Ryder stood beside Damon and Fenway by the front steps. They watched as the carriage was rolling up the road.

  Damon taking a deep breath. "My future Queen is almost here. You will get so much alone time with her with Dato and I out trying to win over a Princess."

  Ryder just watched the carriage. "I will enjoy the silence." He murmured and let his eyes shift away from the carriage to Damon. "Fenway is going to love the quiet."

  Damon nodded as Fenway sighed. But Ryder's mind went back.

  It was summer court, the kind where the capital smelled of sun-warmed stone and jasmine from the palace gardens. Ryder had been performing his princely duties, smiling at noble daughters, nodding through conversations, avoiding matchmaking glances, when he noticed her again.

  Serenity LaRue.

  Standing half-behind a marble column near the atrium, as if the shadows were her shield.

  Brunette hair braided neatly down her back.

  Gray eyes that flicked his way and immediately dropped, like she feared being caught looking.

  He told himself it was disinterest.

  Some stubborn piece of him believed it.

  Some wounded piece liked believing it.

  He approached anyway.

  She startled so visibly he almost apologized. "Crown Prince!"

  “I didn’t mean to interrupt you,” he said lightly.

  “I—I wasn’t…” She flushed pink, hands twisting the hem of her sleeve. “I wasn’t avoiding anyone.”

  He blinked. “I didn’t say you were.” He let a small grin spread.

  “You didn’t have to,” she whispered.

  Ryder tilted his head. “Serenity LaRue, are you… hiding?”

  She bit her lip, embarrassed. “Only a little.”

  And that, unexpected honesty, cracked something warm open in him.

  “From who?” he asked, leaning against the column beside her.

  “…everyone,” she admitted.

  He smiled, softening. “Do I count as everyone?”

  Her eyes flicked up, then away again. “No,” she said. “Not really.”

  And for the first time since Kairi’s gentle rejection, something in Ryder’s chest eased, quietly, unexpectedly, beautifully.

  For months after this moment, he seeked her out at all public functions and they talked more and more till that timid bird started to sing just a little bit.

  The LaRue carriage had barely crossed the palace gates when Serenity nearly tumbled out of it, skirts gathered in both fists, gray eyes bright.

  Ryder laughed as he crossed the courtyard. “Slow down. You’ll make the stablehands think you’re being chased.”

  “I am,” she said breathlessly.

  “By what?”

  “My mother’s opinions on embroidery density.”

  He barked a laugh. “Rescue mission, then. Understood.”

  He offered his arm.

  She hesitated for a heartbeat, she always did, but this time she took it without prompting. Her hand was small in his, cold from nerves, but she didn’t pull away.

  He escorted her to the gardens, where the wisteria hung low and the bees buzzed lazily among the blossoms.

  She looked around in awe. “It’s grown so much since last spring.”

  “I asked them to add more wisteria.”

  He didn’t say it’d been because she once mentioned it reminded her of home.

  She turned to him, lips parted in soft surprise. “You remembered that?”

  Ryder shrugged, suddenly sheepish. “I try to remember what matters.”

  Her gaze softened. “You do,” she murmured. “More than you know.”

  He swallowed, cheeks warming.

  Her shyness didn’t make her small, it made every piece she offered feel deliberate, precious.

  He loved this about her.

  Loved that her affection came like dawn breaking, slow, gentle, impossible to mistake once it arrived.

  They’d stolen a quiet hour on a balcony overlooking the lake, the same one his family favored for summer evenings. The moonlight turned Serenity’s eyes silver, and she rested her head against his shoulder, comfortable in a way she hadn’t been the first year. Or even the second.

  “Your letters kept me sane,” she said quietly. “In the country house. I think… I think I would’ve felt very alone without them.”

  He brushed a loose strand of hair from her cheek. “I’m glad they meant something.”

  “They meant you cared.” She exhaled softly. “I know I’m not… bold. I know I don’t shine like some of the ladies here. But you’ve always been patient with me. You never rush me.”

