"They call it the bakers' village," Kentan says, glancing back at me.
I understand why before I answer because the scent reaches me first. Bread and sugar and warm fruit, the kind of smell that belongs to mornings and small rooms and nothing urgent. At first my thoughts pull toward Ari and Kiss with that old automatic force, the instinct to go back coming fast enough to be almost physical, but I stop myself before it becomes movement. They are safe, fed, and held by capable hands. Saurin and Cambra are with them. The palace has become a structure built around their protection. I need this, the distance and the quiet, if I am going to think clearly about Veynar and Colsar and what comes next once I stop pretending I can wait for someone else to decide it for me.
The village takes no notice of us. People move through their morning with the particular ease of those who have nowhere pressing to be and no interest in who might be passing through. A boy runs past us and shifts mid-stride, his body lengthening cleanly into something faster and lighter while his face remains recognizably his, altered but still carrying expression. He tears between two buildings and vanishes. Further down the street something larger crosses our path, low to the ground and built for speed, its body wholly changed while its face retains enough of its humanity to make the sight strange in a way I cannot quite name.
"Kyvarin," Enovar says quietly beside me, as though he had been waiting for me to notice. "Different from siakar. More precise. Less force."
I watch one of them pass and understand what he means. There is something in the way they move, contained and calm in a waythat feels almost social, their faces holding onto themselves even through the change in a way that siakar do not bother with.
No one around us reacts. A woman carrying a basket continues without lifting her head. An older man steps aside only as much as the path requires.
Further down the main street a small fire burns in a stone basin outside one of the larger houses. A family stands around it. A banner curls and blackens at the center.
"Larafyn," Kentan says, without slowing. "They do not keep the sigil of those who betray the Sovereign."
No one weeps. No one argues. They simply watch it go.
Something loosens in my chest that I had not realized I was still carrying. Whatever tension existed between Colsar and me, it had not bled into this. The crown was not weakened. The people had not fractured. They had simply made their judgment and moved on. I thought about Jessamy's cruelty, about the way she had looked at my husband, and I felt nothing.
Kentan guides us through without hurrying until he pauses outside a small shop with an open door and a window clouded lightly from the heat within. "This one," he says, and steps inside. The woman at the counter laughs when she sees him, gestures us toward a table near the back, and disappears without waiting for instruction. The room is warm in a way that feels earned rather than arranged, the wood of the table worn smooth by hands and plates and years. Nothing here looks like it was created to impress anyone, and perhaps that is why the place feels so whole.
Kentan returns with a plate and sets it in front of me. The cake is simple enough to look almost modest, soft and cream-colouredwith strawberries folded through and sugar dusted lightly across the top.
"Try it," Enovar says.
I do.
The first bite is gentle and bright at once, sweet without becoming heavy, the fruit carrying enough tartness to keep the cream from sinking into excess, and then it finds me before I am ready for it. The last time I ate strawberry cake was when Colsar had it prepared for my birthday. I remember how terrified I was to eat it, how he fed me the first bite, and the way he had watched my face while I ate it as though my reaction was the only thing in the room that mattered to him.
I had not expected memories of us to find me here, in a small room in a mountain village through something as ordinary as a mouthful of cake, and the quiet cruelty of it leaves me still for longer than I mean to be.
"You are thinking too much," Enovar says.
I look down to find the fork still in my hand and the rest of the cake untouched since that first bite. I force myself to take another, to prove that it is nothing more than what it is, but it tastes the same, and the effort of it feels unnecessary the moment it reaches my mouth.
I do not want the cake. I want the man who took the most painful, vulnerable of my memories and turned it into something I could hold without breaking. I no longer think of the painful birthdays I had at the Baron’s house. I think of sitting in Colsar’s lap, of the way his hand steadied mine, of how easily he made something unbearable into something I could survive.
You do not need him, I remind myself, and I know it is true in the way all necessary truths are true, but knowing it does not quiet the pull of him or the way my chest tightens around the absence of something that once felt certain.
"I am ready to go back," I say, and the speed of it tells me more than the words themselves.
Enovar asks if I am certain but there is no resistance in it, and none in Wyn's silence either. Kentan looks at me for a moment with that easy patience he carries into every room, then nods once. "As you wish."
We leave without finishing the plate.
The path back is the same but something in me has shifted in a way that makes the return feel shorter and less forgiving. I cannot think clearly inside those palace walls when all I am doing is watching for him, and I cannot think clearly outside them either if every ordinary thing finds a way to remind me of him.
By the time we cross back through the boundary the day has already begun to lower into evening, the palace moving around us in its usual rhythm. Kentan slows beside me as we walk.
"There is a gathering tonight," he says. Then, when I look at him, "A ball."
"I do not believe I was invited," I say.
"I am quite certain the Sovereign had a dress made for you."
The confidence in his tone is mild enough that it feels like information rather than encouragement. I think of turning it down for all of a second before I say I will attend, and thedecision comes with the same quiet certainty that had carried me out of Urvinar.
Enovar says nothing. Wyn offers no reaction. Kentan inclines his head and continues on. I turn toward my chambers with the taste of strawberries still lingering where I wish it did not, and I go to prepare.
