"Mother." Warning in Hakan's voice.
"Come in. Quickly, before someone sees."
The apartment was tiny but clean. No mirrors — I noticed that immediately. Not a single reflective surface anywhere. The walls were bare where mirrors should have hung, the faint rectangles of lighter paint marking their absence like scars.
I filed it away. Added it to the growing list of things about Hakan's family that didn't add up.
"So this is the famous princess."
The voice came from behind a small table, and when I turned, I found myself face to face with Milan—Hakan’s father.
I'd known of him for as long as I'd known Hakan — the wanderer who'd raised him since before he could hold a sword, who drifted in and out of their lives but always came back, who Hakan spoke about with a quiet reverence he gave no one else. I'd seen him around over the years, caught glimpses of the easy smile and the stories that made Elif laugh, but we'd never actually spoken. And hearing about Milan was one thing — meeting himwas something else entirely. He was handsome — older, grey at his temples, laugh lines around warm grey eyes — and he radiated the kind of easy, uncomplicated warmth that made you feel safe within seconds. I could see Hakan in him, not in the features but in the way he carried himself — that same loose-limbed confidence, the same sharp attention hiding behind an easy smile. He ignored my outstretched hand and pulled me into a brief embrace.
"I've heard so much about you from this one" — he jerked his thumb at Hakan — "that I feel I already know you. Welcome to our strange little family."
I found myself smiling despite my nerves. "I hope I'm not intruding —"
"Intruding? We've been waiting weeks for Hakan to work up the courage to bring you." He shot Hakan a look of fond exasperation. "The whole realm knows Ada. What we couldn't get out ofhimwas whether you actually liked him back."
"She's here, isn't she."
"Could have fooled me. All those sighs and longing looks." Milan winked at me. "He's very secretive, you know. Getting information out of him is like pulling teeth."
"I'm aware," I said, glancing at Hakan, whose ears had gone red. "He's not exactly forthcoming about his feelings."
"Genetic flaw. His mother's the same way." Milan moved back to the table, pulling out a chair for me. "Sit. Elif made enough food to feed an army. She's been stress-cooking since dawn."
The food was delicious — simple, hearty, nothing like the elaborate dishes served at palace dinners. Roasted lamb withpomegranate sauce. Fresh bread that was still warm. For a while, the conversation flowed easily. Milan asked about my studies, my plans, my life at court — and unlike the courtiers who asked those same questions as a prelude to political maneuvring, he seemed genuinely interested in the answers.
I noticed things, though. I always noticed things — it was the curse of being raised in the Light Court, where survival depended on reading what people didn't say.
I noticed things between them — the way Milan anticipated Elif's movements, pouring her wine before her glass was empty, passing the bread before she reached for it. The ease of two people who'd shared a life for a very long time. But also the distance. They sat close but didn't touch. Milan's eyes lingered on Elif when she wasn't looking — soft with a devotion that seemed old and worn and not quite returned, like something he'd been carrying so long it had shaped him around it.
He loved her. That much was obvious. Whether she loved him the same way — the way a woman loves the father of her child, the man who'd stayed — I couldn't tell. Something in the space between them felt unfinished. An old negotiation neither of them had quite resolved.
It should have made me sad. Instead, it made me look at Hakan — really look at him — and feel something fierce and possessive tighten in my chest. Because I had what his parents didn't quite have. I had a man who loved me and whom I loved back, and I'd almost let pride and pain and the memory of cherry blossoms destroy it.
Then Elif set down her fork.
"My son tells me you're courting."
The warmth drained from the table. Milan shifted. Hakan's hand found mine beneath the cloth.
"Yes," I said. "He has."
"And what are your intentions toward Hakan?"
"Mother —"
"No. I want to hear it from her."
Elif's amber eyes bore into mine. I recognized the look — not cruelty, not disapproval. Fear. The bone-deep, marrow-soaked fear of a mother who'd spent a lifetime protecting her child from something she couldn't name and couldn't stop.
"I don't understand the question," I said carefully.
"You're a princess. He's a scholarship student with no family name and no prospects beyond what he can claw for himself. You could have anyone — lordlings, princes, men with fortunes and titles. Why him?"
The question should have made me defensive. Should have triggered the diplomatic training that had been drilled into me since childhood — the careful, measured responses designed to reveal nothing and offend no one.
