Vartis shimmered beneath the weight of summer. The city’s twin rivers ran lower now, sluggish and warm, thick with golden light in the mornings and glinting like molten silver at dusk. Windows stood open across the palace, letting in the scent of sunbaked stone, ripe plums, and garden roses. Children’s laughter echoed faintly from the lower quarters, and even the garrison drills in the middle ring had lost their winter bite, sounding instead like a ritual of rhythm and heat.

  Inside the ducal palace, the mood had shifted with the season. The sharp tension of spring had eased into a quieter strain of vigilance. Guards still stood at every gate, but they no longer wore their armor like second skins. Couriers arrived without breathless urgency. Servants no longer glanced over their shoulders.

  The guest wing remained sealed for now — cleaned, polished, and hauntingly empty. The new security measures had held; the raids had succeeded. Now came the waiting: for justice, for quiet, for the next storm.

  On the upper floor of the west wing, one window remained stubbornly open despite the hour. Through it drifted a breeze laced with jasmine and the dull hum of bees.

  Fran’s study was not the grand one meant for her rank — she preferred this smaller room, filled with overburdened shelves and uneven stacks of paper that crept across the desk like an encroaching tide. A silver teapot steamed near the inkstand, ignored. On a worn rug near the hearth, Rudy was stretched out like a puddle of fur, while Nymph had colonized the windowsill, tail flicking against the shutters.

  Fran herself sat hunched at her desk, elbow deep in correspondence and trial records, her dark hair uncoiled in loose waves down her back. She had been working since sunrise, and the ink stains on her fingers suggested she hadn’t paused for breakfast.

  She signed another document with a slow, deliberate hand.

  Frances Serenna—

  The pen paused.

  She stared at the page, her lips tightening. Even after months, the name still felt unfamiliar in her hand. Frances Mirell—that had been the name written on every academy record, every clinic ledger, every property deed in Candlekeep. And even that name had rarely been spoken aloud. She had been “Fran,” or “the healer,” or “Haran and Sorelle’s daughter.” Nothing more.

  Now she was an Elarion. The name of ghosts.

  She sighed, finished the signature, and set the pen down with an almost inaudible click. The paper shifted, revealing the transcripts beneath.

  She turned to them next: the official statements from the preliminary hearings.

  Vos and Vannor’s testimonies were exactly as expected — defensive, contradictory, and laced with the kind of short-sighted bravado typical of men who had never imagined their downfall. She flipped past them with the tired efficiency of someone long past outrage.

  Then came Avessa’s.

  Fran read the summary carefully, brow furrowing as she reached the final paragraph, underlined with red ink.

  “...In addition to charges of corruption, treason, and conspiracy against the Ducal Authority of Foher, Mistress Avessa Marnel is further accused of violating Article XVII of the Royal Arcane Edict by initiating an unauthorized dimensional gateway within the duchy’s territory, without Velmoran Society of Arcane Sciences’ registration or oversight. Such usage is strictly forbidden under both magical and state law, and carries penalties equal to or exceeding those for flight from justice.”

  She blinked. "Unauthorized dimensional gateway?”

  At that exact moment, the door creaked open without preamble — as it always did.

  Gale walked in holding two envelopes and a half-eaten apple, his cloak abandoned somewhere between the courtyard and the corridor. His shirt was half-buttoned, his hair still damp from a rinse that had clearly not involved a comb.

  Fran didn’t even look up. “You know, normal people knock.”

  “I’ve been tested,” he replied cheerfully, dropping the letters on her desk. “Turns out I’m well beyond saving.”

  She arched a brow. “Both from Kentar?”

  “Both very polished ways of saying ‘mind your business.’” He took another bite of apple. “No doubt penned while sipping iced wine and polishing their conscience with silver.”

  She picked up one of the letters and read the opening lines. Her jaw tightened, but she said nothing.

  Instead, she slid the transcript toward him. “They added another charge to Avessa.”

  He glanced at the underlined paragraph, then grinned. “Ah. The portal.”

  “Unauthorized use of a dimensional portal. That’s a thing?”

  “Very much a thing.” He sat on the edge of her desk, ignoring her disapproving look. “Which means she’s not licensed to open portals. That’s a very serious offense.”

  Fran folded her arms. “Why?”

  “Well,” Gale said, launching into his professor tone, “The Society’s portal laws are some of the strictest we have. You need a license, two layers of clearance, a verified circle, three witnesses, and a letter from someone who doesn’t hate you. Ideally.”

  Fran blinked. “And I assume you’ve got one of those licenses tucked under your belt?”

  He answered a beat too slow, pretending not to have heard her question. “Ah… portals are complicated. Dangerous. The spell must be exact — any miscalculation and you risk catastrophic deconstruction. You’re not really traveling through space, you see. You’re being… dismantled. Atom by atom. Mind, body, soul. Reduced to a theoretical suggestion and then reassembled at the exit point. If the exit point still exists.”

