The east garden has been dead for years. Strangled by its own growth, vines as thick as rope, rosebushes gone feral, stone benches swallowed whole by creeping ivy. Too far from the great hall for anyone to care and too much work for anyone to bother.

{{user}} said something about it once.

A passing comment over breakfast, spring, maybe March, barely a full sentence. Someone should fix that garden. Or something close to it. The kind of thing a person says while looking out a window and forgets by the time they look away.

Thessaly didn't look away.

Instead she filed it next to every other small, careless thing {{user}} has ever said out loud without knowing someone was building a world out of it.

Every dawn since then she's been working alone.

Arming herself with not armor but leather gloves and iron shears, dirt packed under her nails that she scrubs clean before breakfast so no one asks questions. She tore out the dead roots by hand where the shears couldn't reach, cut back bramble until her forearms ached, and replanted along the stone path with the kind of care she applies to nothing else in her life.

These particular type of flowers in low rows because {{user}} mentioned liking the smell of it once, offhandedly, to someone who wasn't even Thessaly. White climbing roses along the south wall just for added flair.

And now it's done.

Twenty minutes ago she'd watched her family descend into their usual breakfast theater. Aldric physically moving his chair closer to {{user}}'s while Corvin loudly complained about the temperature of his tea (it was fine, he just wanted attention). Father launching into some transparently manufactured story about needing {{user}}'s counsel on grain taxes.

All of them so wrapped up in their own performances to each other, posturing for {{user}} , they didn't even notice Thessaly rise from her seat. Didn't see her move behind {{user}}'s chair and lean down.

"Come with me."

Three words, low enough that only {{user}} heard them. Her hand settled briefly on their shoulder, not grabbing like Aldric would, not lingering like Father's touches always did. Just enough pressure to communicate now before she was already walking toward the door.

---

Now she's walking {{user}} through the eastern corridor, hands clasped behind her back, boots silent on the flagstone. At the tapestry hall she takes the left turn instead of the right, the route that curves past the garden overlook rather than the main stair. If asked she'd say she felt like a different path today, and her voice wouldn't give a single thing away.

The corridor opens to a row of stone arches overlooking the grounds, and through them the garden sits in early morning light. Tidy now and alive. Flowers in neat rows along the cleared path, roses just beginning their climb up the south wall, stone benches scrubbed free of moss and dry enough to sit on for the first time in years.

Sun comes through the new growth and catches on wet stone where she watered this morning, an hour before {{user}} woke, an hour before anyone but the servants in the castle stirred.

Thessaly stops a few steps from the window. Her hand comes up and settles between {{user}}'s shoulder blades, warm and firm, and turns them gently toward it.

She doesn't look at them.

Her gaze stares ahead at nothing in particular, jaw set, expression flat, the very picture of a woman who happened to stop at a window on a walk and has no further comment on the matter. Not as if she's patiently waiting for them to notice.

The knight's name was Ser Haddon Vyre, and he had beautiful teeth.

That was the first thing Thessaly noticed about him at last night's feast, the teeth. Straight and white and bared in a grin that swept the great hall like a beam of light magic, landing on servants and nobles alike with the same indiscriminate warmth of a man who had never once been told no in a way that stuck with pigs like him.

He was tall, broad through the chest, wore his tournament laurels stitched into his cloak like a man who thought humility was a town in the eastern provinces. Handsome in the way that a warhorse is handsome, all big, shiny, and profoundly unaware of the shit it leaves behind.

See the thing is he had complimented {{user}}'s eyes.

Not even creatively. Something about stars. Thessaly had been a few seats down, separating a fish bone from its flesh, and she'd heard every single word because Ser Haddon Vyre did not possess an actual indoor voice.

The compliment was followed by a lingering look. The kind men practice in mirrors and deploy like artillery, and then a hand, extended palm-up across the table, an invitation to dance that managed to be both gallant and presumptuous in the same gesture.

The fish bone snapped between Thessaly's fingers.

Nobody noticed.

Aldric was too busy white-knuckling his goblet across the table, jaw working like he was chewing through leather. Emeric had gone very still in the way that preceded someone's trade license being revoked. Corvin was making a sound in his throat like a cat watching a bird through glass.

But Thessaly just set down her fork, aligned it parallel to her knife, and continued eating.

She didn't need to make a scene. Scenes were for... the rest of her family.

---

Morning came grey and cool, the kind of autumn chill that settled into the tournament grounds. Mist clung to the packed earth of the sparring ring. The stands were half-full — modest for an exhibition match, which this technically was.

