Chapter 16 #2
She paused, her gloved fingers tightening slightly.
“My father took me to observe the relief efforts. That was what he called them. ‘Observe.’ Just watch and remember.”
The memory flickered behind her eyes—sharp with frost, thick with smoke.
“There were children lined along the road when we arrived. Thin. Blue-lipped. One girl couldn’t have been older than me. Her hands were cracked and bleeding from the cold, but she still tried to bow when she saw our carriage pass.”
Her tone thinned, controlled but fragile.
“I had a pearl hairpin in my cloak. I gave it to her when the guards weren’t looking. She beamed like I’d handed her the moon.”
She fell silent for a breath. The wind stirred branches above them.
“My father noticed, of course. He always noticed.”
A faint, bitter smile touched her lips. “He told me that giving away wealth without protection was a cruelty. That someone would take it from her—and likely hurt her to do it. I didn’t believe him.
” Her gaze was distant now, fixed somewhere past the hedges.
“Until the next morning. They found her in the gutter. The pin was gone. So were her shoes.”
She inhaled slowly, as if pulling herself back into the present.
“That was the day I stopped believing kindness was simple.”
Alaric remained silent for a moment, his expression unreadable. When he finally spoke, his tone had softened.
“In Solmara, when I was ten, a boy about my age tried to pick my pocket.”
He glanced at her, just once, before looking down at the path beneath their feet. “He wasn’t good at it. His hands were shaking. He’d barely touched the edge of my belt before the guards had him on the ground.”
Evelyne said nothing, but she was listening.
“I told them to let him go. Said he hadn’t taken anything. One of the officers said it didn’t matter. That intent was enough. That if they didn’t punish him, he’d grow up bolder.”
His jaw shifted slightly, as if he still remembered the feel of it locking in protest.
“I argued. My grandfather intervened before it became a scene. The boy was released—but not before they made sure he couldn’t run again for a while.”
He broke off.
“I found out later that his brother was sick. He hadn’t eaten in two days. I asked my tutor how a kingdom could call itself civilized while beating starving children.”
Evelyne looked at him then, surprised.
“What did he say?”
Alaric’s mouth twisted into a faint, bitter curve.
“He said: ‘That’s not your question to ask. Your duty is to rule it better.’”
“It’s good advice,” she paused, then added. “We spend too much time studying other rulers’ victories. We write odes to kings and carve their faces in stone. But it’s their failures that show us where the cracks are.”
Alaric studied her, curiosity flickering across his features.
“Success is circumstance,” she went on. “A battlefield with the wind at your back. But failure—” she glanced at him then, steady and calm, “—failure teaches you where the walls crack.”
“You sound like someone who already plans to rebuild them.”
Evelyne folded her hands behind her back, a gust of wind lifting the hem of her dress.
“Perhaps,” she said simply. “Someday.”
They walked a few more steps in silence, the gravel crunching softly beneath their boots.
“And what is it that you want, Evelyne? If you could do anything?”
There was a time she might have answered more quickly.
When being good at something had been enough.
She’d known her purpose for as long as she could remember.
But as she grew older, excellence had begun to feel hollow without direction.
It was one thing to be skilled. Another entirely to use that skill for something greater.
“I want to be a good ruler,” she confessed at last. “I want to prevent war. Or… if that proves impossible, I want the smallest number of graves.”
Alaric tilted his head. “A good ruler? Just that?”
Her brows rose faintly. “Just? Women in my country don’t even have the right to teach in public halls, let alone hold office. Most are married before they finish their basic education—if they’re allowed one at all. The fact that I can even say I want to rule is more than most are permitted.”
Alaric nodded, his expression was thoughtful.
“I want to use what I’ve been given,” she continued. “Out of the awareness that I’m one of the few who can.”
“Those are wise plans.”
When she looked at him, he wasn’t looking at the gardens.
“And I’m privileged enough to make them more than that. Most people don’t have the luxury of planning. Not like we do.”
His gaze pressed against her composure, slipping past the edges of thought.
“I will have the means,” she continued. “Not to end every suffering. But to change something. To use power not for palaces, jeweled slippers or whatever gold-plated nonsense the court adores—but for fewer widows. Fewer orphans.”
