Chapter 12
REFUSAL
Ada
My father summoned me on the third day after Hakan received his blessing.
I'd been expecting it — dreading it, truthfully.
The court had been buzzing since Hakan walked out of the Golden Throne Hall with the Light God's approval to court me.
A nobody apprentice granted permission to pursue the heir to the Light Court.
It was unprecedented. Scandalous. The kind of thing that made noble ladies clutch their pearls and whisper behind their fans.
But my father had said yes. And I needed to know why.
The throne hall was empty when I arrived, the usual crowd of courtiers and petitioners dismissed. Only Gün Ata remained, seated not on his formal throne but in the smaller chair he used for private audiences. Golden light pooled around him like liquid sunshine, warm and welcoming.
"Ada." He smiled when he saw me, and the expression was so genuine, so fatherly, that my throat tightened. "Come. Sit with me."
I crossed the marble floor, my footsteps echoing in the vast space, and settled onto the cushion at his feet. It was where I'd sat as a child, listening to him tell stories of the old wars, of heroes and monsters and the eternal battle between light and shadow.
"I suppose Hakan told you about our meeting," he said. Not a question.
"The same evening. He was trying very hard not to look pleased with himself."
My father laughed — a real one, warm and brief.
"He has that quality. The pride he tries to swallow and can't quite manage.
" His hand found my hair, stroking gently.
"I liked him, Ada. More than I expected to.
He asked my permission to court you, formally, properly, and when I pressed him harder than courtesy required — about his family, his mother, his father — he didn't flinch.
Most men twice his age wouldn't have held my gaze through half of what I asked him. "
He paused. Something shifted in his expression. Recognition, almost. As though he'd found what he'd been looking for.
"There is something remarkable about that young man, Ada. Something I suspect even he doesn't fully understand yet."
Tears pricked my eyes. I'd spent so many years expecting opposition. Expecting my father to arrange some cold political marriage with a pure-blooded lord I could barely tolerate. To hear him speak of Hakan with approval — with genuine warmth —
"I don't understand," I whispered. "Everyone said you would refuse. That I'd have to fight for —"
"You thought I would deny you happiness?
" He cupped my chin, tilting my face up to meet his eyes.
"You are my daughter. My heir. When I look at you, I see everything I have ever loved about this realm.
" His thumb brushed away the tear that had escaped down my cheek.
"If Hakan makes you happy, then he has my blessing. Fully and completely."
I threw my arms around him, burying my face against his chest the way I had as a child. His arms encircled me, solid and warm, and for a moment everything was perfect.
"Thank you," I choked out. "Thank you, Baba."
"There is nothing to thank me for." He pressed a kiss to the top of my head. "I see great potential in that young man. Great potential indeed."
Something about the way he said it made me pause. I pulled back slightly, searching his face. His expression was gentle, loving, everything a father's should be. But his eyes...
His eyes watched me the way they watched the court. Measuring. Calculating. The eyes of a god who had ruled for centuries and learned to see every angle, every possibility, every piece on the board.
"Baba?" I asked quietly. "Is something wrong?"
The calculating look vanished so quickly I almost convinced myself I'd imagined it.
"Nothing at all, my light." He smiled again, and it reached his eyes this time — or seemed to. "I am simply happy for you. For both of you." He rose, drawing me up with him. "Now go. I imagine you have news to share with your young man."
I left the throne hall floating in the air, my heart so full I thought it might burst. My father approved. My father was happy for me.
So why couldn't I shake the feeling that I'd missed something? That beneath his warmth, there had been a flicker of something else entirely?
I pushed the thought aside. It was paranoia. Years of watching the court's cruelty had made me suspicious of everything, even kindness. My father loved me. He wanted my happiness.
That was enough. It had to be enough.
The weeks that followed were the happiest of my life.
With my father's blessing, there was no need for secrecy.
I could walk through the palace gardens with Hakan's hand in mine, could sit beside him at formal dinners, could let him kiss me in the corridors without fear of scandal.
The court still whispered, of course — they would always whisper — but their disapproval couldn't touch us anymore.