  “I never want to rush you.” He spoke softly gazing out at the lake and it's reflection of both the moons.

  “Why?” she asked, almost shyly.

  Ryder hesitated.

  Not because he didn’t know the answer.

  Because he did.

  And saying it aloud felt like stepping off a cliff.

  “Because,” he said slowly, “every time you give me a new piece of yourself, it feels like a gift I haven’t earned.”

  Her breath hitched. “Ryder…”

  “I like who you become when you’re comfortable,” he said. “I like who I am when I’m with you. And I—”

  He stopped before the words I think I love you could slip out.

  She lifted her head, blinking up at him. “I want you to meet my father,” she said. “Properly, this time. Before we leave for the country.”

  The meaning hit him like a bell.

  This wasn’t a polite invitation.

  This was a door opening.

  He felt warmth bloom in his chest. “I’d be honored.”

  She smiled, small, real, radiant in its quiet way.

  He kissed her then.

  Slow.

  Careful.

  Reverent.

  Because they weren’t rushing.

  They had time.

  Years left to build something steady and gentle and true.

  In that moment, Ryder Lyon knew, absolutely, deeply, that he wanted to marry Serenity LaRue.

  Ryder had always thought goodbyes should be clean.

  A clasp of hands. A bowed head. A few measured words that closed the distance between people with dignity, not tears.

  It turned out all that discipline frayed the second Serenity LaRue smiled at him from the shadow of her family’s carriage.

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  The LaRue estate’s front drive was dappled with morning light, the kind that caught on dust motes and made them look like falling stars. Stablehands moved quietly, efficient and practiced; trunks were lashed in place, parcels checked, the harness adjusted on the matched bays. House LaRue’s crest, green ivy twined around a silver key, gleamed on the carriage door.

  Serenity stood beside it with gloved hands folded, gray eyes bright, travel cloak drawing a soft line from her shoulders to the stone at her feet.

  “This is ridiculous,” she murmured, just loud enough for him to hear. “I’ve gone to the summer estate every year since I was twelve.”

  “And every year,” Ryder said, “I’ve stood on these steps and watched you go.”

  He tried to keep his tone even. It came out softer than he meant.

  She looked up at him, little smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. “You have not. Some years you just waved and pretended not to be watching.”

  “Then I did it poorly,” he said. “I remember every carriage.”

  The faintest flush colored her cheeks. The breeze tugged at a dark strand of hair that had escaped her pinned-up style; it brushed her cheek before tucking itself back behind her ear as if it knew the way.

  He had asked her parents the night before.

  The memory sat behind his eyes like a lantern.

  The LaRue sitting room had been all polished wood and cream upholstery, the air laced faintly with tea and old books. Serenity’s mother sat straight-backed with her hands folded, knuckles soft with age but steady. Her father watched Ryder over the rim of his glass with the kind of look nobles reserved for weighing grain, coin, and men.

  Ryder hadn’t fidgeted. He was the Crown Prince of Naberia. He knew how to hold silence, how to wait for his moment.

  When it came, he didn’t gild it.

  “I’ve come to ask for your permission,” he’d said, “to court your daughter with the intent to marry, if she’ll have me.”

  No flourish. No titles. Just the truth, laid gently on the table between them.

  Serenity’s mother’s eyes had gone glass-bright. Her father’s had narrowed, assessing, not unkind.

  “You understand,” Lord LaRue said after a moment, “that your asking is…not a small thing.”

  “I do,” Ryder said quietly.

  “And that this path is not easily stepped off, for either family.”

  “I am not in the habit of changing my mind,” he’d replied. His gaze stayed steady on the older man’s. “Not about matters of state. And certainly not about Serenity.”

  A beat.

  Then Lord LaRue had nodded once, the kind of nod that shifted the weight of years.

