I'm already dressed when the light changes.
Standing at the window, watching grey bleed into pale gold over the mountains while the rest of the castle still sleeps — or pretends to. I doubt anyone in the royal wing slept particularly well last night.
Below, stable hands move through the early mist, preparing the courtyard with the quiet efficiency of people who understand that some departures are better handled before the world fully wakes. Saddlebags. Supply packs. The muffled sound of hooves on stone.
Lady Eira arrives at my door just as I'm pinning back my hair.
"Your Highness." She curtsies, then straightens with the expression she wears when delivering news she expects me to dislike. "Lord Caspian sends his apologies — he'll join us tomorrow morning. A matter he couldn't delay."
"Tomorrow." My voice stays even. "We leave today."
"He'll ride hard and meet us on the road by midday at the latest." She smooths her skirts — her tell, always, for when there's more. "Your family. They'll travel to Aurelia before the ceremony. Your parents, Lady Mira, Lord Kael. The king and queen have arranged it."
Relief arrives, quiet and unwanted. Just slightly.
The window gets my attention so she won't see it. "Good. Thank you, Eira."
She leaves quietly, understanding without being told that I need a moment.
My fingertips find the cold glass.
They're coming. Not a permanent goodbye, then. Not yet.
One breath. Then I go to find my family.
* * *
They're gathered in the eastern courtyard — all of them, which means Mother organized this down to the minute, because nothing in this family happens by accident.
Father stands slightly apart, hands clasped behind his back, watching the dragons with the expression he gets when he's memorizing something. Kael has planted himself next to Lysara and is attempting conversation with her, which she's tolerating with the patience of someone who finds humans mostly tolerable but occasionally worthwhile. Mira stands close to Mother, their shoulders almost touching.
She looks up the moment I appear.
She's the one I cross to first.
We don't say anything immediately — just stand there in the cool morning air while grooms move around us and Sorin watches the proceedings from across the courtyard with the expression of someone deeply unimpressed by everything he's witnessing.
Then Mira reaches over and ties something around my wrist. A thin cord, braided brown and gold, with a small flat stone threaded through it — smooth-edged, pale grey, from the riverbank that summer when she was seven. She's never taken it off.
"Mira —"
"Don't." Her voice is steady but her throat moves. "Just take it."
The cord settles against my wrist. Lysara catches my eye from where she's abandoned Kael mid-sentence, watching this exchange with large, solemn eyes.
"Bring her back safe," Mira says.
Not to me. To Lysara.
Lysara dips her head once, something quiet and certain moving through our bond. I will guard her with my last breath, little one.
Mira exhales. Some of the tension leaves her shoulders.
Kael appears at my elbow and grabs my hand without preamble, squeezing hard enough that I feel each of his fingers individually. He says nothing — just holds on for a long moment, jaw working, staring somewhere past my shoulder. Then he lets go and steps back and turns away quickly, in that way boys do when they refuse to let their faces betray them.
He goes without comment from me. Some things don't need witnesses.
Father is last.
He cups my face in both hands, the way he used to when I was small and frightened of thunderstorms, and looks at me for a long moment without speaking. The grey at his temples seems more pronounced in this light. The lines around his eyes deeper than I remember them being.
"You carry Galadria with you," he says finally. "Whatever happens, whatever they see when they look at you — they're seeing us. All of us."
"I know."
"I know you know." His thumbs brush my cheekbones once, carefully, like I'm something worth being careful with. "I'm saying it anyway."
He releases me and steps back, already reassembling his king's expression, and I understand that this is the last I'll see of him as simply my father until they arrive in Aurelia.
Mother is watching when I turn. She looks — as always — perfectly composed, her dark hair immaculate, her posture trained into her over decades until it became involuntary. That assessing gaze moves over me from head to toe, checking for loose pins, anything that needs correcting.
Then she reaches up and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear.
Just that. One gesture, brief and almost impersonal, except that her fingers pause for half a second before pulling away.