  “That sounds horrifying. Which is why I’m sure you’ve done it dozens of times,” she answered, dryly.

  Gale sighed. “You know me too well.”

  She tilted her head. “So, do you have this license?”

  Gale coughed into his apple. “Had.”

  “…Had?”

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  “It was revoked,” he admitted. “Permanently. When I was twenty-one.”

  Fran’s lips twitched. “Dare I ask why?”

  He gave her a look of long-suffering martyrdom. “There was… an incident.”

  Fran put down the letter. “Oh, please.”

  “It may have involved a married countess, a rather isolated tower, and a discussion of certain metaphysical principles.”

  “By which you mean—”

  “Exactly what you’re thinking.”

  Fran leaned forward, her chin resting on her interlaced fingers. “And?”

  A pause. Gale looked like a child who had broken a very old, precious vase and was painstakingly confessing to it.

  “And the count returned early. Very early. He was… interested in the nature of our discussion,” he finally answered.

  “With a sword?”

  “More like an axe. I panicked. Opened a portal to escape. In a tower. Without checking the local ley lines.”

  Fran covered her mouth in theatrical dismay. “No.”

  “Yes,” he was avoiding her gaze. “The whole palace.”

  “Where did you send it?”

  “Middle of the Goldenmaw Desert.”

  Another pause.

  “You sent a noble estate in the middle of a wasteland.”

  “Yes.”

  Fran stared at him. “How are you even alive?”

  “It took me twelve hours to bring almost everything and everyone back,” he said, sounding faintly proud. “The Society was… less impressed. They revoked my portal license, slapped a magical trace on me, and added my name to a very short list titled: ‘Absolutely Not.’”

  She laughed — a short, sharp breath of disbelief. “Gale Dekarios, prodigy of the Society, outlawed from portals because he couldn’t keep his wand in his trousers.”

  “I prefer misunderstood visionary.”

  “Of course you do.”

  He took another bite of apple. “Anyway. That’s why Avessa is in deeper trouble than she realizes. Unauthorized portal use is not something the Society overlooks — especially when it makes them look incompetent.”

  Fran leaned back in her chair, glancing at the open window. Outside, the scent of summer drifted in like a memory.

  “And we’re not going to Kentar.”

  Gale tilted his head. “Not yet.”

  “No,” she murmured. “Not yet.”

  A sharp knock interrupted the quiet.

  Fran looked up. “Come in.”

  The door creaked open — properly, this time — and one of the palace valets stepped inside with a bow. “Your Grace, Sir Rhyve and Lady Velgrin have arrived for the meeting you requested.”

  Behind the desk, Gale was now crouched near the windowsill, gently scratching Nymph’s chin while speaking in a tone that might have soothed a warhorse. “Who’s the deadliest little hunter in Vartis, hm? You are. Yes, you are.”

  Fran glanced at him, dry as the desert he’d once banished a palace to. “Try not to infect her with your manners.”

  He stood and stretched. “I’ll leave you to your grown-up duties, then. Yesterday’s council was quite enough politcs to last me until autumn.”

  As Rhyve and Thalyra entered the room, Gale straightened and greeted them with a slight, charming bow. “Sir Elden. Lady Velgrin. Always a pleasure.”

  “Master Dekarios,” Rhyve said with a polite nod.

  Thalyra smiled faintly. “Still refusing to wear proper boots, I see.”

  Gale’s expression was pure innocence. “They pinch the soul.” And with that, he made a dramatic exit, nearly tripping on Rudy, who didn't bother to move.

  Once the door closed, Thalyra turned to Fran with a quiet chuckle. “Does he ever walk out like a normal man?”

  “No,” Fran muttered, already stacking trial papers to the side. “But I’ve given up hoping.”

  Rhyve took a seat without comment, while Thalyra chose the armchair closest to the hearth. Fran remained behind her desk, pen in hand, as the mood settled into something more serious.

  “We need to discuss replacements,” she said. “The council can’t function with three empty seats.”

  Rhyve gave a slow nod. “We need competence, not just titles. The duchy is stabilizing, but the cost has been high. The wrong names now could undo everything.”

  “I agree,” Thalyra said, “though I still believe that a few respected houses should be represented. Families that stood by Duke Alric until the end — they carry weight with the old guard. Names like Morenne, Daskar, and Olyan still command respect in the outlands.”

  “But none of them have ever governed a city or written a tax reform,” Rhyve countered. “We need experienced hands. There’s a clerk in Merindel who’s been managing trade tariffs for twenty years — honest, sharp, apolitical. I’ve seen his work. I’d trust him more than half the nobility.”

