
His eyes were Hazen’s. Red, shadowed, knowing.
“Harvey,” Hazen whispered, before he could stop himself.
But saying the name was dangerous. Names made things real. And if this was real, then everything else—the healer’s lodge, the bed, the ache of living—crumbled.
Harvey tilted his head, lips tugging into the faintest frown. Older than Hazen remembered him, older than he ever had the chance to be. His voice, when it came, was low and quiet, softened by years he’d never lived.
“That’s not what Eomma said.”
Hazen froze.
His fingers twitched against the blanket, clenching fabric just to feel something.
“She told you?”
“She told both of us,” Harvey said, stepping closer. “Said if anything happened, we’d watch over you. Make sure you didn’t lose yourself.”
Hazen’s throat tightened. His whole chest pulled inward. “You’re not real.”
Harvey only looked at him. Steady. Calm. That was always his way. Hazen remembered clinging to his brother’s leg when storms rattled their house. Harvey used to kneel, press his forehead against Hazen’s, and whisper, Don’t worry, Haze. I’m bigger than the storm.
“I miss you,” Hazen breathed, before he could swallow it back.
“I know.”
The boy moved, lowering himself into the chair by the window. The same way he used to sit on the crooked front step of their forest home, carving shapes into bark with a pocketknife, watching the river like it had wronged him.
Hazen’s voice cracked. “Why am I still here? Why did I live and you didn’t?”
“Because someone had to,” Harvey said gently.
“No. No, you should’ve. You were Appa’s firstborn. You would’ve known how to stand in court, how to bend without breaking. You would’ve carried the name better than me.”
Harvey’s jaw tightened. “And Petunia—”
“Don’t,” Hazen rasped.
But Harvey only raised a hand, the same gesture he used when he’d quiet their fights. “Petunia would’ve burned out faster than you. And Eomma would’ve hated to see it.”
Hazen bit down hard on his tongue until iron filled his mouth. The tears came anyway. Hot, spilling down his face like rain carving rivers through stone.
“I wish one of you had lived instead of me.”
“I know that too.”
The way Harvey said it—without blame, without accusation—was unbearable. Hazen wanted him to be angry, to shout, to curse him for taking breaths that weren’t his to take. But Harvey only looked at him like he always had: like Hazen was worth saving, even when he didn’t believe it himself.
Hazen turned away, ashamed of his own face.
“I see you sometimes,” he whispered. “Sometimes you’re twelve. Sometimes older. Sometimes I can’t move because I don’t know if you’re really there.”
“I’m not.”
“Then why,” Hazen’s voice broke, “why do you feel more real than I do?”
The silence that followed was heavier than any answer.
Hazen leaned his head back against the pillow. He was so tired—of bleeding, of healing, of trying to pretend he was whole. His chest trembled. “When I die, I think I want to be buried next to you.”
Harvey’s voice was soft. Almost kind. “You already are.”
Hazen’s eyes snapped open. “What?”
“You leave pieces of yourself at that tree every time you go there. The willow’s already holding you. It’s been holding you for years.”
The air fled Hazen’s lungs. He hadn’t told anyone that. Not Appa, not even Aurelia. That the meadow, that the willow—were the only places that knew his whole truth.
He didn’t speak. Didn’t dare.
“I’m not ready,” he whispered.
“Then don’t go yet.”
The hallucination lingered longer than usual. Hazen stared, memorizing every line of his brother’s face—the curve of his neck, the threadbare collar of his shirt, the smudge of dirt on his knee from a day long gone. He held on, terrified of blinking, of losing him.
But then Harvey did the blinking for him.
And he was gone.
The room was empty again.
But Hazen didn’t cry. Not this time. He just stared at the chair where his brother had been. And for the first time in weeks, the silence didn’t crush him.
It simply held him.

Chapter Text

The hallway outside the court chambers was cold.
The stone never held warmth, no matter how high the sun climbed or how many tapestries were hung. The flickering torches lining the walls cast long, uncertain shadows that made it difficult to tell where night ended and memory began.
Charles sat at the base of a window arch, knees drawn up, his elbows resting on them, a folded piece of parchment trembling between his hands. His body was sore from the hours of sitting, but he did not rise. He hadn’t slept. Not truly. Not since Hazen had been taken.
Not taken, no—found, they all insisted. Recovered. Alive. Breathing. The healers swore it, Aurelia swore it. And yet… Hazen was still gone.
Not here. Not where Charles could see him. Not where Charles could protect him.
And in Hazen’s place—in the chair at the royal table, in the eye of the court—sat Giovanni. A boy painted into Hazen’s outline. A boy Charles himself had placed there. Giovanni wore Hazen’s colors. Ate Hazen’s food. Smiled in Hazen’s stead. Spoke where Hazen should have spoken.
But Giovanni was not Hazen.
Every time Charles looked at him across the council chamber, a knot formed in his throat so sharp he nearly choked. He told himself it was necessary, that the kingdom could not see weakness, could not scent the blood of their heir’s absence. But when Giovanni lowered his head and the light caught his cheek at just the right angle, Charles’s heart lurched with the instinct to whisper—Hazel.
He winced at the thought even now.
No. Hazen. My son. Not daughter. Not anymore.
He rubbed his eyes hard with the heel of his hand, the parchment crinkling. Guilt pooled hot and bitter in his chest. Every slip felt like betrayal—like he was erasing the boy who had fought so hard to be seen. But memory was a cruel creature. It dragged him backward, to years when Hazen’s voice was higher, when Velvet braided his hair with ribbons, when the world had not yet forced them into new shapes.
Charles pressed the parchment tighter, as though its creases might cut him.
It was one of Hazen’s letters—written years ago, meant for Velvet. He had found it weeks past, buried in a box of faded ribbons and worn cloth scraps that still carried the scent of lavender. Just three short lines, written in Cacaoian script. He hadn’t translated them. He hadn’t needed to.
He could hear Velvet’s voice, clear as the day she spoke it, soft as flour on her hands, warm as the hearth:
“If I do not come back from the market, feed the birds and tell Hazel I love her.”
The words were a wound. His throat burned as he pressed the parchment to his lips, breathing in the ghost of ink like it could return what was lost.
At the far end of the hall, a torch sputtered.
Charles did not look up. He told himself it was only wind. Drafts were common in the east wing, and he had always hated this corridor. The walls here whispered when the night grew long, the kind of whispers that sank into his skin like cold water.
Then came the footsteps.
Light. Deliberate. Too soft to be guards. Too clear to be imagined.
Charles lifted his head.
And there she was.
Standing near the pillar, caught between shadow and flame.
Not Hazen. Not Velvet. Not Giovanni.
His mother.
She wore a deep green gown, the color of leaves left too long on a branch, beginning to wilt but not yet dead. Her silver hair was tied back the way she had worn it when he was a boy, before sickness had twisted her spine and pulled her hands into tremors. Her eyes—dark, cutting, familiar as breath—met his like a blade against glass.
Charles blinked once. Twice.
She did not fade.
“You’re doing it again,” she said.
Her voice was soft, distant, but sharpened by memory. A tone he had both feared and longed for as a child.
Charles’s mouth felt dry. “Doing what?”
“Falling apart where no one can see it.”
He let out a shuddering breath. His hands tightened around the parchment until it threatened to tear. “I never stopped.”
She stepped closer, slow, measured. The torchlight spilled over her cheek, catching the lines of her face. Not the face illness had stolen, but the face of the woman she had been before time ruined her. Before he had sat at her bedside and learned how fragile even strength could be.
“You shouldn’t have sent the boy,” she said.
Charles flinched. “I had no choice.”
“There is always a choice.”
“Hazen was—” He stopped, throat seizing. The word gone refused to leave his mouth. “He was—lost. The court was restless. Vanillin was circling like a wolf. Their eyes—”
“You always cared more about eyes than truth.”
The words sliced him open.
He surged to his feet, knees aching, anger and grief tangling into one unsteady step. “You’re not real.”
“No.”
“But you’re right.”
His hands shook. His body felt unmoored, like the stone beneath him might fall away at any moment.
She did not step closer again. Did not need to. Her eyes held him as surely as chains.
The torch sputtered once more, flaring, dimming. And then—
She was gone.
Only the faint scent of rosemary lingered in the air, sharp enough to twist his heart.
Charles pressed his palms over his face, dragging them down until they trembled against his mouth. Not sobbing. Not yet. But something close. Something raw and uncontainable.
The worst part was how much he wanted her to stay. Even if she wasn’t real. Even if she was nothing but scraps of memory stitched together by exhaustion and madness. Because madness was easier to bear when it felt like someone else was in the room.
Slowly, he forced his legs to move. He gathered the parchment carefully, folded it again, and pressed it to his chest as he walked toward his chambers. His steps were quiet. Careful. Avoiding the windows, avoiding the mirrors, avoiding the weight of his own reflection.
He was a man trying to hold a kingdom together.
With shaking hands.
With a vanished son.
With ghosts in every corridor.
And worst of all—
—with guilt that even his love had learned the wrong name first.

