I have never been what you’d call a good sleeper, and dying once apparently didn’t fix that, because three nights into my new life as a disgraced empress with a thriving weed collection, I’m still waking up every couple of hours out of pure survival instinct, half convinced something’s wrong before my brain even catches up to why.
Tonight it’s not instinct.
tonight it’s an actual sound, low and careful, coming from the direction of the garden.
I’m up and moving before I’ve fully decided to be, grabbing the sharpened stick I keep by the door for exactly this kind of occasion, because apparently some habits transfer no matter how many centuries you skip.
Mei’s asleep in the next room, and I let her stay that way.
If this turns out to be nothing, no reason for both of us to lose sleep over it…
If it turns out to be something, well, I’d rather it find me first.
The night is cold and clear, moon bright enough that I don’t need a torch, which is good, because a torch would announce me to whatever’s out there before I get a look at it myself.
I creep along the edge of the garden, sticking to the shadow of the wall, and that’s when I hear it.
A muffled thump.
A word that sounds distinctly like a curse in a voice that is decidedly not Mei’s.
I round the corner of the trellis and find a man dangling upside down by one ankle from a rope trap I rigged two nights ago to keep raccoon-adjacent local wildlife out of the turnip patch, currently swinging gently in the moonlight with the kind of controlled fury that suggests he is used to being in charge of situations and deeply unused to being suspended six feet off the ground by an amateur snare.
I stop dead and stare.
He is dressed well, or was before gravity got involved and his robes started sliding the wrong direction.
Dark hair falling loose around his face.
A jaw currently clenched hard enough to crack walnuts.
And even upside down, even caught red handed in someone else’s garden at midnight, he’s got the kind of stillness that reads as dangerous rather than embarrassed, like he’s already three steps into figuring out how to salvage this.
“Oh,” I say, delighted despite myself.
“It worked.
I genuinely didn’t think anyone would be tall enough to trigger it at the right height.
This is honestly a great night for science.”
“Cut me down.” His voice is low, clipped, the voice of someone who is not used to asking twice for anything.
“That depends entirely on who you are and why you’re sneaking around a condemned woman’s turnip patch after midnight.” I circle him slowly, sizing him up the way I’d size up anything unfamiliar and potentially dangerous that wandered into camp.
No visible weapon, though that doesn’t mean much.
Good boots.
Better fabric than anyone in this wing has touched in years.
“Because from where I’m standing, this looks less like a coincidence and more like a very specific kind of trespassing.”
“I could ask you the same question about the trap.”
“The trap’s mine.
I built it.
I’m allowed to ask about it.
You’re the one currently upside down in it, which puts you at somewhat of a disadvantage in this conversation, structurally speaking.”
He exhales through his nose, slow and controlled, the sound of a man doing math on how much dignity he’s willing to sacrifice to get out of a rope.
“I mean you no harm, maam.”
“Sure, that’s what everyone says right before or right after doing harm, statistically speaking.
Try again.
Who are you, and what are you doing in my garden.”
A pause.
Longer than I’d expect from someone who’s presumably desperate to stop being upside down.
“Casimir,” he says finally, like the name costs him something to hand over.
“Prince of the Northern Reaches.
Brother to the Emperor.”
I blink.
Then I laugh, because honestly, what else is there to do with information like that, delivered by a man dangling by his ankle over a half plowed turnip bed.
“Of course you are,” I say.
“Of course the one person who sneaks into my abandoned death wing in the middle of the night is royalty.
Wonderful.
Great.
This is exactly the kind of night I’ve been having.”
“You don’t seem particularly impressed.”
“I’ve met an actual emperor’s worth of self important people in the last four days, Your Highness, and every single one of them was fully clothed and standing upright while they were rude to me.
You’re behind on both counts.” I crouch down so we’re closer to eye level, which is a strange angle to have a conversation from, admittedly.
“So.
Prince of the Northern Reaches.
What could possibly bring you sneaking around the Cold Palace at midnight, if not to gawk at the disgraced empress fading away on schedule.”
Something flickers across his face, quick and guarded, gone before I can fully read it.
“That’s not why I’m here.”
“Then why are you here?”
“That’s not information I owe you.”