"Good," she says. Which means you look right, and I'm proud of you, and I'm frightened for you, and please be careful, and about six other things she'll never say directly. I've been translating my mother for twenty-two years. I know the vocabulary.
"I'll see you before the ceremony," I tell her.
"You will." She holds my gaze. "Don't let them see you flinch."
"I never do."
The corner of her mouth shifts — barely. "No. You never do."
* * *
Ignis is already mounted when I reach the center of the courtyard, Sorin shifting his weight with the restless energy of a creature that's been kept still too long. The Aurelian party surrounds them — six riders on dragons ranging from deep rust to pale gold, all watching me with the studied attention of people trying to appear as though they're not.
They get ignored. Lysara gets my focus.
She lowers her head as I approach, and my forehead finds her snout for just a moment — breathing her in, that particular scent of warm scales and open sky that means home more than any stone wall ever has.
Ready? she asks.
"No," I murmur against her scales. "Let's go anyway."
She huffs warmly against my face. Then I pull back, grip the saddle, and mount.
When I straighten and settle into position, Ignis is watching me — not cataloguing, just watching, for one unguarded second — before his gaze moves back to the horizon ahead.
Noted.
"We'll follow the northern pass," he says, to the assembled group rather than to me specifically. His voice carries the natural authority of someone who's been giving commands long enough that he's stopped noticing he does it. "Three hours to the border crossing, two more to the first waypoint. We stop there for the horses."
We don't require stops, Lysara informs Sorin, with the pleasantness of someone sharpening a knife. We're not delicate.
Sorin's tail makes one slow, measured sweep across the flagstones. Nobody said you were. In fact, nobody said anything to you at all, which you might consider attempting sometime.
How refreshing. The warmth in her voice could strip paint. The bronze speaks. I was beginning to think you were decorative.
Decorative. The word comes out flat with affront. I am the largest dragon in the Aurelian wing.
Congratulations. I'm sure the others are very impressed. Do they make you a cake?
I don't — there's no — dragons don't eat cake.
I know. It was a metaphor. Should I use smaller words?
Sorin's neck extends toward her by several inches, which on a dragon his size is fairly significant. You have an extraordinary talent for being irritating.
Thank you, Lysara says warmly. I've been working on it.
Across the courtyard, the very edge of something crosses Ignis's face — not quite a reaction, gone before it fully forms — as Sorin makes a sound somewhere between a growl and a sigh and pointedly turns his head in the opposite direction.
Then Ignis nudges him forward without a word, and we move.
* * *
Galadria falls away beneath us.
No looking back — I've said my goodbyes, and grief doesn't get an encore. Forward instead. The mountains ahead, pale and enormous in the early light, their peaks still holding the last of the night's cloud.
The formation settles — Ignis and Sorin at the lead, Lysara to his left and slightly back, close enough that we end up level at the shoulder. I don't know if he chose that placement deliberately or if it's simply tactical. I don't ask. But I notice that he could have put me further back, with the others, and didn't.
For a while, neither of us speaks.
Wind at this altitude has teeth — sharp and clean and cold enough that gratitude for the heavy riding jacket surfaces before I can stop it, though I'd never admit that particular piece of practical thinking came from whoever packed my bags. Below, the northern forests stretch out in dark green waves, broken occasionally by the silver thread of a river catching morning light.
Beautiful, actually. Objectively. And it's mine, the thought arrives unwanted — was mine — and gets pushed down before it can take root.
He keeps looking at you, Lysara observes, with the casualness of someone who's been waiting to mention it.
He's the lead rider. He's monitoring the formation.
Mmm.
That's not agreement.
No, she says. It isn't.
The satisfaction in her voice doesn't get a response.
* * *
The first hour passes in silence broken only by wind and the steady rhythm of wings. Most of it goes toward watching the landscape shift, mentally logging the geography the way Father taught me — noting the places where a defensive line might hold or collapse. Old habit. Probably useless now. Habits don't care about usefulness.
Sorin drifts slightly closer in the second hour. Not dramatically — just enough that the distance between us narrows from coincidental to considered, if you're paying attention.
