She sensed him before she saw him.
The room tilted subtly, conversations shifting like iron filings to a magnet as people noticed the Crown Prince moving through them. Rhosyn kept her eyes fixed on a point just beyond the crowd, a trick she'd learned long ago to keep from startling at his approach.
Panic cut quick and sharp under her ribs as he neared, but she smothered it beneath habit. Cloak and armour, as always: elegance, grace, a pleasant smile. People only saw what they wanted to see in halls like this. Tonight they wanted a pretty ornament on the prince's arm, not a woman who felt like her back was pressed against a wall and the vultures were circling.
"Happy birthday, Rhos," Edrien said when he reached her.
He didn't hesitate. He leaned in and kissed her cheek just as he had on every birthday since she'd turned sixteen, his smile bright enough to convince any watching lord that this was the happiest day of their lives, not a dreadful knot of announcements and bargains.
"Thank you, Your Highness," Rhosyn replied, beaming up at him.
The title sat wrong on her tongue, but they both knew why she used it. There were too many eyes. Too many ears. His name was a private thing.
His hand found her waist as it always did, curving around her with easy ownership, guiding her slightly closer to his side. The contact, so familiar, clenched something hard and painful in her middle.
If Karsyn's touch on her back had been a whisper—a question, a suggestion, a quiet challenge—Edrien's was a shout. Certain. Claiming.
They both pretended not to hear the whirlwind of whispers twisting around them, like trees tortured in a hurricane. The court had already gushed over the spectacle of "the Crown's Treasure" on the arm of "the Northern Issue" when she entered. Now, as she stood ordained on the prince's side again, the tone shifted back to sweet and speculative.
Still, she caught the way Edrien's gaze slipped over her shoulder, tracking Karsyn's retreating form across the hall. When his hand tightened at her waist, the space between them became a fraction closer than usual.
He looked, irritatingly, like he always did.
Like nothing had shifted. Like he hadn't paced and raged at her a week ago, his temper fraying until she didn't know how to calm him. His hair was neat, his clothes perfectly tailored, red and gold rich against his shoulders. His eyes were bright, threaded with that restless zeal he always somehow had.
He looked like her prince.
"I was worried you'd hide in a corner all evening," he murmured, the smile still for the crowd, the words for her alone.
"I tried," she said lightly. "The corners were already taken."
His mouth twitched. For a moment it almost felt like old times—the easy back-and-forth, the comfort of knowing where each other would stand. But shadows lingered at the edges. She could still hear his voice from that last argument.
The musicians shifted their tune. Couples peeled away onto the floor for the next dance, skirts swirling, jewels catching the candlelight. For a heartbeat, it was so easy to imagine the night as it should have been: just another ball, another birthday, another turn about the floor with the boy who had grown into her prince.
Just another evening where she could lose herself in familiar jokes and old touches and pretend that nothing outside these four walls was changing.
"Dance with me?" Edrien asked.
Part of her wanted to say yes so badly it almost choked her. To let him take her hand, to spin, to forget—just for four minutes—that she was about to sign away her hand in marriage as a desperate attempt to wrest back some control.
But the phantom of their argument tugged at the seams of his smile, colouring it in a shade only she could see. His hand on her waist felt less like comfort now and more like a band tightening.
And she just wanted this day over with. To get through the announcement, the congratulations, the stares. To go home to her empty estate and drown in the quiet scream of her own thoughts.
"I…" She forced a little laugh, shaking her head. "If I start dancing now, you'll never get me where I'm needed. Let me suffer the dull parts first, then perhaps you can rescue me."
It was only half a lie.
He searched her face, some of that boyish hurt from a week ago flickering behind his eyes, then smoothed it away.
"Very well," he said. "I'll hold you to that."
Rhosyn inclined her head.
"I need to…" she began.
She didn't finish. She didn't have to.
His thumb stroked once at her waist, a small, private reassurance.
They both knew what she meant. There were papers waiting. Oaths. Promises with teeth. And there was a duke behind a closed door who had to be met before any announcement could be made.
Edrien's fingers flexed against her.
His expression barely changed, but she felt it: the fine crack in his composure, the stiffening of muscle beneath silk.
"This will work—trust me."
She wasn't sure if she was trying to convince him, or herself. Her voice held, her smile stayed in place, but she felt like a fraud in a dress that wasn't hers, on a night that had never truly belonged to her.
Edrien's smile brightened, as if he'd heard only the certainty and none of the fear.
"We'll make it work," he whispered, drawing her an inch closer, his hand warm and solid at her side. "I'll always be here, Rhos."
The promise hurt. It was everything she'd built her life around, and yet she felt suddenly, terrifyingly aware that "always" was not a word even the crown could honour.
Then she stepped back, breaking his hold.
He let his hand fall away, though his gaze clung. "Don't be long."
She nodded. Then turned.
As she walked away from him, the noise of the hall dulled to a distant roar. She slipped her fingers into the hidden pocket at her skirt, seeking something to occupy her hands before they started clawing at themselves again.
Cold, smooth comfort met her touch.
The pebble sat there like a secret, its blue surface polished by weeks of worry. She rolled it between her fingers, letting the familiar shape anchor her. For a heartbeat, the memory it conjured was clean: the hush of waves on a stony shore, the fragmented sense of a voice, a smile that had curved in all the right ways.
Then the image twisted.
It wasn't a stranger on a quiet beach anymore. It was Karsyn, as he always seemed to be—standing over her in shadow and lamplight, a stone offered in his palm like a compliment and a challenge all at once.
She didn't know which unsettled her more. That the memory was corrupted… or that a small, treacherous part of her wondered if she had liked it better that way.
Rhosyn tightened her grip on the pebble until the edge bit into her skin.
This is for us, she told herself firmly, picking up her skirts with her free hand as she headed toward the corridor that would lead to the waiting duke and the waiting contract. For my land. For my prince. For all the lives that hang in between.
Behind her, laughter swelled as Edrien was swallowed back into the crowd. Ahead, the path narrowed. She walked it anyway.