  Fran wrote as they spoke — her notes quick, precise, unemotional. Occasionally, she asked for clarification or a full name, but mostly she listened.

  By the time the sun had shifted past the windowpane, the list was long, and the room had grown warm.

  Rhyve rose. “I’ll speak to a few of them discreetly. No promises until we’re sure they’ll accept.”

  “Thank you,” Fran said.

  He inclined his head, then turned to Thalyra. “I’ll see you at the archive later.”

  “Go ahead,” she murmured. “I’ll stay a moment.”

  When the door shut again, a quiet settled in — softer, somehow older.

  Thalyra stood, but didn’t yet move to leave. Instead, she walked to the bookshelf beside Fran’s desk and brushed her hand across the spine of an old, worn ledger. “You always ended up in the west tower. Even when you were little — you’d wander off and somehow end up there. Your uncle had the place rearranged half a dozen times before he gave up and let you haunt it.”

  Fran said nothing. She kept her pen poised, but didn’t write.

  “You’ve been composed,” Thalyra continued, eyes on the books. “Too composed. I suppose I should commend you for it.”

  “Should you?”

  Thalyra turned toward her, voice quieter now. “You were lied to. About who you are. About everything. And yet you’ve kept smiling and nodding and working yourself to the bone like a true Elarion.” She let the name hang, then added, more bitterly, “Alric’s most reckless decision — and trust me, there were many — was thinking he had the right to choose your life for you.”

  Fran’s mouth tightened, but she didn’t interrupt.

  “I stood with Callen on that,” Thalyra admitted. “We argued about it for years. I would’ve told you the truth the moment you could speak. But your uncle believed the world would tear you apart if it knew who you were. Maybe he was right. But gods, Frances…” Her voice cracked just slightly on the name — the first time she’d used it. “Had it been me, I’d have burned this whole palace down.”

  Silence stretched between them. Nymph flicked her tail once. Rudy snored.

  Then, with a breath, Thalyra gathered herself and reached into the folds of her robes. “The archive is still sealed. No one but me has access.”

  She placed a small, iron key on the desk.

  “You can go in whenever you choose. Read it. Burn it. Curse his name and walk away. That room holds all the truths he never gave you.”

  Fran didn’t reach for the key. Not yet.

  Thalyra stepped back. “I’ll see myself out.”

  She paused at the door, her usual sharpness returning. “Don’t wait too long.”

  And then she was gone.

  The lantern on the far wall burned low, casting a flickering gold halo across the stone floor and the edge of the bed. Outside, Vartis slept under a thick summer haze, the city muffled and slow. Somewhere in the garden, a nightingale sang alone.

  Inside, the room was quiet. A breeze stirred the gauze curtain, fluttering the hem of a dressing robe slung over a chair. On the wide bed, tangled in linen and each other’s warmth, lay the Duchess of Foher and her mage.

  Fran’s head rested on Gale’s shoulder, her skin still warm, her breath calm but not quite settled. Gale brushed a slow kiss along her shoulder before speaking, his voice low, colored with concern.

  “Are you all right, Dove?” he asked. “You seemed… less enthusiastic.”

  Fran made a soft noise — not annoyance, but weary tolerance. That nickname had long since stopped irritating her. She shifted onto her side to face him, placing a hand against his chest. His skin was warm and faintly scented with bergamot and parchment.

  “It’s the archive,” she murmured. “Since Thalyra gave me the key this morning, I haven’t stopped thinking about it.”

  Gale’s thumb traced an idle line across her wrist. “So, you’re still arguing with a dead man?”

  Her lips twitched — not quite a smile. “He lied to me. My whole life. My parents, my name, everything was shaped by a man I never met. All of it planned without ever asking what I wanted. How would you feel if your father had done that to you?”

  “He did,” Gale said simply. “More than once. But unlike your uncle, he wasn’t trying to save me.”

  That silenced her for a moment.

  Then Rudy, as if sensing the emotional weight, leapt onto the bed with a heavy thump and flopped squarely between them, purring with missionary zeal. Fran exhaled and absently scratched behind his ear.

  “It bothers me,” she said finally, “that everyone else seems to know and understand him. Rhyve, Thalyra, even Callen. And I… I don’t. I’m supposed to carry his legacy, and I barely know the shape of the man.”

  “Then find out,” Gale said, quiet but firm. “If that letter was only the beginning, let’s see what else he left you. What else he wanted you to understand.”

  Fran met his gaze. His eyes were serious, but there was no pressure in them — only quiet encouragement. She leaned in and kissed him once, softly, then murmured against his mouth: “All right.”

  She reached for the small key on the table beside the bed, and closed her fingers around it.

  Her Grace, Uncrowned will switch to two chapters per week. The daily updates have been great, but the backlog is getting thinner, and I want to preserve quality as we move into the next arcs.