The Evening Terraces were quiet when Maruzan arrived. Lanterns burned low along the stone paths, their warm gold light flickering against marble rails and climbing vines. The scent of damp soil drifted up from the flower beds below, and somewhere in the distance, water trickled softly from one of the ornamental fountains.

  The gardens overlooked all of Arnathe, rooftops and courtyards spread out beneath the twilight haze, the city alive but muted. From here, everything looked peaceful. Too peaceful, Maruzan thought, for what he suspected tonight would bring.

  Two royal gardeners tended to the far hedges, lighting the last few lanterns, their movements slow and quiet. They did not look toward him. Whether that was due to discipline or deliberate ignorance, he couldn’t tell.

  He spotted her soon after, standing alone at the edge of the overlook, framed by the orange light of the setting sun.

  Princess Phoebe.

  Her gown shimmered faintly in the half-light, a soft white threaded with faint silver. It caught every breeze like a sail catching wind. A thin circlet rested on her brow, simple and unadorned. From a distance, she looked calm, every inch the composed daughter of a king. But when she turned slightly, he noticed her hands. They fidgeted at her side. Clasped. Released. Clasped again.

  Nervous, he thought.

  He didn’t approach quickly. Instead, he paused for a moment under the archway that framed the garden and watched her in silence. She didn’t seem to notice him at first, her gaze distant, fixed on the horizon where the city lights blurred into the darkening hills.

  Then she turned and saw him.

  Her voice, when it came, was soft but steady. “Are you Maruzan?”

  “I am,” he said, stepping closer.

  She studied him quietly for a few seconds. Her eyes were sharp, but not unkind, the eyes of someone who had learned to read a person before they spoke. Then, as if satisfied, she gave a small nod to herself.

  “You came,” she said.

  “You requested,” he answered simply.

  Phoebe almost smiled, but the expression faded before it could form. She looked past him for a brief moment, to the gardeners, to the glowing terraces, and then back to him again. “Thank you,” she said. “For coming so quickly. I know this is sudden.”

  Maruzan folded his hands behind his back, silent but attentive. He’d met nobles before, merchants, barons, visiting lords who’d commissioned armor or cloaks. Some spoke with the kind of arrogance that tried to fill a room. Phoebe wasn’t like that. She carried herself like someone who wanted to speak plainly but wasn’t sure if she was allowed to.

  She took a breath. “This isn’t about court business or politics. It’s about someone important to me.”

  Maruzan said nothing, only waited.

  Her voice wavered slightly before she steadied it. “Her name is Azandra. We grew up together in the palace. Her father was an advisor to mine, and when he was granted a title, their family moved to the Three Corners. It’s far west, between the hills and the forest line. I haven’t seen her in more than a year, but she used to write me almost every week.”

  Phoebe hesitated. The flicker of a lantern’s flame reflected in her eyes. “Until she stopped.”

  Maruzan frowned slightly. “And you think something’s happened to her.”

  “I know something has,” Phoebe said. “Yesterday, a postal came from the Three Corners. Her family sent word to the crown. She’s missing.”

  He didn’t respond right away. Missing nobles were not rare in Arnathe’s history: ransom, political intrigue, self-imposed exile. But something in Phoebe’s tone told him this wasn’t one of those cases.

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  She went on, her words quickening. “The King… my father… said there’s no room in the budget for another investigation. The Green Hills campaign has drained our soldiers and our coin. The guard patrols are stretched thin, and the royal marshals are already deployed.” She looked down, voice tightening. “I begged him to reconsider, but all he agreed to was allowing a bounty notice. No men. No funding. Just a posting.”

  Maruzan looked down at the letter still folded in his coat. “And I was the only one left without a contract.”

  Phoebe nodded. “He signed your martial favor as a compromise, to make peace with me.”

  That explained more than Mylor’s careful wording in the Guildhall earlier that day. Maruzan crossed his arms, considering. “Then I’ll ask what you know. Where was she last seen?”

