A girl was crossing the hall walking toward Elyndra, moving with light easy steps, her smile so wide and bright.
She was pretty in a soft way; round cheeks, warm blue eyes, her robes a bright yellow that suited her well.
She reached Elyndra’s table and sat down across from her.
”I’m Moriah,” she said, like that explained everything.
“Princess Moriah Evercrest of Nymeria.” She tilted her head slightly.
“I’ve been wanting to speak with you since yesterday.”
Elyndra looked at her over her teacup.
”Have you,” she said pleasantly.
”You gave the most interesting answer this morning,” Moriah said.
“Everyone else said what they were supposed to say. You said something real.” She smiled again.
“I respect that.”
Elyndra set her cup down slowly.
“That’s kind of you.”
She kept her expression open and mild and her thoughts exactly where she needed them.
Across the hall she could feel Lythia’s stare like a blade pressed flat against her back.
She didn’t mind it.
Moriah was talking about Nymeria now.
The weather there, the markets, the way the festivals were different from anything she’d seen at other courts.
She talked the way some people did, easily and without stopping, like conversation was simply something that happened around her naturally.
Elyndra had shut her down at first.
Politely, but firmly.
Old habit.
Yet somehow, without quite deciding to, she found herself talking.
Small things at first.
The roads to Velmora, the cold winters, the way the light looked different there in the early morning.
Then more.
Moriah asked good questions, genuinely curious ones.
She asked about the fabrics Velmora traded in and whether the embroidery style was regional and what the women there wore in their hair for formal occasions.
Jewelry, it turned out, was something Moriah could talk about for long.
”In Nymeria we layer them,” she said, leaning forward slightly.
“Three or four pieces together. It sounds too much but it works, I promise. The metals are different there too, darker, almost bronze but not quite.” She looked at Elyndra’s wrist.
“What you’re wearing now is beautiful. Is that Velmoran?”
”It is,” Elyndra said.
”The clasp work is incredible.” Moriah reached across the table and took her hand to look more closely at the bracelet.
Elyndra’s eyes went wide.
It happened before she could stop it.
Her whole body pulling back, a sharp instinctive pull back, her hand slipping out of Moriah’s grip before she’d made any decision to move it.
Moriah turned, blinking once.
Then understanding softened her expression, and a small smile curved her lips.
”You are not used to people taking your hand,” she said.
Not a question.
Then she smiled, warm as before.
“I must have frightened you. I’m sorry.”
”Yes.” Elyndra steadied her voice.
“I’m just…not used to people taking my hand like that. Forgive me.”
Moriah laughed softly.
“Don’t apologize. I grab everyone. It’s a terrible habit.”
Elyndra said nothing.
Moriah’s smile only brightened.
“Don’t worry, sister.” She reached out again, gentler this time, and placed her fingers through Elyndra’s with the easy confidence of someone who had never been refused.
“You’ll get used to mine.”
”Come.
I have pieces from home in my chamber.
You’ll appreciate them.” Moriah said as she gently pull Elyndra up for a walk.
And then she was walking, pulling Elyndra along behind her, talking nonstop.
Elyndra followed, slightly dizzy from the words washing over her.
—
Moriah’s chamber was warmer than hers.
Brighter somehow even.
She’d unpacked almost everything already; fabrics over the backs of chairs, small jewelries on the writing desk, perfume bottles lined along the window shelf catching the afternoon sun. You are reading on novelping.com, the official source.
She opened a carved wooden drawer and started pulling things out.
Necklaces.
Bracelets.
Earrings in pairs tucked in small cloth pouches.
She held each one up and talked about where it came from, which craftsman made it, which festival she’d worn it to.
She was generous with them.
Elyndra sat on the edge of the chair across from her as she listens.
Then she noticed it.
She was smiling.
Not the small polite smile she’d been wearing since she arrived at Azgareth.
Something easier than that.
Something that had arrived on her face without her putting it there.
She caught herself and felt something strange move through her.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d smiled like that and meant it.
She stood up.
“I should get back to my quarters.”
”Already?” Moriah looked up from the drawer.
”It’s been a long few days,” Elyndra said.