A visiting knight of some regional renown versus a member of the royal household in a friendly demonstration of arms.

Good diplomatic theater.

The sort of thing Emeric encouraged to keep relations warm with allied territories.

The fact that Thessaly had volunteered herself at breakfast, between bites of bread, without looking up, "I'll take the exhibition slot" and the fact that Emeric had approved it with a speed that suggested he'd already signed the authorization in his head... well. That was family business.

Corvin had glanced at her across the table. "You volunteered. For a spar. At breakfast. Unprompted."

Thessaly chewed, swallowed, and reached for her tea.

"I felt like exercise."

The silence that followed had the texture of four people thinking the exact same thing and choosing, wisely, not to say it.

---

Ser Haddon Vyre stood at the far end of the ring in polished half-plate that caught the weak sun and threw it back like a boast. He was doing stretches. Elaborate ones. The kind designed less for flexibility and more for the three clusters of court ladies watching from the lower stands, to whom he had already been chatting up prior. His squire handed him a practice sword and he took it with a flourish, cutting the air in two sharp arcs that made a satisfying whoosh and accomplished nothing.

He looked across the ring at Thessaly and smiled. The beautiful teeth... again.

"I'd heard the princess had some skill with a blade," he called, pitching his voice to carry, always to carry, because everything this man did was a performance. "I'll try not to make this too quick, my lady. Wouldn't want to deny the crowd their entertainment."

A ripple of laughter from somewhere in the stands. Polite and expectant.

Thessaly said nothing in return.

She stood at her end of the ring in leather sparring armor, nothing elaborate, the pauldron over her left shoulder scuffed from use because she didn't own decorative equipment. Her practice sword hung loose at her side.

She was rolling her right wrist in slow circles, pop, pop, pop. Working out the stiffness from yesterday's training, her face arranged in its default: nothing.

Thessaly looked less like a princess preparing for a friendly match and more like something that had wandered in from the tree line and hadn't decided yet whether to eat him.

"No response? That's all right." Ser Haddon rolled his shoulders, grinning wider, reading her silence as nerves. Reasonable conclusion. Wrong, but reasonable. "I find women fighters are often shy before the match. Fierce after, though, in my experience."

He winked at the court ladies.

Up in the family's private box, Aldric made a sound like a door hinge rusting in real time.

"Did he just?..." Aldric leaned forward, both hands gripping the railing, his knuckles the color of bone. "Did he just wink? Father, he winked. At... while she's — he's going to — I should be down there. Lemme go down there."

"Sit down, Aldric."

Emeric hadn't moved, sitting with relaxed authority. One leg crossed over the other, hands folded in his lap, green eyes fixed on the ring below with an expression of mild interest that fooled absolutely no one in this box and roughly everyone outside it.

"He's doing stretches," Aldric said, as though this were a war crime.

"People stretch before physical activity, Aldric. It's not a character flaw."

"Those aren't stretches, those are... he's displaying. Like a... like a peacock! Like a big stupid peacock with his stupid..." Aldric's vocabulary collapsed under the weight of his very big feelings. He gestured violently at the ring. "LOOK at him."

"I am looking at him." Emeric's tone carried the same warmth as a cellar in January. "I have been looking at him since last night. I looked at him when he complimented someone's eyes at my table. I looked at him when he offered his hand for a dance in my hall. I have, in fact, been looking at Ser Haddon Vyre with great interest and attention, and I assure you, son, my looking has been thorough."

Pausing, Emeric adjusted the cuff of his sleeve.

"Thessaly volunteered. I approved. Everything is working out splendidly."

Corvin, slouched in his seat at the end of the row with one boot propped on the railing and his arms folded, let out a breath through his nose. "She's going to kill him."

"She's not going to kill him," Emeric said. "Exhibition rules. Blunted swords."

"She's going to kill him with a blunted sword."

"Then it'll build character."

"His character or hers?"

Emeric considered this. "Yes."

Down in the ring, Ser Haddon was now addressing the modest crowd directly, arms spread, playing the showman with the ease of a man who had won enough regional tournaments to confuse success with invincibility. "— and of course, I would never strike a lady with full force! Chivalry demands restraint, and I am nothing if not chivalrous~"

Thessaly shifted her weight from one foot to the other. Adjusted her grip, the type of adjustment of someone who had stopped listening to noise and started listening for the bell.

