Lysandra peered at her sister with profound suspicion, her delicate features pinched. She had always been the conscience of the trio, and the talk of vanishing envoys sat in her stomach wrong.

"As long as it remains just a thought," Lysandra murmured, her voice a plea for civility.

"This is not Romelia," Jasmine answered, her tone flat and reassuring "And I have no desire to be the first sovereign in the history of the South to shatter the sanctity of the envoy. My rule is already a labyrinth of taboos given who I have in bed; I’d prefer not to add state-sanctioned murder to the architecture."

Besides, the Kakunians were guests. While guest-right had a sunset clause, butchering them the moment they cleared the city gates would be a stain no amount of rain could wash away. It wasn’t just about morality; it was about the optics of power.

"Speaking of taboos," Lysandra asked, leaning in, "do we know anything yet? Anything at all?"

To her left, Maraya remained silent, but her sharp, fox-like eyes imparted the same hungry question.

"If there were news, I would have shared it," Jasmine said somberly.

The air in the garden grew heavy, the pleasant rustle of the walnut trees suddenly sounding like the whispering of ghosts. This was the precipice. Even though the heaviest part of the storm had supposedly drifted away, through an operation whose details Alpheo had kept maddeningly vague, they were still deep in the woods.

Jasmine knew the stakes better than anyone. If Alpheo fell, Yarzat wouldn’t just lose a war; it would lose its soul. The enemy wasn’t just the coalition of princes at the gates; the enemy was sitting in the manors of Yarzat and Herculia who still dreamt of the Old Ways. As Alpheo often said, the only thing keeping the dogs from the throat of the state was the iron leash of the Legions. Without them, the wheel would stop turning their ways and go the other.

She was a woman, and for that, she had been given nothing but trouble. While other princedoms had known female regents and princess, she was the first to truly hold the reins in Yarzat’s long, masculine history. But the wheel rotated, and just as it had been her father’s time, it was now hers.

Her uncle Ormund had tried to cheat her of her turn. The princes of Oizenia and Ezvania had tried to force the wheel to skip a beat. If Alpheo fell, civil war would follow like a shadow, and her son Basil would be the first victim of their ambition. After him, there would only be Rosalind, a girl-child who Nibadur would undoubtedly betroth to some spineless pup of his choosing.

They summoned their storms and broke them against my husband, she thought fiercely. If they think they can cheat me of my turn under the sun, they can bloody well think again.

She was jolted from her dark reverie by Maraya’s voice, which had shifted to a much more predatory tone.

"Are you worried about that boy?" Maraya asked, turning her gaze pointedly toward Lysandra.

The sound of wine being sprayed across the table followed. Lysandra sat there, her nose dripping with red vintage, her eyes wide with shock.

"W-what? What are you talking about?" A stubborn droplet of wine hung from the tip of her nose. She wiped it away frantically with a rose-silk handkerchief, her face rapidly approaching the color of a ripe beet.

"Oh, my..." Maraya purred, a smile spreading across her face that was far too wide to be considered kind. "Gods strike me down, it seems a broken bow can still hit the mark. I didn’t believe my husband when he told me, but look at you!"

What are they talking about? Jasmine wondered, her irritation momentarily eclipsed by a soaring curiosity. She looked at her sister’s tomato-red face.

"Have you gone past the bushy garden, Lysandra? Is someone... hung?"

"Maraya!" Lysandra chided, her voice pitching up an octave.

Jasmine leaned in, a slow smirk tugging at her lips. Lysandra was nineteen, well past the age when a woman should be wed. Every time Jasmine brought it up with Alpheo, he became uncharacteristically vague, no doubt fearing the political complications of a marriage alliance, both inside and outside Yarzat.Was it for him she would be known as the virgin princess.

But the Aveloni-isha family was dangerously small, only four members. One plague or one well-placed blade was all it would take for the wheel to be snatched away by a rival house.

"Who is this dashing knight?" Jasmine asked, her eyes gleaming.

A polite, dry cough rang out from behind them. It was Old Sebastian, his face a map of neutrality. "Would perhaps your Grace prefer for me to withdraw? This appears to be a conversation not intended for common ears."

