Alva and Geri had arrived. With their arrival, everyone had gathered around. I almost forgot to check on Zoe.
I went to the room where Zoe got the treatment. As I came inside the room, there was Elpis, sitting on the edge of the bed, carefully wrapping a fresh bandage around Zoe's ribs. The air was thick with the scent of crushed herbs and antiseptic spirits—a sharp contrast to the fresh garden air outside.
Sitting in a chair in the corner was Aldea. She wasn't her usual loud, boisterous self. She sat hunched over, her greatsword resting against the wall, peeling an apple with a small dagger. Her eyes were fixed on Zoe with intense, silent concern.
Zoe lay propped up against several pillows. Her face, usually so full of predatory confidence, was a map of purple and yellow bruises. Her left eye was swollen shut, and her breathing was shallow, hitching slightly with every inhalation.
"Your Highness," Elpis said, standing up and wiping her hands on her apron. "You have come."
Zoe turned her head slowly. Her good eye focused on me, and a weak, crooked grin tugged at the corner of her split lip. "Look who it is," Zoe rasped, her voice sounding like dry leaves. "The Princess finally descends from her tower."
"Zoe," I whispered, the guilt hitting me like a physical blow. I walked to the bedside, hesitant to touch her for fear of causing more pain. "I am so sorry. I should have ordered the search sooner."
"Don't start weeping on me," Zoe grumbled, though there was no heat in it. "I knew the risks when I took the job."
Aldea stood up suddenly, the chair scraping loudly against the floor. "It wasn't just a risk," she spat, her anger flaring. "It was a trap. There were too many of them, Zoe. You shouldn't have been alone."
"The knights were already in position," Zoe admitted, wincing as she shifted. "I infiltrated the cellar, but I was surrounded before I could secure the documents. They were waiting for a 'rat'. It was humiliating."
"It was not your fault," I said firmly. "But now we know exactly what they are capable of. Rest now, Zoe. You will need your strength for what comes next."
My gaze went to Aldea and Elpis. "I want to check the peas and the lands; do you two want to accompany me?"
Aldea hesitated, her hand drifting toward her sword as she glanced back at the wounded Zoe. The desire to stay and protect her friend was written clearly on her face. Elpis, however, gave a sharp, decisive nod. "I will come, Your Highness. It is vital to see how the soil reacts to the first planting."
Seeing Elpis agree, Aldea finally sighed and nodded, following us out of the room.
Once we reached the shadowed corridor outside, I spotted Alva leaning against a pillar, looking bored as she toyed with a lock of her silver hair. I gestured for her to follow me into a small, private alcove.
"Alva," I whispered, making sure neither Louis nor Cail was within earshot. Magic was a rare commodity, and its discovery by the nobility or common folk was strictly forbidden. "I have a task for you. Tonight, you must enter the estate's granary alone."
Alva raised an eyebrow. "Alone?"
"I need you to be a ghost," I replied. "Use your magic space to empty the supplies you brought from the city into the granary. Sacks, barrels, everything. It must look as if this food was hidden here all along—a 'Royal Reserve' that I have just unlocked. If anyone sees you, the secret of the spirits is out. Can you do it?"
Alva smirked, her golden eyes flashing. "To move unseen is the simplest trick of the Wood Kin. Consider it done, Master."
"Good. But before night falls, there is one more thing," I said, stopping her before she could melt back into the shadows. "I am taking my brother to see the fields right now. I want you to come with us."
Alva frowned, looking ready to refuse. "Why would I want to trudge through mud with a pompous human prince?"
"Because you called me a liar at the lake," I reminded her softly, a challenge in my voice. "You said I was bluffing about restoring the soil without magic. If you have the courage to face the truth, come and see what my 'bluff' has produced."
Alva's expression shifted, the boredom vanishing instantly. She straightened, her pride clearly pricked. "Very well," she sniffed, crossing her arms. "I shall witness this... miracle. But do not expect me to be impressed by weeds."
With the secret logistics settled, I returned to the dining hall, where my brother, Connor, was still nursing a cup of wine. He looked up as I approached, his expression one of mild amusement.
