The capital was warmer than she expected.
Not in temperature—though the late spring sun did linger longer over the marble-tiled courtyards—but in sound. The air carried voices more freely here, as if even the wind was encouraged to linger. Servants gossiped in open courtyards without bothering to lower their voices. Laughter rang across the gardens like wind chimes strung between balconies. Even the nobles, in their heavy embroidered clothes and artful expressions, seemed to speak without the stiffness Yunhua had always associated with their kind.
She should have found it strange.
Instead, she found it exhausting.
Every step she took in the guest wing felt deliberate, watched. Her borrowed robes—fine-cut, a shade too long in the sleeves—whispered too loudly against the polished floors. Her silence, once a comfort and a shield, now marked her as something unusual. Curiosity flickered behind every glance. Her presence stirred murmurs even when she said nothing at all.
Sairen had warned her.
"The capital is drawn to novelty," she had said gently, a flicker of something unreadable in her eyes. "And they know nothing rarer than a girl who belongs nowhere."
Yunhua had given no reply.
She had merely nodded, as she always did, and followed.
But as the days passed, she found herself seeking corners. Narrow walkways tucked between tall hedges. Empty antechambers with their windows flung open to birdsong and dust. Forgotten libraries with slanting light on shelves no one seemed to touch anymore. Places where the silk-soft murmur of the court couldn't reach her.
And there, in those still, stolen moments, her mind drifted.
Not to the politics she was meant to study.
Not to Lady Sairen.
But to Rowan.
—
It was stupid, she told herself. Illogical. Self-indulgent.
They hadn't spoken in weeks. Couldn't be called friends for years now. Not really. The last thing between them had been an argument—the kind of raw, splintered fight that never quite scabbed over. The kind where no apology would ever come because neither of them knew how to start.
And yet—
She reached for her gloves one morning and paused.
The worn pair she always used—fraying at the fingertips, weather-stained, rough in the palms—was missing. Left behind in the outpost, probably folded under her bedroll or tucked between pages of an unfinished journal. The ones Rowan had given her, grumbling about her frostbitten fingers, shoving them into her hands like it was nothing.
She had new gloves now. Finely made, dyed pale blue to match the lining of her ceremonial robe. Gold stitching at the seams. They were warm, elegant.
She hated them.
They were soft in the wrong places. Stiff at the joints. They didn't smell like garden soil or smoke. They didn't smell like home.
Not that the outpost had ever been home.
But Rowan had. In some foolish, half-formed, impossible way.
Even if it hadn't lasted. Even if they'd never said it aloud. Even if they weren't really friends. Weren't anything now.
Still—she had.
—
The palace library was enormous. Labyrinthine.
Its halls spiraled like the spine of some sleeping beast, with every corridor ending in a mirror or a statue or a window with light so golden it didn't look real. The scrollwork was ancient. The tomes—some of them older than the mountain passes—were chained to their shelves with silk-wrapped links. Yunhua should have been in awe.
Instead, she sat at a reading table with a half-translated scroll unfurled before her and a heavy ache behind her eyes. The words blurred. Her attention slipped.
She tried again to focus—on inked glyphs, on medicinal herbs mentioned in some forgotten dialect.
But her thoughts wandered.
To bloodroot. To frostbitten soil and half-remembered arguments in muddy boots.
To red curls catching sunlight.
To Rowan's voice.
Gods, she missed her voice.
The way it filled a room without overwhelming it. The way it curled around Yunhua's name like it belonged there. Her reckless laughter. Her terrible jokes. The way she'd fall asleep mid-conversation with her back against the wall and one boot still half-tied.
Yunhua hadn't realized how much space Rowan had taken up in her thoughts until she was gone.
Now the absence felt like snowfall.
Light. Constant. Suffocating.
—
A few evenings later, Lady Sairen invited her to a private viewing of the night-blooming orchids in the eastern garden.
"They only open when the moon is high," she said, guiding Yunhua past halls hung with perfumed silks and arches carved with birds in flight. "And only for a few hours. Most guests never bother to see them. A shame."
Yunhua followed silently, the train of her robe whispering along the stone.
The orchids were pale as bone. Their petals unfurled like sighs, soft and glowing with a faint inner light under the moon. Sairen crouched beside one, fingertips brushing the edge of a bloom as delicately as if it might shatter under her touch.
"Your mind is elsewhere." She says suddenly not even bothering to turn around, snapping Yunhua out of her daze.
"It's nothing." She replies, but the moment of hesitation was enough for Sairen to push it further.
"Is it the change in scenery, the sudden attention or... something you left back there, hm?" She questions Yunhua, amusement laced in her voice.
The silence was like an invitation for her to continue.
"Ah, is it perhaps that girl?"
"I just miss her..." Yunhua's voice came out weaker than she intended and Sairen finally turned around to look at the girl. A silent sigh of something akin to exasperation left her red lips as she closed the distance between them.
Yunhua stiffened.
She always did, when someone got too close.
But Sairen merely studied her with that same patient gaze, as if Yunhua were some rare orchid herself—something that bloomed only under specific conditions.
"You miss her," Sairen echoed. "Even after everything?"
Yunhua gave a small, bitter smile. "Especially after everything."
"You don't owe her that."
"I know."
"Then why?"
Yunhua hesitated.
There were so many things she could have said. Because I'm foolish. Because I don't know how to forget. Because part of me still believes she'll turn a corner and say something that makes it all make sense.
But what she said was simpler.
"Because she mattered. Even when she didn't mean to."
Sairen studied her in silence. The moonlight cast long shadows between them. Somewhere, a garden bell chimed softly.
"When something leaves a mark," Sairen said at last, "you don't get to choose how long it lasts."
Yunhua said nothing.
The orchids trembled in the wind.
—
That night, Yunhua lay in her borrowed bed, staring at the high-carved ceiling and thinking of the sound Rowan made when she was laughing too hard to breathe. Of the way her hands moved when she explained something she loved. Of the way they'd fought, all the words left unsaid and how even then, she'd still wanted her to stay.
Sleep didn't come easily.
When it did, she dreamed of frostroot blooming through cracks in polished stone. Of Rowan's voice echoing through empty halls. Of warm gloves tucked in her hands.
And for the first time since her mother's death, she woke with tears in her eyes.