The next morning, Ace woke up already annoyed.
Sunlight stabbed through his window, too bright.
The whole keep buzzed with a frantic energy—the winter festival preparations.
Hammering, shouting, the scent of baking and pine.
It grated on his nerves.
He’d gone to bed with the feel of Serion’s letter against his skin, a secret warmth.
Now, the day had stolen it.
His older brother, Alex, was gone.
A patrol to the eastern peat bogs.
A routine check.
Ace was supposed to lead it with him.
A chance to get out of the stone walls, to breathe cold, clean air that wasn’t thick with politics and perfume.
He’d overslept.
A deep, drugged sleep from the liquor and his restless thoughts.
Alex, ever efficient, had left without him.
“Probably thinks I’d slow him down,” Ace muttered, stomping down a corridor.
“Mr.
Perfect.
Can’t have the wild dog scaring the bog spirits.”
He shoved his hands deep into his pockets, his boots echoing too loud on the flagstones.
He was a storm looking for something to break.
Then he smelled it.
A soft scent.
Winter lily.
Sakura.
Clean, like a page of a new book.
It cut through the dusty, sun-warmed air of the hallway.
He stopped.
The door to the old library was ajar.
Not the Duke’s grand study, or the scholars’ archive.
This was the children’s library.
A small, sun-drenched room full of forgotten tales and painted furniture.
He looked inside.
Jade sat in a pool of morning light by the window.
He wore simple northern clothes—a soft white shirt, dark trousers, a grey wool cardigan draped over his shoulders, slightly too large.
Borrowed.
He looked… normal.
Startlingly so.
In his hands was a book.
A thick, illustrated volume with a worn cloth cover.
A child’s book of fables.
His head was bent, his moon-white hair falling forward.
His thumb moved slowly, tracing the edge of an illustration on the page.
The gesture was absent, tender.
His silver-rimmed glasses had slid a little down his nose.
He felt the stare.
His eyelashes lifted.
Crimson eyes found Ace in the doorway.
He didn’t startle.
He simply smiled.
A small, gentle curve of his lips.
“Good morning, brother.”
The word hit Ace like a physical blow.
He moved before he thought.
Three long strides into the room.
He grabbed a fistful of the grey cardigan and yanked Jade to his feet.
The book tumbled to the rug with a soft *thump*.
“You bastard,” Ace snarled, his face inches from Jade’s.
His scent of black cherry and anger rolled out in a hot wave.
“Don’t you *ever* call me that.
I have one brother.
One.
He’s out checking fucking peat bogs because I overslept.
You are nothing.
A political smear.
A mistake in a fancy robe.
Do you understand?”
Something flickered in Jade’s eyes.
Fast.
Unreadable.
Not fear.
Something deeper, darker.
It was gone in a blink, replaced by that placid, sorrowful calm.
“Ah,” Jade said softly, not struggling against the grip.
“Forgive me, my lord.
It was… an error.
It will not happen again.”
Ace held him there for another second, searching that perfect face for a crack.
He found only stillness.
It infuriated him more.
He let go with a shove.
Jade took a half-step back to steady himself.
He adjusted his glasses with a graceful, unhurried motion.
“Why are you here?” Ace bit out.
Jade opened his mouth to speak.
“I’m not asking why you’re *in the keep*,” Ace cut him off, his voice dripping venom.
“I already know that script.
You’re here for the inheritance.
The heir’s seat.
To suck up to my father.
To play the victim until someone hands you a crown.
Save your self-sacrifice act for the ministers.
It doesn’t work on me.”
He pointed a sharp finger at the book on the floor.
“I’m asking why you’re *here*.
In this room.
This is the kids’ library.
Shouldn’t you be in the archives?
Studying law?
Or poems?
Or…” He leaned in again, his voice dropping to a malicious whisper.
“…seduction techniques?”
Jade stared at him.
For a long moment, he said nothing.
The only sound was the distant festival clamor.
Then, he did something unexpected.
He chuckled.
It was a soft, genuine sound.
It didn’t match the tension in the room at all.
“Well,” Jade said, a faint, real smile touching his eyes behind the glasses.
“I was looking for the proper library.
I got lost.
The corridors all look the same when you’re trying not to wander into forbidden areas.
I ended up here.”
He bent down, fluidly, and picked up the fallen book.
He brushed a bit of dust from its cover with his thumb.
The same tender gesture.
“It’s a good story,” he said simply, holding the book to his chest.
“*The Wolf and the Winter Moon*.
It’s… comforting.
The illustrations are beautiful.”
Ace was thrown.
The anger was still there, a hot coal in his gut, but it had nowhere to land.
He’d expected defiance, or more simpering apology, or cold silence.
He hadn’t expected… this.
A lost poet admiring children’s pictures.
“Comforting?” Ace echoed, skeptical.
“It’s a kid’s tale about a lonely wolf.
It ends with him freezing to death because he was too proud to join the pack.”
Jade’s smile didn’t fade.
“Some read it that way.
I read it as the wolf choosing his own peace.
The moon was company enough.
The cold was just… quiet.”
He looked past Ace, out the sunlit window.
“Your home is very loud, Lord Ace.
Even the silence here has a weight to it.
This room is… lighter.”
Ace had no retort.
The observation was too keen, too true.
The keep *was* loud.
With history, with expectation, with unspoken rules.
He watched as Jade carefully replaced the book on a low shelf, his movements precise.
The borrowed cardigan slipped off one shoulder, revealing the line of his throat, pale and vulnerable.
“The festival is tonight,” Ace said suddenly, the words coming out rougher than he intended.
“The whole damn territory will be here.
Dignitaries.
Rivals.
People with sharp eyes and sharper tongues.”
Jade turned back to him, waiting.
“If you’re going to play your part,” Ace continued, crossing his arms, “you’ll need to do better than getting lost and reading fairy tales.
They’ll eat you alive out there.
Kalgen’s just the appetizer.”
“Is that advice, my lord?” Jade asked, his head tilting slightly.
“It’s a warning,” Ace shot back.
“I don’t want you humiliating the Valebane name more than you already are just by existing.
So keep your head down.
Smile less.
And for the gods’ sake, find a thicker coat.”
He turned to leave, the confrontation leaving him feeling oddly hollow, unsatisfied.
“Lord Ace?”
He paused at the door, not looking back.
“Thank you,” Jade said quietly.
“For the warning.
And… I am sorry about the patrol.
It is difficult to be left behind.”
Ace stiffened.
How did he know about that?
The servants’ gossip moved faster than he thought.
He didn’t acknowledge it.
He just walked out, leaving the poet alone in the sunlit room with the children’s books.
In the hallway, the festival noise seemed louder, more abrasive.
Ace leaned against the cold stone wall, closing his eyes.
*The wolf choosing his own peace.
The cold was just quiet.*
The words stuck in his mind, an irritating splinter.
He saw it again—the thumb tracing the edge of the picture.
The gentle chuckle.
The admission of being lost.
Was it an act?
It had to be.
A deeper, more subtle game than he’d first thought.
Or was it possible… was the bastard actually just… lonely?
Ace pushed off the wall with a growl of frustration.
He didn’t have time for this.
He had a festival to survive, ministers to outmaneuver, and a ghost who wrote him letters to obsess over.
But as he walked away, the image wouldn’t leave him.
Jade, holding a storybook to his chest like a shield, standing in a patch of sunlight, looking for all the world like he belonged nowhere at all.