The king sat in the garden with the stillness of a man pretending to rest.
Around him, the palace bloomed in careful, cultivated beauty. Pale flowers nodded in the breeze, and the fountain nearby whispered softly over stone. A gentle wind moved through the branches overhead, lifting the ends of his hair, cooling the heat that clung to the late afternoon. For a moment, he looked almost peaceful.
Then Ingrid, his royal mistress, drifted away from him with a satisfied little sway to her step, her jewelry catching the sunlight as she went. She had come for a favor and left with a new grant of land for her brother's son, and she wore the success of it with the ease of someone who knew exactly how to win a man's indulgence without ever appearing to ask for it.
The moment she disappeared from view, the king's smile vanished.
