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The garden greeted them with the sharp scent of herbs and the morning chill.
Elara stopped just at the threshold.
The sky. A whole sky above her, no ceiling, no stone walls closing it off. Even in the estate courtyard there had been sky, but here it seemed wider. Open. And the air was different: not the air of rooms or corridors, but real, alive, tight with moisture and the fragrance of raw earth.
She exhaled, slow, all the way to empty.
Mira stopped beside her and tactfully said nothing, looking away — as if deliberately giving her a moment.
/"She noticed."/
Elara stepped forward and crouched beside the first bush. Her fingers touched the leaves carefully — soft, with fine serrated edges. She recognized it.
/"Mint. Ordinary. But if there is something else beside it..."/
She shifted slightly to the side, parted the stems, and looked deeper: there it was — darker shoots, almost burgundy, close to the soil.
Mira watched.
"You do not just gather herbs."
Not a question. An observation.
Elara looked up at her.
"And you are not just a maid."
A short pause. Then — a faint, thin smile.
"No one here is 'just' anything."
The silence between them shifted instantly. It stopped to be awkward, and turned weighted, as if both had laid a card on the table and were now waiting to see whose move came next.
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From the second-floor window, the garden was visible as if on the palm of a hand.
The Duke stood motionless, his hands clasped behind his back. His gaze stayed fixed on the two figures moving between the bushes.
Beside him stood Alan.
"You're giving her too much freedom," Alan said quietly.
"She limits herself." The Duke did not look away. "You saw it."
Alan's jaw tightened.
"I did. But that changes nothing."
"Oswin will look into everything. Who she is, where she came from. And why the Prince is searching in person."
Alan flinched.
"You still think she is..."
"I think," the Duke cut in, "that we are running short on time."
The door behind them opened without a sound. Oswin entered as though he had always been in the study all along, merely materializing out of the shadows. Dark clothes, calm eyes, movements that occupied absolutely no excess space. People like him never tthe first thing you noticed — which was exactly what made them dangerous.
"You called, Your Grace."
"The girl. I need everything," the Duke said, still not turning. "About her, and about the Crown Prince."
Oswin held a short pause.
"How much time do I have?"
"Yesterday."
The corner of Oswin's mouth twitched — not a smile, just the shadow of one.
"Understood."
He moved his gaze down, to the garden. To Elara.He looked a moment longer than a routine assessment required. Something flickered behind that look, unnoticeable even to the Duke — not an appraisal, and not curiosity. Something men bury at the very bottom of their souls and almost never let reach the surface.
"She is not ordinary," he finally said.
"That is why you are here."
Oswin nodded and left, without another word or gesture.
Alan watched him go.
/"He noticed too. But what, exactly?"/
The Duke did not moved.
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In the garden, Elara suddenly lifted her head.
Not a sound. A premonition.
/"Someone is watching me."/
She felt it between her shoulder blades and at the nape of her neck — a familiar sensation, honed over years. She did not look back. She simply bent over the bush again, pretending to sort through stems and examine leaves.
But from that moment, every movement grew more measured. Every pause, a fraction of a second shorter.
/"This cage has no bars. And that makes it far more dangerous."/
/"Erebus used to say: when there are no bars, a person starts building her own. Chooses their own boundaries. And never knows, after a while, which walls were given to them, and which they raised themselves."/
Beside her, Mira was quietly humming a simple, easy melody. A live, light sound. Elara did not react to it.
But she listened.
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