The room was packed. It had been packed for two days — her books in their crates, her clothes in their trunks, everything that was hers reduced to objects that could be loaded onto wagons and transported to a keep three weeks' ride north. What remained was the furniture that had always been there and would remain after her.

She did not look at it for long.

"Is there anything left?" she said.

"Nothing." Thessaly had her own bag at her feet, small and self-contained. "The trunks went down an hour ago."

"Good." Seralyn fastened the cloak at the collar and pulled on the gloves. The leather was soft, already shaped to movement from the breaking in. She flexed her fingers once. "Then we should go down."

Thessaly picked up her bag. Neither of them moved immediately.

It was not grief, precisely. It was something more specific and harder to name — she had stood in this room through fevers and arguments and the night her wings appeared. She had read half the palace library sitting in the window seat that was now bare of its cushions. She had been nine years old in this room and she was twenty-five in it now, and after this morning she would not be in it again. Not as the person she had been in it.

That was simply the nature of it. It was not a reason to stand here any longer than necessary.

"Your Highness," Thessaly said, quietly.

"Yes," Seralyn said. "I know."

It took more of her strength than she realized to turn away, but in the end she did. It was only a few steps to the door — which she counted. One. Two. Three. Four. The door handle was cold under her gloved hand. She opened it without pausing—because pausing would have let the hurt set in—and went through.

The corridors of the Aelundran palace had always been occupied by a particular stillness that chilled her.

Not this morning.

This morning the Solathis was awake and purposeful, its corridors moving. Servants passed with their arms full. Stewards conferred in doorways. She walked through it all at a brisk pace. Thessaly followed a half step behind, as she always did.

They descended the main stair and turned toward the entrance hall, and it was there that she found her family assembled — not formally, not in any arranged way, simply present. Her father stood near the doors with his hands behind his back. Her mother was beside him in dark green, composed and upright. Orren was slightly apart from both of them, which was his habitual position in any configuration that included their parents.

Coryn was there. Emric was there. Coryn looked as though he had been awake for some time and had spent that time in motion. Emric looked as though he had not yet fully woken up and was managing this with the quiet dignity that a thirteen-year-old maintained when he did not want anyone to notice.

She had not expected all of them. She had not expected to feel the presence of them quite so precisely. She had expected...nothing.

She crossed the hall and greeted her father first, because that was the correct order of things and she was not going to abandon the correct order of things simply because her throat had developed an inconvenient tightness somewhere between the stair and the entrance hall. He took her hands briefly. His expression was what it always was in formal contexts — measured, deliberate. She held his gaze for a moment and then released his hands and turned to her mother.

Queen Lissavel looked at her for a long moment. Her eyes moved over the riding clothes without comment, which was itself a form of comment, and then they returned to her face and stayed there.

"You look well," her mother said.

"Thank you."

A pause. "The cloak is a good weight for the season."

"It is."

Her mother reached out and adjusted the clasp at her collar — a small, precise movement, unnecessary in any practical sense. Seralyn stood still and let her do it.

"Write," her mother said. "When you arrive."

"I will."

Her mother stepped back. Her expression had not changed and would not. That was simply the shape of her, and Seralyn had made her peace with it years ago, or near enough.

Orren put his arms around her without preamble, which was so thoroughly characteristic of him that she almost laughed. He was warm and solid and smelled of the same soap he had used since childhood, and she let herself hold on for a moment longer than was strictly composed. She almost cried.

"Do not let them make you miserable," he said, low, against her hair.

"No one makes me anything," she said.

"I know." He pulled back and looked at her with the expression he wore when he was being sincere, which was rarer and therefore more valuable than most of what he produced. "Write to me. The dull parts too. I want the dull parts."

"You will find them extremely dull."

"Good," he said. "Send them anyway."

Coryn's farewell was physical and imprecise and involved her cloak being somewhat disarranged, which she straightened afterward without comment. Emric stood in front of her and looked at the floor and then at her face and then at the floor again, and she waited, because he always needed a moment to arrive at the thing he meant to say.

"I finished the book," he said finally. "The one you lent me. About the coastal surveys."

"What did you think of it?"

"The third chapter was wrong," he said. "About the tidal patterns. He did not account for the seasonal variation."

"No," she agreed. "He did not. I have a note on that page."

He nodded. His jaw worked slightly. "I could send you a letter about it. If you wanted."

"I would want that very much," she said.

He nodded again, quickly, and stepped back. She looked at him for a moment — at his too-long limbs and his serious face — and felt something pull tight in her chest.

She turned before it could pull any tighter.