  “You have our permission,” he’d said. “Our blessing, if you want it.”

  “I do,” Ryder had said.

  Lady LaRue had dabbed at the corner of her eye and insisted on tea to celebrate; he’d accepted with a smile that felt a little like standing on the edge of something good and solid for the first time in a very long while.

  Later, they’d sent for her.

  The drawing room had emptied of parents and servants, just as he’d quietly, politely asked. He’d stood by the tall window, hands folded behind his back, watching late light spill over the gardens.

  He heard her before he saw her—the whisper of skirts, the soft catch of breath in the doorway.

  “Ryder?”

  He turned.

  Serenity stood just inside the threshold, fingers curled in her skirts, looking at once shy and hopeful, like someone expecting either a reprimand or a gift.

  He did not make her wait.

  “Your parents have given their consent,” he said. The words felt too big and too simple for what they meant. “To our courtship. With the intent to marry.”

  Her lips parted on a soft inhale. Her hand went to her mouth.

  “For…you and—me?” she asked, as if there might have been some confusion.

  The corner of his mouth lifted. “That was my understanding, yes.”

  She laughed then, a sound like water over stone, and crossed the room in three quick steps that startled him because she never moved quickly in public. Her arms went around him in a fierce, impulsive hug.

  Ryder went very still.

  Then his own arms came up, hesitating only once before settling around her waist.

  “I was afraid,” she said against his shoulder, words warm through the fabric of his coat, “you’d change your mind. Or decide I was too quiet. Or too dull. Or that you needed someone…brighter, for a queen.”

  “I am not in the habit of changing my mind,” he murmured into her hair. “And I have had enough brightness for a lifetime.”

  She leaned back enough to look up at him, gray eyes uncertain and bright. “So you want…me.”

  He’d held her a little tighter, just for a breath.

  “Yes,” he said simply. “If you’ll have me.”

  She smiled then, like dawn.

  “If I’ll have you,” she repeated, amused and breathless and on the edge of tears. “You absolute, impossible man.”

  She nodded, once, and there was steel in it.

  “Yes,” she said. “I’ll have you.”

  Now, in the morning light of departure, that memory sat between them like a secret no one else on the drive could see.

  Serenity smoothed her gloves, eyes roaming his face as if memorizing lines she’d already traced a hundred times.

  “My mother will insist on at least twenty letters,” she said. “One for every dull afternoon at the estate.”

  “I had planned on writing more,” Ryder said.

  Her smile sharpened. “Good. I’ll need something to lord over my cousins. ‘My suitor writes better prose than yours.’”

  “You like my letters?” he asked, mock-affronted. “I was under the impression you endured them.”

  “I hoard them,” she corrected, voice softening. “I keep them tied with a ribbon in a box under my bed. So no one reads them and gets ideas.”

  “Ideas?”

  “About you.” She tilted her chin. “About me.”

  He went quiet at that, something warm and fierce settling low in his chest.

  One of the footmen approached, cleared his throat. “My lord, my lady. We’re nearly ready.”

  Serenity nodded, then turned back to Ryder. Her hand went to a small pocket at the side of her cloak.

  “I nearly forgot,” she said. “Here.”

  She drew out a folded handkerchief, white linen edged in pale green embroidery. His initials were stitched in one corner, hers in the other—R.L. and S.L., neatly intertwined.

  “This is for when you’re being very serious at council and need something to remind you you’re a person,” she said. “Not just…a crown.”

  He took it carefully, as if it were more fragile than cloth.

  “You made this?” he asked.

  “I stabbed myself five times and swore at least twice,” she replied. “So you’d better actually use it.”

  “I will treasure it,” he said.

  “That’s not the same as using it.”

  “It’s the same in this case,” he said gently, and tucked the handkerchief into an inner pocket, over his heart.

  She rolled her eyes, but there was no heat in it.

  He offered his hand. She placed her gloved fingers in his, and he helped her up the carriage step as if she were made of glass.