"My dear brother," I said, offering a small, practiced smile. "Since you are so fond of staying here, perhaps you would care to accompany your little sister on a trip to the village? I should like to show you the progress we are making with the lands."
Connor leaned back, his eyes calculating. "A tour of the mud and the peasants, Caroline? You certainly have strange tastes for a princess."
"It is the land you are now interested in, isn't it?" I countered, reminding him of our pact regarding the crop rotation. "Come. See how the peas are healing the earth."
Connor chuckled and stood up, smoothing his fine doublet. "Very well. Let us see this 'miracle' of yours."
We left the manor together—the Crown Prince in his finery and the Baroness in her simple brown trousers—heading toward the outskirts where the first green shoots of the pea plants were beginning to defy the dead soil.
As my entourage with my brother came inside the village, immediately one of the people approached us. In front of us, a man skidded to a halt, his chest heaving and his face slicked with sweat despite the cool air. He looked as though he had run from the very edge of the world.
"Your Highness! Please!" he gasped, bowing so low his forehead nearly brushed the dry road. "You must come! The field... the one where the little green seeds were buried... something is happening!"
I exchanged a glance with Elpis, who adjusted her medical bag, her eyes flashing with a mix of professional curiosity and a hidden, knowing glint. My brother, Connor, arched a disdainful eyebrow, his hand resting idly on the hilt of his ceremonial sword.
"What is this commotion, Caroline?" Connor drawled, looking at the ragged man as if he were a particularly uninteresting insect. "Does your 'miracle crop' finally require a priest to read its last prayers?"
"Quite the opposite, I suspect," I replied calmly, keeping my voice level. "Lead the way."
We quickly followed him to the field he was talking about. The man sprinted ahead, gesturing wildly for us to hurry. Connor walked with a leisurely, predatory grace, while Aldea stayed half a step behind me, her hand never straying far from her greatsword. She seemed tense, her eyes scanning the rooftops for any lingering threats from the knights who had taken Zoe.
From afar, I could see a lot of people gathered around in that field, as if there was a commotion there. The grey, dusty landscape was broken by a sea of brown tunics and frantic movements. As we drew closer, the sound of raised voices reached us—a chaotic blend of fear, wonder, and heated argument.
The person who guided us immediately told the people to make way for us from far away. "Make way! Make way for the First Princess! The Crown Prince is here! Step back…"
The crowd parted like a receding tide. The villagers, who only days ago had looked at me with cold suspicion or slammed their doors in my face, now fell into a stunned silence. They dropped to their knees, their eyes darting between my simple trousers and Connor's shimmering ducal finery.
We reached the center of the clearing, and even I felt a momentary catch in my breath.
There, in the middle of a land that everyone had declared dead—a soil that had supposedly been bled dry by years of potatoes —rows of vibrant, defiant green shoots were punching through the crust of the earth. The pea plants weren't just growing; they were thriving with an unnatural vigor that seemed to mock the surrounding desolation.
"It is... impossible," someone whispered from the crowd. "The Saviour Eris told us this land was healed, but nothing grew for years. How can these little stones bring life back?"
Connor stepped forward, the heels of his polished boots clicking against the hard earth. He knelt, staining his fine silk hose, and reached out to touch a tender leaf. He looked back at me, his eyes sharp and dangerous.
"You said this was 'Crop Rotation', Caroline," he said, his voice low so only our entourage could hear. "But I have seen many duchies and many harvests. Plants do not wake up like this simply because you changed their name. Tell me... what did you really put in this soil?"
I met his gaze. "I told you, brother. It is about the right nutrition. The land was starving, just like the people. I simply gave it what it needed."
The soil, dear brother…" I said softly, stepping up beside him.
"The soil? I see the soil is the same as the other soil…" he retorted, gesturing broadly to the desolation that stretched toward the horizon. To his eyes, dirt was simply dirt—a stage for peasants to toil upon, not a living thing.
"On the outside, it is the same, yet underneath it, it begins to be different. The reason why the soil has failed to grow potatoes is because the soil has deteriorated. Soil is a plant's food, Connor. Like a human eats food—when a human eats less food, their growth will be stunted. Similarly, when the soil lacks nutrients, the plant's growth will be hindered, and eventually, it fails entirely."
