Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
Onyx’s wings cut through the cool morning air with steady rhythm, carrying Ryden high above Bloomhaven as the town began its slow awakening beneath them.
Sunrise painted the world in shades of rose and amber, transforming the landscape into something ethereal, and Ryden drew in a deep, bracing breath as the air rushed past his face.
He leaned forward slightly, feeling the familiar bunch and release of Onyx’s shoulder muscles, the warmth radiating through the creature’s glossy black coat despite the cool morning air. This was freedom—just the wind, the sky, and the steady beat of powerful wings.
He turned Onyx toward Solstice Hall, and the pegasus responded instantly. Behind them, another set of wings beat against the morning air. His companion keeping pace, though barely. Ryden smiled to himself. Evryn had never been much of a morning rider. Though, to be fair, neither had he.
As they approached the palace grounds, Ryden felt the familiar tingle of the protective wards, invisible barriers that existed in layers around Solstice Hall. The magic recognized him instantly, a warm pulse of acknowledgment as he passed through.
He tossed a glance over his shoulder and saw Evryn and Cobalt—now falling slightly behind—pass through the barrier a heartbeat later.
As an invited guest who’d flown these skies countless times over the years of their friendship, Evryn would experience only a brief shimmer of resistance before the wards recognized and admitted him.
Ryden guided Onyx down toward the landing meadow, a stretch of perfectly maintained grass that sparkled with morning dew. A scattering of palace gnomes scrambled to clear the field, arms waving as they hurried to rescue their tiny wheelbarrows of glimmering dew-crystals from the imminent landing.
Onyx touched down with a soft, rhythmic thud of hooves against the damp grass, the sound muffled and fleeting before he slowed to a graceful halt, wings folding against his sides. Beside him, Evryn’s midnight-blue mount landed with equal grace, though his rider swayed slightly in the saddle.
“Getting slow in your advanced age?” Ryden called out as he dismounted. “I seem to recall you claiming you could outfly me blindfolded.”
Evryn slid from Cobalt’s back with a groan that seemed to come from his very soul. “That was before you sent your deranged messenger pixie to assault me before dawn. The vindictive little creature didn’t just wake me—it poked me. In the cheek. Repeatedly.”
“It isn’t that early,” Ryden countered, though it was likely even the gossip birds weren’t awake yet.
Evryn rubbed his face, then shot Ryden a baleful look. “No one should be conscious at this hour, including you. The sun itself is barely awake. I’m fairly certain that pixie was still half asleep when it jabbed me. It kept yawning between pokes.”
Ryden found himself smiling despite the chaos in his chest. Indeed, he had never been fond of early mornings.
Their rides typically happened somewhere around midnight, when the palace slept and the world felt suspended between one day and the next.
Those dark hours had always felt safer somehow. Less observed, less performed.
But he had woken early this morning and been unable to return to sleep.
After the previous night’s endless dinner—smiling and charming and deflecting while his mind churned with thoughts of L’s silence—he’d escaped to his chambers and discovered her letter waiting.
Relief and joy had flooded through him like sunlight breaking through storm clouds, like being pulled from drowning when his lungs had already begun to burn.
After a week of agony, of checking the box obsessively, of writing increasingly desperate letters into what felt like a void, she’d finally, finally answered.
At that moment, Ryden wouldn’t have cared if an entire flock of gossip birds had witnessed him cheering at his ceiling.
L had replied. She wanted to keep writing. She needed him, even if only in this limited way.
He’d responded immediately, trying to contain his elation enough to write something coherent, something that wouldn’t scare her off again.
Then he’d attempted sleep, but his mind wouldn’t quiet.
Her words kept echoing: certain events are unfolding in my life, events that require me to be brave, day after day.
What was happening in her life? What was demanding such courage from someone who insisted she possessed none?
Sleep had finally claimed him, but it hadn’t lasted.
By the time the first birds began their tentative morning songs, he was awake once again.
The walls of his chamber had felt too close, the air too thick.
He needed movement, needed sky, needed to outrun the tangle of emotions her letter had awakened.