Chapter Text

The healer had finally left the chamber.
She had lingered longer than usual, bustling about the room with her soft voice and gentler hands, offering things Hazen didn’t want—soup, tea, warm compresses, a fire lit brighter, even a lute brought in for music. He hadn’t spoken. Only nodded or shook his head when pressed. His throat felt locked, every word like a stone too heavy to drag free.
Now, with the door closed, he curled tighter beneath the quilt.
His body throbbed with dull persistence. His wrists still burned from the chafing. His ribs protested with every breath. His stomach, hollow and sour, churned at the memory of the broth he had forced down earlier. Even the blanket seemed too heavy against his chest.
He was cold, though the fire in the grate still glowed.
But worse than the cold, worse than the pain, was the exhaustion. Not just in his bones, but in the marrow of him, in the very place where spirit was supposed to live. It was a tiredness that felt permanent, the kind that no sleep could mend.
Ten minutes, he told himself.
Close your eyes for ten minutes.
He didn’t even remember when sleep found him.
The first thing he noticed was the wind.
It smelled different. Not like smoke or ash or herbs simmering in a healer’s pot. It smelled of river moss, rain-damp bark, crushed clover. It smelled like home.
But not the palace.
The meadow.
Hazen opened his eyes and found himself beneath the willow tree.
The grass was thick and alive, dotted with clover blossoms and buzzing with bees. The air shimmered with gold, not quite sunlight, not quite anything he could name. It was warm without weight, like memory had melted into air.
And sitting on the roots of the tree, barefoot and grinning, was Petunia.
But not the Petunia he remembered.
Not the seven-year-old with wild red curls and scabby knees. Not the little sister who used to steal berries by the handful and sing loudly, proudly off-key.
This Petunia was older. Hazen’s age—or perhaps older still. Her red hair was tangled with twigs and woven through with tiny white blossoms. Her freckled face was sharper, her green eyes cutting in a way no child’s should be. She looked like something the forest had chosen to keep for itself—feral and beautiful, terrible and beloved all at once.
“Hey, runt,” Petunia said, swinging one leg over the other. Her smile was wide, wolfish. “You look like shit.”
Hazen didn’t laugh. Didn’t even move.
His throat tightened. “Am I dreaming?”
“Does it matter?” Petunia tilted her head, smirking. “You always knew I’d come back to you. Just not how you wanted.”
His hands—unbandaged here—lay pale and trembling in his lap. He stared at them, hating the thinness of his fingers, the fragile shape of them. “I miss you,” he whispered.
Petunia scoffed. “Don’t get soft on me now.”
“I wish it had been me.”
The smile slid from her face. The meadow dimmed.
“I know,” she said at last. Her tone was sharp, but her eyes weren’t. “We all do.”
Something in Hazen’s stomach lurched. He looked up, startled. “We?”
“Don’t ask stupid questions, Hazel.”
The name struck him like a blow. His jaw clenched, breath stuttering in his chest.
“Don’t—” He swallowed hard, the word scraping out raw. “Don’t call me that.”
Petunia arched an eyebrow, unimpressed. “Why not? That’s who you are.”
“No.” Hazen’s fists tightened at his sides. “That’s who I was. That’s who they wanted me to be.”
“And what—now you’re better because you changed a couple letters?” Petunia’s smile came back, sharp-edged this time. “Still sounds the same when you cry at night.”
Hazen flinched, fury and shame crashing together inside him. He wanted to shout, to argue, but his voice cracked instead. “You don’t understand.”
“I understand more than you think,” Petunia said softly.
The willow’s branches swayed low, as though straining to hear. The leaves whispered in the wind.
“I think about you every day,” Hazen said. The words spilled out, jagged and desperate. “Every morning. Every night. I sit under this tree—this tree in my head—and I talk to you like you’re going to answer.”
“And now I am.”
His chest ached. “Then stay.”
Petunia’s smile tilted. “Depends. Are you going to listen this time?”
Hazen’s voice dropped, almost a child’s plea. “I don’t want to be here anymore.”
“Alive?”
He hesitated.
“I don’t know.”
Petunia stood, brushing dirt from her dress. The air around her shifted darker, heavier. “Then figure it out. Because if you’re not going to fight, go ahead and lie down next to us. The fourth stone is waiting.”
Hazen’s heart stumbled in his chest. His throat burned. “That’s cruel.”
“So is the world.”
“Petunia—”
She turned then, and her eyes pierced him through. “You’re not broken, Hazel.”
His jaw locked. “Stop.”
“You’re not broken,” she repeated, firmer now. “You just keep trying to convince yourself you are.”
“I hallucinate the dead.”
“And yet I’m the one here trying to shake you back to life.”
Hazen surged forward, desperate to close the distance, desperate to touch her. Her hand, her wrist, her face—anything to prove she was real.
But she stepped back, away from him, the gold light bending with her.
“It’s almost time,” she said.
“No—please. Just another minute—”
“You’re going to wake up.”
The meadow dimmed. The willow blurred. The scent of clover bled into smoke.
“Hazel.” Petunia’s voice softened, sad in a way that made his stomach twist. “Live a life worth surviving for.”
And then she was gone.
Hazen woke with a gasp. His body jerked upright in the healer’s bed.
His skin was clammy with sweat, his ribs screaming at the sudden movement. His eyes darted wildly, searching the room. But there was no willow. No meadow. No sun.
Just the healer’s chamber. The same quilt. The same fading light in the hearth.
His hands shook uncontrollably.
But the air still smelled faintly of red berries and wet grass.
And the name she’d used—Hazel—still scraped against his chest like glass.

Chapter Text

The room was too still.
Hazen’s breath stuttered in his throat as the last thread of the dream unraveled. His fingers curled into the quilt, nails biting crescents into the fabric. He could still feel Petunia’s eyes on him, sharp and unrelenting, the weight of her words clinging to his chest like damp wool.
Live a life worth surviving for.
The phrase echoed through him, looping, snagging on every brittle edge of his thoughts. He hated how it lingered. Hated how real her voice had sounded—how much it had felt like her, like she had truly been there beneath the willow.
And worse—he hated how she had called him Hazel.
The name had bitten into him, old skin he’d tried to shed. It wasn’t who he was anymore. But hearing it on her lips had carved something raw in his chest, like a reminder that no matter what he called himself now, to the dead he would always be the girl they remembered.
His pulse drummed in his ears. He pressed the heel of his hand to his temple, grinding against the ache building there. The hallucination had been too vivid, too precise. The way she had looked older, wild and freckled, like the forest had chosen her… it was different from the others. This time it had reached deeper, farther inside, where his defenses couldn’t hold.
His stomach twisted hard.
He didn’t want to cry again. Not in this room. Not where the walls felt like they were listening. Not where he was already too weak.
So he breathed.
One inhale. One exhale. One more.
He counted them like lifelines, like anchors dragging him back into the body that felt too heavy to keep.
Until—
A knock.
Soft. Hesitant. Two gentle taps.
Hazen froze. His grip on the quilt tightened, knuckles paling.
The door creaked open before he could gather his voice.
And there she was.
Aurelia.
She didn’t step inside right away. She hovered in the doorway like a shadow unsure of its place, her frame stiff with uncertainty. Her hair was pulled half-up, a braid woven with tiny glass beads that caught the low light. Her coat was heavy, navy blue, and dusted from travel—edges darkened by rain or mud. A streak of dirt clung stubbornly to the hem, proof she had not stopped moving, not stopped searching.
Her cheeks were flushed from wind, but it was her eyes that stopped him.
They looked hollowed by exhaustion. Red-rimmed. Unslept. Like she had spent nights chasing something too fragile to hold.
Her gaze locked with his.
Something passed between them—silent, heavy, unnameable. Not a question. Not a greeting. Just breath, just the rawness of being in the same room again.
“I wasn’t sure you’d be awake,” Aurelia said finally. Her voice was quiet, almost aimed at the floorboards.
“I just… was.”
Hazen’s throat caught around the words. His voice rasped, brittle, cracking like dry bark.
Aurelia stepped inside slowly, closing the door behind her with a click so soft it was almost careful. Her hand lingered on the wood as though afraid that letting go might make the sound too sharp, might shatter something fragile in the air between them.
She didn’t come closer. Not yet.
“I thought I’d missed you,” she admitted, her voice breaking on the last word.
Hazen blinked. His head tilted. “What?”
“I mean—I thought you were—” Her breath stuttered, her throat catching around the word she couldn’t say.
Gone.
Hazen studied her. Really looked. The tension in her brow, the way her shoulders folded inward, like she was bracing herself for a blow that hadn’t landed yet.
“You came anyway,” he whispered.
Her eyes lifted to his. “I didn’t want you to be alone.”
The ache rose sharp in Hazen’s chest, unexpected and unbearable. That dangerous kind of ache—the one that came when someone cared more than you knew what to do with.
His mouth was dry. His next words scraped out: “I don’t really know how to talk right now.”
“That’s okay,” Aurelia murmured, finally stepping closer. “I’m good at quiet.”
His eyes burned, stung with tears he didn’t want to let fall. He looked down at his hands still fisted around the quilt, his palms smeared faintly with sweat, the fabric imprinted into his skin. His wrists pulsed beneath the bandages, but for once he didn’t try to hide them.
He didn’t have the strength to hide anything.
Aurelia moved closer still and lowered herself onto the edge of the bed. Slowly. Carefully. Like she thought he might vanish if she made a wrong move.
For a long while, they didn’t speak. The silence wasn’t empty—it had weight, warmth, a shape that wrapped around them both.
Finally, Hazen’s voice cracked through it. “I saw my sister.”
Aurelia turned to him, her expression shifting, softening. “In a dream?”
He swallowed. “Or maybe a hallucination. I don’t know anymore. It’s hard to tell the difference.”
Her voice gentled. “What was she like?”
Hazen stared past the firelight, into memory.
“Older. Freckled. Wild. She looked like she belonged in the woods, like she’d been alive all this time without me. Like the forest had taken her and kept her safe.”
“And did she… say anything?”
He nodded, slowly, like the words weighed too much to move quickly. “She told me I had to live a life worth surviving for.”
Aurelia’s gaze dropped to her lap. Her hands folded together with deliberate care. “That sounds like her.”
Hazen blinked, startled. “You didn’t know her.”
“No.” Aurelia’s voice was soft, steady. “But I know you.”
Something inside him cracked. He hadn’t expected that. Hadn’t expected to feel seen like that—seen in a way that scared him, because it left no room to hide.
He turned his head quickly, like breaking the gaze would lessen the weight of it. “You were right,” he muttered. “That first day in the woods. When you said I looked like I didn’t belong.”
Her brow furrowed faintly. “I didn’t mean it to hurt.”
“It didn’t. Not really. I just…” He exhaled shakily. “I don’t belong anywhere. Not here. Not at the palace. Not in Vanillin. Not even in my own head.”
Aurelia was quiet for a long time. The silence pressed heavy, but not cruel.
Then she said, simply: “You belong with the people who wait for you to wake up.”
Hazen turned his head, slowly, almost unwillingly, to look at her again. Their eyes caught. And held.
“Hazel,” Aurelia whispered. The name wavered like it hurt her to say it, though it carved deeper into him, still raw from Petunia’s voice. “I thought you were dead.”
His breath caught.
And after a long silence, he nodded.
“So did I.”

