The first true bite of winter had finally come.

  It lingered in the palace stones the way old cold always did—soaked deep into the walls, where no amount of brazier heat could fully chase it away. Outside the tall windows, the morning light lay over the courtyards, and the air beyond the glass looked brittle, as if one good breath would turn it to frost.

  Edmund and Aristide met Renault in the king’s drawing room. No banners. No formal procedure. Just a long table, a hearth that crackled low, and the faint smell of parchment, wax, and smoke.

  Edmund stood with his hands clasped behind his back. Aristide hovered at his shoulder. Minister Horace sat off to one side, quill and paper ready, eyes attentive in that quiet way of his.

  Renault listened without interruption as they detailed everything they had witnessed and encountered in Danuville. The city’s hunger, its bitterness, its hard humor, and even the plague.

  The two princes hadn’t wanted to bring it up, not initially, until the incident with the giant undead. When Edmund finally circled back to the road, his voice tightened.

  “The monster that attacked us bore a resemblance to the monsters we fought in Danuville.”

  Renault didn’t shift, but the firelight moved across the lines of his face as he leaned forward slightly. “A creature made by the plague?”

  “That’s the best guess we have,” Edmund said. He heard the carefulness in his own words and hated it. “Based on its appearance.”

  “Other than the bandits’ hideout, there weren’t any signs the plague was elsewhere,” Aristide added, quick to anchor it in what they could prove. “It could be the creature simply slipped out of the city and found its way to that village.”

  A faint hiss rose as a log settled in the hearth. For a moment, Edmund could almost smell it again. Wet earth and old rot, smoke and fear, the metallic tang that clung to the back of his throat after the fighting.

  “Sorry, Father,” Edmund said, and he meant it more than the words could carry. “We… didn’t want to bring this up… about the plague.”

  Renault’s gaze held steady on him, calm as a drawn blade that hadn’t yet been raised. “It’s quite all right. If those are your findings, then there’s no need to hide the facts.”

  Horace’s quill scratched lightly against parchment, recording what the room did not want to hear.

  Renault rested his hands on the table, fingers interlaced. “Now, what else did you learn?” His tone sharpened, not with anger, but with expectation. “If I only wanted to hear facts, I could have sent anyone for that purpose.”

  The two princes fell quiet.

  Edmund had spent days imagining this moment: the relief of being home, the safety of familiar walls. He hadn’t imagined how heavy it would feel to put Danuville into words in front of the man who carried the crown, as though each sentence were another stone laid onto Renault’s shoulders.

  The king watched them both. Then, without raising his voice, he pressed again.

  “You said the citizens of Danuville hated us, yet you also mentioned that in the short amount of time you were there, you bonded with its people. You spoke to them, shared stories, laughed and ate with them.”

  Edmund’s fingers flexed once behind his back. He remembered Noel and his brothers, the children, everyone they’d met. Even Paul wasn’t that bad. He remembered the thin stew, the rough bread, the way a stranger had offered it anyway. The way laughter had come easy.

  “It didn’t feel like they actually hated us,” Edmund admitted at last. “At least, not without knowing who we are.”

  “Just the memory associated with our name,” Aristide continued, voice quieter than usual. “Without fine robes, titles, and names, we’re just people to them.”

  Renault nodded slowly. He received that answer like it mattered more than any report of troop movement.

  “And considering everything you’ve heard and learned from them,” he asked, “do you think there’s hope that one day we can reach reconciliation with them?”

  Edmund opened his mouth, then closed it. He couldn’t quite meet his father’s eyes, not because he feared judgment, but because Renault was looking at him with something rarer than authority. A demand for honesty.

  “It’s going to be hard…” Edmund said. The words came out rougher than he intended. Then, almost reluctantly, he added, “Well. Serena did suggest I change my name.”

  Horace’s head lifted at that. Aristide’s eyes widened outright.

  Renault, instead of bristling, let out a single soft chuckle that broke the tension like a thumb over a taut string.

  “The past can’t be forgotten,” he said, “but perhaps someday we can find a way to live hand in hand.”