  Phoebe took a slow step toward the railing. “Her letters always mentioned her research, ruins, old relics, the histories that came before even the Second Dwarven Era. She was obsessed with them. The last one she sent said she’d finally found something worth studying in the hill country, south of her estate. She wrote that she’d be gone a few days, then come home.”

  “Did she travel alone?”

  “I think so. Her father forbade her from leaving the estate without guards, but she never listened.” Phoebe’s tone softened, a mix of irritation and fondness. “She’s brilliant, always has been, but stubborn. She’d rather face danger than let someone tell her what not to do.”

  Maruzan nodded. He understood that kind of stubbornness. “How long has she been missing?”

  “Two weeks,” Phoebe said. “Long enough that her family’s search parties have already returned empty-handed.”

  Maruzan’s brow furrowed. “That’s a long time for anyone to survive alone in those hills. Troll sightings are still common there, and the ruins she studied are not without risk.”

  Phoebe looked at him sharply. “Are you saying she’s dead?”

  He met her eyes evenly. “I’m saying I don’t make promises I can’t keep. But I can find answers.”

  She looked away, gripping the railing tightly. The garden around them seemed to quiet, even the fountain’s soft trickle faded beneath the weight of her silence. When she finally spoke again, her voice had dropped to a whisper.

  “She left a letter,” Phoebe said. “For me. Said she’d be back soon, that I shouldn’t worry. But her room was full of notes. Scrolls on lost artifacts, diagrams of runes I don’t recognize. It’s like she was trying to piece something together.”

  Maruzan took a slow breath. “Then she didn’t plan to vanish. She planned to return.”

  “I know her,” Phoebe said, turning back toward him. “She would never disappear without sending word. Not unless she couldn’t.”

  Their eyes met again.

  Maruzan saw it clearly now, this wasn’t royal duty driving her. It was friendship. The kind of bond built when the world was still simple, before crowns and councils and wars made everything harder.

  He nodded once, his decision already made. “Then I have no choice. I’ll find her.”

  For a moment, Phoebe said nothing. Then, before she could stop herself, she stepped forward and threw her arms around him. The gesture surprised them both. It wasn’t the kind of embrace a princess was supposed to give, not formal, not rehearsed. It was the kind born out of relief and quiet desperation.

  When she pulled back, her cheeks were flushed, her voice softer. “Captain Vane spoke of you once. He said you were a man who carried his promises like armor. Now I believe him.”

  She reached up and unclasped a delicate silver chain from around her neck. A single green emerald hung from it, catching the lanternlight like a captured star. She held it out to him.

  “Azandra wears one just like this,” she said. “I gave them to her before she left the palace. If she’s alive, she’ll still have it. Show her this, and she’ll know I sent you.”

  Maruzan hesitated before taking it. The metal felt cold against his palm. He closed his hand around it carefully, almost reverently.

  “I’ll return it when she’s safe,” he said.

  Phoebe smiled faintly, not the smile of a princess, but of someone clinging to hope. “Then I’ll be waiting.”

  He gave a slight nod. “You’ll hear from me soon. One way or another.”

  Maruzan turned and started down the lantern-lit path that led away from the terraces. The gardeners bowed slightly as he passed, but he barely noticed them. The silver chain felt heavy in his pocket, heavier than the letter that had brought him here.

  As he stepped through the gates at the garden’s edge, he paused and looked back once. Phoebe stood where he had left her, framed by the soft glow of the lanterns and the deepening night. For a moment, he wondered if she had any idea what kind of danger her friend might truly be in.

  Then he set his jaw and continued down the path, his thoughts sharp and focused.

  So this is how it begins, he thought. A missing noble’s daughter. A hunt through the hill country. Relics. Ruins.

  And, somewhere unseen, the first steps toward something much larger than any of them yet understood.

  He didn’t know it yet, but this was not just a rescue. It was the beginning of a trail that would lead his warband into the heart of the old world’s buried secrets, and into the shadow of the thing that still dreamed beneath the earth.

  Even so, as he reached the city streets again, Maruzan did not hesitate.

  He had made a promise. And he had never once failed to keep one.