"What thing?"
"That clenching thing. Like you're trying to bite through iron." Her thumb traced my jawline, and despite everything, I felt the tension begin to ease. "Talk to me."
I couldn't tell her about my conversation with her father. Couldn't explain the certainty that had taken root in my gut—that I was a piece on a game board, moved by hands I couldn't see. She loved her father. She trusted him. And maybe she was right to. Maybe I was seeing shadows where there were none.
The irony wasn't lost on me.
"Just wondering what I did to deserve you," I said instead.
"Nothing." She grinned. "You're terrible. Arrogant, secretive, prone to dramatic brooding. I'm clearly making an enormous mistake.”
"Clearly."
"Good thing I like mistakes." She kissed me, and for a moment the wrongness faded, drowned out by the taste of her, the warmth of her light against my shadows.
I could live like this, I thought. I could ignore the questions and the doubts and simply be happy.
But happiness had never been something I trusted.
"So," Sarp said, sprawled across one of the courtyard benches like he owned the entire Academy, "when's the wedding? I need to know how long I have to prepare my devastatingly moving toast."
"We haven't discussed?—"
"I'm thinking something heartfelt but humorous. A few light jabs at Hakan's inability to express emotion, a touching story about the time he almost murdered someone for looking at Ada wrong?—"
"That happened once."
"Three times. That I know of." His smile didn't waver but his eyes held mine for a beat too long. "Though I suppose the Borderland Forest incident remains officially unsolved, so we'll keep that one off the speech."
Ada laughed, that bright sound that made my chest tight every time I heard it. "There's no date yet. We want to do this properly.”
Around us, the courtyard was still full — students and minor court members from the evening's gathering, cups raised, conversations carrying across the warm air. One of them — Demir, a scholarship student two years below me, ink-stained fingers and the kind of earnest that hadn't been beaten out of him yet — hovered at the edge of our circle until Sarp waved him over.
"I just wanted to say —" He was nervous. Fidgeting with his cup. "Gün Ata gave you his blessing. You. A scholarship student from the border district. My mother wept when she heard. She said she never thought she'd live to see a border-born stand beside a god's daughter as an equal, not as a servant." He went red. "Sorry. That was — I'll go."
"Sit down, Demir," I said. And I meant it.
He sat. Ada poured him wine. He stayed for an hour, and by the end of it Sarp had him laughing so hard he knocked over his cup, and I thought: this is what we're building. This is what it's for.
The courtyard thinned as the evening wore on. Demir eventually left with a handshake and a grin he couldn't quite suppress, and it was just the three of us again — Ada leaning into my side, Sarp stretching out on the bench opposite with his cup balanced on his chest.
"Properly meaning what? A formal announcement? Letters to distant relatives?" Sarp's eyes slid to mine, deliberately casual. "Speaking of which — has your mother heard the news yet? Officially, I mean. From you. In person. With words."
My jaw tightened. "She'll hear."
"Hakan." Ada's voice was gentle but firm. "She should hear it from us. Not through court gossip."
She was right, and I knew it, which was exactly why I didn't want to go. The moment my mother found out about Gün Ata's blessing, it would unsettle everything — and making it official would mean she'd have to find out.
But Ada was looking at me with that particular expression she had, the one that bypassed every defence I'd built, and I heard myself agreeing before I could think of a reasonable excuse.
"Fine." I pushed back from the bench. "Tonight."
Sarp raised his cup in a mock toast. "Wonderful. I'll be here, not doing that."
* * *
The border district swallowed the light the moment we crossed into its streets. Ada walked beside me in her borrowed servant's clothes, her hood drawn low, her hand tight in mine. She hadn't spoken since we'd left the palace gate.