Chapter Text

Hazen
It was quiet again.
Too quiet.
Even with someone in the room.
Aurelia sat next to him, close enough that their shoulders almost touched—but not quite. Hazen could feel the warmth radiating from her, the slight shift of the mattress when she breathed or adjusted her weight. But he didn’t look at her. Not directly.
He didn’t know how.
His heart hadn’t stopped racing since the hallucination. Since Petunia’s voice had vanished into the air like a breath he hadn’t meant to take. His palms were still damp. His throat dry.
The air between them was thick with words they hadn’t said.
Hazen stared down at his hands. He’d folded them into the blanket to stop the shaking, but it wasn’t working. Nothing ever worked.
Not really.
“You don’t have to stay,” he said finally, his voice low, not quite steady.
Aurelia didn’t move. “I want to.”
Hazen flinched at the answer. Not because it was cruel. But because it wasn’t.
Because it meant something he didn’t know how to hold.
He glanced sideways, just enough to catch her profile. Her braid was slipping loose at the side, strands of silver-gold hair curling toward her cheek. Her eyes were on the floor, unfocused, like she was thinking about something she couldn’t say out loud.
Hazen looked away again.
Silence closed in.
“I didn’t think you’d come,” he whispered.
“I didn’t think you’d still be here,” Aurelia said, almost at the same time.
They both froze.
Hazen bit the inside of his cheek.
“You mean alive.”
Aurelia didn’t deny it.
Hazen let the words hang in the air between them like ash.
Aurelia
Hazen looked thinner than before.
Even with the blanket pulled around him, Aurelia could see it in the angles of his face, in the pale stretch of his hands, the collarbone just visible where the healer’s gown dipped. His wrists were wrapped, but not well enough to hide the cuts.
And his eyes…
Red, glassy, exhausted.
He looked like he hadn’t truly slept in weeks. Maybe months. Maybe ever.
And Aurelia didn’t know what to say to him.
She had thought about it on the way there. Over and over, rehearsing every word. Apologies. Pleas. Something about how scared she’d been when Hazen disappeared. Something about how the court hadn’t searched fast enough. About how no one had told her anything—not really—and how it had made her furious.
But now, sitting here, it all felt fragile and wrong.
Hazen was so still. Like movement might break him.
So Aurelia didn’t move.
Didn’t speak.
She waited.
And when Hazen whispered, “I didn’t think you’d come,” Aurelia had answered without thinking.
“I didn’t think you’d still be here.”
But she should’ve said something better. Something gentler.
Now Hazen was curling in on himself again, tucking his knees slightly, shifting away like he was making himself smaller.
And Aurelia wanted to reach out. Touch his hand. Say something real.
But her mouth wouldn’t open.
She wasn’t sure she had the right to say anything at all.
Hazen
“I kept hearing your voice,” Hazen said quietly. “When I was gone.”
Aurelia didn’t answer right away.
Hazen stared at the wall.
He wasn’t even sure why he said it.
Maybe because it had been true. Or maybe because he needed someone else to carry it. Just for a second.
Aurelia shifted beside him.
“You heard me?” she asked softly.
Hazen nodded. “When I was underground. When… everything was black. I thought I was dying. Or maybe already dead.”
Aurelia turned fully now.
Hazen didn’t look at her.
“I kept thinking about the meadow,” Hazen said. “The first time we met. You looked like you hated me.”
“I didn’t,” Aurelia said, so quickly it almost startled him.
Hazen’s chest tightened. “You were scared of me.”
“No,” Aurelia whispered. “I was scared for you.”
Aurelia
That was the truth.
It had always been the truth.
Even when Melina was whispering poison in her ear and Coral was standing too close and Sawyer looked like he might rip someone in half just to keep from screaming.
Even then.
Hazen had looked out of place in a way that wasn’t just physical. He didn’t speak their language. His skin caught the light differently. His eyes held stories no one else in that circle would have survived.
And Aurelia had known.
Somewhere deep down, before Hazen had even said a word.
This boy was made of too many broken pieces.
And he was still standing.
Now, here in the healer’s room, Hazen looked more ghost than boy. But he was still here.
And Aurelia wasn’t leaving.
“I want you to know something,” she said, keeping her voice steady.
Hazen didn’t look up.
So Aurelia reached out. Slowly. Gently.
Her fingers brushed the edge of Hazen’s wrist, just above the bandage.
“I never forgot about you,” she said.
Hazen didn’t pull away.
But his breath hitched.
Hazen
He wanted to believe her.
Desperately.
But believing meant hope. And hope meant expectation. And expectation meant pain.
He wanted to ask—
Why now?
Why me?
Why would anyone stay when they could leave?
Instead, he just stared at the small touch—Aurelia’s fingers on his wrist. Not holding. Just there. Warm. Soft. Real.
He hadn’t been touched gently in a long time.
“I thought maybe the world was better off without me,” Hazen whispered.
Aurelia didn’t move. Didn’t speak.
But after a moment, her hand turned and slid over Hazen’s.
Fingers intertwined.
No pressure. Just presence.
Hazen didn’t pull away.
And for the first time in what felt like centuries, he didn’t feel entirely alone.
Hazen
The silence between them shifted.
It wasn’t empty anymore. Not awkward. Not sharp.
It felt like a quilt pulled tighter. A place to rest, just for a little while.
Aurelia’s hand was warm. Her fingers didn’t grip too tightly or tremble with pity. She just held on, and Hazen wasn’t used to that.
He wasn’t used to anyone staying past the sadness.
Not after the screaming. Not after the silence.
Hazen stared down at their joined hands.
He could feel something rising in his chest—something trembling and soft. Not quite joy. Not quite grief. Something in between.
A heartbeat.
“Do you think I’ll always feel like this?” Hazen asked, voice barely audible. “Wrong. Heavy. Like my body is… too loud, even when I’m quiet.”
Aurelia was quiet for a long time.
Then: “I think you feel more than most people know how to carry.”
Hazen blinked.
“And I think you’ve been carrying it alone for so long, you forgot it wasn’t meant to be that way.”
Aurelia
She hadn’t meant to say that.
Not exactly like that.
But once it left her lips, Aurelia knew it was true.
Hazen looked stunned. Not like he was offended—but like no one had ever said something like that to him. Like he was still deciding if he was allowed to believe it.
Aurelia wanted to reach out and touch his face. Just a thumb at the jaw. A palm to the cheek. But she stayed where she was, watching Hazen’s shoulders slowly ease.
“I’m not very good at people,” Hazen said softly, his voice uneven.
“You’re good at honesty,” Aurelia said. “That counts for more than you think.”
Hazen laughed—just once. It wasn’t a happy sound, exactly, but it wasn’t bitter either. It was sharp around the edges, a little disbelieving.
“I don’t even know how to be around you sometimes,” Hazen admitted. “You’re so… Vanillin.”
Aurelia smiled faintly. “You say that like it’s a curse.”
Hazen looked at her sideways. “Isn’t it?”
“Only if I let it be.”
That made Hazen pause. He didn’t say anything for a while.
Then: “You came here anyway.”
“I would’ve crossed all seven kingdoms if I had to.”
Hazen turned fully toward her.
His eyes, even red-rimmed and tired, were striking. Deep, liquid, watchful. A darker brown than chocolate. Something like rust and wine and shadows beneath stars.
Aurelia looked into them, and suddenly, she couldn’t look away.
Hazen
He wasn’t used to being seen like this.
Not like a problem. Not like a ticking clock of risk and ruin.
But like a boy.
Just… a boy.
Hazen’s breath caught in his chest.
He should look away. He knew he should. But Aurelia wasn’t looking away either.
There was something in her eyes now—hesitation, yes, but also something soft and certain. Something that made Hazen feel almost safe.
“You don’t even know who I am,” Hazen said, barely a whisper. “You don’t know what I’ve done.”
“I know you came anyway,” Aurelia said.
Hazen’s throat tightened.
“I’m not who you think I am.”
“I think,” Aurelia said slowly, “that you’re more than anyone’s ever let you be.”
Hazen blinked.
He wasn’t sure if it was the pain in his chest or the softness in Aurelia’s voice that made his heart break a little more.
Aurelia leaned in, just slightly. Like she was offering—not taking.
Hazen didn’t move.
He wasn’t sure he could.
Aurelia
She waited.
Let the moment breathe.
If Hazen pulled back, she’d stop. She would never push.
But Hazen didn’t pull back.
He was still. Not frozen. Not afraid.
Just watching her. Like someone who was bracing for something terrible and hadn’t expected something kind.
Aurelia’s thumb brushed the back of Hazen’s hand.
And then—slowly, gently—she leaned in that last inch.
Their foreheads touched first. Soft. Careful.
Hazen inhaled like it surprised him. Like even this much closeness was more than he thought he deserved.
And then, when Hazen didn’t move—
Aurelia kissed him.
Hazen
It wasn’t like the books.
There was no rush of wind, no shattering spark, no orchestral swell.
Just warmth.
Gentle. Still.
Like a blanket pulled over bare skin. Like a promise whispered without words.
Hazen felt himself tilt forward, just a little. Just enough to keep the contact. To say: I’m still here. Please stay.
Aurelia’s lips were soft. Dry with wind and salt. Honest.
It lasted a heartbeat. Maybe two.
Then Aurelia pulled back, barely.
Hazen opened his eyes.
Neither of them said anything.
There was no need.
Aurelia
Hazen didn’t look away.
He wasn’t crying.
He wasn’t shaking.
He was just there.
A little stunned.
A little real.
And Aurelia thought—
If he asked me to stay until the sun rose, I would.
If he asked me to burn the kingdoms down, I might.
But Hazen didn’t ask.
He just whispered, “Thank you.”
Aurelia smiled.
“Anytime.”

