“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.”