So he’d summoned a messenger pixie—the poor creature had indeed been half asleep, blinking slowly at him as he’d given it instructions—and sent it to wake the one person he might at last dare to confide in about the secret correspondence that had gone on for almost a year.
When the first rush of elation at her reply had faded, a quieter ache had taken its place.
She hadn’t responded the way he’d desperately hoped she would.
She hadn’t admitted to feeling what he felt, hadn’t agreed to meet, hadn’t offered him anything beyond the continuation of their strange, suspended relationship.
And in his reply, he had not lied to her.
He did want to be whatever she needed, and he would continue to be so for as long as possible.
The problem which had crept forward from the corners of his restless mind and grown sharper with every sleepless hour was that this arrangement could not continue forever.
It could not even continue past this Season if he was expected to choose one of the Crown Court ladies.
The conversation with Evryn at the Opening Ball haunted him—his friend’s belief that he might find it difficult to be faithful once wed.
But he fully intended to be. Which meant he could not continue this correspondence with L if he married someone else.
Despite what he’d written about being friends, about pretending his confession never happened, the truth pulsed beneath every carefully casual line: he loved her.
With a certainty that should have been impossible for someone he’d never met.
He could not maintain that love, couldn’t nurture it through letters, while pledged to another. It would be a betrayal of both women.
Which left him in a most wretched predicament: the Season slipping through his fingers while he was expected to choose a bride from among women who stirred nothing in him, while the only one who did had made it heartbreakingly clear she did not wish to know him beyond their letters.
“I think I am in love with someone.”
The words tumbled free before Ryden could reconsider them, falling into the morning air with all the grace of a stone into still water.
Evryn, who’d been adjusting Cobalt’s saddle, froze. “I beg your pardon?”
“I said—”
“No, I heard you. I’m simply trying to process the impossibility of what I heard.” Evryn turned to face him fully, his expression caught between amusement and disbelief. “Love? You? So soon? The Crown Court began only yesterday. Don’t tell me you’ve already fallen for one of them.”
Around them, the world carried on in perfect indifference. Birds twittered, and two garden pixies swung merrily from one of Onyx’s stirrups, chattering in delight as though nothing whatsoever of consequence had just been spoken.
Ryden cleared his throat, tugged slightly at the collar of his riding jacket, and tried to pretend this conversation wasn’t already making him infinitely uncomfortable. “It isn’t one of them.”
Evryn’s eyebrows climbed toward his hairline. “Then who—”
“We’ve been corresponding for nearly a year.”
“Corresponding?” Evryn’s voice pitched higher with incredulity. “As in … letters?”
“Yes.”
“Letters. You. Prince Ryden, who I once witnessed charm three different ladies at the same garden party—in full view of each other, no less—are telling me you’ve fallen in love through letters?”
Ryden felt heat creep up his neck. “When you say it like that—”
“How else should I say it?” Evryn moved closer, studying Ryden. “You’re serious. You’re actually serious. You think you’re in love with someone you’ve been writing to?”
“I don’t think,” Ryden said quietly. “I know.”
“Who is she? Where did you meet her?”
Ryden hesitated, mouth parting before the words would come. His hand rose to rub the back of his neck. “I … have never met her. I don’t know who she is.”
Evryn’s eyes widened further. Then he began laughing, a startled, disbelieving bark of sound that broke across the quiet morning. “You don’t even know who she is?”
“That is to say,” Ryden added, his tone growing defensive, “I do know her. In all the ways that truly matter. I know how she thinks, what makes her laugh, what frightens her. I know the … the shape of her kindness, the depth of her wit—”
“All right, all right.” Evryn held up a hand, but his expression had shifted from disbelief to something more thoughtful. “It is only … Ryden, I’ve known you for years. I’ve watched you flirt and charm and scandalize your way through multiple Seasons. I didn’t think you were capable of … this.”
Ryden shifted his weight and attempted to stand a little straighter. “Of what?”
“Of actual love. Of …” Evryn broke off, making a helpless sort of motion with one hand.