Sarp handled his displacement with characteristic drama. I found him sprawled across a bench in the Academy courtyard one afternoon, arm thrown over his eyes in theatrical despair.
"Three years," he moaned as Hakan and I approached. "Three years I've cultivated my reputation as the Academy's most eligible heartbreaker, and you've destroyed it in a single month."
"Your reputation was destroying itself long before I came along," Hakan said dryly.
"I wept." He pressed a hand to his chest. "Actual tears, Ada. On my pillow."
I couldn't help laughing. "Maybe if you actually followed through on your flirtations instead of running away the moment anyone showed genuine interest —"
"I don't run away. I strategically withdraw." He clutched his chest. "Besides, the chase is the best part. Once they're actually caught, what's the point?"
"Emotional connection?" I suggested. "Mutual respect? The joy of building something real with another person?"
Sarp's face twisted in exaggerated horror. "Gods, you've infected her, Hakan. She's speaking in romantic platitudes. Quick, someone fetch a healer before it spreads."
Hakan pulled me against his side, pressing a kiss to my temple. "I think she's perfect."
"Of course you do. You're diseased with love.
Both of you." But Sarp was smiling despite his complaints, and when he clapped Hakan on the shoulder as we passed.
"Take care of her," he said to Hakan, grip tightening on his shoulder, "or I will dedicate the remainder of my very long life to making yours unliveable. "
He smiled. It reached his eyes.
"I've been practicing on you for decades. You know I'm not bluffing."
We both stared as he walked away, but I also knew that not everything was sunshine and stolen kisses.
Elif's words from our dinner weeks ago still haunted me. That desperate embrace at the door when Hakan and I had left her apartment, her trembling hands gripping my arms, her whisper against my ear: "Whatever you learn about what he is — whatever happens — don't let them take his heart."
I'd asked Hakan about it afterward. He'd gone quiet, then shrugged and said his mother had always been fearful, always looking over her shoulder at shadows that weren't there. He didn't know why. She'd never told him.
But I saw the lie in his eyes. Or if not a lie, then an uncertainty — a question he'd been asking his whole life without ever finding an answer.
*Whatever you learn about what he is.* What did that mean? What was there to learn? And who were *them* — who would try to take his heart, and why did Elif speak as though it were inevitable?
The note arrived three weeks after my father's blessing.
No seal, no signature — just Hakan's handwriting, bold strokes I would recognize anywhere. *Tonight. Moonrise. Wear something you can climb in.*
I pressed the paper to my chest like the lovesick fool I'd apparently become, then burned it in the fireplace before any servant could find it.
Hakan met me at the eastern gate as the first silver of moonlight crested the palace walls. He wore dark clothes that made him look like a shadow given form — all lean muscle and dangerous grace. When he saw me in my simple dress and climbing boots, something heated flickered in his gaze.
"You followed instructions." His voice was low, intimate. "I'm impressed, princess."
"Don't call me that." I fell into step beside him. "Where are we going?"
"Somewhere I've been wanting to show you." His hand found the small of my back, guiding me through the servants' passages he knew better than any noble should. "Somewhere that's just ours."
We slipped through the city like thieves — through the Border District, through streets that grew wilder, until we reached the edge of the Border Forest and started to climb.
The path wound upward through ancient trees, their branches heavy with luminescent moss that cast the world in soft blue light. The air tasted different here — sharper, electric.
"Hakan," I gasped, hauling myself over a fallen log, "you could have mentioned the mountaineering portion of this evening."
"Where's the fun in that?" He caught my hand, pulling me up the next ridge. "Besides, you're doing fine."
"I'm dying."
"Dramatically, maybe."
The trees parted, and I saw it.
A tower rose from the mountainside like a finger pointing at the stars. Ancient stone, half-covered in vines, its windows dark but somehow expectant.
"The Sky Tower," Hakan said. "Built by an astronomer three centuries ago. Everyone thinks it was destroyed in the Sundering. I found it last year."
"Last year? But we weren't together then," I pointed out.
"I know." Something vulnerable moved behind his eyes. "I still dreamed about you then. I've been restoring it, doing a bit of work here and there." He produced an ancient iron key. "For you."