"Oh, dear Sebastian," Maraya purred, "I do not doubt the Prince and his generals have conversations half as interesting as ours while double in vulgarity . Stay! Don’t tell me you aren’t even a little curious?"

"My station compels me to shake my head, my lady," the old man replied, though his eyes twinkled a tiny bit.

Jasmine looked at Sebastian. He had been their caretaker since before she could walk, the only man in her life who had ever shown more warmth than the cold, distant statue that was her father.

"Won’t you tell us the name of this heart-thieving knight? Is it someone I know?" Jasmine leaned closer, her voice conspiratorial. "Mother is always saying you’re past time for the altar. Is this a prospect?"

Lysandra’s cheeks went a shade of red that Jasmine hadn’t thought humanly possible. "Would you really want to disappoint Mother?"

Lysandra drew the handkerchief to her mouth, mumbling something into the silk.

"What was that, sweetling?" Maraya prodded.

"Basil!" Lysandra blurted out, her voice louder this time as she tried to pivot. "Mother also wants to know when Basil is going to be betrothed! She’s always mumbling about how he never leaves the court, how he isn’t ’weaved into society.’ A future prince needs connections, she says!"

It was plain she was scrambling for a diversion, and while Jasmine knew exactly how to fish for a name, she let the hook dangle for now. A different shadow had begun to stretch over her mood at the mention of her son.

"I’ll show him exactly how I feel about his social graces the moment I get my hands on him," Jasmine muttered, the fire returning to her eyes. "Worrying his mother to death. Him and that idiot father of his! I truly do not know what to do with the boy; one moment he is as sweet as a summer peach, and the next I would have an easier time teaching a mule to dance."

She brought the wine to her lips, the vintage tasting like vinegar against her frustration. "I have broached the subject of his future a dozen times with Alpheo. I brought him names—sweet girls from houses with impeccable standing, prospects that would anchor our family for a generation. He didn’t even deign to look at the scrolls.

’He is too young!’ , or ’It is not yet time!’. I could list a whole book for every time I heard those. "

She sighed, the exhaustion of years of quiet domestic battles seeping from her lips. "’I have plans for him.’ That’s all he ever says, one way or another. And as much as it irks me to relent, Basil is a boy; the clock doesn’t tick quite so loudly for him.

But Alpheo keeps him so close, clutching him like a prized jewel, as if he fears everyone in the South is simply dying to plunge a dagger into the boy’s chest. Mother is right, a future prince needs to be woven into the fabric of his people. But try telling that to our dear conqueror. Try telling that to the boy. The Weaver alone knows who carried him for nine months; you’d think the mother would be the favorite, yet they act like a pair of thieving conspirators whenever I enter their little world."

She sipped sourly from her cup, the resentment of the left-behind boiling beneath her skin.

’’Men will be men’’

As Maraya was about to reply to that , the stillness of the garden was suddenly shattered by the sharp, rhythmic clinking of armor. The sound was hurried, metal plates slapping together in a frantic tempo that didn’t belong in the quiet sanctuary of the walnut trees.

Jasmine immediately straightened, her cup hitting the table with a sharp clack. Her hand went instinctively to the side of her neck. "What is this?" she demanded, her voice cutting through the air before the man had even rounded the hedge.

A guardsman burst into the clearing, his breastplate caked in the grass of the garden, his face flushed and glistening with sweat. He didn’t wait for a formal introduction; he dropped to one knee, his armor groaning as it hit the dirt, but the expression he wore was not one of defeat. A wide, breathless smile split his grime-streaked face.

"Your Grace," the guard gasped, his chest heaving.

"Speak!Is it the Prince? Is it Alpheo?" Jasmine commanded, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. "What has happened?"

The guard looked up, his eyes bright with a frantic, joyous light. "The whole city is in a ruckus, my Lady. The messengers have just cleared the gates.The people are calling it the Battle of the Ford’’

He bowed his head again, his voice ringing with a triumph that made the garden feel small. "It is victory, Your Grace. A total victory. His grace broke Oizen’s army. We are victorious"