There was a beat of silence before Alaric spoke, quieter now. “Are you afraid?”
Yes, she thought. It bloomed fast and sharp in her chest—an instinctive, animal truth. Yes, she was terrified. Of failing. Of being powerless. Of being remembered only for the blood she couldn’t stop.
But her answer came out smooth, practiced.
“No.”
“I am,” he admitted.
Evelyne for a moment simply stared at him, unsettled by the disarming honesty. She felt a pang of something she couldn’t name. And then she smoothed it over, as always, folding the tremor away before it could show.
She slowed slightly, then glanced at him sidelong.
“And you? What do you want to achieve?”
Alaric was quiet for a moment, as though weighing whether to answer plainly—or honestly.
“If you’re set on fighting to spare the world from suffering,” he pondered, “then I suppose I’ll have to take up something else.”
He turned his face toward the fading light.
“I want the truth, Evelyne. I want transparency. No more cloaked decisions made in vaulted halls, no more history rewritten by the winners. I want a realm where knowledge isn’t a danger, and silence isn’t safety.”
A pause. Then, quieter: “I’m tired of living in a world that censors reality.”
She tilted her head, brows lifting. “So you’re one of those, then? The kind who thinks we’ve all been lied to?”
“Not exactly,” he said. “I think we’ve been told half-truths. Just enough to pacify. Not enough to understand.”
“That may be harder to protect than any border,” she murmured, more to herself than to him. “And it may end in war.”
He smiled at that, and this time it was quiet.
“Then it’s a good thing I’m stubborn.”
She looked at him for a beat longer than she meant to, the edges of his expression soft in the golden light.
“I heard about the veil,” he said. “Is that an Edrathen tradition?”
Her throat tightened, just slightly. “Yes and no,” she murmured.
He hesitated for a beat too long.
“Bold choice,” he commented, softer this time. “I think red suits you better. It doesn't lie about what you've survived.”
“My prince, I’m afraid that you’re not allowed to be so kind to me,” she murmured. “It’s inconvenient.”
Alaric turned slightly, a slow, devastating smile pulling at the corners of his mouth. “Is it?” he asked, eyes catching hers. “Unfortunately, I’m not very good at following rules I didn’t write.”
Her gaze drifted from him to the expanse of the garden beyond. Alaric’s gaze followed hers, pausing on the blooms. For a moment, neither of them spoke. The footsteps of their accompanying attendants shuffled behind them in dutiful silence.
“You navigate conversation as well as you do these gardens,” he mused, glancing sideways at her. “With precision. Always knowing where to step.”
Evelyne arched a delicate brow. “Would you prefer me to be reckless, Your Highness?”
“Not reckless. But perhaps… less careful. Less rehearsed.”
She scoffed. “You assume I rehearse.”
“I assume you are never unprepared.”
Evelyne opened her fan with a smooth flick of her wrist, the delicate fabric catching the light as she held it before her face. “A wise woman is always prepared,” she said. “But if it comforts you, I do not write our conversations in advance.”
His grin widened. “Ah, then it leaves me woefully outmatched.”
“What does that mean?” she asked.
“That you are not easy to forget.”
Evelyne stopped walking, turned slightly toward him and her stomach did a flip. Alaric, for once, didn’t follow it with a smirk.
“People talk about you,” he continued. “That you were too cold for diplomacy, too intelligent to be agreeable, too cursed to be desired. But the thing is… I find myself preferring reality over any of my preconceptions. And I’d rather know the truth of a person than live with an illusion.”
Evelyne blinked once. It brushed too close to something she’d rather not examine. Praise was dangerous. It made one foolishly lean into the comfort of it, especially when the one did not fully know the truth of themselves.
“You should be careful,” she warned, “about finding comfort in sharp things. They tend to draw blood when you hold them too close.”
“Then it’s fortunate I never cared much for safety.”
Fool, she thought. And worse—she believed him.
She broke eye contact and continued walking along the path. Alaric adjusted his pace to match hers.
“You should. A well-forged shield serves its purpose. Control. Calm. Focus.”