Chapter Text

The fire had long since burned out.
The room was dark now, save for the moonlight slanting through the tall, arched window. The stone walls of the guest chamber were thick and silent, but Charles Kakao couldn’t sleep.
He hadn’t really slept since Hazel disappeared.
Giovanni had played the part well enough during the banquet. He carried himself with practiced poise, even bowed in the exact way Hazel used to. His words were measured, his laugh timed just right. But to anyone who had ever truly looked at Hazel—even once—it wasn’t him.
Charles wondered how long it would be before someone called it out.
Or worse—before someone believed the lie fully, and forgot the real child existed.
He sat in the high-backed chair facing the cold hearth, elbows resting on the table. A cup of untouched tea sat at his side, the surface gone still and skinning over.
He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. His mind was turning again. It had been getting worse.
He could feel the slant in his thinking. The edges going soft. Something in the air didn’t fit right anymore—too quiet, too stretched. Like the whole world had tilted two degrees to the left and refused to admit it.
He should get up.
He should ask about Hazel again. He should do something.
Instead, he closed his eyes.
When he opened them, he wasn’t in the room anymore.
He was back at the long wooden table in their cottage. The one from before the palace. Before reconciliation. Before Appa’s throne and velvet and sword-polished shame.
This table was cracked and crooked and always smelled like sap.
The fire was roaring.
There were voices.
And suddenly—they were all there.
Hazel. Younger. Around eight, hair too long and never brushed properly. That crooked smile, those eyes already too deep for someone who still lost their shoes in the woods. Hazel was playing with a bit of red string, tying it around their wrist.
Petunia sat cross-legged on the bench, barefoot, a row of berries lined up in front of her like tiny soldiers. Her hair was impossibly bright. She was laughing. Loud and sharp and wild.
And across the table—Harvey. Tall. Ten, maybe eleven. He had his mother’s hands, and Charles’ shoulders. His black hair was cut short, but white streaks ran through it—just like Eomma’s. Just like Hazel’s.
Eomma stood by the fire.
Not as she’d been when she died—thin and pale and coughing into cloth—but strong. Full. Her apron dusted with flour, her hands busy with something unseen.
And Charles…
Charles sat at the head of the table.
Where he never had, not really.
He was home.
“Papa,” Petunia called, biting into a berry. “You’re making that face again.”
“What face?” he asked, but his voice trembled.
“The one where you’re here but not really,” she said, squinting at him.
Hazel nodded seriously. “You get foggy. Like the window in the rain.”
Harvey just watched him with solemn eyes.
Eomma smiled faintly, brushing her hands on her skirt. “You should eat,” she said, setting down a bowl of something steaming and sweet. “You’re always forgetting now. Like your head’s been cracked open and some of it leaked out.”
Charles reached for the bowl. His hand passed through it. His breath caught.
He looked down at his hands. They were shaking.
The room flickered.
For a moment, he saw the stone walls again. The moonlight. The cold tea.
But then—
Back.
To the table.
“You should’ve kept her home,” Harvey said. His voice wasn’t cruel. Just tired. “Hazel was never meant for that world.”
“She has your fire,” Eomma murmured.
“She has my weakness,” Charles said hoarsely. “She has all the worst of me.”
Petunia rolled her eyes and threw a berry at him. “No one ever loved her like we did.”
“She’s not like you,” he whispered.
“She’s too much like us,” Harvey said.
Charles stood suddenly. The chair scraped back, but the others didn’t react.
“She’s not dead,” Charles snapped.
Silence.
Hazel looked up at him. Their face was soft. Curious.
“I know,” they said. “But if you keep pretending I’m someone else, I might as well be.”
The table began to fade. The children’s voices blurred. Eomma turned toward the fire and vanished into its light.
And then—
He was back in the cold room.
Alone.
The chair beneath him creaked in protest. His hands were trembling violently now.
Charles shoved the cup off the table. It shattered against the floor.
He pressed his palms into his eyes again and whispered, voice hoarse and cracked:
“Hazel. Please. Come home.”
The name hung in the air. It felt wrong now, heavy and misshapen on his tongue. The vision’s echo clung to him—Hazel’s words, soft but firm: if you keep pretending I’m someone else…
Charles let out a ragged breath. His chest ached. His mind clawed at the truth he had resisted for so long.
Not Hazel. Not his daughter.
Hazen.
His son.
He gripped the edge of the table as if it might anchor him, the realization burning through him, undeniable now.
“Hazen,” he whispered this time, and the sound of it broke him open.
The wind rattled the window.
Still—
No answer came.

Chapter Text

The name lingered, heavy and unfamiliar now. Each syllable dragged against his throat like a stone.
He remembered Hazel’s small voice in the dream—If you keep pretending I’m someone else, I might as well be.
Someone else.
His breath caught. His chest felt tight, as if bound in iron. The realization pressed in on him, impossible to shake off this time.
Not Hazel. Never Hazel.
Hazen.
His son.
Charles swallowed hard, his vision blurring. For so long, he had clung to the name, the shape, the memory he thought he understood. A daughter, fragile and bright, someone he could hold too tightly, shield too fiercely, lock away from a world that never softened its blows.
But Hazen had never been that.
And Charles—blind, stubborn, desperate—had refused to see it.
He had buried his son beneath the name “Hazel,” the way one buries a seed beneath earth, smothering it in darkness while hoping it would bloom. He had thought he was protecting him. Instead, he had erased him.
That was the truth. The shame coiled deep in his gut.
Because if Charles admitted Hazen was his son, then he also had to admit how many times he had silenced him, corrected him, tried to smooth him into a shape that was never his to hold.
He thought of Hazen’s stubborn chin, the way he squared his shoulders even as a boy. The way his laughter rang sharp like a spark leaping from flint. The way he never once asked permission to be himself, and yet Charles kept denying him all the same.
And now—
Now Hazen was gone.
Charles gripped the edge of the table, bowing his head until his forehead touched the wood. His tears stained the grain, and he let them.
“Hazen,” he breathed this time, and the sound cracked something open inside him. “Forgive me. I should’ve seen you. I should’ve called you by your name.”
The wind rattled the window, sharp and cold.
No answer came.
Only silence.
But Charles sat there anyway, whispering the name again and again—Hazen, Hazen, Hazen—as though if he said it enough, the world itself might finally remember him.

Chapter Text

The east wing of the palace was quiet—too quiet for comfort.
The morning sun filtered through blue-tinted glass, casting silver light across the long marble corridor. Queen Lily of Lillies walked with careful steps, each movement elegant, deliberate, contained.
She had been up before dawn.
She always was, when the stakes were this high.
King Azure trailed behind her, still rubbing the sleep from his eyes. His royal sash was off-center, one end dragging slightly across the floor as he walked. His boots had not been polished.
“You seem tense,” he said, his voice rough with fatigue.
“We’ve received word,” Lily said without turning. Her hand brushed the carved edge of a pillar, fingertips pausing there as though grounding herself. “A whisper from one of the Vanillin aides.”
Azure frowned and lengthened his stride to catch up with her. “Another shift in the trade agreement?”
“No.” She stopped at the end of the corridor. Her eyes flicked toward the chamber doors just beyond, then back to the pale light spilling across the floor. “It’s about the boy.”
His brow knit. “Hazen?”
“Yes.”
“I thought he was missing. Or…” He didn’t finish the sentence.
“So did I.” Lily’s mouth tightened into a thin, regal line.
“And now?”
“There are rumors,” she said carefully. Her voice was quiet, but the weight in it pressed hard against the stillness of the hall. “That he was found. Alive. That he’s here—somewhere in the palace.”
Azure blinked, the heaviness in his expression betraying his attempt at casualness. “Then the plague rumor didn’t work.”
Lily turned to face him fully.
The line of her jaw was sharp, carved by years of statecraft. Her eyes, green like spring stalks after rain, did not waver.
“The plague rumor was never meant to work,” she said. “It was meant to delay. To confuse. To cast doubt where clarity threatened us. We wanted the other courts uncertain. Not to believe in pestilence.”
“But you said he might be ill,” Azure said slowly, studying her face. “That it was spreading.”
Lily’s silence told him everything he needed to know.
“Lily,” he said, voice dropping lower. “Did you—?”
“No,” she said quickly, firmly, with a flash of temper. “I did not curse that boy. Nor did I order anyone else to. But someone has done something. And now there’s talk that he’s changed. That he looks… off.”
Azure’s brow furrowed. “A changeling?”
“I don’t believe in fae tales,” Lily said, dismissing it with a flick of her jeweled hand. “But I do believe in deception. If Hazen is walking these halls again, I want to know who brought him back—and what he knows.”
Azure sighed, running a hand through his silver-streaked hair. He walked a few steps further down the corridor until he reached a narrow window. Outside, the courtyards were coming alive with the day: soldiers forming drills in perfect rows, merchants guiding laden carts toward the kitchens, couriers darting through the gates with sealed letters destined for far kingdoms. The trade gathering was in full swing, despite the undercurrent of unease.
“We shouldn’t have gotten involved in this mess,” he muttered.
“We were already involved the moment he was born,” Lily said coldly.
Azure turned slightly, his face half-lit by the glass’s pale glow. “I saw him once, you know. Hazen. At a border event, years ago. He must have been six, maybe seven. Holding his mother’s hand.”
Lily’s head snapped toward him. “You never told me that.”
“You didn’t ask,” Azure said with a shrug that wasn’t entirely careless. His gaze drifted out the window again. “Even then, he looked… different. Like something wild caught in a golden leash. You know what I mean. You’ve seen it too.”
“I’ve seen the danger in him,” Lily said, her words precise, as if spoken through glass. “It’s not just madness—it’s legacy. His bloodline is a stain. The Kakao name should have ended with Charles. Not continued in a son who doesn’t know his place.”
Azure was silent for a long while. His reflection in the glass stared back at him, tired and older than he remembered. “And yet he’s here. Alive. Which means he has a place, whether we like it or not.”
Lily’s hands curled against the carved pillar. “He’s a threat.”
“To what?” Azure asked softly. “To our alliances? To the crown? Or to the stories you’ve worked so hard to keep buried?”
Her eyes flashed, green like a blade of grass sharpened to a knife.
“Do not mistake hesitation for mercy,” she said. “If he walks into court again—this new Hazen—then we find out if he remembers anything.”
Azure studied her, the lines of exhaustion cutting deeper into his face. “And if he does?”
Lily’s voice dropped to a whisper that held no warmth. “Then we do what we must.”
The words lingered in the cold marble corridor like frost that would not melt.