  On the small landing by the door, she paused and looked down at him.

  “I’ll write,” she promised.

  “And I’ll answer,” he said.

  “See you in autumn?” she asked.

  “See you in autumn,” he echoed.

  She hesitated, then leaned down quickly and pressed her lips to his cheek. It was chaste and quick and still somehow felt like something inside his chest reorienting around a new north.

  He didn’t reach for her when she drew back. He wanted to. He let her go.

  The door closed. The driver clucked to the horses. The carriage rolled forward, wheels crunching on the pale gravel.

  Ryder stood on the estate steps until it was nothing but a dark smudge at the curve of the road, then nothing at all.

  He didn’t know that was the last time he’d see the real Serenity.

  Autumn came in with a bite to the air and a haze of woodsmoke over the capital.

  Ryder stood on the palace steps in his formal coat, cloak fastened at one shoulder, the LaRue crest banner flying alongside the royal one in quiet honor of their return. The stone under his boots still held a breath of the day’s sun; above, the sky had turned the flat, pale blue that came just before the first frost.

  Carriages had been coming and going since morning. Officials, minor nobles, trade delegations. None of them mattered.

  He only watched the road.

  When the LaRue carriage finally appeared at the far end of the long approach, something in his chest eased and tightened at the same time.

  He knew that carriage. The particular shine of its lacquer. The way the house colors were trimmed around the wheel spokes. The slight sway it had when the driver handled the reins too sharply at the first turn.

  His fingers brushed, unconsciously, over the place in his coat where the handkerchief rested, edges softened from being smoothed between his fingers on long nights.

  Damon gave a small squeeze on his shoulder as himself and Fenway walked back into the palace.

  The carriage drew closer, slowed, and finally rolled to a stop at the base of the steps. The driver snapped the reins once more, bringing the horses to a neat standstill. A footman hopped down, moved to open the door.

  Ryder exhaled. He kept his shoulders straight, his face composed. But joy thrummed under his ribs, small and fierce.

  She’s here. She’s safe. We have time.

  The footman swung the door wide.

  Serenity stepped down into the autumn light.

  She wore travel blue instead of the soft rose tones she favored in the city, her hair arranged in a more elaborate style than when she’d left, twist tighter, the pins finer. She moved with a touch more poise, perhaps; time away with her mother tended to bring out her most polished manners.

  But her face—

  Her face was Serenity’s. The same gray eyes. The same mouth that tilted shy when she smiled. The same small line between her brows when she looked up at the palace, like she still couldn’t quite believe she belonged here.

  Ryder realized belatedly that he was already moving.

  He descended the steps faster than protocol would have recommended, boots ringing on stone, his composure a step behind his feet for once.

  She saw him halfway up and stilled, hands tightening briefly on her skirts.

  “Your Majesty,” she started, dipping, but he was already there, reaching for her hand.

  “Welcome home, Serenity,” he said.

  Her glove was cool in his.

  For a heartbeat, something flickered in her eyes—surprise, sharpened into something he couldn’t immediately name.

  Then she smiled, just as he remembered she would.

  “Thank you,” she said, voice warm and smooth. “It’s good to be back.”

  He lifted her hand, brushed his lips over the back of her glove, the gesture practiced and public and, this time, deeply personal.

  Autumn wind tugged at the banners overhead.

  The palace watched its prince greet the woman everyone assumed would one day be its queen.

  Ryder only felt the simple, quiet truth of it:

  For the first time in months, the city felt less like stone and duty and more like a place a man could build a life.

  He tucked her hand in the crook of his arm to lead her inside, the words he’d written in unsent letters echoing faintly at the back of his mind.

  I hope the summer is kind to you. I hope you come back. I hope we have years.

  “Tell me everything,” he murmured as they climbed the steps. “I’ve been waiting all season to hear about how dull the country is.”

  She laughed on cue. And she began to tell him about the country.