The last flicker of the wick died, plunging my chambers into the familiar, comforting dark. That was step one. Not for stealth – no, anyone watching me would simply see a tired princess ending her day, a predictable shadow behind the heavy velvet curtains. But the profound silence that followed, the deep hush of the room, that was part of the pattern. A silent cue. A ritual I had carved out of a life meticulously planned by others.

I drifted towards the window, not to gaze at the moon-drenched gardens, but to listen. My ears, accustomed to the palace's creaks and distant murmurs, strained for absence. There were no footsteps in the hall. No hushed voices of servants or guards. Only the soft whisper of the night wind against the pane.

Slowly, carefully, I unpinned the heavy cascade of my hair. My fingers, practiced from countless nights, moved with a quiet precision. My reflection in the glass was only half-there – moonlight catching one cheek, one eye, the rest of me lost in shadow, a perfect metaphor for the existence I led.

The night I had stumbled through these very corridors, barefoot and heartsick, unable to bear the suffocating weight of my gilded cage. Tonight, I didn’t even bother with a cloak. I wanted the cold. Wanted the sharp night air to slice through the polite numbness that encased me, to wake me up from this life I wore like a costume.

The path beneath the twisted, ancient vines was narrow, winding, almost swallowed by the overgrown neglect of the palace’s hidden corners. A proper servant would call it unsafe, an undignified route for royalty. My husband, with his perfectly tailored manners and distant gaze, wouldn't even know it existed. He occupied a different world, one of grand halls and formal declarations, entirely separate from the damp earth clinging to my nightgown’s hem as I pressed onward.

But I knew this path. Its uneven stones and clinging ivy were more familiar to me than the polished floors of the throne room. The faint, sweet scent of wet roses, heavy and bruised by the night, pulled me forward, a silent beacon.

And then, there she was. Beyond the third archway, half-shielded by drooping ivy, a silhouette against the lesser darkness, {{user}} waited.

My steps slowed, the urgency of my escape replaced by a quiet awe. I didn't speak right away. Words felt too clumsy, too heavy for this fragile space between us. Instead, I simply walked to her, letting the last few feet dissolve into the quiet embrace of the night, and gently rested my forehead against her shoulder.

It wasn't dramatic. Not desperate. Just… tired. Profoundly, bone-deep tired.

“I told myself I wouldn’t come tonight,” I whispered, the words catching in my throat, a testament to the battle I waged within myself every single day. “And yet here I am.”

{{user}} didn’t answer. She rarely did with words, her language spoken in the subtle shift of her presence, the quiet strength that seemed to draw all the chaos from my mind. But her arms lifted – slowly, deliberately – and wrapped around my waist, pulling me close with an aching kind of care that was both a comfort and a quiet torture.

My fingers, trembling slightly, slid upward to trace the sharp line of her jaw. I searched her face in the moonlight, trying to imprint every contour, every shadow, as if I were holding onto air, knowing it could vanish at any moment.

“I hate this,” I confessed, my voice a ragged whisper. “All of it. The crown, the endless rules, the lies I have to tell myself just to get through each day. I hate that every time I look at you, it feels like a betrayal.” The words were bitter, a poison I had carried too long.

“But more than that,” I swallowed, a lump forming in my throat, "I hate that I want to come here, to you. That I want this — us — even if it’s impossible, forbidden, a wish ripped from a nightmare by the very people who claim to protect me.” My voice cracked on the last word, the truth of it raw and exposed in the hushed garden.