The palace at night was a different creature entirely.
The corridors that had been populated with stewards and advisors during the day emptied into something quieter and more honest. The torches were spaced further apart, leaving longer stretches of shadow between them. The stone held the cold of the night air in a way that made each room feel more contained, more private.
Nora spent the afternoon learning the layout of her wing.
This was simply how she operated in new places — she walked the space systematically, noted what was where, identified exits and windows and the fastest routes between key locations. Not anxiety. Just the same practical instinct that made her note a loose paving stone before she tripped on it.
Her rooms, after a thorough inspection, were genuinely comfortable.
This surprised her slightly.
She had expected comfort designed to impress rather than to actually be comfortable — the kind that put beautiful objects in inconvenient places and called it taste. But whoever had prepared these rooms had thought about how a person actually used a space.
The chair by the window caught the morning light without blinding. The writing desk had a lamp at exactly the right height. The bed had enough blankets for cold nights and one thin one for warmer hours after the fire had been lit a while.
She noted all of this and wondered who had given the instructions.
She was composing a note to her father when Aldric knocked and entered with a tray. Hot tea, a small plate of something that smelled of honey and warm spice, and a folded note.
She read it after Aldric left.
The handwriting was the same controlled precision she recognized from the summons letter.
Four words: Are you all right?
She turned the note over and wrote on the back: Yes. Are you?
She gave it to Aldric when he came to collect the tray.
Twenty minutes later another note arrived.
No one has ever asked me that.
She sat with it for a moment. Then she wrote: That seems like an oversight on everyone's part and sent it back.
The reply, when it came, was not a note.
It was a soft knock at her door — different from the firm steward's knock, different from the authoritative knock she would have expected from him. A single quiet rap.
She opened the door.
He was leaning against the opposite wall with his arms crossed, his red eyes fixed on a point on the floor between them, with the look of a man who had arrived somewhere and wasn't entirely sure how he had gotten there.
"You can come in," she said.
He came in and sat in the chair near the fire. She sat back at the writing desk and turned her chair to face him.
"When people ask how you are," she said, "what do they usually want?"
"To know if I'm dangerous," he said. "Whether they should say something different today than they planned." He looked at the fire. "No one has ever wanted the actual answer."
"What is the actual answer?" she asked.
He was quiet for a long time.
"I don't know," he said. "I don't think I've examined it in a long time."
"That seems exhausting," Nora said.
"Most people would say lonely," he said. "Or difficult. Or some other sympathy word."
"Most people," Nora said, "are saying something about themselves when they choose the word they think you want to hear." She folded her hands on the desk. "I said exhausting because not examining something doesn't make it go away. It just means you're carrying it without understanding what it weighs."
He looked at her steadily.
"You are," he said, "genuinely unlike anyone I have met."
"You've probably met a limited sample," she said.
"I've met every significant person in six kingdoms," he said.
"Significant in what sense?" she asked.
He opened his mouth. Then closed it again. She watched him work through the question — actually work through it — and find that it didn't have an easy answer.
"I'm going to think about that," he said.
"Good," she said.
They sat in comfortable silence. The fire between them. The palace night outside the window. And Nora thought that this was, all things considered, a very strange situation that was somehow not strange at