  He leaned back slightly, gaze drifting for a moment as if he were seeing a different room. “Those were the last words spoken by Roland Archambault to Ambria’s natives before they parted ways, after he led them to their new home. It has been centuries”

  “To live hand in hand,” the king repeated. “That has been our greatest struggle ever since the first Cervolnan stepped foot on this land. Rebellions, invasions, infighting over beliefs…”

  “Now the division, the wounds Rucaldia left behind, inflicted with our names.”

  The two princes remained silent, listening intently as their father spoke. The hearth popped softly behind him, and for a moment the sound felt too loud in the stillness. Renault’s gaze moved between them, steady, weighing, measuring not their answers but the kind of men they were becoming. The warmth of the fire did little against the chill that clung to the stones.

  “Yes, it will be hard,” Renault continued. He paused, then added with the same calm that made commands feel like truths. “It will take time.”

  The king leaned forward slightly, forearms resting on the table. In the firelight, the lines at the corners of his eyes looked deeper, not from age alone, but from years of carrying decisions that had no clean ending.

  “But make it your goal,” he said, and this time there was no room for doubt, “the two of you.”

  Edmund felt Aristide shift beside him, only a fraction, the way a man straightens when something lands squarely on his chest.

  “Find a way to reconcile not just with Danuville,” Renault went on, “not just Calyssia, but all of Ambria.” His voice hardened on the words that followed, not in anger, but in resolve. “Mend the wounds of these lands. Succeed where I, my father, and all those before you… failed.”

  The silence that followed was different. It wasn’t emptiness. It was weight. It filled Edmund’s throat, pressed against his ribs, made the air feel thicker than it had a moment ago.

  Renault held their gaze, one after the other, as if fastening a clasp that could not be undone.

  “That,” he said quietly, “will be your legacy.”

  The princes glanced at each other. Not with smiles, neither of them had it in them, but with that small, quick look that said Are we doing this? and We are. A quiet agreement, struck without ceremony.

  Edmund gave a single nod. Aristide mirrored it a heartbeat later.

  “We’ll try,” Edmund said.

  “We will,” Aristide added, voice steadier than the tightness in his jaw.

  Renault didn’t soften, not truly, but something eased in his shoulders, as if the burden had shifted, just slightly, from him to them. He rose, signaling the end of the audience.

  “That will be all,” he said. “You’ve returned with something no amount of text can impart. Unwind for the day, my sons.”

  They bowed and withdrew, the door closing behind them with a muted thud that seemed to seal the room back into its older silence. For a moment, only the hearth spoke, crackling low. Horace remained standing near his chair, papers gathered neatly, quill set aside. He did not rush his words. He had served Renault long enough to know when a question was welcome and when it was merely noise.

  When he finally spoke, his voice was careful. “Your Majesty… are you confident they can achieve what you’ve asked of them?”

  Renault kept his gaze on the table. The polished wood reflected a thin smear of firelight, and his fingers rested there as if the grain could hold answers better than any council ever had. He didn’t look up when he answered. “They must.”

  Renault exhaled through his nose, slow. He lifted his eyes at last, but not toward Horace. Toward some point beyond him, as if he were already staring down a road he would rather not walk. “If what they’ve found is true, and if it matches the reports from the men we sent into the other Calyssian states…”

  His voice lowered. The fire popped again, and the sound felt like punctuation. “Then it may be true that House Archambault is attempting to regain control of Calyssia… by putting its elected leaders in their grip.”

  Horace’s expression tightened almost imperceptibly. “A quiet conquest. No banners. No armies. Just hands around throats that smile while they squeeze.”

  Renault’s mouth flickered. Not quite a grimace, not quite a smile. “In and of itself, their control of their ancestral lands is not my concern. If they wish to reclaim what was once theirs, then so be it.”

  He paused, and the pause carried cold with it.

  “But if their ambition goes beyond that… if Calyssia is only the beginning…” His fingers curled once against the tabletop, the only sign of strain. “If your suspicion is correct that they are conspiring with House Carnarvon to restore Beldomagne…”

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  Horace inclined his head, understanding settling over him like frost.

  Outside, winter pressed against the palace windows—patient, inevitable.

  Edmund and Aristide walked side by side until they reached an open walkway. Outside, the air struck them like a clean slap. The palace warmth vanished the moment the doors shut behind them, replaced by a cold that felt sharper for how sheltered they’d been.

