King Niveus came down the steps as his personal Shadowguard, Ezra, and his head advisor, Zudo, trailed behind him. Ryder already stood at the foot of the stairs, adjusting Serenity’s cloak around her.

  “Let me know if you get too chilled,” he spoke softly.

  She nodded. “I am fine. Thank you.”

  Ryder moved back beside her, watching her profile just at the edge of his vision. Their relationship as of late had been strained after he sent her away. He would need to work on earning her grace again before more pressure was put on her and she decided to regret him. He blinked slowly, letting the cold of the day ground him to the present. That was an item on his long list to confront later, after their guests were safe within the palace.

  His eyes caught the first riders coming up the drive and he straightened. Jayce and Rush were in the lead as the wagon and then the carriage came through the gates to the palace grounds. Jayce slowed near the stairs; Rush followed suit, pausing as his gaze slid over Ryder and then Niveus.

  Rush dismounted with grace and covered the distance between them in a few long strides. The two men embraced.

  Ryder let the surprise pass briefly across his face, then reminded himself: Rush and Niveus were friends, allies for years before the fall.

  He could hear them speaking quietly before they pulled back enough to hold each other at arm’s length.

  Rush looked his friend over. “You are so old. Do you need help getting up in the morning?”

  Ezra and Zudo tensed at the insult.

  Niveus laughed deep from his chest. “And you look like you are the age of my sons instead of being older than me.”

  Rush shrugged. “Your sons were well raised, Niveus. You should be proud.”

  Niveus set a hand on Ryder’s shoulder. “I am.” He squeezed once, warming Ryder with the simple contact, before letting his attention go back to Rush. “Now. Did you murder any of them? Damon is still whole?”

  Ryder watched Rush’s face do something interesting.

  “They are both perfectly healthy,” Rush muttered.

  Niveus’s mouth pulled into a slow smirk. “I see. Did they both do well in trying to court? Does she resemble her sister?”

  Rush’s eyes sharpened toward the carriage as the rest of the riders came up. Darius and Dato dismounted, heading for the door.

  “You’ll see soon enough, dear friend,” Rush said, not looking away. “And you are too old for her.”

  Niveus huffed. “She is twice my age.”

  Rush tilted his head. “More than that, if we’re honest. Your grave, though, if you tell her that to her face.”

  Ryder laughed once at that. They both looked to him. He waved it off. “Sounds like her.”

  Rush moved in front of Ryder and Serenity. He nodded to Ryder, then bowed gracefully to Serenity.

  She curtsied in return. “Welcome to Carlbrin, Majesty,” she said politely, slight amusement tucked behind her composure at seeing this man bow.

  When Rush straightened, he paused a heartbeat. “Thank you, Highness.”

  She only smiled in return. Rush gave a smile back, but it didn’t reach his eyes. Ryder stepped forward, bringing Rush’s attention back as the carriage came to a stop.

  Darius opened the door. Damon climbed out with a little smirk, turned, and offered his hand to Kairi. She took it, and he helped her down with ease.

  Ryder and Dato both went to offer their arms. Damon looked between them.

  “Ah. Ryder,” Damon drawled, “I would normally be alright with letting you take the lead, but…” He guided Kairi a step toward Dato.

  Kairi only smiled and took Dato’s arm. “I think he gets the win this time.”

  Damon clasped his hands behind his back, watching.

  Ryder nodded and looked at his youngest brother and Kairi. “Welcome, Kairi. It’s been a long time.”

  He took note of her fingers gripping Dato’s sleeve, feeding the suspicion he’d been wrestling in his own mind ever since learning Dato was her dream visitor.

  “It has been,” Kairi replied, chin lifting in practiced poise. Then it softened into something warmer. “Ryder.”

  Dato placed his other hand over hers on his arm. “Let’s get you inside.”

  They approached his father.

  Dato bowed. Kairi curtsied. “Father,” Dato said evenly, “Princess Kairi Shadow has arrived safely.”

  Then Niveus swept his cloak back and knelt before her, taking her hand and pressing his forehead to the back of it.

  “I’m sorry,” he said softly.

  Dato’s free hand twitched forward on instinct, then stopped, returning to rest over Kairi’s fingers as if restraint itself was a kind of duty. Ezra and Zudo also shifted, half a step, ready to catch their king until it became clear it was purposeful.

  Dato’s eyes flicked around the entrance. No host of nobles. No crowd. Just the palace steps and the people who mattered.

  Kairi released Dato and took Niveus’s hand in both of hers, pulling him up.

