The estate was still when she left it. No grand announcement. No drawn-out farewell.
Just a sealed letter, placed on her father's desk beside a candle that had long gone cold. Her handwriting was precise, formal, distant—yet there was a thread of iron woven through the words.
"I have fulfilled every obligation you left abandoned. I protected what bore your name when no one else would.
You no longer need worry about the northern border.
It answers to me now."
—Zareena Valeska ibn Serinova
By the time the first servants stirred and the guards changed shifts, she was already ten miles from the capital. Her cloak snapped in the wind. Her small group—just four guards and one mage—rode with silent purpose. They took the eastern road, avoiding the main gate. Avoiding eyes.
But not all eyes.
Spies moved like mist in the capital. One saw her pass through a shadowed alley before dawn and whispered it to another. Messages flew through hands and mouths like wildfire.
"She's left."
"Heading north again."
"Without permission."
The news reached her father's study before the ink on her letter fully dried. It reached the noble circles before breakfast. It reached the Crown Prince by the second hour of daylight.
And in the gilded halls of court, Prince Kaelen stood at his balcony, still holding the gloves he'd worn the night before. His thoughts were not of meetings or treaties. They were of a girl in black and silver. Of the way she danced with another man and never once looked his way. The way her voice never trembled, even when surrounded by wolves.
He clenched the gloves tighter.
He told himself he was intrigued by her strength. That her defiance was a political curiosity. But the burn behind his ribs—jealousy, raw and unexpected—said otherwise.
He turned to his steward. "Send a rider north. Quietly. I want updates on Fort Vireloch every week."
The steward hesitated. "By what authority, Your Highness?"
Kaelen didn't look back. "Mine."
Meanwhile, in deeper corners of the court, whispers grew darker.
"She disrespected her own House."
"She's gathering soldiers."
"They say the people love her."
Old men with old grudges tapped fingers on silver chalices and shared tight-lipped smiles.
"She's becoming inconvenient."
"She's becoming dangerous."
And somewhere, far from the capital, as the sun cracked the morning sky, Zareena looked to the horizon.
She knew the silence would not last.
But she didn't need it to.
She only needed time.