  The sky above the courtyards had turned the color of iron. Wind combed through bare branches and set the banners snapping softly, and every breath came out in pale threads that vanished as quickly as they formed. Their boots clicked over stone that already held a thin bite of frost. For a time, they said little, each of them carrying Renault’s words like a weight in the chest.

  Then, as they crossed into one of the inner yards, Aristide finally broke the silence. “You think we’re up to it? That’s… quite a task.”

  Edmund let out a quiet breath that might have been a laugh, if it had more warmth in it. “Maybe.”

  “Just maybe?” Aristide pressed, glancing at him.

  Edmund’s gaze drifted across the palace grounds. Guards drilling in the distance, servants hurrying with bundled linen, distant figures moving against pale stone. “We’ll never know if we’ll succeed. All we can do is try our best.”

  “Many have tried,” he continued. “People greater than us, people we can’t even compare ourselves to. We’re just two boys, still figuring out how to look at the ministers without sweating.”

  Aristide chuckled. “Is this the crown prince I’m speaking to? I was expecting something like, ‘Of course we can!’”

  “I guess reading a few books now and then with you has had some effect,” Edmund replied, a little bashful.

  But that wasn’t all that was on his mind. It sat heavier than the cold. Losing battles, losing men, the journey to Danuville, everything he had lived through since the hunt. Each loss, each face he’d met, had been another small turn of the blade, gradually prying his eyes open to the real burden waiting for him.

  They kept wandering without a plan, letting their feet choose for them the way they had on the road, turning left when a corridor looked less crowded, angling toward the faint echo of metal striking wood.

  The training hall announced itself long before they reached it. The rhythm of it lived in the air: the sharp crack of practice blades, the dull thud of staffs on sand, the occasional barked instruction that carried through the cold like a whip.

  Then it stopped. A moment later, the doors swung outward, and Serena stepped through.

  She wore her usual red cloak over her red training tunic, sleeves rolled, hair tied in a practical braid. A faint flush colored her cheeks from exertion, and a few loose strands had escaped, clinging to her temple. She paused at the top step, inhaling the cold, then started down.

  Edmund’s steps slowed. Aristide noticed immediately and followed his brother’s gaze. “She’s training again, already?”

  The two princes approached.

  Serena looked up, and the intensity in her eyes softened, only slightly, but enough that Edmund felt it like a hand easing off a tight knot. She bowed first.

  Edmund knit his brows. Something about her had felt different since they’d returned. She was more formal than usual, barely smiled, and trained longer than she had before—every day.

  “You shouldn’t be pushing yourself,” he said. He tried to keep his tone light, but worry bled through anyway. He remembered too vividly the way she had looked in that village. Pale, strained, trying to stitch herself together with will alone.

  Serena straightened. “I need to learn more. I need to be better,” she said, and there was no apology in it. “If I’ll be protecting you…”

  Edmund’s brow lifted faintly, not in surprise, but in something close to resignation. He’d watched her carry too much for too long, and this—training until her hands hurt, until her muscles shook—was simply another weight she was trying to shoulder alone.

  Edmund nodded once. “Me too,” he said. The words came out quieter, but heavier. “I want to hone my skills further. If we face another threat…” He stopped himself before his thoughts could turn the air colder than it already was. Then he added, honest and unguarded, “So I can better protect you…”

  Serena’s gaze flickered.

  “You—and… everyone,” Edmund finished, as if the words could soften what his eyes had already confessed.

  Before Serena could respond, footsteps crunched over the packed frost behind them.

  Leif appeared, cheeks pink from the cold, scarf pulled up around his mouth. Beside him walked Lyam, carrying a practice bow under one arm, a quiver slung over his shoulder. Lyam gave a respectful bow to the princes. Leif, looking half caught between embarrassment and enthusiasm, offered a sheepish smile.

  “We were just—” Leif began, then motioned to Lyam. “He’s teaching me archery.”

  Aristide raised an eyebrow. “Archery? I thought you hated weapons.”

  Leif shrugged. “I wanted a new hobby,” he said, as if that explained everything. “I won’t be gardening during winter, so I thought I’d try something… um… unusual?”

