The palace felt colder the next day.
Not because the weather had changed, but because Mandle was trying — desperately — to rebuild the walls that had shattered the moment she saw his face. He kept his hood pulled low, his steps silent, his presence small. He avoided the gardens, avoided the paths she walked, avoided even the places where her scent lingered in the air.
But fate was not interested in his attempts to hide.
Everywhere he went, he felt her.
A glance from across a courtyard.
A shadow passing behind a column.
A soft breath when he turned a corner too quickly.
She was watching him — not with fear, not with pity, but with something far more dangerous.
Curiosity.
Longing.
Recognition.
And it terrified him.
That evening, he carried water jugs across the courtyard, the sky dimming into a deep violet. Servants passed him without a second glance, muttering about their chores, their gossip, their petty frustrations. To them, he was still nothing — a hooded beggar doing heavy work.
But she saw him.
She stepped out from behind a marble pillar, her dress catching the last light of the day. Her presence alone shifted the air, as though the world paused to make room for her.
"Mandle," she said softly.
He froze.
He didn't turn. He didn't breathe. He didn't trust himself to.
"You've been avoiding me," she continued, her voice quiet but steady.
"I have work," he said, forcing the words out.
"That's not why."
He closed his eyes. Her voice was too close, too warm, too honest. It slipped past every defense he had built.
She stepped closer, her footsteps barely audible on the stone. "Look at me."
He shook his head. "I can't."
"You can," she whispered. "You just don't want to feel what you felt yesterday."
His grip tightened around the jug. "I don't know what I felt."
"Yes," she said, her voice trembling with emotion she could no longer hide, "you do."
He turned then — slowly, painfully — and their eyes met beneath the shadow of his hood.
The tension between them snapped taut.
Her breath caught. His chest tightened. The world around them blurred into nothing.
"You don't have to hide from me," she said, stepping closer until he could feel the warmth of her body through the cold air. "I meant what I said. I love the way you are. All of you."
He swallowed hard. "You shouldn't."
"Maybe not," she whispered, "but I do."
The words hit him like a blow — gentle, devastating, impossible.
He took a step back, but she followed, refusing to let the distance grow.
"You think your scars make you unworthy," she said. "But they don't. They make you real. They make you strong."
"You don't understand," he whispered. "If anyone sees us—"
"They won't," she said, her voice fierce and soft all at once. "I won't let them."
For a moment, they stood there — a princess and a hooded servant — bound by a pull neither of them could break.
A pull that felt like destiny tightening its grip.
High above them, unseen, the City Lord stood on a balcony, watching the courtyard with narrowed eyes.
He couldn't hear their words.
He couldn't see their faces.
But he felt something.
A shift.
A disturbance.
A whisper of fate moving where it shouldn't.
He would find the source.
And when he did, nothing in the palace would remain the same.