The summer arrived in the Valley Kingdom the way it always did — all at once, without apology.
It pressed itself into the courtyard stones, hummed through the silk curtains, and pooled like warm honey in every corner of the palace garden. The persimmon trees stood heavy and patient along the garden wall, their branches still green, still promising, still waiting for a season yet to ripen. And it was beneath one of those trees — the tallest, most unreasonable one — that Prince Shen Xinghui first laid eyes on Angelina Wang.
He almost missed her entirely.
He had been walking through the garden with his wooden sword tucked under one arm, doing what boys of eight do when left unsupervised in an unfamiliar palace — exploring with great seriousness and no particular destination. His silver-violet hair had been combed neatly that morning by his mother's hands. His robes were pressed. He was, by all accounts, behaving.
Then something small and very fast ran directly past him.
A streak of red-brown hair. The flash of an undone ribbon. The hem of a ceremonial dress dragging half-undone behind her like a surrendered flag.
Servants came seconds after, breathless and red-faced.
"Third Princess — please — your ceremonial robes—"
But the Third Princess was already gone.
Xavier turned slowly, tracking the small figure as she wove between the stone pillars of the corridor like water finding the path of least resistance. She was fast — genuinely, impressively fast for someone so small. She ducked beneath an outstretched arm, pivoted on one bare foot, and vanished behind a column with a muffled squeak of delight.
He should have continued on his walk.
Instead, Shen Xinghui stood very still, and he laughed.
It came out surprised, mostly because he hadn't expected it — a real laugh, the kind that lives in the chest rather than the throat. Because it was funny. It was genuinely, completely funny, watching the servants circle the pillar like confused geese while the princess peeked out from the other side with her hair half-unraveled and absolutely no remorse on her little face.
He followed her without deciding to.
That was how it happened — not with any ceremony, not with an introduction arranged by their mothers or a formal meeting in the great hall. It happened in a garden, in summer, because a small princess ran past him and something in his chest said *follow* before his mind could say anything sensible at all.
He found her eventually behind the persimmon tree — the tallest one, the one she had clearly been attempting to scale before the servants interrupted her ambitions. She was standing at its base, hands on her hips, head tilted all the way back to study the branches with the expression of someone who had not yet given up.
She noticed him the same way she seemed to do everything — directly, without hesitation.
"You laughed at me," she said. Not an accusation, just a fact she was reporting.
"I did," Xavier agreed. He saw no reason to deny it.
She considered this. Then: "It was funny," she decided, with the generous magnanimity of a princess who could afford to be gracious. "The servants make very silly faces when they run."
He almost laughed again.
Up close, she was even smaller than she had seemed in motion — the top of her head barely reached his shoulder, and she had a red ribbon half-dangling from what had once been a neat updo. Her ceremonial robes were a soft blush pink, still mostly intact despite her best efforts. Her eyes were dark and bright and asked questions before her mouth did, which her mouth then did immediately.
"Why do you have a sword?"
Xavier looked down at the wooden sword under his arm. "For practice."
"But it's made of wood."
"Yes."
"So it can't hurt anyone."
"Not really, no."
She absorbed this. "Then it's a toy."
He opened his mouth. Closed it. "...It's a training sword."
"Mn." She looked unconvinced. Then her gaze traveled up, the way children's gazes do when they are cataloguing a person thoroughly and without any attempt at subtlety. His face. His hair. His eyes. Back to his hair again.
"Why is your hair that color?"
"I was born with it."
"But why is it silver *and* purple? Mine is just brown." She sounded mildly aggrieved by this inequality.
"I don't know," he said honestly. "It has always been that way."
"And your eyes." She was staring now, the way only very small children are permitted to stare — with pure, uncomplicated fascination. "They're blue. Like the sky after rain."
He had been told his eyes were unusual before. Courtiers said it with careful, diplomatic appreciation. His mother said it with love. But no one had ever said it quite like that — like they were simply telling him something true about the sky.