  Serena’s mouth twitched, almost a smile. Lyam, for his part, looked like a man who had already decided Leif was an odd pupil, but a willing one.

  Edmund’s eyes stayed on Serena. The cold air made her lashes look darker, made the loose strands of hair escaping her tie shine at the edges.

  “How about we go out today?” he asked, leaning in a little, too close for court distance, close enough that his voice became something meant only for her.

  Serena stiffened a fraction, then flushed, the color rising quickly beneath her pale skin. She looked away, as if the courtyard stones had suddenly become fascinating.

  Edmund’s lips curved, just slightly. “You don’t have to push yourself too hard,” he murmured. “Not all the time.”

  Serena swallowed. “I… have to—” she said, quiet.

  “I know,” Edmund replied. He hesitated, then made his choice. “But you can set it down for a few hours.”

  He straightened just enough to meet her eyes again. “Come with me,” he said. “Let’s go into town. Just… us.” His voice warmed at the thought, as if the idea itself was a fire. “We can explore. Eat something that isn’t palace food. Skate. Feel the wind. Pretend for a day that the world isn’t sharpening its teeth.”

  Serena stared at him, caught between instinct and longing. Aristide watched the exchange quietly. Leif’s eyes darted between them, trying very hard to pretend he wasn’t listening.

  A hush fell over the courtyard.

  Edmund felt it first against his cheek, so light he thought it was ash.

  Then he saw it. Tiny white flecks drifting down from the gray sky, slow and weightless.

  Snow.

  It touched the dark stone and vanished. It caught in Serena’s loose strands and stayed, bright as a pinprick of light. Within breaths it thickened, flakes turning from hesitant to certain, the air filling with soft white motion.

  Winter, at last, had begun to fall in earnest.

  Edmund looked up, then back to Serena, and the snow fell between them.

  “Shall we?” he asked softly, extending his arm.

  Serena held his gaze for a moment. Then, at last, she allowed herself to smile, stepped closer, and walked beside him as they headed out from the palace.

  In the forest north of the capital, near the border between Aurelith and Lunaris, a lone noble stood at the mouth of a cave.

  Odilon waited with his guards a short distance behind him. A brown winter cloak hung from his shoulders, and a fur hat shadowed his brow. He kept his eyes on the ground, pacing in front of a firepit whose flame snapped and hissed in the cold. The wind worried the treetops. Now and then it shoved through the branches hard enough to make the whole forest creak.

  At last, two figures emerged from the darkness within. Odilon lifted his head as they approached. Torchlight painted their faces in uneven gold. The men looked tired in a way sleep wouldn’t fix. Soot in the creases of their gloves, grit on their boots, eyes that had been staring at stone for too long.

  “Lord Odilon,” one of them said with a bow. “It’s a pleasure to see you.”

  “The pleasure is mine, Professor,” Odilon replied. His voice sounded steadier than he felt. “How is everything here? Did you—did you learn anything new?”

  The scholar didn’t answer at once. His gaze flicked, briefly, to the cave mouth, then back to Odilon.

  “Yes,” he said carefully. “My companions and I have.”

  Odilon’s fingers tightened at his side. He stared at the fire as if the flames could give him courage.

  “Tell me,” he murmured. “Guide me inside… and speak as we go.”

  The scholar inclined his head, and Odilon followed him into the cave.

  The cold changed the moment they crossed the threshold—less wind, more damp. The smoke from the fire thinned behind them, replaced by the mineral scent of wet stone. Their footsteps became the loudest thing in the world.

  “I must admit, Lord Odilon,” the scholar said as they walked, attempting a lighter tone that didn’t quite land, “I was thrilled when you told me about this ruin. How did you come across it again?”

  Odilon’s answer came after a beat too long.

  “I got lost,” he said. “And… I took refuge here… after I was chased by a wild animal.”

  He didn’t add that he had been younger then. That he had not known fear could be so quiet. That he had stumbled on something he still tried not to remember.

  They reached an opening in the ground and descended by ladder, the rungs cold beneath their gloves. Odilon kept his eyes fixed on each rung as he went down, counting without meaning to. At the bottom, they pressed onward through a narrow passage until they came to worn steps leading deeper still. Odilon remained silent as they descended.