  “Kings shouldn’t kneel to foreign princesses,” she said firmly, a small smile tugging at her mouth. “I’m pretty sure Trinity told you that last time too.”

  Niveus smiled warmly and nodded. For a fleeting moment Kairi thought: Dato’s smile is like his father’s. And then, uninvited, another thought followed. Would Dato look like him when he is older?

  “Walk with me?” Niveus asked, offering his arm.

  She nodded and took it.

  Ezra and Zudo fell in behind them as Niveus led her toward the palace doors. Rush matched his stride on Niveus’s other side. Shade trailed a little behind the advisor and guard like a shadow that didn’t need permission to exist.

  Dato glanced back long enough to see Tessa signing with Zen about taking the wagon and carriage around to unload with the servants.

  Ryder came up beside him with Serenity on his arm.

  “Let’s go, Ky,” Ryder murmured. “Before Father does something else surprising.”

  The words were smooth, but the slight panic was there.

  Niveus’s arm was warm beneath her hand, solid in the way stone was solid. The moment they crossed the threshold, the palace swallowed them whole. Cold daylight fell away behind the doors and was replaced by lamplight and the clean scent of polished stone, beeswax, and something faintly herbal clinging to the tapestries. The air inside was warmer, but not soft. It had the stillness of a place that listened.

  Servants along the entry hall froze mid-motion.

  A footman with a silver tray held too perfectly steady. A maid paused with folded linens against her hip. A pair of pages stopped arguing with their eyes and snapped their chins down. It wasn’t the kind of attention that felt like awe. It felt like calculation, like a hundred silent ledgers being updated at once.

  Kairi’s instinct was to shrink under it.

  She didn’t. Not with the thought that any one of them could be a spy. Instead, she looked at them deliberately. She would have to learn as many as she could. Who had ink stains on their fingers. Who wore the quiet exhaustion of someone who’d been up since before dawn. Who was happy. Who was resentful. She stored them away and searched for patterns that might keep her safe.

  That might keep Dato safe.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  She had never been above them. Not in Tearia. Not now. The palace ran on their backs, and she knew what it cost to keep a place like this spotless while the people who lived inside it bled each other with smiles. She had always wanted to be a ruler for the people, not of the people. The Phoenix had widened that desire into something sharper, something more urgent, because it had dragged her among common folk in a way princesshood never had.

  While her eyes tracked the servants beginning to move again, the spell breaking, she listened to Niveus and Rush speak quietly at her side. Old plans. New war. Threads they’d been pulling for years, with Ryder’s help.

  She glanced once over her shoulder. The rest of them had filtered in behind. Ryder and Serenity moving together, Jayce and Tamsin close. Darius already scanning the hall like it might bite. And Dato…

  Dato stood half a step behind her shoulder, as if he’d decided the palace itself didn’t deserve the space between them. His posture was correct, but his attention wasn’t on the marble or the tapestries. It was on people. On hands. On doors. On what the eyes of strangers did when they landed on her.

  She brought her focus back to Niveus.

  “I had the west wing aired out,” Niveus said. “The rooms were prepared days ago. Not the… showy suites. The ones with thick walls and fewer doors.”

  Rush’s mouth didn’t quite become a smile. “You’ve gotten smarter.”

  “I learned from having sons,” Niveus replied dryly. “And from surviving.”

  Rush’s eyes flicked toward the servants, then back to Niveus. “Who knows we’re here?”

  “Only who must,” Niveus said. “The household staff will know by tonight, no matter what I order. Palaces gossip like old women at market. But the court?” His voice tightened just a fraction. “Not yet. We’ll control the first story they hear.”

  Rush hummed low, approval more felt than seen. “Good. Let them hear what we want them to hear.”

  Kairi listened without inserting herself. She was good at that. Better than she wanted to be. She kept watching the servants as they resumed their motions, careful and too aware.

  One maid glanced at Kairi’s hands. Not her face. Her hands. Kairi met her eyes and gave a small nod, the way she would to any working woman. The maid startled, cheeks flushing at being caught, then dipped her head and hurried on.

  Niveus leaned in closer to Kairi and spoke softly, as if confiding rather than interrogating. “Tell me my sons didn’t embarrass me.”

  Kairi couldn’t help the small smile that came. “Which one do you want to know about first?”

  “Tell me how Damon conducted himself,” Niveus said, though the wariness in his tone betrayed him.

  “He was a gentleman,” Kairi answered. “Polite. Entertaining to talk to. It made the carriage rides pass quicker.”

  Niveus nodded, taking that in with mild surprise. “You must have made a good first impression with him.” His gaze tipped toward her, curious now. “And Dato?”