Chapter Text

Hazen

He woke to warmth.

Not the fevered kind.
Not the cold-sweat kind.

The other kind—the one he never trusted, because it always vanished too soon.

The kind that felt like safety.

Hazen’s lashes fluttered before his eyes opened fully. Morning light filtered pale through the frost-painted windowpanes, sketching delicate vines of ice across the glass. The fire had burned low in the hearth, only faint embers left, but the room didn’t feel bitter. Someone—she—had kept the blanket tucked securely over him through the night.

He lay still, his chest rising and falling slowly, as though even the act of breathing might shatter the fragile peace. He tried to name the feeling curling inside his chest.

It wasn’t panic.
It wasn’t pain.
It wasn’t happiness either—too fragile, too fleeting—but it was something near it.

It hummed like a quiet echo of last night, when Aurelia had touched his wrist as though it wasn’t a ruin, when she had kissed him like he was something worth staying for.

Hazen turned his head, cautious, almost afraid to find it had all been a dream.

But there she was.

Aurelia sat curled in the chair at the foot of the bed, one leg tucked under her, hair mussed from restless sleep. A book rested open across her lap, but the page was untouched. Her gaze wasn’t on the words—it was on him.

Their eyes met.

Hazen blinked, disoriented by the simple weight of being seen.

Then—hesitantly, awkwardly, as if it had to be relearned—he smiled.

Aurelia smiled back.
Small. Real. And impossibly warm.

“You were talking in your sleep,” she said softly, her voice still hushed from the quiet of the morning.

Hazen’s heart skipped. He swallowed. “Did I say anything… strange?”

“You said ‘not again’ three times,” Aurelia said gently. Her thumb brushed the book’s corner as though grounding herself. “Then you said ‘Father.’ And you started crying.”

Hazen exhaled sharply, shoulders shifting beneath the blanket.
Of course.

He turned his face toward the frost-silvered window. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Aurelia said quickly. “I didn’t wake you. You calmed down on your own.”

Hazen nodded once, his throat suddenly too tight for words. His hand tightened on the blanket where it bunched near his chest. The bandages along his wrist had shifted; a thin trace of blood dried against the edge.

Aurelia noticed too.

“Let me help,” she murmured, already standing.

He almost flinched. Reflex. His body didn’t know how to expect gentleness.

But he didn’t tell her no.

⸻

Aurelia

She moved slowly, deliberate, as though he were a bird that might startle and flee.

The healer had left supplies neatly arranged on the shelf: clean wraps, salves, a bowl for water. Aurelia gathered them in silence and returned to the bed.

Hazen didn’t argue. He extended his wrist toward her, his eyes fixed somewhere beyond her shoulder.

Aurelia dipped the cloth in warm water, then began carefully cleaning the edges where the old bandages had slipped. Hazen remained still, gaze distant, jaw tight.

“Does it hurt?” Aurelia asked quietly.

“Not as much as it should.”

The answer was strange, haunting. He didn’t elaborate, and she didn’t press.

When the wrappings came away, Aurelia froze for half a breath. The marks were deeper than she remembered. Clean, yes, but raw—like he had clawed at himself. Her stomach knotted. She forced her hands to remain steady.

She wrapped him gently, careful as though her touch might unravel him. His skin burned faintly under her fingers, fever still clinging to him.

“You’re warm,” Aurelia murmured. “Still a bit of a fever.”

“I’ll live.”

Her lips curved faintly, almost stubborn. “I’m counting on it.”

At that, Hazen finally looked at her. Just a flicker of his gaze, but it landed heavy, carrying more weight than whole speeches.

She tied the bandage neatly and let his hand fall softly into his lap. Her fingers lingered there, unsure whether to retreat or stay.

And then she heard herself ask, “Do you want me to do your hair?”

Hazen blinked at her, startled. “What?”

“I mean—” Aurelia flushed, suddenly aware of how absurd it sounded. “It’s just… you have that streak, and it’s kind of everywhere.”

His hand twitched upward, touching his hair self-consciously.

“It’s okay,” Aurelia said quickly, more earnestly. “I like it.”

Hazen stilled, then lowered his hand. His voice was quieter when he spoke again. “It was my mother’s.”

A silence settled, softer than the snow outside.

“She had white in her hair too,” he said after a moment. “And Harvey had patches like snow across his head. Petunia didn’t, though. She got all of Eomma’s fire—red and wild.”

Aurelia didn’t speak, not wanting to shatter the way his voice carried memory like glass.

“They’re all buried in the meadow,” Hazen said. “Under the willow tree. I used to think when I died, I’d go there too. I even imagined what flowers would grow on my grave.”

Aurelia swallowed hard.

She reached for the comb.

Hazen didn’t stop her.

⸻

Hazen

Her fingers threaded gently through his hair, not trying to discipline it into court-worthy order. Just brushing, untangling, as though time itself slowed for him.

His chest ached with the intimacy of it.

No one had touched his hair like this since Eomma.

He closed his eyes, his voice quieter now, almost confession.

“I used to sit under that willow,” Hazen murmured. “Every day. Even in winter. I’d talk to them like they were still there. Sometimes I’d see them. Harvey grown taller than Father. Petunia dancing barefoot in the frost. Eomma scolding me for not eating.”

Aurelia’s hand paused, then kept combing, steady, steady.

“I couldn’t always tell what was real,” Hazen admitted, lashes trembling. “Sometimes I still can’t.”

He opened his eyes. Aurelia’s were shining.

“I’m sorry,” he said quickly, guilt catching in his chest.

“Don’t be,” she whispered.

Their gazes locked, close again. Closer than last night. No fire between them this time, no fear—only pale morning light, soft rhythm of breath, and something in Hazen’s chest that hurt because it felt like hope.

“Are you going to tell the court I’m alive?” Hazen asked quietly.

Aurelia blinked, the question heavy in the air. “Do you want me to?”

Hazen looked down at his lap. His hands clenched against the blanket.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “Part of me wanted to disappear.”

“And the other part?”

Hazen lifted his eyes to hers.

“I think the other part wanted to be found.”

Chapter Text

Hazen

The comb had long since been set aside. Aurelia’s hands rested quietly in her lap, folded, unmoving. Hazen sat beside her on the cot, his back slouched against the thin mattress, his long legs folded uncomfortably beneath him, the blanket bunched and tangled around his ankles.

The pale morning had thickened into a golden haze, sunlight stretching long across the healer’s ward, but neither of them moved.

Hazen wasn’t sure he could.

The warmth in his chest hadn’t faded. It ached against his ribs in a way that wasn’t quite pain—just fullness, a pressure rising in his throat, behind his eyes. Not tears. Not yet. But close.

Aurelia hadn’t asked anything of him.

She hadn’t filled the silence with questions, or instructions, or judgment. She simply stayed. She let him speak when he could. And when he couldn’t, she waited.

Hazen couldn’t remember the last time someone had given him that much room.

Slowly, almost uncertainly, he turned his head to look at her. He studied the faint line of shadow beneath her cheekbone, the gold thread fraying loose from her tunic, the puffiness around her eyes like she hadn’t slept much.

His chest tightened.

“You stayed,” Hazen whispered.

Aurelia met his gaze. “Of course I did.”

He nodded faintly, eyes falling back to his hands. His fingers twisted the edge of the blanket, restless.

“I thought you might leave in the night,” he murmured.

Her voice softened. “Why?”

“Because I always wake up alone.”

For a long moment, Aurelia said nothing. Then: “You didn’t, this time.”

Hazen blinked hard.

No. He hadn’t.

And that was terrifying.

⸻

Aurelia

The room was so still she could almost hear the beat of his heart.

She could feel the tension humming under his skin—the way his fingers plucked nervously at the blanket, the way his gaze darted restlessly toward the window but never stayed there.

She didn’t try to fix it.

Some wounds couldn’t be mended with words, or with bandages. Sometimes, the only gift was presence—making space for someone to exist without demands.

Hazen stared out the window, though his eyes weren’t focused on anything at all.

“What are you thinking?” Aurelia asked quietly.

He didn’t answer for a long while. Then: “I’m thinking about the fact that someone replaced me.”

Aurelia inhaled slowly. She’d been waiting for this.

“Do you know his name?” Hazen asked. His voice was careful, flat.

“Giovanni.”

Hazen gave a faint, bitter laugh. “Of course. Strong. Polished. Familiar.”

“He looks a lot like you,” Aurelia admitted. “But he isn’t you.”

Hazen turned sharply to her. “How can you tell?”

Aurelia didn’t look away.

“He doesn’t flinch when people look at him. He doesn’t pause before he speaks. He doesn’t carry the streak in his hair. And he doesn’t smell like wildflowers and coal dust and that tea you always drink.”