Connor turned his gaze from the ground to me, his eyes narrowing. The villagers had drawn closer now, huddling together in a ragged semi-circle, listening to the Princess speak of the earth as if it were a child to be fed.
"Why are peas different from potatoes?" he asked, his tone betraying a flicker of genuine interest.
"Peas are an amazing plant," I replied, gesturing to the defiant green leaves punching through the crust. "They can grow in soil which has deteriorated and actually inject more nutrients back into the earth. The reason the soil here is spent is because the people kept planting potatoes in the same soil, over and over, draining it of everything it had to give. Peas can repair and improve the soil. The great thing is that peas are quick to harvest; it just takes two months to harvest them."
I looked at the crowd. They were silent, their faces etched with a mix of awe and a lingering, superstitious fear.
"Two months," Connor mused, rubbing his chin. "In two months, these peasants will have something to trade besides their own misery. You truly are a strange one, Caroline. You treat the dirt like a ledger to be balanced."
"A kingdom is only as strong as its foundation, brother," I said, meeting his gaze steadily. "And right now, the foundation is hungry."
I turned my head slightly, finding Alva at the fringe of the crowd. She stood with her arms crossed, feigning the boredom of a disinterested traveler, but her knuckles were white where she gripped her sleeves. Her golden eyes—too sharp, too bright for a normal human—were fixed on the vibrant green shoots with a mixture of hunger and disbelief.
"Alva," I called out, my voice casual but commanding. "Come. You have the sharpest eyes among us. Tell me what you see."
She hesitated, glancing warily at the villagers. To them, she was just a strange, silver-haired foreign retainer. She pushed off the fence post and walked toward me, her movements stiff. She stopped before a row of peas, refusing to look at the plants directly, as if fearing they would bite her.
"You doubted the method," I whispered, stepping between her and the crowd to shield her from prying eyes. "You said the earth was dead. Kneel, Alva. Touch the truth."
Alva dropped to her knees. She reached out, her hand trembling violently as it hovered over the leaves. She was a Wood Kin, a spirit who perceived the world through life force, not just sight. She was bracing herself for the silence of dead soil.
Instead, when her fingers brushed the leaves, she flinched.
She dug her hands into the dirt, frantic now, unearthing a cluster of roots. She stared at the tiny, knobby nodules clinging to them. To the villagers, she was just inspecting the crop. But I saw the way her pupils dilated, her chest heaving as the "sound" of the healthy plants overwhelmed her senses.
"It… it isn't silent," she breathed, her voice barely a thread of sound, audible only to me. "It's deafening."
She looked up at me, tears cutting clean tracks through the dust on her cheeks. The arrogance was gone, shattered by the undeniable reality of life blooming without her magic.
"For so long... I thought they needed me," she whispered, her voice cracking with the weight of a century of failure. "I thought they needed my voice, my power. But they just needed... to eat."
She looked back at the roots in her hands, reverently brushing the dirt from the nitrogen nodules. "These little knots... they are doing what I couldn't. They are feeding themselves."
Alva slumped forward, resting her forehead against her muddy hands. It looked like exhaustion to the crowd, but I knew it was surrender. The spirit who had tried to force nature to obey her will had finally found peace in understanding how nature actually worked.
"I was so arrogant," she murmured into the earth, too low for even Connor to hear. "I was screaming at them to wake up, when I should have just set the table."
She raised her head, wiping her face quickly to hide her vulnerability from the Prince. She looked at me with a profound, terrifying respect.
"You are a terrifying creature, Master," she whispered. "You fix the world with dirt and logic, where magic only breaks it."
Connor cleared his throat loudly, stepping closer. He looked down at Alva with a raised eyebrow, sensing the intensity but missing the context.
"Your retainer seems quite... emotional about vegetables, Caroline," he drawled, though his eyes remained sharp, calculating the potential profit of such a crop.
"She is passionate about agriculture," I lied smoothly, helping Alva to her feet.