  Kairi couldn’t stop her eyes warming. They dropped to where her hand rested on Niveus’s arm, then to the ring beneath her collar, hidden for the moment. A small smile spread across her face anyway. “He was brave,” she said quietly. “And attentive.”

  She felt it, even before she heard it, the way Dato went still behind her. Not stiff. Not startled. Just… held. Like those words had weight he hadn’t expected her to lay down in front of his father.

  Rush cleared his throat. “Niveus, we need to speak about Dato.”

  Niveus didn’t miss the shift. His gaze slid from Rush to Kairi, then back again. “Is this a private conversation?”

  Rush nodded.

  Niveus eyed him for a few steps as they continued, then returned his attention to Kairi. “Do you know what he means?”

  Heat climbed Kairi’s cheeks. She looked away.

  Niveus’s mouth twitched once, the closest thing to a smile. He didn’t press. He only guided her with a subtle turn toward the west wing. “They call this the side palace,” he said. “Added on later.”

  They moved down a corridor of archways and open doors leading to an outer walkway overlooking the courtyard below. It would be beautiful in spring. Right now, it looked like a place where wind could carry secrets just as easily as it carried cold.

  Kairi watched the turns, the spacing of doors, the patterns in the stone. She began to wonder how long it would take to learn the palace well enough not to get lost. Maybe Darius could show her tomorrow, then test her like a drill. She nodded to herself. Yes. That would be the plan.

  Niveus chuckled. “Are you planning?”

  Kairi glanced at him and nodded. “I want to learn the layout of the palace as soon as I can.”

  Rush sighed like the answer was inevitable. “Of course.”

  Niveus slowed at a door, pulled a key from within his cloak, and placed it in Kairi’s hand. “This is your room.”

  The metal was cool against her palm. She stepped closer and slid the key into the lock.

  Before she could push the door open, Darius moved ahead of her with practiced ease. “Quick sweep,” he said.

  Kairi let him. She didn’t like it, the way it reminded her she needed it, but she let him anyway. Darius disappeared inside and returned moments later with a single nod.

  Clear.

  She beamed at him before she could stop herself and slipped into the room.

  Behind her, Niveus turned his head. “Ryder.” His voice carried the kind of authority that made the corridor itself straighten. “Go tell the household staff we will have a private family dinner tonight. Serenity, Rush, and Kairi will be attending as well.”

  Ryder bowed his head and covered Serenity’s hand where it rested on his arm. “Shall we go?”

  Serenity looked once toward Kairi’s door, then smiled. “Of course. Let us go.”

  They turned back toward the heart of the palace, Jayce and Tamsin falling in behind them.

  Ezra lingered near the threshold with Darius. Kairi caught only pieces of it as she glanced back.

  “There’s a guard room attached,” Ezra said quietly. “For when the princess requires someone to stay.”

  Darius’s brows pulled together. “I saw it. When is a ‘requires someone to stay’ moment?”

  Dato answered before Ezra could, voice even, the mask in place. “Tessa only stays when I’m sick.”

  It was offered like an example.

  Darius’s expression shifted anyway, brief and shadowed, as if a memory had caught him by the throat. The night on the road. Fever. Kairi fading. The helplessness of watching someone burn and not knowing if they would come back.

  “…Noted,” Darius said.

  Niveus cleared his throat.

  Dato and Darius both straightened at once, instinctive as breath. Kairi felt something in her chest tug at that. How quickly they responded. How deeply it was trained into them.

  “Come on now,” Niveus said, amused and commanding all at once. “Both of you. In.”

  They entered.

  The room was quiet in that peculiar way royal rooms were quiet, like even the walls were listening for secrets to repeat. Kairi crossed it quickly, curiosity pulling her through the space. The small guard room off to the side. The attached bath. The writing desk. Then the bedroom, where the window opened to the lake’s pale spread beyond the palace grounds.

  Aurelune.

  It glimmered under winter light, beautiful enough to hurt.

  Rush came to stand beside her at the window. He waited until she looked up at him. His gaze dipped to the chain at her throat.

  “You want this?” he asked quietly.

  Not the necklace.

  The courtship.

  Kairi’s eyes stayed clear. There was no doubt in them when she nodded.

  She felt Dato’s attention like heat behind her shoulder, like he was watching her answer with more fear than relief.

  Rush turned from her and faced Niveus.

  “I have accepted Prince Dato’s request to court my sister with the intent of marriage,” Rush said. “We will come to terms for what this means for Tearia and Naberia. I request Tearian customs on her behalf, and your son has accepted those customs.”

