The sun had climbed high. The garden changed with it — the dew dried, the shadows drew in tight beneath the shrubs, and the air thickened into that warm, heavy smell that belongs only to the middle of the day: heated earth, flower pollen, a thin bitter thread of wormwood underneath.
Mira sat straight on the grass, legs tucked beneath her, plucking at the tips of stems with no particular aim.
"Are you always this quiet?"
Elara did not answer at once. She shifted the branch to her other hand.
"Not always. I am simply used to it."
Mira snorted — as if she understood well enough, but had no intention of asking more.
"You can stay quiet here," she said. "But not for long. It gets boring."
Elara almost smiled. Not for Mira — just to herself. A corner of the mouth, nothing more.
They worked on in silence after that — the gardener a little further off, among the denser rows, Mira close beside her. The wind touched the tops of the shrubs now and then.
"Damn it," the gardener hissed, and snatched his hand back.
Elara raised her head.
The shears had slipped against a knot — a shallow cut across the pad of his thumb, the skin split open. He was already moving to shake off the blood and keep working.
"Do not move," she said.
The gardener frowned.
"It is a scratch. Not even a deep one."
But she had already risen and crossed to the nearest bush. Her fingers worked on their own, quick and precise, her body held its readiness for the worst even in the smallest things.
She stripped off a few leaves. Rubbed them between her fingers, brought them to her nose. The right smell.
/"Stop the inflammation first. Then the pain."/
She knew the order. Because she had been made to know it — until the rule stopped being a thought and became something the body remembered on its own, displacing thought entirely.
The gardener watched her press the crushed green to the cut and said nothing. He did not flinch, did not object. He accepted it the way a person accepts things once they have grown used to the surprises this estate produces.
Mira watched from a distance.
"So you are not just a herbalist after all."
✧─────── ⋅❦⋅ ───────✧
"Not bad."
She went still.
He stood behind her. She had not heard him approach — no footsteps, no rustle of clothing, nothing. Dark clothes, a calm gaze. Around him hung a heavy, pressing silence that made the garden air suddenly feel too thick to breathe.
"Oswin."
He gave his own name. As if the name alone should be enough for everything.
Mira straightened at once — her shoulders twitched back, barely, but Elara had already learned to catch such small movements.
He stepped forward, stopped between Elara and the bush, and pointed at the plant.
"What is this?"
That is not how people ask when they are getting acquainted. It was a test.
Elara looked at the leaves.
"This one stops the inflammation and keeps it from festering. And this" — a pause, brief but deliberate — "eases pain. Take too much, and it is poison."
Oswin went rigid. Something shifted behind his eyes — not surprise. A cold, fast calculation.
"Who taught you?"
/"Do not answer directly."/
"I had to remember it."
He stepped closer. Slow, deliberate, watching for the slightest flinch.
"You are not afraid of me."
"I am."
Quiet. Even. He had stopped just behind her left shoulder — too close, nearly past the line of what manners allowed. Close enough to feel another person's breath against her ear.
"But not that way."
And he left. He simply dissolved between the shrubs, as though he had never been there at all.
Mira went on staring at the empty path for another few seconds. She let out her breath only once the branches behind him had stilled.
"I do not like him."
Elara said nothing. But the thought came anyway:
/"You are not supposed to."/
✧─────── ⋅❦⋅ ───────✧
The day stayed quiet. Even the birds seemed to have lowered their voices. The sun rolled slowly toward the horizon, the fence's shadows stretched into long bands, and the garden smelled of warmed grass and lemon balm — Elara could still feel its scent on her own fingers.
She gathered the cuttings into the basket. Methodically. Without hurrying.
/"So this is what almost calm feels like."/
The thought arrived and faded before she had time to decide what to make of it.
✧─────── ⋅❦⋅ ───────✧
Somewhere further off in the courtyard, a voice called out — and cut off at once.
Auden raised his head. Set down the shears. Said nothing.
Footsteps. Fast, sharp, throwing an echo out from deep in the corridor.
"Your Grace!"
A servant stopped at the threshold of the house — he did not step into the garden, but his voice carried clearly through the open doors.
"You have... The Crown Prince has arrived."
The quiet in the garden shifted into something else. The air itself seemed to change.
At the second-floor window, the Duke stood motionless, hands clasped behind his back. Alan went rigid beside him.
"Early," Alan said quietly.
The Duke exhaled slowly. He lowered his gaze to the garden below — to the girl's moon-silver hair, gleaming under the sun even through the headscarf, betraying her far too clearly.
"No," the Duke said. "On time."
Below, Elara did not raise her head. She went on stacking the cut branches. Evenly, carefully, without hurrying.
But the wind had shifted. A thin, cold draft ran across the back of her neck — too sharp for a warm afternoon.
/"Something is wrong."/
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