The portal sealed behind them with a sound like silk pulled taut, too soft for the sharpness of the cold that greeted them.

  Daimon stumbled forward, his boots sinking into wet gravel bordering a hedge. The air tasted of stone and iron, clean but edged, and colder than anything he’d known in Kentar. It caught in his throat and clung to his lashes like it had a mind of its own. Mist, thin as breath, drifted over the clipped lawns and tangled between rows of faded late roses, their petals browned at the tips. Beyond the garden walls, the towers of Vartis rose dark and ancient, streaked with rain. The sky pressed down, low and metallic, the afternoon sun only a pale rumor behind clouds.

  Daimon’s first thought was of silence.

  No shouts from the guards. No footsteps. No music from open windows—just the faint hiss of wind in the laurels and a single distant bell striking three. Even the birds seemed to have abandoned the city to its hush.

  He rubbed his hands together, suddenly wishing he’d brought another layer. The cold crawled up his sleeves and nipped at his throat, leaving his skin prickling. Still, he straightened, trying to look steady beside Gale—who stood there, for a moment, almost shining.

  Gale drew a breath as if tasting the air for memory. He wore his best coat, dark blue over a crisp white shirt, every line neat and deliberate. He looked younger in the autumn light, sharper, his eyes bright with anticipation. He shifted the bundle of books under his arm, then smiled—a real, irrepressible smile.

  “Welcome to Vartis,” he said, his voice lower than usual. “The garden’s drearier than I promised, but the company’s better.”

  Daimon managed a smile in return, but his heart beat oddly fast. He felt lighter than he should, clear-headed, almost feverish. The portal hadn’t left him tired this time. If anything, he felt as if something inside him had uncorked—bracing, exhilarating, dangerous.

  “Is it always this cold?” he asked, breath misting.

  Gale exhaled beside him. “This? This is tolerable. It’ll snow in two days, maybe sooner. You’ll learn to hate it properly come winter.”

  Then Gale started walking, his stride quick and unguarded, boots scuffing pale stone.

  He hadn’t felt this alive in weeks.

  The sky was grey, sure, and the garden colder than he liked, but none of it mattered. He was back. With gifts under his arm, hair tied back neatly for once, coat pressed and deep blue—not Society robes or traveling garb, but something he’d chosen because he knew she liked it. He could almost see her standing just beyond the archway, arms folded, lips twitching in that way that meant she was annoyed and amused and already softening. He could already hear her voice.

  “Come to brag about your findings, Portashaft? Or just to escape another antagonizing goose?”

  His step quickened.

  The great doors ahead were closed, their ironwork black against the old wood, but Gale didn’t hesitate. He pushed them open and swept inside, Daimon hurrying at his heels.

  A guard posted by the door straightened at their approach, mouth opening in surprise. “Master Dekarios—? We… we weren’t told you’d return, sir.”

  Gale gave a clipped nod. “No one was.”

  The guard, clearly unused to surprises, looked from Gale to Daimon and back, then quickly stepped aside. His relief was almost palpable.

  Inside, the palace felt suspended—caught between movements, as if someone had left in the middle of a song and the echo still lingered. Light from the high windows washed the marble floors in bands of silver-grey, brightening the corridors but lending every surface a faint chill. Somewhere, a draft rattled a tapestry. The usual bustle was gone; only the distant, muffled clatter of pots and the measured tread of a solitary guard broke the quiet.

  A serving girl passed them in the vestibule and nearly dropped her tray. A page bowed too quickly, muttered something about “welcome back” and vanished down the nearest hallway before Gale could reply.

  Gale’s pace was brisk, almost eager. “Study first,” he said, glancing over his shoulder. “If she’s not there, then the solar. If not—maybe the council room. She always ends up where she’s needed.”

  Daimon nodded, though his attention wandered. Every angle was unfamiliar—the walls carved with old imperial sigils, the air tinged with beeswax and faint, mineral dust. For all its size, the palace felt like a shell, cleaned of life.

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  They reached Fran’s study. Gale pushed the door open, a confident smile half-forming.

  Empty.

  Everything was in order. The desk was clear, quills stacked in their jar, the ledgers shelved precisely. The chair stood neatly tucked under the table. There wasn’t a cup left to stain the grain, not a scrap of parchment out of place. The scent of ink lingered, but faintly, as if days had passed since it was last used. No shawl over the backrest, no fire in the grate.

  Gale’s brow furrowed, just slightly.

  “Maybe the solar,” he murmured. “She’d want the afternoon light.”

  The solar was the same. Polished, clean. Cushions plumped, windows latched tight against the cold. No trace of Fran—no book left open, no half-folded blanket, not even one of the cats curled in her usual chair.

  Daimon stole a glance at Gale’s face. The older man’s expression had softened into something quieter—uncertain, but not yet worried.

  They tried her bedchamber. It too was immaculate. Sheets turned, wardrobe closed. A faint whiff of cedar and lavender hung in the air, but no warmth lingered. It was as if she’d vanished, or never been there at all.