“Indeed.” His gaze flickered with something that might have been understanding. “But a shield, no matter how expertly crafted, offers little warmth to the one holding it.”
“That is a very Varantian thing to say.”
Alaric laughed. Not the charming kind he doled out in salons or the rakish kind that softened barbs. This one was sharp. For one unbearable second, she wanted to keep the sound. Bottle it. Break it open later when no one was watching.
Idiot.
“We’re a nation of optimists, Your Highness,” he said, the words light. “We find fire even in ashes.”
She turned, gravel crunching in crisp disapproval beneath her heels. He followed.
“That warmth you cling to?” Evelyne said, not looking at him. “It blinds. Makes fools think fire is invitation, not warning.”
He didn’t so much as twitch. Of course he didn’t. It would have been easier if he had. Easier to dismiss him as reckless, simple, foreign. But his restraint was the kind that came from choice, not ignorance. And that made him dangerous.
“Maybe,” he said. “But I’d still rather be a fool who feels than a statue who survives just to crack in silence.”
Her breath caught, shallow and cold. “Cold preserves,” she said. “It keeps what matters intact.”
“It also kills what could have lived.”
She stopped. He did too.
The gardens around them were hushed, wind tracing the eaves with practiced fingers.
Beyond the hedges, she caught the flicker of Cedric’s amused gaze, Vesena beside him with that infuriating stillness that Evelyne noticed meant she was listening too closely.
Further back, Isildeth hovered, tension writ plain in her shoulders, eyes wide with worry.
“You mistake silence for emptiness,” Evelyne said. Her voice was composed, but the heat behind it leaked through. “You think because I don’t pour every thought into the room, I must not have any worth guarding.”
His gaze didn’t flinch. He just hummed like he was cataloguing something important.
“I think,” he said slowly, “you built a fortress so well, you forgot where the door is.”
There was no smirk this time. No quip waiting in the wings. Just the clean cut of a truth delivered without cruelty.
“It keeps you safe, yes. But alone. On a pedestal no one asked you to climb.”
The pause wasn’t accidental. He let it stretch, just long enough to matter.
“You could climb down, you know.”
The breath that left her chest wasn’t visible—but she felt its absence like a bruise. The remark lodged like a needle breaking under the skin.
Her fingers snapped open her fan. The movement was precise, elegant. Deflect, conceal, distract. Armor made of silk and habit.
“Better a fortress than a stage,” she said, each word wrapped in frost. “At least I don’t perform sincerity for the sake of strangers.”
She simply let it hang there, like a gauntlet no one was meant to pick up.
But he did.
“And what does that make you, then?” His voice was low now, brushing close. “Better than everyone, just because you can name the parts of me you can’t stand in yourself?”
The fury shot up so fast it nearly choked her. Like a match struck too close to bone. Her hands curled into fists, nails digging into her palms.
How dare he?
He stepped closer, close enough that she could feel the gravity of his presence pulling at the edge of her self-control. He smelled of storm-soaked linen and something sharper beneath—ink, perhaps, or citrus peel.
She didn’t move. Wouldn’t. But she could feel it anyway. The hairline crack, invisible but spreading.
“You don’t have me, Prince,” Evelyne said, the words clipped. “And you won’t win me by pressing.”
“I’m not pressing,” he said. “I’m trying to understand.”
“Then understand this,” she said, snapping the fan closed again, the motion ringing like a drawn blade. “This is politic. You are in my country, walking my path, under my terms.”
He watched her for a moment longer than he should have, and she felt it like a touch. Then, slowly, he inclined his head.
Something pulled at her, in the silence between one breath and the next. And then, mercifully, a bell tolled from the far end of the garden, calling the hour with cold precision.
Evelyne folded one palm neatly over the other, fan clasped between them. “Forgive me, Your Highness. May we end our walk?”
Alaric’s gaze lingered for a beat longer, searching her face. But she gave nothing away.
“Of course,” he murmured at last, stepping aside.
Evelyne inclined her head. “Thank you for the walk, Prince Alaric.”
He bowed, keeping his eyes on her. “Princess Evelyne.”
She turned first, but even as she walked away, she hated that part of her was listening for his footsteps.