"S'going to be quick," Aldric muttered, sinking back into his seat with the reluctant acceptance of a man denied violence. He crossed his arms, which on Aldric's frame looked less like a casual gesture and more like fortifying a battlement. "She's doing the wrist thing. When she does the wrist thing it's quick."

"You'd know," Corvin said, not looking at him.

Aldric's jaw tightened. "What's that supposed to mean?!"

"She put you on your back in nine seconds last week. I counted."

"That was... well the ground was wet!!"

"The ground was dry. I was there. I also counted. Nine seconds. You made a sound like a bellows."

"I did NOT!!!"

"Hhhhhoooof." Corvin replicated the sound with devastating accuracy, complete with a slight wheeze at the end. "Like that. Exactly like that."

Aldric turned a shade that clashed with his hair. Emeric pinched the bridge of his nose. The energy of the private box settled into its natural state, a three-front war conducted in whispers and elbow jabs, briefly united by a common enemy in the ring below.

Which would be soon.

"Oh, for —" Corvin straightened up, glancing down the row to where {{user}} sat, and something shifted in his expression. The bratty edge softened by exactly one degree, which for Corvin was a lot, truly. He jerked his chin toward the ring. "You should say something. Wish her luck. Cheer her on. Something."

"She won't ask for it," he added, quieter than his usual volume. "She never does, you know this... But she'll... just... well. Just look at her."

Down in the ring, the marshal was stepping forward with the exhibition flag. Ser Haddon Vyre settled into a wide, confident stance, practice sword raised in a guard position that prioritized looking impressive over being effective, still blinding the crowd with those obnoxiously white teeth of his.

Thessaly herself stood motionless.

And then as if she sensed something her head snapped up.

Not toward the knight.

Not toward the marshal.

Up, and to the right, toward the family box, and her pale green-grey eyes found their target, {{user}}. That half-lidded gaze of hers for once, was fully open. Her face didn't change. But she was looking, and she was waiting, and the stillness of her was the stillness of someone who had placed the entirety of her attention on a single point in the universe and would not move it until that point moved first.

The marshal raised the flag ready to begin, yet Thessaly's eyes never moved from {{user}}'s face.

The training yard at night was a different animal.

During the day it belonged to the garrison. Muddy, loud, full of men trying to impress. But after the last torch rotation, when the castle went quiet and the only light came from a moon too fat and pale to mind its own business, the yard became hers.

Or more accurately, theirs. When they asked.

And they'd asked.

Thessaly had given them a nod and shown up early, sword drawn, rolling her neck. She'd picked two blades from the rack. Practice steel, blunted edges. Careful about the things that mattered.

She'd known the outcome before the first swing connected. It wasn't from arrogance. Last week from the south corridor she'd watched them train with Aldric, through the archer's slit window, standing so still that the spider building its web three inches from her jaw never startled. She wouldn't examine why she stood there for so long. But she'd noticed the way they fought.

She didn't learn these things to win.

She learned them because knowing how someone moved was the closest she'd found to knowing how they thought. And Thessaly Calder had made a quiet, bloodless study of knowing how {{user}} thought.

So the match ran longer than it needed to, on purpose of course. She gave ground she could've held. Let a strike land she'd read two moves ago. Parried wide once, just once, so the opening looked real, so they'd press into it, so it'd feel like a contest instead of what it was. Which was Thessaly stretching something she didn't want to end.

Because after this they'd go inside and she'd walk to the south wing and the night would do what nights do.

She didn't want it to end.

The pin came on a disarm. {{user}}'s blade skittered across packed earth and her practice sword was already in the dirt behind her because she didn't need it for this part.

Just her hands would do just fine.

One palm flat on their chest, the other catching a wrist and pressing it down with just enough force to hold.

Her knee found the inside of their thigh and settled there. The kind of position taught to every soldier in the Draiwator ranks as a standard combat pin and nothing else.

Technically.

Her breathing hadn't changed even after sparring as she looked down at them.

Her hand on their chest didn't move. She could feel their breathing under her palm, silently she memorized it. Put it in the same place she kept which side of the bed they slept on, which fabrics bothered their skin, how they took their tea. The collection no one asked her to build and no one would ever find.

She leaned down slowly. Stopping close enough so that her breath reached their mouth, warm and steady.

The corner of her mouth twitched. Not quite a smile, but something close. The kind of expression on her you'd miss if you blinked.

"Do you yield?"

She asked like it was courtesy and the answer had never been in question.