The oars cut through the lake’s surface with a rhythm so steady, it could’ve been music—had Vernon been in the state of mind to hear it as such. But he was not. His thoughts were too loud for beauty.

Sunlight poured across the water like molten glass, and the entire lake was still, reflecting the pale sky and surrounding trees as if even nature had stilled itself to witness his humiliation. Vernon sat upright, coat perfectly tailored, hair immaculately tied back, hands folded in his lap with academic precision. And yet, for all his composure, a wildfire simmered beneath the surface.

He hadn’t intended to feel this...exposed.

She was rowing. Of course. He hadn’t thought to object when she took the oars—hadn’t even considered that, perhaps, a man who invited someone on a romantic excursion ought to do the physical labor himself. But Vernon did not labor. He advised kings. He drafted policy that shaped the realm. He corrected philosophers. His hands were not callused. They were not meant for effort—they were meant for direction, for intellect, for design.

He had designed this.

It was supposed to be a gesture. Quiet, refined, distinct from the crude ways lesser men courted women—flowers, compliments, clumsy conversation. Vernon didn’t believe in those things. He believed in purpose. In offering something real, not saccharine. He had arranged the lake outing in retaliation, truthfully—sparked not by affection, but by something dangerously close to desperation.

The Princess had been meddling.

She had never liked him, that petulant girl in silks. Always watching him with that performative smile, that thin veneer of charm stretched over clear disdain. He had long suspected she feared how easily he navigated her parents’ good graces, how his influence far outweighed her own despite his lack of noble blood. And now, like any creature backed into a corner, she had begun to scratch.

He hadn’t believed it at first—those whispered rumors about her playing matchmaker, arranging secret meetings in gardens, conversations between her lady-in-waiting and the knight, that shining symbol of virtue with all the depth of a puddle. But then he’d heard it from the Queen herself, that the Princess thought they were “perfect together.” That they would be a “sweet match.” That her lady deserved “someone kind.”

Kind.

As though kindness were something rare. As though it outweighed usefulness, ambition, and intelligence. Vernon knew what the Princess meant. She was not praising the knight—she was slighting him.

The man she paired her lady-in-waiting with was everything Vernon was not: warm, gregarious, simple. A man with good posture and open smiles and the sort of laugh that echoed down corridors like it had nothing to hide. He was the court’s favorite storybook son—beloved, boring, and safe.

Vernon loathed him.

He loathed his easy familiarity, the way he knelt too deeply when addressing nobility, as if his humility were a performance. He loathed the way he spoke to her—Vernon’s intended—with that charming cadence that made handmaidens sigh and even the Queen lean in closer.

And above all, he loathed that he might succeed.

The Princess was ruthless, in her own way. She didn’t like to lose. Especially not to Vernon. She had seen his gifts, of course, she had. Everyone in court had whispered about them, the silent procession of objects left in her lady’s quarters without note or explanation. She must have known what he was doing. Which meant this...interference was deliberate.

A challenge. Or worse, a rescue.

That thought sat in his gut like a stone. That perhaps the Princess believed her lady-in-waiting needed to be saved from him. From the coldness. The intensity. From the man who couldn’t even say her name aloud without his voice tightening.

He clenched his jaw, forcing the thought down before it swallowed him whole.

The oars continued their soft rhythm. The lake was quiet. The wind teased a single strand of hair loose from his ribbon, and it brushed against his cheek like the ghost of a hand he would never be allowed to hold.

He had given her gifts—he reminded himself of that, fiercely, as though recounting a defense in a trial. He had chosen them. Not ordered. Not delegated. Chosen. With intention. A porcelain hairpin made in the old empire’s style, its glaze no longer replicated. A handwritten collection of rare poetry, with annotations. A satchel woven with dragon’s silk. They weren’t just valuable. They were irreplaceable. Like her.

He had offered her pieces of his world. Subtle signs of regard. But now, sitting here, he wasn’t sure if she’d recognized them as such. Or if she had smiled politely and tucked them away, unaware that each object was a tether. A confession wrapped in silence.

Perhaps she’d even assumed the Princess sent them.

That thought made his vision blur for a fraction of a second behind his glasses. He removed them briefly, pressing his thumb and forefinger into the corners of his eyes, as if he could rub the shame out of them.

He had never courted anyone before.

That wasn’t a weakness. It wasn’t. It simply hadn’t been necessary. Romance was for lesser minds. Vernon had married ideas—efficiency, ambition, power. He’d never looked twice at anyone in the court. They didn’t interest him. They didn’t challenge him. Until her.

She had smiled at him in passing one night.

He hadn’t stopped thinking about it since.

And now, she sat across from him, close enough that he could count the freckles across the bridge of her nose if he dared to stare long enough—but he wouldn’t. He couldn’t. Because she wasn’t his. Not yet. Perhaps never. Not if the Princess succeeded.

Not if he failed.

The word left a taste in his mouth more bitter than ash. Vernon did not fail. His counsel had ended wars. His revisions to tax policy had tripled provincial income. He had, at the King’s own word, “saved the realm with ink and logic.” And yet he couldn’t hold the gaze of one woman. He couldn’t find the words to make her see.

That possibility was worse than rejection. Indifference he could manage. Rejection he could counter. But patience? Ambiguity? It left him floundering, exposed. It demanded vulnerability. And Vernon did not know how to be vulnerable without looking like a man unraveling.

He had chosen this lake because it was quiet. Because it was far enough from the palace that no one would see. Because he thought the privacy might invite intimacy. But now the stillness mocked him. Every splash of water felt like another beat in the litany of his failure.

He folded his hands tighter in his lap. He refused to look away, but his throat was dry, his breath short. He imagined the knight again—standing with flowers, laughing too easily, saying something clumsy and genuine and painfully human.

He couldn’t breathe.

He had never needed anything. Not before. Not like this.

But he needed her.

Not as a prize, not as a possession. As a person. The only one who made him question everything he thought he knew about love. The only one who made him want to learn it.

He wanted to tell her. In plain words. He wanted to say, I see you. I watch you when you’re not looking, and I think about you when I should be solving things. I’ve written your name in margins I’ve torn out. I don’t know how to do this, but I’m trying. For you.

But Vernon said nothing. He couldn’t. The words caught in his throat and turned to lead.

And so, instead, he sat with his hands folded and his jaw locked, and let the only person he had ever wanted row him farther into silence.