For all his years of discipline and battle, Sir Alaric Thorne had never mastered silence the way she had. In the stillness before dawn, every sound felt amplified — the steady pulse in his chest, the faint echo of his boots against the stone path. The royal gardens were forbidden at this hour; the guards were changing shifts, and for a fleeting moment, the world belonged to neither crown nor command. It was the only time they could meet.

He shouldn’t have come. Every lesson drilled into him — every vow, every scar — warned against this. Duty and desire were not meant to share the same breath. And yet, when he saw her waiting beneath the ivy-draped archway, all those lessons crumbled into dust.

She wore a cloak, her hood drawn low, but he would have known her anywhere. The way she held herself — poised yet restless, as though stillness itself was a cage — was unmistakable.

He stopped a few paces away, the distance between them heavy with everything unsaid. “Your Highness,” he murmured, his voice roughened by restraint. “If they find you here—”