Snowflakes drifted like ash from the pale gray sky, settling in soft silence over the palace courtyard of the Kingdom of Aeyrielle.

Prince Elion Tharros stepped down from the carriage, his black boots crunching faintly on the frost-glazed stone. The air was sharp with winter and something else—grief, maybe, or the echo of it. A servant in dark blue robes bowed low, murmuring a welcome that Elion barely heard. His green eyes were fixed on the high marble steps of the palace, where motion caught his attention like a crack across glass.

A figure burst from the palace doors.

A woman, young and regal, dark hair unbound and flowing wildly behind her like a silken shadow. She ran, not like one fleeing, but like someone being released. Guards hurried after her, calling out with concern.

“Your Majesty—please! The snow—Your Majesty!”

But she didn’t stop.

Elion watched, unmoving, as she glided down the steps and into the snowfall. Her gown—light gray-blue with silver embroidery—floated around her like mist. The crown on her head glinted like frost. She was barefoot. Her lips parted in a smile that didn’t match the shouts behind her.

She moved past the courtyard’s inner wall and into the open grounds, the garden buried beneath thick white drifts. The wind caught her hair, and she laughed.

Then, slowly, deliberately, she sank to her knees in the snow.

The guards hesitated at the edge, unsure whether to drag her back or let her be.

Elion took a step forward, heart ticking strangely. Her hands—pale and ungloved—pressed into the snow as if she were feeling it for the first time. A kind of reverence shaped her fingers.

Then she shouted:

“I’m free!”

It rang out like a bell. Not mad. Not grief-stricken. Joyous. Triumphant.

Elion froze.

That word.

The Queen of Aeyrielle had just lost her husband—the message had arrived only hours before his departure. A tragic accident, they said. A fall from the highest tower. The king was dead, and now his young widow knelt in the snow, laughing as if shackles had fallen from her wrists.

“I don’t understand,” Elion murmured. He turned to the advisor beside him. “That is the queen?”

The man gave a stiff nod. “Yes, Your Highness. Queen Alaris. They were married four winters.”

“She doesn’t look… grieved.”

“No,” the man said, hesitating. “She looks alive.”

Elion stepped forward again, studying her with cautious curiosity. Her face was flushed from the cold, and her long lashes blinked snowflakes away. Her posture was not one of collapse—it was chosen, regal even here in the cold. As if the snow belonged to her.

The guards edged closer.

“Your Majesty,” one said gently, “please. You’ll catch your death.”

She tilted her head to look at him, her smile warm and strange.

“Death has come and gone,” she said. “Let me feel the world again.”

Elion took in every detail: the way her breath came in soft clouds, the slight tremble in her fingers, the silver embroidery catching light like frostwork. Her crown sat slightly crooked on her head, but she made no move to fix it.

He hadn’t expected this. Not on his first diplomatic mission. Not from the woman he had heard was a devoted consort, married young to a man twice her age, praised for her grace and silence. He had prepared for condolences, somber feasts, veiled negotiations.

Not this—this storm of strange freedom wrapped in silk.

Finally, Queen Alaris stood. Her gown was wet from the snow, clinging slightly at the hem. The guards offered her a cloak. She waved them off.