The summons arrived with the morning tray, a square of thick parchment lying beside my teacup like a sleeping snake. The wax seal was plain grey, stamped with the stark, angular silhouette of a frost wolf—the sigil of the Northern Duchy.
My hand trembled as I broke it.
Lady Rosalind Evangeline Thorne,
You are requested to attend upon His Grace, Duke Kaelen Frost, in the Map Room of the East Administration Wing at the second morning bell.
Purpose: Consultation on trade routes and geographical features of the Thorne March bordering the Northern Territory.
- Sir Damien Ashford, Vice-Captain, Northern Guard
It was formal, cold, and exactly as outlined in the dossiers of border nobles. A logical, impersonal request from a military commander to a local source of intelligence. It had nothing to do with silver-haired saints or battlefield regrets.
It had everything to do with me sitting across from him, in a closed room, while my soul screamed his name.
I spent the hour before the meeting in a state of controlled panic. I pulled every map, trade ledger, and geological survey my father had ever sent me from my trunk—which wasn't much. The original Rosalind had cared more for poetry than topography. I memorized pass names, river flow rates, and seasonal traffic patterns on the Silverrun Road. I became an expert on the riveting subject of sedimentary rock formations in the Greypeak Mountains.
It was armor. If I could be nothing but a useful fount of border data, I could survive the encounter.
The second bell tolled, its deep bronze note vibrating in my bones. The Map Room was on the ground floor, a high-ceilinged chamber dominated by a massive, scarred oak table. Sunlight streamed through tall windows, illuminating dust motes dancing in the air and falling across the man who stood with his back to the door, studying a large parchment spread across the table.
Kaelen.
He'd dismissed his guards. We were alone.
He didn't turn as I entered. "Close the door."
His voice was the same. That low, gravelly baritone that had given terse orders on a hundred battlefields, that had whispered my name with his last breath. I closed the door, the click sounding final.
"Your Grace," I said, dipping into a curtsy he couldn't see.
"Lady Thorne." He finally turned.
Up close, the impact was devastating. He was taller and broader than memory could do justice. The silver-gray eyes were like chips of winter sky, assessing, intelligent, and utterly devoid of the warmth I'd once seen in them. The scar on his cheek was a pale, fierce line. He wore a simple, dark grey doublet with no ornamentation. He looked every inch the warrior-duke, and I felt like a child playing dress-up in a noble's gown.
"You requested information on the Thorne March," I began, my voice thankfully steady. I launched into a rehearsed summary of the main trade artery, the Silverrun Road, its conditions, and toll stations.
He listened, arms crossed, his gaze fixed on me. He wasn't looking at the imaginary map in my words; he was looking at me. At my face, my posture, and the way my hands clutched the notes I didn't need.
I moved to the table, gesturing to points on the large map. "Here, the river ford becomes impassable after the spring melt until mid-summer. The alternate route through the Briarwood adds two days but is more secure against… against bandits." I almost said "monster incursions," a term from my future wars, but caught myself.
I pointed to another spot, leaning over the map. A beam of sunlight chose that moment to shift, falling directly through the high window and onto my hair, turning the silver-blonde strands into a cascade of molten light.
Kaelen went perfectly still.
The flow of facts died in my throat. The room fell silent, save for the distant shouts of students in a yard. His intense gaze was no longer analytical. It was puzzled, sharpened by a dawning, profound confusion. He was staring at my hair with the look of a man confronting a mirage.
He took a single, silent step closer. The space between us, charged and brittle, shrank.
"Have we met, Lady Thorne?"
The question was quiet and blunt. It wasn't a social nicety. It was a demand.
My heart halted. The world tilted. Yes. The field was drenched in blood. In the rain. In the quiet of a tent after battle. In the moment you died for me.
"No, Your Grace," I whispered, feeling the lie turn to ash in my mouth. I forced my eyes to meet his. "We haven't."
He searched my face, his own a mask of granite, but I saw the fracture. A flicker of frustration appeared in his expression, similar to the feeling of having a name on the tip of his tongue that he couldn't recall. His eyes dropped to my hands, which were trembling faintly on the map's edge. He noticed everything.
"You're certain." It wasn't a question.
"I would remember," I said, and it was the truest thing I'd said yet. The pain in those four words was so raw, so naked, that his brow furrowed.
The moment stretched, thin and screaming. The threads of fate in my vision went haywire—the red thread of death, the blue thread tied to Elara, and the new silver-blue thread that had attached to him in the courtyard, all pulsing wildly. His own thread, I could see it now—a thick, steadfast cable of iron-grey, was reaching, confused, toward mine.
He broke the stare first, turning his head back to the map as if shaking off a thought. "The Briarwood alternate. You recommend it for security. Based on what? Your father's patrol reports?"
He was back to business, but the air was still electric. I grasped the lifeline. "Yes, Your Grace. And… historical precedent. The terrain is difficult for large, organized groups to traverse quickly. It favors defenders."
"A tactical assessment," he noted, with a hint of something—approval? surprise?—in his tone. "Not the usual commentary from a court lady."
"I read," I said lamely.
"You read military history," he corrected. He tapped a spot north of the Thorne March on the map. "Your people. Are they loyal to the Crown or to the land?"
Another blade of a question. "To the land that feeds them, Your Grace. The Crown is… a distant concept in the mountains."
A faint, almost imperceptible grunt. He understood that language. "And if the land were threatened from the North? Not by bandits. By something… older."
He was testing me. He was probing for my knowledge of the true threat—the Abyssal Rift, which refers to the monster waves that would soon begin to intensify. Knowledge no noble girl should have.
"The people of the March are hardy," I said carefully. "They defend their homes. But they are not an army. They would need a leader. A symbol." They would need you. The unspoken words hung between us.
His gaze pierced me once more, but the confusion gave way to a deeper, more calculated intensity. "You speak with a clarity that belies your age and station, Lady Thorne."
"Recent events have provided… clarity, Your Grace."
He knew I meant the tea party refusal. The rumors. My social ostracization. He gave a slow nod. "Clarity is a rare weapon in the South. Guard it."
It was a warning and, strangely, a piece of advice. He rolled up the large map with efficient, strong motions. The audience was ending.
"Thank you for your time. Your information was… illuminating." He paused, holding the rolled map. "My sister tells me she has enlisted you as a guide. She finds the academy tedious."
"Lady Elara is refreshingly direct."
"She is." For a fraction of a second, the stern line of his mouth softened. "She is also an excellent judge of character." He held my eyes for one last, searing moment. "Do not disappoint her."
It was a threat wrapped in a brother's concern. A final, unmistakable message: I am watching you, for her sake.
"I have no intention of disappointing anyone, Your Grace," I said, and curtsied again, my body moving on autopilot.
He turned his back, dismissing me. I fled the room, my composure crumbling the moment the door shut behind me. I made it three steps down the corridor before my legs gave out. I leaned against the cold stone wall, pressing my forehead to it, gasping for air.
I had done it. I had spoken to him. And he had felt it—the ghost of a connection he couldn't name. The question, "Have we met?" would haunt me.
But as my breathing slowed, a new realization dawned, colder than the stone against my skin. His questioning hadn't just been about trade routes or my character. The query about threats "from the North… something older." The tactical assessment.
He wasn't just gathering information for a report. Duke Kaelen Frost, the man who dreamed of battlefields, was already looking for allies. He was scouting the board, and for a reason I couldn't fathom, he had just placed a tentative, questioning marker on the most unlikely piece: Rosalind Thorne.