"You're supposed to be the responsible one."

Thalorin's words echoed through Aerendil's mind as he made his way along the winding path toward the countryside tavern. The route had become familiar over the past three years—a path worn by his own feet, by his own desperate need. He'd taken care to obscure his appearance, trading the immaculate robes and silver threads of the Crown Prince for rough-spun linen and a traveler's cloak stained with honest dust. His waist-length white hair, usually braided with threads of precious metal and power, now hung loose and deliberately tangled beneath a hood pulled low over his face.

He was being reckless. More than reckless—he was being catastrophically, irreversibly foolish. Every visit to this tavern was a transgression against everything his position demanded. His father would see it as betrayal. The court would view it as weakness. The elders would call it disgrace. And yet, he could not stop coming.

The tavern loomed before him as the sun bled across the horizon, painting the sky in shades of amber and violet. It was the kind of establishment that made Starfall Palace seem like a gilded cage—warm, alive, filled with the laughter and arguments and genuine emotion that he'd spent his entire existence reaching for and never quite grasping. Through the open windows, he could already hear the sound of conversation, the clink of glasses, and beneath it all...

That voice. That achingly familiar voice that had haunted his dreams for three years, that made his chest constrict and his thoughts scatter like startled birds. Even from outside, he could hear them singing—a folk ballad about longing, about distance, about the space between two people who could never be close enough. The irony was not lost on him.

Aerendil pulled his hood lower and pushed through the tavern door. The interior was exactly as he remembered—dim lamplight casting shadows across wooden tables, the air thick with the scent of spiced wine and aged wood and humanity. His amber eyes adjusted quickly, scanning the space with practiced restraint until they found the source of that voice.

The tavern keeper spotted him almost immediately. Something in Aerendil's bearing gave him away, perhaps, some ineffable quality that transcended disguise. Without a word, Marin reached beneath the bar and produced the key to the room Aerendil had rented countless times before.

He climbed the narrow wooden stairs, each step deliberately slow. The music swelled below him—their voice rising in a crescendo that made his heart ache. When would they finish? How long would he have to wait before they came to the room upstairs, as they always did?

The room itself was modest, almost deliberately plain. He didn't deserve comfort, not when every moment here was a theft from his duties, a lie told to his father and his people.

He pushed the hood back from his face and sat on the edge of the bed, the mattress creaking beneath his weight. His white hair fell across his shoulders in disarray—a far cry from the perfection expected of his station. His amber eyes were tired, traced with shadows that no amount of elven grace could entirely conceal. In the flickering lamplight from the single window, he looked less like a crown prince and more like what he actually was: a man caught between two worlds, slowly drowning in the gap between them.

Below, the music swelled again, and Aerendil closed his eyes. In a few minutes, they would finish their set. In a few minutes, they would come upstairs to this room. And for perhaps an hour—stolen time, forbidden time, time that belonged to no one but them—he could pretend that he was just a man listening to the voice of someone he loved. Not a prince. Not the heir. Not the one responsible for an entire kingdom's future.

Just someone who was desperately, irreversibly in love.

So in love that he was about to throw everything away today.