Six days.

  Six days of frozen roads, cramped sleeping arrangements, aching backs and icy mornings where breath turned silver before their mouths. Six days of ceremonial waves to townspeople, of passing half-frozen villages and bowing roadside lords, of forced silence and careful expressions.

  By the time the procession crested the rise into Vartis, Frances Serenna Elarion had not slept in nearly thirty hours and could barely feel her knees.

  And yet, the city rose before her like a promise she no longer trusted.

  The streets were thinner than when she’d left. The air colder. The people quieter. And though the royal audience had been private, the entire duchy seemed to know what had passed behind those gilded doors in Velarith.

  No one said it aloud, of course.

  But their eyes said enough.

  The King is displeased.

  She won’t last the year.

  She’s unmarried. Unstable.

  Still a healer pretending at power.

  Return to the Wolves

  Her first day back was a blur of meetings and signatures.

  The second, worse.

  By the third, she had been asked about marriage five times — once during council, twice during lunch, once by her steward (politely), and once by a wandering baron who seemed to have forgotten his own name but not his suggested nephew.

  Everywhere she turned, there was someone watching, measuring, waiting.

  She felt it most at court.

  Council sessions now felt like slow dissections. Every word she spoke was met with strategic silence or faintly amused replies. Every decision questioned. Every idea mirrored back to her with new edges, designed to slice.

  By the tenth day, her patience was a torn and bloodied thing.

  The Winterfire Banquet

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  It was meant to be a celebration — the Festival of Winterfire, a midwinter feast of renewal and warmth dating back to the Old Empire. The central hall of the palace had been dressed in evergreen garlands and silver lanterns, and crystal chandeliers glowed like ice lit from within.

  There was music, there was laughter, and for a time, Fran managed to pretend.

  Until the sixth request.

  The sixth request in a single week.

  The old lady — a Countess of something, in silk and jewels that had likely outlived two husbands — leaned over her wine and asked with a grandmother’s smile:

  “But truly, Your Grace, such a fine young woman can’t possibly intend to face spring unspoken for. Surely the King’s wisdom offered... guidance?”

  A few heads turned.

  Fran blinked. Her mouth opened, closed. Her temples ached.

  The garlands blurred in her vision. The clink of goblets sharpened. The room suddenly felt too hot, despite the frost on the windows.

  And before she could stop herself—

  “Fine,” she said.

  The word was soft. Cold.

  Hands froze on forks.

  She stood slowly, her voice rising with it — not in volume, but in intensity, quiet and unnatural.

  “You want a name?” she said. “Then take it. Gale Dekarios of Waterdeep.”

  The room fell into silence like a dropped blade.

  “There,” she added, staring at no one. “That’s my answer.”

  Mouths hung open.

  A goblet was set down a little too hard somewhere near the hearth.

  “Dekarios?”

  “The wizard?”

  “The librarian?”

  “He isn’t even nobility.”

  “He isn’t even here.”

  She heard it all. But she didn’t move.

  Her hands were clenched so tightly on the back of her chair that her knuckles pulsed with pain. Her chest burned — not with shame, but with release.

  She had made a move.

  A reckless, stupid, satisfying move.

  And now, they could choke on it.

  The Letter

  She left the banquet in silence, not waiting for the music to resume.

  Her rooms were cold. Her boots were muddy. Rudy was asleep on her desk. Nymph leapt from the bed with a soft mewl and pressed against her ankle.

  Fran sat down on the edge of her mattress and buried her face in her hands.

  Not from shame.

  Not even from fear.

  But from the sudden, bitter grief of knowing that the only things that had brought her comfort — a silent study, a shelf of books, the scent of parchment, two furred creatures and one insufferably smug mage — now felt impossibly distant.

  She was drowning in a world not made for her. And now, she had screamed in the middle of the storm.

  Finally, her eyes fell on it.

  The envelope.

  Still unopened.

  Still sealed in Alric’s wax.

  Fran stared at it for a long time. Then, with numb fingers, she picked it up. Her thumb hovered at the edge.

  You wanted to know why, didn’t you?

  She broke the seal.

  And began to read.