Hazen blinked.

“I thought I was invisible.”

“You never were,” Aurelia said firmly. “Not to me.”

Hazen’s mouth parted, but he didn’t speak. His shoulders sank, just slightly, as if something tight inside him had finally loosened.

⸻

Hazen

The silence between them was different now. Heavier—but not suffocating. Just… full.

“I want to see him,” Hazen said suddenly.

Aurelia blinked. “Giovanni?”

He nodded. “I want to see how they think I’m supposed to be. What version of me makes people more comfortable.”

“You sure?”

“No,” Hazen admitted, his voice low. “But I need to know what I’m walking back into.”

Aurelia hesitated, then reached forward, brushing a loose strand of hair from his face. Her touch was careful. Gentle.

“You don’t have to become him again,” she whispered.

Hazen’s throat burned. “But what if they only want him now? What if I come back, and they decide he’s easier to keep?”

“Then they’re fools,” Aurelia said simply. “And they’ll lose something irreplaceable.”

Hazen shook his head. “I’m not—”

“Yes, you are,” Aurelia cut in softly. “You’re not perfect. You’re not easy. You’re not what they planned. But you’re real. And brave. And here. And I think that scares them more than anything.”

Hazen’s eyes locked on hers. He couldn’t look away. Her words cut clean through him.

“I don’t know if I can do this,” he whispered. “If I can face the court. Or Father. Or the others. Melina…”

“You don’t have to do it alone,” Aurelia told him.

“But I’ll be the only one who remembers what happened.”

“I’ll remember,” she said.

Hazen stared at her, as though weighing whether to believe her.

Then Aurelia reached for his hand. Not fast. Not urgent. Just steady.

And Hazen let her take it.

⸻

Aurelia

He was still trembling. Just faintly, under the surface—but she felt it in his grip.

She had seen it the first time they met: how tightly he held himself, how his eyes scanned every room like he was waiting to be found wanting. She had seen the way people flinched away, the whispers behind his back, the way he spoke his own name as if it were both a curse and a prayer.

And yet—he had let her in.

Now he sat before her, scarred and raw, asking silently: What comes next?

She didn’t know the answer.

But she knew this: he wouldn’t face it alone.

“You don’t have to decide today,” Aurelia said gently. “You can stay here as long as you want. Or we can leave. Go anywhere. I’ll help you.”

Hazen’s mouth twisted in a smile that wasn’t quite a smile. “They’ll know I’m not dead eventually.”

“I know.”

His eyes fell to his hands again. Ink stains, faint scabs, ghostly burns from months past. The history of his survival mapped into his skin.

“I used to think I’d die quietly,” Hazen whispered. “In a room like this. And no one would notice until I started to smell.”

Aurelia’s chest tightened. She reached out before she could stop herself.

This time, Hazen didn’t flinch.

Her fingers brushed his cheek.

“Hazen Dusk Kakao,” she said firmly, “if I ever find you gone and cold, I’ll bring the whole forest down trying to find your heartbeat again.”

He stared at her.

Then his lip trembled.

And then he began to cry.

⸻

Hazen

It wasn’t loud.
It wasn’t violent.

It was worse.

The kind of crying that folded inward, ribs shaking without sound. Tears poured down his face like rain, unstoppable, no matter how tightly he clutched the blanket.

He hadn’t meant to. He hadn’t wanted to. But Aurelia’s words had pulled something loose inside him. A thread. A knot. A door.

And now he couldn’t stop.

Aurelia’s arms wrapped around him. Steady. Careful.

And Hazen folded into her without thought.

His forehead pressed into her shoulder. His body shook with panic, with shame, with the aching relief of being held and wanting to deserve it.

“I don’t want to go back,” Hazen choked. “I don’t want them to look at me and pretend everything’s fine.”

“Then we won’t pretend,” Aurelia whispered.

“But they’ll lie,” he sobbed. “They’ll say I’m healed. They’ll say I’m strong. But I’m not.”

“You don’t have to be strong. You just have to be.”

Hazen clung tighter.

And Aurelia held him.

⸻

Aurelia

They stayed that way for a long time.

No one knocked. No one searched for them. The healer’s ward remained quiet, the gathering and the palace far away, as though they lived in a different world entirely.

Aurelia rocked Hazen gently, her fingers combing through his dark hair until his trembling slowed.

At last, Hazen pulled back. His face was blotchy, his lips raw, but his eyes—his eyes were clearer.

And when he looked up at her, something unspoken passed between them. A pulse. A tether. A breath.

Hazen exhaled, long and shaky.

And then, almost too soft to hear:

“I want to go outside.”

Chapter Text

They called him Hazen now.

Giovanni straightened his back as he moved through the eastern corridor, his steps careful, measured, the way he had practiced over and over until his muscles ached. His chin lifted just high enough to echo the princely bearing of a boy he had never met.

The boots pinched his toes. The jacket—black velvet with bronze buttons that gleamed in the morning light—was a fraction too wide across the shoulders. The cuffs were lined with gold thread, but they chafed his wrists. His hair itched from the chalk-dusted streak the attendants had brushed into it. Every move felt borrowed. Every word rehearsed.

He had practiced the walk.

He had practiced the silence, the stillness Hazen Kakao was known for—the restrained composure Charles had described in such painful detail that Giovanni sometimes wondered if the man loved his son at all, or only the memory of him.

But no amount of practice saved him when someone looked too closely.

Like the Vanillin girl did.

Aurelia.

She didn’t speak her doubts outright. She didn’t accuse. But she watched. Every tilt of her head, every flicker of her gaze was measured, searching, as if she were listening for something beneath his words.

Giovanni hated that look.

It made him feel like a shape cut from the wrong cloth.

And then there was the desert boy—Sawyer. With eyes like sunbaked sand and a voice sharp as cracked glass. He’d cornered Giovanni at the banquet table the night before, asked him something low and soft in a language he didn’t know. Guildloin, maybe.

Giovanni had blinked, forced a smile, and murmured some vague sound of confusion.

Sawyer had not smiled back.

The performance had been easier the first night.

The nobles had clapped politely, bowed, greeted him as Prince Hazen Dusk Kakao. They had acted as if they hadn’t buried the real boy beneath rumors only days before. The court had no affection for Hazen. No clear memory of his face. Only the title. Only what they had been told.

And Giovanni—well, Giovanni had always been good at doing what he was told.

That was how he had ended up here, wasn’t it?

A soldier’s son. A boy from the barracks. One face among hundreds in the training yard. Overlooked for advancement again and again—he had no lineage, no name that carried weight. But he had the look. The dark eyes. The build. The voice that could be shaped and trained.

When Prince Charles called him forward that day, Giovanni thought he was being punished.

He hadn’t realized the man was about to ask him to become someone else.

Now, standing in the prince’s boots, he wasn’t sure which fate would have been worse.

In the small side chamber, Giovanni sat alone, fingers trembling as he adjusted the rings on his hand—Hazen’s rings, Charles had said. One was shaped like a coiled serpent. The other held a ruby set crooked in a weathered band.

“It matters,” Charles had insisted. “People will notice.”

But not enough to tell the difference between a son and a stranger, Giovanni thought bitterly.

He didn’t know much about Hazen. Only what had been whispered during late-night sessions with Charles:

“He walks with his head down—he thinks it makes him disappear.”
“He doesn’t smile unless he’s lying.”
“He smells of coal dust and ink.”
“He’s got a white streak in his hair. On the left, always.”

Giovanni had asked once if he should bleach his.

“No,” Charles had snapped. “We’ll handle that.”

And so the attendants powdered his dark hair that morning. Every time Giovanni shifted, he feared the streak would smudge away.

This wasn’t who he was.

And it certainly wasn’t who he wanted to be.

But he knew what happened to boys in the army who refused orders.

He’d seen it.

The door creaked.

Giovanni straightened at once, spine rigid, hands frozen around the ruby ring. He turned.

Aurelia stood framed in the doorway, one hand on the panel of carved oak.

Her gaze narrowed—not in anger, but in something quieter, sharper. Caution. Curiosity. A question she hadn’t voiced.

“You left early last night,” she said, calm and even.

Giovanni blinked. “I—wasn’t feeling well.”

Her head tilted. “Mm. I would have thought you’d stay. You used to love the gathering. Or so I was told.”

Giovanni forced a smile. “I suppose I’ve changed.”

“Apparently.” Her eyes flickered over him, too knowing. Then: “Your eyes look different.”

His throat went tight.

“Lighting,” Giovanni managed. “Maybe.”

Aurelia didn’t reply. She only watched.

The silence stretched until Giovanni dropped his gaze to his lap. “Is there something you want to ask me?” he said at last. Not harsh. Just tired.

“I already asked,” Aurelia said. Her voice was quiet, unreadable. “But you didn’t understand.”

He looked up, startled.

It was that same language again—Guildloin. A string of soft syllables he couldn’t follow, couldn’t even repeat.

Hazen would have known.

“I never liked that language,” Giovanni said quickly.

And the moment the words left his mouth, he knew it was wrong.

He knew it was something Hazen would never have said.

Aurelia didn’t react. Didn’t call him out. But something in her face shifted, as if an invisible curtain had fallen.

A distance.

A quiet, unspoken goodbye.

“I should go,” Aurelia murmured. “Court is reconvening.”

Giovanni nodded mutely.

The door clicked shut behind her.

For a long time, Giovanni sat alone in the chamber, hands clasped tightly, jaw locked.

At last, his lips parted, and for the first time since he had agreed to this masquerade, he whispered the truth into the silence:

“I’m not him.”

Chapter Text

Hazen didn’t want to move.

He had said, earlier, that he wanted to go outside—his voice small, almost steady at the time. But that had been hours ago, or at least it felt that way. The light had shifted across the floorboards, turning gold, then pale, then gold again, like the sun couldn’t decide what season it wanted to be.