  The torches ahead appeared one by one, like distant eyes opening. At last, they entered a chamber lit only by flame. Several men were at work inside, carefully wiping soot and grit from walls, carvings, and coffins. A torch stood planted beside each site, along with magnifying lenses, papers, quills, and scattered tools.

  Odilon felt their attention turn toward him, then away again. The scholars and hired hands returned to their work quickly. The professor spoke again, and this time his expression darkened. “We have deciphered some of the hieroglyphs.”

  Odilon stopped. The heat of the torches did nothing to his skin. “What do they say?”

  The man led him toward one coffin among dozens lining the chamber. Odilon’s boots scraped lightly over fine grit. The sound made him flinch, though he kept his face still. “As you requested,” the professor said, “I personally inspected this empty coffin.”

  Odilon stared at it for a heartbeat, his breath becoming shallow. In that short moment, his mind was somewhere else, not a different place, but a different time. The time he and Renault stumbled upon it the first time, pulled something out, taking what was inside with them as they fled the buried ruins.

  The professor pointed to an engraved character, pulling Odilon out of his trance. “This,” he said, “reads Selene, a name that refers to the moon in an ancient language.”

  “Selene,” Odilon echoed under his breath, staring at the hieroglyph. “I see.”

  The professor guided him toward a wide opening in the wall. “Careful,” he warned. “The ground is littered with glass.”

  Odilon slowed. The shards glittered under torchlight, too many, too sharp, scattered as though something had shattered in anger. He stepped around them, eyes narrowing.

  “And this one,” the scholar continued, angling his torch toward an inscription beneath the opening, “reads Nyohilanthra.”

  Odilon’s throat tightened. “The night,” he whispered.

  The scholar nodded. “So far, those are the clearest words we’ve recovered, along with a phrase that appears more than once.”

  He hesitated at first, then continued.

  “Second arrival.”

  Odilon’s gaze snapped to him. “Second arrival?” The words came out too quiet. “How does it relate to the two?”

  “We’re still working to decipher more,” the scholar admitted. “To piece it together properly.”

  Odilon forced his voice steady. “Have you checked what’s on the other side?”

  The scholar glanced at the opening. “I have, although I’ve only gone in twice. There are shards of broken crystals… and strange vines spread across the floor and hanging from the ceiling.”

  “Strange in what way?” Odilon pressed.

  “They weren’t… plant life,” the scholar struggled. “I’m not quite certain how to put it, but… it felt like they were made of metal. I haven’t seen anything like it, but there’s more.”

  The scholar led him along the chamber’s edge, toward a section of wall where broken columns lay like snapped bones. He lifted his torch higher, angling the light across the stone.

  “Some of the damage in here wasn’t natural,” he said. “Such as the broken glass back there. From what I have surmised, something exploded on the other side, causing the glass to shatter and be strewn on the floor. And some of the marks in these ruins… they don’t match age, collapse, or erosion. It looks like it was caused by an ether blast, or something similar.”

  Odilon swallowed. The sound felt loud in his own ears. His breath grew shallow, but he made himself keep walking.

  “The weapons we found,” the scholar went on, “and the bones… humanoid and non-humanoid both… suggest there was a battle here.”

  “And the remains,” the scholar added, quieter now. “Those in the coffins… they died here.”

  Odilon turned sharply. “What do you mean?”

  “They weren’t laid here to rest,” the man said, voice dropping. “Not as we first believed. Some of them… died while trying to get out.”

  “Others fell,” he continued, “and broke upon the stone below.”

  Odilon’s hands began to tremble. He clenched them hard, forcing stillness into his fingers. The cold seeped into his knuckles anyway.

  “Go on,” he said through his teeth.

  The professor nodded and guided him farther, away from the lined coffins, toward the far end of the chamber. There, visible with the dim torchlight, stood a door. Massive. Hewn from stone. Its surface carved with two serpents spiraling around one another, bodies coiling in a perfect loop. Their mouths met near the center, teeth bared.

  Odilon stared at the entwined shapes. The longer he looked, the more the carving seemed to tighten.

  “My lord,” the scholar said, almost reluctant, “we’re doing everything we can to understand what happened down here… but this place is—”

  Odilon didn’t let him finish. His voice came out thin.

  “This isn’t a tomb.”