Always paying attention.
"The border ceremony is brief," Ignis says, without looking at me. "Formalities. You won't be required to speak, just to be present."
"How reassuring."
A beat. "That wasn't meant as an insult."
"I know." A hawk wheels far below, impossibly small from this height. "I'm practicing for Aurelia. I've been told the court expects a certain disposition from me."
"Who told you that?"
"Your mother."
He goes still for a moment in a way that isn't stillness. "What exactly did she say?"
"That I should present well." The tone stays light. "Which I interpreted as: be gracious, be decorative, and don't have opinions in public."
The silence that follows is the specific kind where someone is choosing their words carefully.
"That's not what she meant."
"Isn't it?"
"She meant that Aurelian court politics are different from Galadrian ones. The landscape takes time to learn."
"And in the meantime?"
"In the meantime," he says, and there's something dry underneath the words, "perhaps reserve the sharper observations for private company."
For the first time since leaving the ground, I turn to look at him directly. He's facing forward, jaw set, Sorin's reins loose between his fingers in the easy way of someone who's barely thinking about them.
"Is that advice," I ask, "or instruction?"
He finally glances over. Green eyes, unreadable as ever. "Whichever you find more useful."
Ahead of us, unprompted, Sorin makes a sound that might generously be described as clearing his throat.
Something to add? Lysara asks.
Nothing whatsoever, Sorin says. I'm simply here. Existing. Minding my own affairs.
You don't have affairs. You have opinions about my affairs.
I have opinions about everything. It's called being perceptive.
It's called being nosy.
Coming from you, Sorin says, with the dignity of someone who has decided to be wounded by this, that's genuinely rich.
I'm going to take that as a compliment.
It wasn't one.
I know, Lysara says pleasantly. That's what made it fun.
Distantly, controlled almost to nothing — something that might have been a short exhale from Ignis's direction. Not a laugh. Something close enough to one that the distinction felt almost arbitrary.
A glance his way.
Complete composure. Horizon. Nothing.
* * *
The rogue wind comes out of nowhere — a sharp gust off the mountain face that hits us sideways, hard enough that Lysara drops half a wingspan before catching herself. My stomach follows a second late, the horizon tilting sharply before she rights us, and the Aurelian riders react in a brief chorus of startled movement behind.
Sorin doesn't react. Neither does Ignis.
Except that his eyes cut to me — one quick, sharp look. Here? Steady? Fine?
I give him a single nod.
He holds it one beat longer than the question required. Then he's forward again, reins loose, expression closed.
His profile gets a moment longer than it should.
See, Lysara says, with insufferable satisfaction.
Stop.
I said nothing.
You were extremely loud about it.
I merely —
Lysara.
Fine.
Sorin angles toward her with the slow deliberateness of someone making a point. Does your rider often argue with you about things you haven't technically said?
Constantly, Lysara says. She's very talented at it.
Sorin does the same — Sorin says, then stops. That is — I do the same. With my rider. Not that I'd — it's a common dynamic.
Is it.
Among bonded pairs, yes. Completely standard.
You just referred to yourself in the third person.
A beat of silence that somehow manages to feel deeply embarrassed despite involving a creature with no identifiable capacity for embarrassment.
I did not.
You absolutely did.
I misspoke.
Mm, Lysara says, with exactly the tone I'd used on her earlier. Of course you did.
"Are they always like this?" The question comes out before the decision to ask it.
Ignis doesn't look at me, but the slight compression at the corner of his mouth is there. "Sorin is usually worse. Your dragon appears to be a stabilizing influence."
"I'll pass that along. She'll be insufferable about it."
Already heard it, Lysara announces, with considerable satisfaction. He's right, by the way.
"She says you're right."
"I know," he says. And then, so quietly it nearly disappears under the wind: "She's not wrong."
Neither of us speaks for a moment. The wind fills the space between us, cold and clean and indifferent to whatever just happened.
Then Sorin shifts his wings and the moment closes, and Ignis is watching the horizon again like nothing happened, and I'm looking at the forests below pretending the same.