  Each room added weight to Gale’s steps. He opened doors with increasing impatience, spoke less, moved faster. The unease built as they crossed back through the halls. Gale’s steps slowed, his smile slipping, replaced by an inwardness Daimon recognized—a calculation, the weighing of possibilities.

  They reached the long windowed gallery overlooking the courtyard. Outside, the sky had dulled to pewter, and the first dry leaves skittered across the flagstones. The late light slanted sideways now, gilding the stone in bronze.

  There, on the wide inner sill, were two shapes—Nymph and Rudy.

  The cats were still as sculptures, pressed close together for warmth. Their eyes tracked nothing in the room, only the gates beyond, as if they waited for someone to return from the road. Their tails curled tight around their bodies, ears flicking now and then at an invisible sound.

  Gale approached, crouching by the windowsill, one hand resting lightly on the cold stone. Nymph blinked, slow and regal, but didn’t rise or rub against him as she used to. Rudy’s gaze didn’t even flicker his way.

  Gale swallowed. It hit him then—the absence. Not just of Fran, but of her warmth, her voice, her rhythm. Something was wrong. Deeply wrong.

  He stood, suddenly brisk again. “Let’s try the council room.”

  At a crossroads, a pair of guards passed them, stiff-backed, eyes fixed straight ahead. One muttered a greeting and hurried on. The other averted his gaze altogether.

  At the corner just before the chamber doors, a maid rounded the hallway and startled at the sight of them. Mira. She was tall, broad-shouldered, with streaks of grey in her braid, carrying a basket of linen like a shield. She saw Gale and stopped dead in her tracks.

  “Well,” she said, voice unflinching, “didn’t expect to see you today, Master Dekarios.”

  Gale tried for a smile, but it came out lopsided. “Is the Duchess in council?”

  Mira set her basket down with a thump. “You weren’t due back, were you?”

  Gale frowned. “There was a change of plans. Where is she?”

  “She’s not—”

  “She’s not here, Master Dekarios.”

  Lady Thalyra Velgrin appeared from the shadow of the next arch. She looked exhausted—her grey hair bound back too tightly, eyes pinched at the corners. Her clothes, always severe, seemed somehow more severe today. She nodded to Mira, who picked up her basket and vanished with a last, assessing look at Gale.

  Gale faced Thalyra, suddenly cold inside. “Where is she?”

  Thalyra regarded him for a long moment, and in that silence, something in her guard slipped—a flash of genuine concern, quickly masked. “You truly don’t know.”

  “No.” His voice cracked despite himself.

  “She’s in Durnhal. A planned tour of the Eastern Baronies.” Thalyra’s composure wavered for a heartbeat, something close to pain showing in her face. “But there was an attack. The raiders found a breach in the walls. It was deliberate.”

  Gale’s breath stopped.

  “Someone tried to kill her,” Thalyra said, her voice soft as frost. “She’s alive. Wounded, but alive. She’s under the care of Mother Elna and a cerusician from the lower town.”

  The confidence that had carried Gale through the palace drained away, leaving him hollow. The books slipped from his grasp, landing with a soft, final sound. He didn’t seem to notice. He stared at a crack in the floorstone as if the answer to Thalyra’s words might be written there.

  He squeezed his eyes shut, his entire body rigid, not bracing for a blow but absorbing it. The silence stretched, taut and awful. His voice, when it finally came, was low and rasping, stripped of all its earlier warmth. “Why... why didn’t anyone—”

  Thalyra’s own composure finally fractured, her voice soft with a regret that seemed to age her on the spot. “We didn’t know how to reach you at first. And then—she was so weak... We thought it better to wait until she was out of danger. I’m sorry, Gale. Truly. I should have sent for you sooner.”

  Her words seemed to only make it worse. He gave a stiff, barely perceptible nod—the nod of a man who understood the facts but could not reconcile them with the feeling tearing through his chest.

  When Thalyra left, the silence she left behind was different. It was the silence of a plan utterly derailed.

  Gale’s knees gave way. He didn’t crumple dramatically, but sank down with a weary heaviness, bracing himself on his thighs. He pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes, as if to push back the images his mind was already conjuring—a breach in a wall, raiders, Fran wounded. He drew in a long, shaky breath that was more gasp than sigh. He didn’t weep; he was too focused on the simple, monumental task of not coming entirely undone.

  He drew in a long, shaky breath. The world narrowed to the cold floor beneath him and the single, anchoring truth: Alive. She is alive. Everything else was a problem to be solved.

  Then, quietly, the first step to solving it: “Daimon.”

  Daimon stepped close, pulse hammering. “Yes?”

  “Durnhal,” Gale whispered, hoarse. “Can you take us?”

  Daimon nodded, already moving toward the garden, his vision narrowing, everything bright and sharp and wrong.

  Behind them, the palace faded into silence. Only the cats remained, waiting by the window—faithful, unmoving, eyes fixed on a road empty but for the first drifting flakes of cold autumn air.