Moriah stood.
She looked at Elyndra for a moment and then reached back into the drawer and pulled out a necklace.
Fine dark chain, a small pale stone at the centre that caught the sunlight.
She stepped forward and wore it around Elyndra’s neck before she could say anything.
”There,” she said, stepping back to look.
“That suits you.” She smiled brightly.
“Keep it.”
Elyndra touched the stone lightly.
“I couldn’t…”
”You can,” Moriah said simply.
“I want you to.”
Elyndra looked at her for a moment.
Then she bowed her head slightly.
“Thank you, Moriah.”
She left with the necklace cool against her collarbone and Moriah’s warm voice calling after her to come back tomorrow.
—
Her quarters were still when she returned.
The evening light had dimmed to yellow lights already, and two letters sat waiting on her writing desk.
The first letter she knew from the handwriting before she broke the seal.
She sat on the edge of the bed and read it twice.
Kyren.
Her brother.
She could picture him writing it, bent over a desk somewhere, ink on his fingers probably, his careful neat handwriting that he’d worked so hard on.
He would be fifteen now.
Taller, she imagined, taller than when she’d last seen him.
He’d been wearing his nobleman clothes, trying to look serious about it, medical leaves staining the tips of his long thin fingers.
He had looked so grown the last time she visited.
She had stood in the doorway and said nothing for a moment, just looked.
She folded the letter when she finished and set it gently aside.
Then she reached for the second.
She saw the seal and her smile disappeared.
She sat with it in her hands for a moment without opening it.
The seal was one she would have known anywhere.
Her jaw tightened.
And then a knock at the door.
”Your Highness, The Crown Prince requests to see you.” Senna’s voice.
She had just announced the crown prince’s presence.
”He may enter,” Elyndra said.
—
He looked around the room once slowly and then at her.
She had already turned back to her desk.
Her ink, her brush, her paper.
She arranged them with quiet focus, beginning to write back to Kyren as the Crown Prince spoke.
Her brush moving in steady strokes across the paper.
She listened as she wrote.
He moved through the room slowly.
His fingers trailed along the edge of the window, the back of the chair near the wall.
”Your answer this morning,” he said.
“The second test.”
”Yes.”
”My mother talked about it.” He said it evenly, without particular feeling.
“She found it notable.”
”I hope I didn’t speak carelessly,” Elyndra said.
”You spoke differently from the others.” He turned slightly to look at her.
“That isn’t the same thing as speaking carelessly.”
She dipped her brush as she continues writing.
The scratch of it was quiet in the room.
”Letters from home?” he said, after a moment.
”My brother,” she said.
“He writes always.”
He was quiet for a moment, looking at the desk.
“Family letters are important,” he said, and something in his voice was different when he said it.
Quieter.
More considered.
“I see you cherish them,” he said.
She glanced up.
“Yes,” she admitted.
His gaze moved across the desk.
She felt it before she looked up, moving across the writing materials, the open letter from Kyren, and then drifted to the second letter.
Her arm moved without thought, sleeve falling across the paper, covering the seal from view.
She looked away.
The movement had been too quick.
Too sudden.
She knew he had noticed.
He said nothing.
But she felt the questions gathering behind his silence, patient and unasked.
He looked away after a moment and the conversation continued.
Carefully.
Quietly.
”I’ll take my leave,” he said.
”Thank you for coming, Your Highness,” she said.
He looked at her once more and then he left, closing the door quietly behind him.
Elyndra sat without moving for a moment.
Then she let out a sigh.
She reached under her sleeve and pulled the second letter out.
She looked at the seal for a long moment.
Then she broke it and read.
The room was very quiet while she read.
Then she stood up and carried it to the small candle burning low on the side table and held the corner of it to the flame.
She watched it catch.
Watched the fire move slowly across the paper, curling the edges, turning the words to black ashes and then to nothing.
She stayed until there was nothing left.
Then she returned to bed.
It was late.
She had not gone down for the evening meal, she had told Senna she wasn’t hungry so the girl could carry her words to the queen.
She closed her eyes.
It had been a long day, she thought, and sleep took her.