Away. The edge of everything familiar, growing distant and small.
* * *
The northern pass opens suddenly — the mountains parting like a door — and then Galadria is simply gone. Behind us. The landscape ahead falls differently, the forests darker and denser, and when the coastline appears on the western horizon, it's nothing like ours.
Our coastline is rocky. Dramatic. Cliffs that drop straight into the sea like they have something to prove.
This is different.
The Aurelian coast curves — wide bays and pale sand and water that shifts from deep green at the edges to something almost turquoise further out, the kind of color that doesn't look real in the way that the most beautiful things often don't. The afternoon light turns everything gold and amber, and where the sea meets the sky the horizon holds a clean, perfect line.
This wasn't expected.
Stone and shadow and something appropriately hostile — that's what made sense. Not this.
Oh, Lysara breathes, and for once she has nothing else to say.
...yes, Sorin says, after a moment. Quietly. Like he'd forgotten anyone could hear him. It does that.
Neither of them says anything else.
Neither do I.
Ignis hasn't said anything either. But when I glance over — just once, just briefly — he's not looking at the coast.
He's looking at me looking at it.
Away. Immediately. But not before I've seen it.
The descent begins as the sun tips toward the horizon, the city spreading below in a way that's simultaneously overwhelming and — there's no other word for it — lovely. Pale stone buildings climb a hillside in layers down toward the harbor, and the harbor itself is full of ships with amber sails catching the last light, and flowering trees line every road, white and pink blossoms visible even from this height.
It looks like somewhere people choose to live.
Hating that I notice this doesn't stop the noticing.
You can appreciate something beautiful without surrendering to it, Lysara says gently.
No answer. But I stop fighting the view.
* * *
The landing ground sits outside the city walls — a wide flat plateau above the harbor, built for exactly this purpose. A reception party is already assembled, which means they've been watching our approach for some time, which means every move made in the last ten minutes has been observed.
Spine straight.
We land in formation, Sorin and Ignis first, the rest of us following in practiced sequence. Lysara touches down with her usual precision, and I dismount before she's fully settled — because standing still waiting to be helped off my own dragon is not how I intend to introduce myself to anyone.
The assembled crowd watches. The awareness of it sits the way weather does — not threatening exactly, but present. Something to account for.
Ignis has crossed to where the reception line has formed, speaking quietly with an older man — military bearing, someone important based on how the others position themselves around him. His back is to the crowd.
Then it isn't.
One measured glance, and I understand what he's done: placed himself between me and the reception line so that anyone wanting to form an impression of me has to come through him first. Not standing with me. Not declaring anything. Just — there, close enough that I catch the same scent from the banquet, cedar and smoke, without commentary, in a way that could easily be nothing if you weren't paying attention.
I don't know what to do with it.
So I don't do anything. I straighten my spine and walk forward and pretend I haven't noticed, which is becoming a habit where he's concerned.
Still deciding when a woman separates from the reception line and comes toward me directly — young, confident, with Ignis's coloring and an expression that suggests she's been waiting to have opinions about me since before I landed.
Alina. His sister, from the banquet. Different here than she was last night — her shoulders sit looser, her smile comes faster, like it doesn't have to travel as far in a room she already owns.
"You're taller than I thought," she says, by way of greeting.
"You're more direct than I expected," I reply.
She considers this for a moment, and something in her expression shifts — a small recalibration, a point conceded — before she turns back toward the reception line with a nod. "Come on then. They'll want the formal part done before dark."
Following her in, with Lysara at my back and the city spreading below in gold and amber and that impossible sea.
Not looking back toward Ignis.
No need to know if he watches me go.
But the moment his gaze moves elsewhere registers anyway, caught at the edge of my vision.
It isn't immediately.
* * *
The eastern tower. High up, windows on three sides, the sea visible from every angle.
These aren't guest quarters. These are chosen.