"Yes," he said softly. "Like the sky after rain."
She nodded, satisfied, and turned back to the persimmon tree. "I'm going to climb it," she informed him. "I would have already but Mei-jie kept chasing me."
"The branches are quite high."
"I'm good at climbing."
"Have you done it before?"
A pause. "I've thought about it very thoroughly."
Xavier looked at the tree. Then at the small princess. Then at the tree again. He should, by any reasonable measure, have discouraged her. He was eight years old and therefore very mature and responsible. He had a training sword. He was a guest in this palace and climbing trees was not on any itinerary his mother had mentioned.
He set his wooden sword against the garden wall and laced his fingers together.
"I'll give you a step up," he said.
Her face broke open like a persimmon in summer — sudden, sweet, and completely without restraint.
She did not make it very far up the tree before the servants found them both.
But she made it further than she would have alone, and when Mei-jie arrived red-faced and horrified to find the Third Princess halfway up a persimmon tree with her ceremonial robes bunched at her knees and a foreign prince standing below with his hands raised to catch her if she fell — Nana looked down and laughed so freely that even the scandalized handmaid had to press her lips together very hard to keep from smiling.
They were brought before their respective parents in the great hall with the particular solemnity reserved for children who have Caused an Incident. Xavier stood straight and quiet. Nana stood beside him and managed to look only faintly repentant, which was, her mother noted privately, more repentance than anyone had ever extracted from her before.
"She climbed the tree," Xavier said, when asked what had happened.
"He helped," Nana added helpfully. Then: "But it was my idea. So it's mostly my fault."
The Queen of the Valley Kingdom exchanged a look with the Queen of the Northern Peaks across the length of the hall. Something passed between them — the kind of look that only very old friends can give each other, full of things that don't need to be said aloud.
Their children were made to stand in the corner for a quarter of an hour as consequence.
Xavier stood with his hands folded and his eyes forward, the way he had been taught. Nana stood beside him and ate a stolen persimmon that she produced from somewhere inside her ceremonial robes with the calm satisfaction of someone who had planned ahead.
"Do you want some?" she whispered.
He looked at her sideways.
"It's good," she offered. "Very sweet. I took it from the kitchen this morning."
"...Just a small piece," he said.
She grinned and broke him off a piece with her small hands, and it *was* sweet — the sweetest persimmon he had ever tasted, though perhaps that was only because it was shared, and stolen, and eaten standing in a corner with someone who had not yet learned to be anything other than wholly, entirely herself.
He didn't notice, then, the faint way she pressed her free hand briefly against her chest afterward — a small gesture, quick and quiet, gone before it could mean anything. He saw only that she tilted her head back and smiled at the ceiling with such uncomplicated joy that the afternoon light seemed to collect around her like it, too, wanted to stay close.
Later, their mothers would find them in the garden again — Nana cross-legged in the grass with Xavier's wooden sword across her lap, examining it with immense seriousness, while Xavier sat beside her with his silver-violet hair half-undone where she had apparently been braiding small knots into it without his resistance. His ears were very pink. He was looking at the persimmon tree with great dignity and pretending the braids were not there.
"They look like trouble," said the Queen of the Northern Peaks, watching from the corridor.
"She is trouble," said the Queen of the Valley Kingdom, with all the fond exhaustion of a woman who had accepted this fact years ago. "But look at him."
Her friend looked.
The young prince had not moved to stop the small princess from decorating his hair. He had not reclaimed his sword. He sat in the summer grass with the patience of someone who had decided, quietly and without fanfare, that this — whatever *this* was — was exactly where he wanted to be.
"He'll come back next summer," the Queen of the Northern Peaks said. It was not quite a question.
"She'll be waiting," her friend replied. It was not quite an answer.
Above them, the persimmon tree stood tall and unhurried in the afternoon heat, its branches still green, still unclimbed, still full of promises that the summer had not yet finished making.
.
.
.
.
.
⭐⭐⭐
To be continued.