A letter arrived from Aunt Sera.
Warm, sharp, full of pointed observations.
Nora laughed — genuinely, fully — for the first time in the palace.
Malik heard it from the corridor.
He stood there for a moment.
He thought about it for the rest of the day.
The letter arrived with the morning post, in Sera's particular handwriting — small, dense, and slightly aggressive in its punctuation.
Nora opened it.
My dear Nora —
I have been hearing things. The guild wives talk. The market vendors talk. Jenk the palace guard's wife talks, which means Jenk talks, which means half the city knows the Dragon King said your name at the monthly court reception in front of a hundred people like you were simply — there.
I want you to know that I, your aunt Sera, who has known you since you were four years old and refused to apologize for cutting your own hair because you said the length was inefficient, am not surprised by any of this. I told your father this would happen. He said nothing was happening. I said something was always happening with you, it just looked like nothing from the outside until suddenly it was everything.
Your father is well. The stall is doing well. The royal patronage has meant three new regular customers and a waiting list for the winter wool. You should know this is also causing Maris next door to ask pointed questions because she now suspects the patronage is connected to you.
Tell me everything. Tell me nothing if you prefer. But know that if anyone in that palace is unkind to you, I will come there personally and be extremely inconvenient about it.
With love and an unreasonable amount of opinions,
Sera
P.S. — Is he as tall as they say? I only ask for practical reasons.
Nora read it once.
Then she read the postscript again.
She laughed.
Not the small contained smile she produced when something was genuinely amusing. A real laugh — full and brief and completely unguarded, the kind that happened before you could make a decision about it.
Outside the door, footsteps that had been passing — purposeful, familiar, his — stopped.
A pause.
Then continued. Slower.
She looked at the door.
He heard that, she thought. He was passing and he heard me laugh and he stopped.
She folded the letter carefully and put it in the desk drawer.
She wrote back to Sera that evening.
She told her very little. She answered the postscript.
Yes, she wrote. Taller.