Just before training started that day, Netser was already waiting at the Old Gardens, tucked away in the eastern quarter of the palace. The place where he stood was a quiet threshold—the manicured hedges of the royal grounds brushed against the untamed edge of the forest, as though order and wilderness leaned toward one another in secret greeting.
Shaya appeared at last, dressed not in silks or jewel-toned gowns as she once had at the duke's mansion, but in her training attire: loose, wide-legged black trousers and a simple long-sleeved blouse of white linen. The simplicity of her clothes only threw her beauty into sharper relief—her presence seemed to belong to another world entirely, one that required no ornament.