Now he sat curled in the cot, his knees drawn close beneath the blanket, his shoulders pressed against the wall. His head leaned back, but his eyes were fixed on the wooden floor as if it might split beneath him at any moment. His lips were pale, his jaw tight. He hadn’t spoken in nearly twenty minutes.

Aurelia sat beside him. Quiet. Waiting.

Not urging him. Not asking him to get up.

Just there.

Hazen wasn’t sure which weighed on him more—his gratitude for her presence, or the sharp fear of what it meant to be seen so fully. Both feelings warred inside him, loud enough that it was almost unbearable.

Outside, people would stare. Perhaps they already knew. Perhaps whispers had already spread down the corridors. Maybe someone had glimpsed him slipping through the healer’s ward. Maybe the healer herself had spoken.

He pressed his palm against his forehead. His skin felt clammy, too hot, though the air was cool. The tears had stopped, but they had left behind a heavy tightness in his chest that made it hard to breathe, like the world had grown narrower and narrower until there was no room for air.

“I can’t do this,” he whispered.

Aurelia turned toward him, her voice calm, steady. “You don’t have to. Not right now.”

“I said I would.” Hazen’s words were faint, but edged with desperation. “I said I wanted to.”

“It’s all right to change your mind.”

He shook his head. “I’ll keep doing that forever. I’ll keep starting and stopping, freezing and failing. I’m not—” his throat tightened, “I’m not ready to be anything to anyone.”

Aurelia didn’t interrupt him.

And that was worse—and better.

His voice cracked quieter:
“Everyone I loved died. Or they forgot me. Or they replaced me. And now I’m supposed to… what? Put on these boots, stand tall, and be a prince again?”

Aurelia moved slowly, lowering herself onto the cot until her shoulder brushed his.

“You’re not supposed to do anything,” she said gently.

Hazen turned his face toward her, his eyes dull but burning. “Then what am I even for?”

Aurelia reached for him.

And this time, Hazen didn’t pull away.

He let her guide him—silently, carefully—into her arms, his tall frame folding against her as though his body had been waiting for the shape of hers, for warmth, for touch. He pressed his forehead into her collarbone, his breathing uneven, too fast but quieter now.

Aurelia held him as though he were something fragile, something precious and breakable.

Hazen’s fingers clutched at her tunic, not hard, not desperate—but enough to say: don’t go.

And Aurelia didn’t.

The silence was thick, but not suffocating.

Hazen closed his eyes. His voice came low, ragged:
“I thought about dying. Before you found me. Not just once. Not in a dramatic way. Just… the soft kind. The kind where you stop making plans.”

“I know,” Aurelia said. Her voice didn’t waver.

Hazen breathed in, shaky.

“You still stayed.”

“Of course.”

His throat worked. His next words were barely audible.
“You kissed me. Even after all of it.”

Aurelia’s arms tightened around him.

“I kissed you because I wanted to,” she said. “Not because you were easy. Not because you were safe. But because when you looked at me, it was like the whole world finally went quiet.”

Hazen trembled.

“I’m not easy to love,” he whispered.

Aurelia didn’t argue. She pressed her forehead against his, her breath soft and steady.

“You’re still worth it.”

Hazen couldn’t answer. His heart had folded inward on itself again, an aching, twisting shape that pulsed beneath his ribs. He buried his face in her shoulder. Her scent was warm, sharp—winter herbs and ink. He breathed it in like medicine.

For a while, they lay like that.

Aurelia’s hand traced slow circles across his back. At one point, she slid her fingers through the streak of white in his hair, combing it gently behind his ear.

“I dreamed of Petunia again last night,” Hazen murmured suddenly.

Aurelia’s hand stilled for just a second, then continued.

“She was older this time. Seventeen, maybe. Red hair longer than I remembered. She smiled at me. Said I was late.”

Hazen’s eyes burned.

“I keep thinking if I’d been faster… If I’d told her not to eat the berries… If I’d known—”

“You were six,” Aurelia interrupted softly.

“She still died,” Hazen whispered.

Her chest rose against his cheek in a deep breath.

“I talk to them sometimes,” Hazen admitted. “When it’s bad. Harvey. Petunia. Eomma. I pretend they’re still there. I ask them what I’m supposed to do.”

“Do they answer?”

A faint, broken laugh left him. “Depends how bad it is.”

Aurelia bent down and kissed the top of his head.

Hazen froze.

Then—slowly—he leaned closer.

He didn’t have the words for what he wanted, what he ached for. But he felt it. The need to be held not only to feel safe, but to prove he was still real.

“Can we stay like this a little longer?” he whispered.

“Yes,” Aurelia said at once.

They shifted until Aurelia lay against the pillow, and Hazen curled beside her, his arm resting across her stomach, his forehead pressed into the hollow of her collarbone. Her hand rested gently on his shoulder, not controlling, just anchoring.

Hazen sighed. The weight in his chest didn’t vanish, but it began to settle.

“I don’t want to be Giovanni,” he whispered.

“You’re not,” Aurelia said.

“They wanted him instead.”

“They thought they did. Because he’s easier to look at. Easier to explain.”

“They’ll see me again and wish it was him,” Hazen said hoarsely.

“No. They’ll see you and remember what it means to look at someone real.”

His grip on her tunic tightened.

They lay in silence as the light shifted again. Voices murmured outside the window, muffled—court staff, perhaps, or delegates. Life going on without him.

The thought of standing, of facing them, turned his stomach. But he knew the moment was coming.

Finally, he lifted his head, meeting Aurelia’s eyes.

“I’m scared,” Hazen admitted.

“So am I,” Aurelia said softly.

He blinked. “You?”

She nodded. “I’m scared I’ll lose you again.”

His throat closed.

Slowly, almost painfully, Hazen leaned forward.

This time, it wasn’t accidental when his lips brushed hers.

It wasn’t desperate. It wasn’t frantic.

It was soft. Trembling. Painful in the way all beautiful things are when they’re touched too carefully.

He pulled back after only a moment, eyes wide, terrified he had ruined everything.

But Aurelia cupped his cheek.

And kissed him back.

The world narrowed to breath and warmth and the soft, steady press of her lips against his.

When they parted, Aurelia rested her forehead against his.

“You’re not a puzzle, Hazen,” she whispered. “You’re a story. And I want to know every page.”

His breath broke into a shaky laugh. “You’re such a poet sometimes.”

“And you,” she murmured, “are such a storm.”

He blinked at her. “Is that a compliment?”

“It means I’d rather be in the middle of you than safe somewhere else.”

Hazen didn’t answer. His throat was too tight, his eyes too wet.

The light shifted again, climbing the wall. The world was waiting for him.

“I need to go,” he whispered.

Aurelia rose first, offered her hand. He stared at it for a moment. Then took it.

His legs were unsteady, but he didn’t fall.

Together, they walked toward the standing mirror.

Hazen’s breath caught when he saw himself—thinner, paler, older. His eyes flinched from his own.

“I look like I died,” he whispered.

“You didn’t,” Aurelia said.

“Not for lack of trying.”

“You lived. And you’re still living.”

He shook his head. “I don’t think I like him.”

“Then we’ll get to know him again,” Aurelia said softly. “Together.”

Hazen turned from the mirror.

And into her arms.