“You’re currently owing me quite a lot, actually, starting with the use of my turnip bed as a landing pad and ending with several minutes of my sleep that I am never getting back.” I straighten up, considering him, considering the rope, considering how much leverage I actually have here, which, given the circumstances, is more than you’d think.
“Here’s the deal, Your Highness.
I cut you down when you tell me something true.
Doesn’t have to be everything.
Just something real, something that isn’t a court answer designed to make me go away happy.”
“You’re negotiating with a prince while he’s upside down in your vegetable patch.”
“I’m negotiating with a trespasser who happens to be a prince, which honestly changes very little about the leverage situation from where I’m standing.” I fold my arms and wait, because if there’s one thing six years of wilderness survival taught me, it’s that patience is a weapon most people aren’t prepared for.
He’s quiet for a long moment, blood clearly starting to pool uncomfortably in his head, and I can see him running the calculation, weighing dignity against information, weighing whatever brought him here against a stranger’s curiosity.
“I’m looking for something,” he says finally.
“Evidence.
Related to a matter I can’t discuss in detail.
This wing has been abandoned long enough that I assumed I could search it without being noticed.”
“You assumed wrong.”
“Clearly.”
“Evidence of what?”
“That’s more than the deal required.”
Fair, actually, and I respect a man who reads the fine print even upside down, so I step over to the rope and start working the knot loose, slow and deliberate, letting him feel every second of the indignity before he actually comes free, landing in an undignified heap in the dirt that he recovers from with a speed that suggests he’s had practice landing badly and pretending he meant to.
He stands, brushes turnip leaves off his sleeves with visible restraint, and looks at me properly for the first time upright, which is somehow a completely different experience, all that controlled stillness now backed by actual height and actual presence, the kind of person a room probably goes quiet for.
“You’re not what I expected,” he says.
“Yes,yes.
I am not withering away like a salpless tree.
i get it….” I gesture at the garden around us, the neat furrows, the drying grain visible through the open door, the three chickens roosting in a lump on the collapsed trellis, entirely unbothered by the midnight drama unfolding a few feet away.
“Welcome to the Cold Palace.
We’re doing better than advertised.”
He looks around properly now, and I watch something shift behind his eyes, some recalculation happening in real time, the gap between the story he walked in with, disgraced empress wasting away in ruin, and the reality currently standing in front of him covered in garden dirt at midnight with an entirely functional chicken flock.
“This is not what I was told to expect,” he says slowly.
“Yeah, i have heard that too..
I get the feeling not a lot of people bother updating their information about this wing once they’ve decided it’s a lost cause.” I study him, weighing the last few minutes, the guarded answer he did give me, the very careful shape of everything he didn’t.
“You’re not going to tell me what you’re really looking for, are you?”
“Not tonight.”
“Does that mean you’re coming back….?”
It’s not a question, not really, and something about the way he goes still tells me I’ve read it right before he even answers.
“I may have further reason to,” he says, which is about as close to an admission as I suspect he’s willing to hand a stranger in a turnip patch at midnight.
“Well, next time, use the front gate, Prince,” I say, nodding toward the far wall.
“It’s not locked, believe it or not, mostly because nobody thought it needed to be.
Would save you the indignity.
And if you’re going to keep sneaking around, you might as well make yourself useful while you’re at it.
I’ve got a roof with a hole in it and you look like you’ve got decent arms under all that fabric.”
He stares at me like I’ve suggested something genuinely unprecedented, which, given his job title, he might not be wrong about.
“You want to put..me..
to work?” he sounded like my old friend who i asked to forage for bugs with.
“I want a hole in my roof fixed before winter, and you’re the first person to wander into my life in days who isn’t already committed to a full schedule of chores.
Seems efficient to me.”
For just a second, something that might almost be the beginning of a smile moves across his face before he catches it and puts it away again, careful as everything else about him.
“Goodnight,” he says instead, and turns to go, disappearing back over the wall with more grace than a man should have after being upside down in a rope trap for ten minutes.
I stand alone in the moonlit garden for a while after he’s gone, turnip leaves crushed underfoot, and find myself, against my better judgment, already looking forward to whatever excuse he invents for coming back.