This was not the sort of topic the two of them generally discussed.
“Of feeling something genuine enough to make you look the way you look right now. Like someone’s reached into your chest and rearranged everything. ”
Ryden turned away, ostensibly to check Onyx’s saddle but really to avoid the intensity of his friend’s gaze. “Yes, well. It surprised me too.”
“I always knew the public persona was at least partially an act,” Evryn continued, his voice gentler now.
“You hide pieces of yourself from everyone—stars know we all do to some extent. But I thought there was at least some truth to the stories. All those flirtations, those scandals that keep the gossip birds so well-fed …”
“There is some truth,” Ryden admitted. “Certainly. But it’s mainly—” He gestured vaguely, searching for words. “Surface. Performance. A way to be charming without being real. To be wanted without being known.”
“And this woman knows you? The real you?”
“More than anyone else ever has.” The admission felt raw, scraped from somewhere deep.
She did not know everything, but she knew the things that mattered.
She knew that he still struggled with his magic years after manifesting—though he had not told her the exact nature of his ability.
She knew his teasing nature, his struggles with loneliness and the weight of expectations.
“Then you must find out who she is.” Evryn said this as if it should be obvious.
“She does not want to meet me.”
“Ah. That is …” Evryn paused, clearly choosing his words carefully. “That is rather suspicious, don’t you think? Are you certain this is actually a young lady you’re corresponding with and not some elderly sorcerer having a grand joke at your expense?”
“The thought has occurred to me,” Ryden admitted. “It would certainly be embarrassing if that turned out to be the case. But no, I believe she is genuine.”
“And you believe she …” Evryn trailed off, his gaze skittering away toward the horizon, as though the rising sun might spare him the discomfort of saying his next words. “Feels for you as you do for her?”
“She is careful with what she reveals, but I believe so, yes. Yet something is holding her back.”
A silence settled between them, thick with unspoken thoughts and a shared awkwardness neither seemed willing to acknowledge. Both men folded their arms, suddenly fascinated by the sight of their pegasi nosing through the grass, tails flicking idly as the meadow brightened with morning light.
“Well, my friend,” Evryn said eventually, “you are simply going to have to be your charming best and convince her otherwise.”
Ryden regarded his friend. “That is entirely unhelpful.”
“Perhaps,” Evryn said around a yawn so wide it seemed to threaten the structural integrity of his jaw, “if you’d sent a pixie to poke me in the face at a more reasonable hour, I’d have more helpful advice for you.
” He blinked a few times. “As it is, my brain is still waking up.” He placed his hands on his hips then, his expression turning thoughtful.
“How did this even begin? How did you find yourself writing to someone you don’t actually know? ”
Ryden sighed. “A wooden box containing a letter enchantment. The corresponding box was lost years ago and I don’t know where it ended up.”
Evryn frowned.
“What?” Ryden asked.
“I feel as though I’ve heard of an enchantment like that before. Or seen a similar box somewhere, though I cannot recall where. Could you show me yours? Perhaps it will stir something in my memory.”
An instinctive protectiveness stirred in Ryden’s chest. The thought of anyone else handling that box felt somehow wrong, as though it were a sacred relic rather than simply a carved piece of wood and spellwork. The idea of another’s hands upon it made something in him recoil.
“Uh … of course,” he said aloud, forcing a quiet laugh at his own foolishness. It was only a box, after all—even if it was the sole thread connecting him to L. “Though I’m afraid it will have to wait. My mother has arranged a rather relentless schedule of Crown Court activities for today.”
“How dreadful for you,” Evryn drawled, lips quirking into a smirk. “Forced to spend your day in the company of ten beautiful ladies, all desperate for your attention. Well, nine, I suppose, given that one of them is my sister, and I prefer not to think about that.”
Ryden leveled a pointed gaze at Evryn. “Would you find it such a delight when there is only one who holds your heart, and she is not among them?”
“Touché, my friend,” Evryn conceded, his expression softening into that particular dreamy-eyed look that appeared whenever his wife was mentioned. “Touché.”