  Niveus’s gaze slid to Dato.

  Dato did not flinch. Not away. Not down. He stood still as stone and met his father’s eyes with the quiet resolve Kairi had watched him practice for years.

  “You have some courage, asking him,” Niveus murmured, more observation than warning. Then he looked back to Rush. “I accept Tearian customs. But the Temple of the Phoenix will have final say. We come to terms for what it means between our kingdoms after Dato’s name day, and after the priests decide what is holy.”

  Rush leaned back against the wall, folding his arms. “When is his name day?”

  “In eight days,” Dato answered.

  Niveus nodded once, thoughtful. “Then we will announce the courtship between our houses with the acceptance of what beast claims my son, and how the Temple will receive it.”

  “And we come to terms once the priests have settled,” Rush agreed, gaze sliding briefly to Darius. “Tomorrow, Kairi and Darius should visit the temple to request training.”

  Niveus nodded, then caught Kairi’s slight shift as she turned from the window.

  “Kurt as well,” Kairi added. “He asked if he could be one of my Ash Guard, and I wouldn’t mind… if it is acceptable.”

  Niveus’s brows lifted with amusement. “Asking permission?”

  “I’m in your home,” Kairi said simply. “It feels right.”

  “That you are,” Niveus agreed, and his grin softened just enough to show he liked her for it. He tipped his chin toward Dato. “If my son believes Kurt is up to the task, I will allow it.”

  Dato’s gaze flicked to Kairi. A small pause, the kind only she would notice. He thought, weighed, then nodded once. “Kurt would be a good guard for her,” he said. “With Darius.”

  Niveus only nodded, satisfied, then looked at Rush with a cocky, boyish grin that didn’t quite fit a king. “Let’s eat something. It will be entertaining to see which son I can embarrass more.”

  Rush’s eyes went straight to Dato. “Probably him,” he said, entirely too pleased.

  Kairi smacked Rush’s arm. “Be kind to my prince.”

  Niveus laughed. “Take good care of my son.” He shifted toward the door. “Rush, let me show you to your rooms.”

  Rush followed him out.

  The moment the door closed, Dato’s shoulders dropped a fraction. Not enough to be unprincely. Enough to be human. He exhaled, slow, like he’d been holding that breath since the carriage.

  Darius wandered back into the guard room, assessing it properly this time. A narrow bed. Pegs for cloaks and bags. One dresser. A small bathing space tucked tight, functional and private.

  “This is better than my room in the barracks,” he muttered.

  Kairi drifted over, peering in beside him. “You can stay whenever you want.”

  Darius looked down at her, expression calm, voice not. “I will. Until we know everyone who comes into contact with you isn’t corrupted.”

  Kairi nodded.

  She stepped back and bumped into Dato.

  His hands caught her lightly, automatically, as if he’d been built for it. His grip stayed careful, not possessive. His gaze searched her face for something he couldn’t ask out loud in front of a guard room and palace walls.

  “How are you?” he asked quietly, thumbs rubbing once over her arms like he could smooth away the day.

  “Good,” she said, and laughed a little because it was either laugh or shake apart. “Overwhelmed. I don’t even know how to get back to my room.” Her smile softened. “But I’m happy.”

  Dato pulled her in, tucking her under his chin. For a heartbeat, she felt the real him there, the one who breathed against her hair in the dreamscape like the world couldn’t touch them.

  “This dinner is going to haunt me for years,” he muttered.

  “Mm-hmm,” Kairi hummed, eyes closing as she let herself rest against him.

  Darius had already hung his cloak and begun to move with purpose, like keeping busy was the only way to keep the weight of the day from settling on his shoulders. He glanced once at them, then back to the guard room.

  “While you’re at dinner, I’ll get some things moved in here,” he said.

  Kairi pulled away enough to smile at him. “Thank you.”

  Then she looked up at Dato, teasing and sincere all at once. “Show me where dinner is? I might be able to find my way back here after.”

  Dato nodded, gaze flicking briefly to Darius. “Be sure to eat something yourself. Tomorrow might be a lot.”

  Darius waved them off. “I will eat. Go be royal.”

  Dato’s mouth curved. He placed Kairi’s hand on his elbow with exaggerated formality.

  “My princess,” he murmured under his breath, just for her.

  Kairi narrowed her eyes at him, but her smile betrayed her as he led her out.

  Behind them, Darius sat in the silence for a long moment, closed his eyes, and breathed in like a man who hadn’t realized how much he missed familiar walls.

  Home sweet home.