The pavilion was tucked between two garden walls, shaded by a crab-apple tree just beginning to blush into bloom. It smelled faintly of rain and moss, like the courtyard had been waiting too long for something—maybe someone—to happen.
Maybe we both had.
Twelfth Princess Liang Yiran sat across from me, her hands folded neatly in her lap, the curve of her back too perfect for someone raised outside this world. But her eyes—those hadn't changed. She still looked at people like they might say something wonderful.
Her robes shimmered faintly with embroidered clouds. Her hair was pinned with soft white jade. Everything about her said gentleness, grace, poetry. But I remembered the girl who once tripped over her own laptop cord and spilled bubble tea all over my final presentation slides. The one who offered to take the blame because, in her words, "your GPA has further to fall."
That girl wasn't gone. She just sat behind more layers now.
