The water dripped in slow, rhythmic beats, like a forgotten clock echoing in a stone chapel. Elias leaned forward, one hand delicately tracing the smooth rim of the fountain, the other catching a single, falling droplet. His eyes followed its descent, transfixed—not by its simplicity, but by the moment it became weightless before the fall.

“Do you often speak to fountains, my lord?”

The voice behind him was soft. Clear, but not mocking. Not like the others. Elias froze, hand still extended, the droplet sliding silently from his fingertip. He turned his head slowly.

She stood beneath the archway like something conjured from a snow-swept dream. The Crown Princess. Her hair fell in moonlit waves over her shoulders, kissed by jewels that shimmered like stars trapped in metal. Her eyes, pale and piercing, were focused on him—not in the way others stared, with quiet scorn or morbid curiosity. Her gaze held… patience. Wonder.

Elias straightened awkwardly, brushing at his coat. “Not speak, exactly,” he murmured. “They don’t answer, you see. But they remember things. I think.”

She stepped closer, the sound of her gown barely more than a whisper against the stone floor. “Remember?”

He nodded, glancing at the fountain again. “Yes. The water. The stone. They’ve seen generations pass. Lovers, secrets, grief. All of it, soaked in silence. It must stay somewhere, mustn’t it?”

The Princess smiled—gently, as if afraid a louder expression might scare him off. “No one has ever spoken of a fountain like that before.”

“No one listens to fountains,” Elias said without thinking. “Or to people who do.”

Her gaze lingered on him, and he felt the odd warmth of being seen—not inspected, not pitied. Seen.

“I would like to listen, Lord Thorne,” she said. “If you’d let me.”

His breath caught, not from fear this time, but wonder. The same kind he saw in falling droplets, frozen in air.