Chapter Text

In the quietest room of the palace, the roses were dying.
Not withered—dying. Their petals curled inward too tightly, as though ashamed of their own color. Their stems had gone brittle, bowing beneath their own weight. The perfume that once perfumed this chamber with sweetness now soured, sharp as vinegar.
Queen Lily sat beside them at the long cedar table, the lamplight soft against her ivory skin. Her fingers were pale and thin, working with delicate precision as she threaded a strip of red silk through the binding of a page so old the ink itself seemed to recoil from the air. She looked serene—composed—but her face had that specific stillness of someone concentrating on keeping it that way.
King Azure stood nearby, his silhouette carved against the gloom. He did not speak. He watched her the way one watches a storm from a high window—helpless to stop it, but unable to look away.
The door to the chamber had been sealed with salt.
Not for protection.
For containment.
There were things in this room that ought not to leave it—words, names, the shape of fear itself.
“This was supposed to be quiet,” Lily murmured, not looking up. Her voice was calm, low, yet it trembled faintly at the edges. “A rumor. A breath. Something we could pretend was someone else’s fear.”
Azure’s reply came after a long silence. “Rumors grow teeth, Lily. Especially when we whisper them first.”
Her gaze flicked to him, a flash of reproach or agreement—hard to tell which—and then fell again to the scrolls on the table. They were bound in wax the color of dried violets, stained around the edges by the oils of those who should never have touched them. These scrolls had names, forbidden ones. The one that lay open before her was the worst of all:
The Thorn Index.
Every kingdom had its archive of dead knowledge—rituals outlawed, experiments burned, words no tongue should form—but Vanillin’s Thorn Index had been written in blood and bound in sin.
Lily had not looked at it in twelve years. Not since before Hazen was born.
“The others are asking questions,” she said softly. “The envoys from Chocokollis are still missing from the summit. But Hazen is not.”
Azure’s jaw tightened. “He shouldn’t have survived.”
“He shouldn’t have been there to begin with.”
The words hung between them like frost.
Outside, the evening wind scraped against the shutters, sounding almost like breath.
“We need the lie to become the truth,” Lily said at last.
Azure exhaled slowly. “You’ve said that before.”
“And you agreed with me before.”
He turned his head toward her, studying her profile. “Then I was a coward. Now I am a king.”
Lily looked up, eyes like cold glass. “The difference is that now, we don’t have the luxury of pretending there’s a difference.”
They stared at each other across the dying roses.
King Azure had been taught early that truth was a blade that cut both ways. His tutors had whispered it during lessons; his father had taught it with silence. Truth itself was nothing—a mere shard of what had once happened. But the shape of truth, the story others believed, that was everything.
And now, their kingdom had shaped something monstrous.
A sickness.
A story that traveled faster than disease itself—of poisoned grain and fevered merchants, of air that turned to dust in the lungs. A sickness blooming along the trade routes from Chocokollis.
It wasn’t real. Not yet.
But if they said it enough—if they gave it blood—it would become real.
It would keep their enemies busy. Distract the foreign courts from Vanillin’s shrinking harvests and empty coffers. Make them look elsewhere. Fear elsewhere.
Lily’s hand hovered above the parchment. Her sleeve shifted, revealing a pale scar running along her forearm—long healed, but ragged at the edges. Azure had seen it before. He had never asked.
“The Breathless Coil,” she said quietly.
He knew the name immediately. “That’s not a containment spell.”
“No,” she replied. “It’s a transmutation.”
Azure took a step closer. The runes on the page shimmered faintly, lines folding in on themselves as though writhing to escape the ink. He smelled dust. Old, sacred dust.
“It requires blood,” she said.
He nodded once. “They all do.”
“Not just any blood.”
Lily reached into the side drawer of the cedar table and withdrew a crystal vial no bigger than her thumb. It caught the lamplight and fractured it. Inside, suspended in preservation oil, floated something darker than wine.
Azure recognized it at once.
“Asher’s,” he said.
“Not a question,” she noted.
“No,” he replied. “A warning.”
She didn’t look at him. “He cut his hand during his Rite of Temperance. His blood fell on the anointing cloth. I kept it.”
“For what?”
“In case.”
It wasn’t an explanation. It was a confession.
For a long time, the two of them said nothing. The silence felt like an animal, pacing just out of sight.
Azure crossed to the hearth. He struck flint to steel, and a small, reluctant flame bloomed in the brazier. Shadows leaned toward it like worshippers.
He returned to the table and laid one hand upon the page.
“Let’s begin,” he said.
They read the incantation together.
Not aloud. Never aloud.
Their lips shaped the forbidden syllables in silence, tracing the contours of words no living tongue was meant to speak. The air thickened. The lamplight dimmed. The salt at the door began to sweat.
The roses gave up their last scent.
Lily uncorked the vial. The scent of iron unfurled, sharp and immediate. She let one drop fall onto the center of the parchment.
The scroll reacted.
It hissed—a faint, wet sound. The runes came alive, coiling inward, devouring the blood. The air in the chamber grew cold enough to mist their breath. The floorboards beneath their feet shuddered once, like something deep below had stirred.
Lily’s hands trembled. Azure reached out, steadying the corner of the scroll.
And then they spoke, together, in Old Vanillic, the dead tongue of kings:
To the breathless, we give name.
To the body, we give question.
To the world, we give answer:
Let them choke on what they feared,
And bleed what they denied.
The fire dimmed. The parchment blackened from its heart outward, curling like a rose in reverse. The air grew so still it seemed to hold its breath.
And then—
It crumbled to ash.
For a long time, neither of them moved.
It felt as though something had left the room. Not fled, not died—left.
The absence pressed against their ribs.
Lily slowly placed the empty vial back into the drawer, each motion deliberate, as though she feared the glass might still bite.
Azure turned to the window, his reflection caught in the black pane. For a heartbeat, he thought he saw someone else standing there—a boy, pale and hollow-eyed. Hazen’s shape.
He blinked, and it was gone.
“If he ever finds out—” Azure began.
“He won’t,” Lily said.
“If he does…”
She turned toward him, her face a perfect mask. “If he does, then we’ll make sure he understands. This wasn’t about him. This was about Vanillin.”
He looked at her for a long time.
She didn’t blink.
She never did when she was lying.
Later that night, Lily would return to the east wing, where her attendants waited with hot water and new silks. She would wash the scent of iron from her hands and stare into the mirror until the woman looking back almost resembled a queen again.
Azure would retire to the south solar, where the air was heavy with sage smoke and regret. No one would ask why his sleeve was darkened to the elbow. No one ever did.
And outside, beneath the quiet stars, the kingdom exhaled.
Someone coughed in the lower wards.
Then another.
By dawn, the healers would notice.
By dusk, the rumors would spread.
They would call it The Breathless Coil—a curse that began as a lie and learned how to live.
And somewhere, far beyond the palace walls—
in a quiet chamber at the edge of the forest—
Hazen woke with his hand over his chest, gasping.
The candles beside his bed flickered violently, though there was no wind. His heart stuttered once—twice—and then steadied.
He didn’t know why, but he felt as though someone had just whispered his name.
Not kindly.
Not lovingly.
But as part of something far larger.
Something that had begun with his blood.
He sat upright, staring into the dark, the taste of metal at the back of his throat.
And as the first faint cough echoed through the palace corridors below, Hazen whispered to no one:
“Father… what have you done?”
Outside, the roses in the queen’s chamber turned entirely black.
And the lie began to breathe.

Chapter Text

The wind rattled the windows of the healer’s cabin—soft and dry, like a whisper through brittle leaves.
Hazen sat beside the hearth, his knees pulled to his chest, watching as Aurelia added a strip of dried thyme to the kettle. The scent filled the small room—sharp, clean, earthy—but it couldn’t quite mask the metallic tang beneath it. Not anymore.
Outside, the snow had begun to rot. Thin patches melted into the dirt, leaving streaks of gray and purple where frost met soil. It wasn’t the kind of winter he remembered from childhood—the deep, blue-quiet kind that made the world feel clean. This winter felt wrong. It smelled of smoke and old blood.
They hadn’t left the cabin in hours.
They hadn’t dared.
The first child had arrived at dawn.
A girl, maybe eight years old. Pale as moonlight, lips flushed too red. One of the healers had found her shivering near the riverbank, where the poorer villages thinned into the wildlands. No shoes. No coat. Just a cough that sounded like something tearing inside her chest.
The second came not long after—a boy, older, silent. His hands trembled when he drank, and when he tried to speak, violet foam clung to his teeth. He didn’t seem to notice.
Hazen hadn’t spoken then.
He’d only stared at the color.
A sickly violet, like crushed berries bleeding through snow.
Now there were three.
The third had arrived only an hour ago—a smaller boy, too young to name his fever. He hadn’t coughed yet, but his breath came in shallow bursts, and his eyes were ringed in red. He muttered to himself in a dialect Hazen didn’t know.
The healers moved quietly between the cots, whispering to one another—not in secrecy, but fear. The walls felt swollen with it. Every creak of timber sounded like a heartbeat. Every breath carried dread.
Aurelia knelt beside Hazen again, the steam from the kettle curling around her hands like ghosts. “You should drink something,” she murmured.
He shook his head. His throat was too tight. He could taste iron every time he tried to swallow.
Aurelia didn’t insist. She simply sat close—close enough for their shoulders to touch, close enough to share warmth that neither of them quite had to spare.
One of the healers murmured something in Cacaoian. Hazen caught only one word—krov.
Blood.
He stood before he even knew he was standing.
Crossed the room on unsteady feet.
And saw it.
The girl—the one without shoes—was convulsing now.
Each cough brought up not mucus but dust. Fine and violet, like ground petals. It clung to her mouth, her fingers, the corners of her eyes.
Hazen froze.
Not from fear of the sickness.
But from recognition.
The scent hit him first—a sweetness that wasn’t right. Like fruit left too long in the sun. Like decay pretending to be perfume.
His stomach lurched.
The memory broke open like a wound.
Petunia, giggling.
Her lips stained purple.
“The berries tickled,” she’d said.
And then the blood.
Too much of it.
Soaking into the blanket he’d brought from home.
He couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe.
His body felt caught between this room and that one—between the present and the day everything fell apart.
Aurelia said his name, but it was muffled, far away.
He saw Petunia again—eyes wide, skin paling under the shadow of the trees. Saw Appa screaming for water, saw Harvey’s hand slipping under the violet current, saw Eomma’s mouth open in a word she never finished.
And then the girl in front of him coughed again.
And the color bloomed.
Hazen stumbled back.
The walls seemed to ripple, the air thickening like syrup. His palms were slick with sweat—or blood—he couldn’t tell.
Aurelia was there instantly, steadying him by the shoulders.
“Hazen—”
“She’s going to die,” he rasped.
“No,” Aurelia said, too quickly.
“She’s going to die,” he repeated, louder, his voice breaking. “And it’ll be my fault.”
Aurelia caught his arm, held him tighter. “Hazen. Look at me.”
He tried.
But he saw Petunia instead.
The world tilted. The sound of the kettle was deafening now—the hiss, the boil, the pulse of heat that sounded almost alive.
He barely felt himself fall.
Only Aurelia’s arms around him. Only the sob caught halfway in his throat.
“I can’t do it again,” he whispered. “I can’t bury another child. I can’t—”
“You won’t,” Aurelia said softly.
“You don’t know that.”
“I don’t,” Aurelia admitted. Her voice trembled. “But if we do… I’ll carry it with you.”
That broke him.
Not the sickness.
Not the memory.
The kindness.
Hazen cried.
Not the quiet kind. Not the kind you hide behind your sleeve. The kind that empties you out completely—raw and human and helpless.
Outside, the snow thickened, then thinned again, shifting between rain and frost. The wind carried whispers through the gaps in the wood—words Hazen couldn’t understand but somehow felt were meant for him.
Inside, one healer pressed a cloth to the child’s forehead. Another crossed himself and muttered something about the gods sleeping.
A boy’s voice echoed faintly from the door. Another sick child was being carried in from the village.
The dust was spreading.
The air itself felt tainted.
And out past the treeline, where the slush met the woods, the snow had begun to stain faintly purple.
No one else noticed.
But Hazen did.
He stared at it through the narrow cabin window—the faint shimmer of violet on the ground, soft as breath.
And he understood.
The sickness wasn’t new.
It wasn’t foreign.
It wasn’t even cruel.
It was remembering him.