"And yet," she said, unable to keep the smile from her voice, "you'd still build it exactly as I want it."
He looked at her then with an expression so quietly affectionate that it nearly stole the breath from her lungs. "I would," he said simply. "Every bit of it."
From there, the two of them began making their plans in earnest, small and unremarkable plans that would have meant nothing to anyone else but meant everything to the pair of them. How many shelves the shop would require, and where they would be placed so that the morning light would fall pleasantly across the fabric without fading the dyes too quickly. What colors would appeal most to the kind of customers they hoped to attract. Whether the front counter should stand nearer the door or further back, so that whoever entered wouldn't feel as though they were being watched the moment they crossed the threshold. Even their small disagreements over such trivial matters felt precious to her, each one a tiny thread stitching together a future she had never truly believed she would be allowed to have.
"Blue," she insisted one afternoon, holding up a scrap of fabric Caelan had managed to procure from somewhere.
"Absolutely not," he replied without hesitation.
"Red, then."
"Blue," he countered, and she stared at him in open confusion.
"You just said no to blue."
"I changed my mind the moment you argued for red instead."
"That makes no sense whatsoever."
"It stains too easily, the red. Trust me on this."
"You've never dyed a single piece of fabric in your entire life, Caelan."
"I've spilled more than enough tea over the years to know precisely how difficult red stains are to remove."
He laughed so hard at his own reasoning that he very nearly dropped the wooden ruler he had been using to measure out his sketch, and Aleel found herself thinking, with a kind of quiet astonishment, that she could happily spend the entirety of her remaining years arguing over something as insignificant as the color of a shop's shelving, so long as it was with him.
Three days remained before their departure, and by then everything had already been arranged. The merchant caravan that would carry them far from the capital and away from House Tasan's reach was scheduled to leave well before sunrise, and Caelan had spent months quietly setting aside every copper coin his modest wages allowed him to save, while Aleel had gathered together what remained of the jewelry her late mother had left to her, not with any intention of selling it unless circumstances truly demanded it, but simply as a safeguard against whatever hardships might lie ahead of them on the road. She packed very little for herself in the end. A single spare dress. Two books she could not bring herself to leave behind. Her embroidery needles, more out of habit than necessity. And the small wooden comb Caelan had carved for her with his own hands after she had accidentally broken the far more expensive ivory one her mother had once given her.
"It isn't terribly pretty," he had apologized when he first presented it to her, clearly embarrassed by the rough, uneven teeth and the slightly crooked handle.
"It doesn't need to be pretty," she had told him, and she meant it entirely. She carried it with her always after that, tucked carefully away wherever she went.
The night before they were meant to leave, her father summoned her once again to the ancestral hall, and the moment she stepped through its heavy doors she understood that something was wrong. The atmosphere inside felt different from any of the countless other times she had been called before him, heavier somehow, charged with a tension she could not immediately place. Every elder of House Tasan had gathered within the hall, their expressions grave, and the thick, cloying scent of incense hung so densely in the air that it made her chest feel tight before her father had even spoken a single word. He dismissed every servant present until only family remained behind the closed doors.
"You have brought great shame upon this family," he said at last, his voice devoid of any warmth.
Aleel frowned, genuinely confused, or perhaps simply refusing to allow herself to understand what she already suspected. "I don't understand what you mean, Father."
Without another word, he tossed a folded piece of paper down before her feet. She bent to retrieve it with trembling hands, and the moment she unfolded it and recognized what lay within, her blood ran cold. It was one of Caelan's sketches, the cloth shop rendered in his uneven, earnest lines, and beneath it, every route they had planned to travel, every stop along the way, every careful estimate of coin and distance, every quiet dream the two of them had built together beneath the plum tree. Someone had betrayed them, though she would never learn who.
"Did you truly believe," her father asked, each word measured and deliberate, "that House Tasan would permit one of its own daughters to abandon her position and run off with a mere gardener?"
"He is not merely a gardener, father," she said, her voice shaking despite her attempt to steady it.
"No," her father replied, and something in the sudden, frightening calm of his tone made her stomach twist violently. "He is a corpse."
Everything within Aleel seemed to stop at once. "...What did you say?"
"He resisted when the guards came for him, so they killed him," her father explained, with all the casual detachment of a man discussing nothing more consequential than the weather for the following day.
Aleel stared at him, unable to comprehend, unwilling to comprehend. "No. That isn't true."
"He lied to you from the very beginning."
"No, he didn't."
"He sought only your status, your family's wealth, nothing more."
"No! That isn't what happened between us!" She rushed forward before she could stop herself, and her father struck her across the face before she could reach him. She collapsed onto the polished floor, her cheek burning fiercely where his hand had connected.