Sleep didn’t come.
She lay in the dark and stared at the shelter above her bed, She listened to the palace breathe around her and thought about a cup of tea sitting on a table and the girl who had reached for it without knowing what it was.
She had almost drunk it.
After a while she got up.
She didn’t think about it much.
She just swung her legs off the bed, pulled a dark robe over her sleep clothes, and unbolted the door.
The Inner Orchid Residence was quiet.
Lanterns burned low along the covered passages, casting everything in dim yellow light.
No servants visible.
No movement.
Just the soft sound of the night and the distant call of owls and crickets in the trees beyond the walls.
She walked.
She wasn’t going anywhere in particular.
That was what she told herself.
She just needed to move.
Needed the air.
Needed something other than the ceiling of that beautiful room and the thought she kept coming back to.
Her feet took her east without her deciding to go east.
Through the inner courtyard, under the archway at the far end, down a route she hadn’t been shown that afternoon.
The stone under her foot changed.
They were smoother and older.
Then the path opened and she stopped.
The eastern garden stretched out in front of her in the dark.
It was not like the courtyard gardens she’d seen earlier, those had been neat, arranged, built to be looked at.
This one was different.
Old trees with roots that had pushed up through the stone paths.
Flowers that grew the way they wanted to grow.
A long pond running through the centre of it, still as glass, with the sky reflecting perfectly in it.
Elyndra stood at the entrance for a moment.
Then she walked in.
She moved slowly as there was no reason to rush.
Her fingers trailed along the edge of a stone bench, over the rough wood of a tree that had been there longer than the palace around it probably.
The night air here was different.
Cooler, quieter, like the garden kept its own atmosphere separate from the rest of Azgareth.
She stopped beside a flower she didn’t know the name of.
It was pale, wide-petalled, growing low near the edge of the pond.
She crouched down and reached out toward it.
Then she felt him.
A shift in the air.
A presence; still, controlled, closer than she’d expected.
The crown prince.
He had seen her twice now and the feeling had not gone away.
The first time at the palace gates.
The second in the corridor earlier that day.
And now here, alone in the eastern garden where she was not supposed to be.
He watched her from the shadows between the trees without announcing himself immediately.
Something about her bothered him.
Not fear.
Not suspicion exactly.
Something quieter than that.
Something that kept catching his thoughts and refusing to leave.
The way she stood.
Too balanced.
Most noblewomen carried themselves carefully because they had been taught to.
Princess Elyndra did it like it was instinct.
Like her body naturally understood where weight should rest.
The way she moved bothered him too.
Nothing wasted.
Nothing uncertain.
Even reaching toward a flower looked somehow.
And her voice.
Calm.
Even.
Controlled in a way that felt strangely familiar.
He had heard that calmness before.
Somewhere.
He just could not place where.
Velmora was not a kingdom he visited often but he had passed through enough courts over the years to know their noble families by face if not by name.
Yet he could not remember ever seeing Princess Elyndra before the selection ceremony.
Still.
Every time he looked at her something in him paused.
It irritated him more than he cared to admit.
Because he never forget faces easily.
Especially not faces attached to feelings like this one.
His eyes moved to the flower near her hand and he stepped forward slightly before she could touch it.
”Don’t touch that.”
His voice was deep.
Even.
Not loud.
Her hand stopped mid-reach.
She straightened slowly and turned around.
He was standing perhaps fifteen steps away on the stone path, dark clothes, hands loose at his sides.
The crown prince looked at her with a raised brow.
”This part of the palace is closed,” he said.
“The eastern garden is not included in the residence tour. No one comes here.”
”I wasn’t aware,” Elyndra said.
”How did you get here?”
She paused just long enough to be a person genuinely thinking about it.
“I couldn’t sleep. I walked. I must have lost my way in the corridors.”
He looked at her.
”You must have lost your way,” he repeated.
”Yes.”
”Through a locked gate.”
A small silence.
Elyndra held his gaze pleasantly and said nothing.
He studied her for a moment then he said, “This is a serious violation of the residence rules. You understand that.”
”I do,” she said.
”And yet you don’t look concerned.”
She tilted her head slightly.
“Should I be?”
Something moved in his expression.
Faint.
”Most people,” he said, “when told they’ve violated palace rules by the crown prince, look at least somewhat alarmed.”
”I imagine they do.” She met his eyes.
“What is the punishment, Your Highness?”
He was quiet for a moment.
”You’re asking for the punishment?”
“I wandered somewhere I wasn’t supposed to be,” she said simply.
“If there’s a consequence I’d rather know it plainly than wonder about it.”
He looked at her the way he’d looked at her in the corridor that afternoon.
Like something was turning over slowly in his mind and he wasn’t finished yet.
”You keep reminding me of someone,” he said.
It came out quieter than his other words.
Elyndra blinked.
Slowly.
“I’m sorry?”
He seemed to catch himself.
He looked away briefly, toward the pond.
“It’s nothing. A passing thought.”
He was quiet for a moment.
Then he looked at the flower she’d been reaching for when he’d spoken.
”That plant is poisonous,” he said.
“The sap. Contact with skin causes a rash that lasts weeks. The gardeners leave it because it grows along the pond and keeps certain insects away.” He looked back at her.
“You are lucky you didn’t touch it.”
Elyndra looked at the flower.
Then at him.
”Thank you for telling me,” she said.
”Leave the garden, Princess Elyndra.
And don’t come back here.” He turned to go.
“Find your way back to the residence. I’ll have someone check that the gate is properly secured.”
She bowed as he walked away.
Watched him move through the old trees and disappear around the bend in the stone path, his footsteps quiet and unhurried.
She stood in the empty garden for a moment after he was gone.
The pond was still.
The pale flower grew at her feet, untouched.
The night air moved slowly through the old trees.
She turned and walked back the way she came.