My thumb slides over the smooth band of the rings on my finger.
Cold metal. Polished stone.
Real. He is real. We are real.
But my thoughts circle—bright ones, dark ones, grounded ones, messy ones. Someone attacked me. Someone sits rotting in a cell because of it.
Vale loves me.
I have a family now. A home.
New mysteries rise like fog over the valley of my future. For every steady thought, two more shift and blur. I don’t reach for any of them.
I can’t. They’re too loud, too tangled?—
“Ow.”
A sharp slice tears across my palm where I leaned against a beam. I jerk back. A nail juts from the wood, rusted and jagged. Vale is at myside before the breath leaves my lungs. He presses a handkerchief into my hand, eyes dark with worry. I clamp the cloth over the wound. The sting pulses, throbbing deep.
“Are you two lovebirds ready to fly the coop?” Ace calls, already astride his horse. Soria sits ready as well, reins loose in her hands and patience thinning.
A pair of guards cross to Vale—final checks, last-minute words. He gives a curt nod, irritated at the interruption, then turns back to me. His hands close around mine, gentle but insistent. He peels the cloth away. We lean in. And then?—
Nothing.
Not a mark. Not a scratch. Just a smear of blood on the linen.
“Huh.” The sound escapes me, brittle and too high. “It must not have been as bad as it felt.” But the air around me tightens.That… isn’t possible.
“We’re ready for you, my lord,” a guard calls.
Vale examines my hand once more, frowning. “Are you sure you’re alright, love?” The concern in his voice could stop the world. He’d abandon the Jewel, the council, the throne itself if he thought I needed him.
“I’m fine,” I insist gently. “Just a small nick, that’s all.” I reach for him as I mount the white mare they’ve prepared for me.
His hand stays on my leg a beat too long. His eyes never leave me—not as he swings onto Bracken, not as the gates open, not as guards form around us like armor.
We ride out of Caerhollan with protection flanking us, more shadowed strength hidden in the hills beyond.
And still—the phantom sting lingers in my palm. As if something beneath my skin is waking.
Hands gloved and the ride well underway, my thoughts drift despite my best efforts to savor the beauty around us. The morning air is crisp against my cheeks, the summer sun not yet warm enough to chase away the cool.
I breathe it in.
Up here in the high passes, the stillness feels pure in a way nothing in the palace ever could. The tight rocky trails, the open meadows, thesong of the stream running beside us—each sound, each scent, feels like the truest home I’ve ever known. As the water rushes over stone, I pray the current might carry the lingering heaviness with it.
But something inside me refuses to be washed away.
I’ve felt it for some time now—quiet but growing clearer, like a voice learning how to speak. The old call, the one that used to tug at me restlessly through sleepless nights, is gone. What remains feels… rooted.
Stirring. Neither loud nor frightening, but inevitable.
My nerves may jostle with leftover fear, and my stomach may flutter with unease, but this is something else entirely. It feels as though it is weaving itself into me, stitching into the very marrow of who I am.
Strange, yes—but not unwelcome. There is a familiarity to it, the same way the forest once felt like an extension of my own skin.
I know I’ve changed.