Alina had left me at the door with a brief "dinner is informal, an hour past sunset" and disappeared back into the corridor before I could form a response, which I suspect was entirely intentional. I'd stood in the doorway for a moment, listening to the unfamiliar sounds of the palace settling around me — different footsteps, different acoustics, voices in the hallway that didn't belong to anyone I knew — and then stepped inside.
Now I stand at the window as the sun finishes setting and the harbor lights come on one by one below, and I let myself think about all of it: the cord on my wrist and Kael's hand squeezing hard, my mother's fingers pausing at my temple. A wind off a mountain face and three words that hadn't been intended as anything more than they were. A coastline that had absolutely no right to be that beautiful.
Ignis of Aurelia doesn't fit the shape I made for him. That's the most honest thing that's surfaced since landing — more honest than I'd like it to be.
Easier to navigate an enemy you understand. Harder when they keep refusing to behave like one. Harder still when you find yourself cataloguing the specific moment they look away.
Sleep, Lysara suggests from the balcony, where she's arranged herself with the satisfaction of a creature who has already decided to like this place. Think about it tomorrow.
"You like it here."
The sea is extraordinary. A pause, weighted and considered. Don't tell Sorin I said that.
"He'd probably agree."
I know. A note of something long-suffering. Inconvenient.
Almost a smile.
Outside, the last light fades from the water, and Aurelia settles into night — strange and unfamiliar and not, despite every preparation I made for the contrary, entirely unwelcoming.
I stay at the window a little longer than I need to.
***
The dining room is smaller than I expected.
Not a banquet hall — a side room off the main corridor, with a round table that seats eight and windows overlooking a courtyard garden I haven't seen yet. Candles rather than chandeliers. Someone made a deliberate choice about the scale of this.
Alina is already there, along with the older woman from the reception line — introduced as Lady Vessen, some kind of household steward — and two others whose names arrive and slide away before they can stick.
I take the empty chair without waiting to be directed to it.
Ignis arrives two minutes after I do. He's changed out of the riding gear — dark jacket, no weapons visible, though the habit of his hand near his hip hasn't gone anywhere. He scans the room once, the way he always scans rooms, and then sits down across the table without looking at me.
Or without appearing to.
"You found it," Alina says, to me.
"Your directions were efficient."
"They weren't directions. I said dinner, an hour past sunset."
"Which was efficient."
Her mouth does something that isn't quite a smile. Across the table, Ignis reaches for his wine.
The food arrives — lighter than last night's banquet, actual food rather than ceremony — and Alina wastes no time.
"What's Galadrian court like in winter?" She asks it the way she seems to ask everything: directly, like the answer genuinely matters to her.
"Cold," I say. "The training yards ice over and nobody admits it's a problem."
"Do you train in them anyway?"
"Every morning."
Ignis's hand stops on his glass. One beat. Then he lifts it. He doesn't look up.
Alina steers toward safer territory after that — the palace, its history, the gardens I'll want to see before the ceremony. I answer what's asked and ask a few things in return, and somewhere in the middle of it I notice that Ignis has said almost nothing, which shouldn't be notable because he rarely says much, except that his silence tonight has a different quality than it did in the air. Like he's making room for something and hasn't decided what yet.
At some point Alina mentions the eastern tower — the view, some previous occupant — and I find myself asking before I've decided to.
"Who chose those rooms?"
A brief pause. Alina glances toward Ignis.
He's looking at his glass. "I did."
"Why."
"The tower faces east." He meets my gaze, level and unhurried. "You'd see the mountains from Galadria on a clear morning. I thought it might help."
The table is quiet for a moment.
"Thank you," I say.
He nods once — brief, almost dismissive, already reaching for his wine — and Alina says something about the harbor festival next week, and the conversation moves, and I let it move.
But I don't look at him again for the rest of the meal, and I'm fairly certain he doesn't look at me, and neither of us mentions it.
***
The corridor outside is quieter than it was an hour ago, the palace settling into its nighttime version of itself. When I reach the tower stairs I don't look back toward where he'd gone.
The cord on my wrist catches the lamplight as I climb — brown and gold, the small pale stone.