Chapter Text
“This servant humbly greets Your Majesty.”
She kneels before the throne. Beside her is a small briefcase, carrying whatever supplies she needs—brushes, loose papers, charcoal. Her notebook, which she brings with her everywhere. Nothing more than that. Nothing less.
“Rise, child.”
She does, lifting herself from the floor, smoothing down the front of her dress. She raises her gaze to the empress, who looks down at her from upon the throne. Her expression is cool. Mildly curious, mildly assessing.
She does not let herself react. Not visibly, anyway. She stands and waits for the scrutiny—to continue, to linger, to end. It will come to pass at some point. Attention from the child of heaven is not so easily granted. Fleeting and momentary, a flicker in time itself, yet her gaze carries with it the weight of a nation.
“You are the artist,” the empress finally says. “The one who has agreed to take my commission.”
She nods. “I am, Your Majesty.”
The empress studies her for a while. A few seconds, a few distinct beats of her heart. Something within her clenches, tight and small. Something that is neither quite fear nor excitement. Something quiet and trembling, like a whisper, like a secret, like breath grazing the shell of your ear.
“Tell me your name again.”
“Lumine, Your Majesty.”
“You must have heard the stories,” the empress says. “About how difficult the crown prince can be.”
“I have, Your Majesty.”
“Then why have you agreed to take this on?”
She pauses here. Looks at the empress, who regards her with that same cool distance as before. She takes a moment to consider.
Why, indeed, had she taken on this commission?
She is not foolish. She knows there is a reason no one else has stepped forward to accept the crown’s request, generous as the rewards are. Most people are prideful, and where they are not, they are practical—they will not take on a commission they know they cannot fulfil. Will not take on the risk of the imperial family’s ire should they fail to meet their demands.
And yet, here she is. Stepping forward. Willingly accepting this request, with no blade held to her throat, no threat whispered in the dark.
Inazuma’s imperial family is austere. Known for its dignity, its standards, its adherence to unspoken rules. No artisan comes before them without a healthy measure of faith in their own ability to deliver on what they promise, for fear of drastic loss—not only in time and resources, but in reputation. To answer the throne is to answer the heavens, to lift one’s head from the mud of the common man and declare for all to see: I am better. I am greater. I am worthy.
She does not think of herself as exceptionally worthy. She does not think of herself as anything much at all.
And yet, here she is. Standing before the throne, her briefcase at her feet. Nothing with her but the clothes on her back and her small, secret wish.
“I am in need of the money, Your Majesty,” she finally says.
The empress tilts her head, watching her with those piercing violet eyes, the colour of an overcast sky when thunder rumbles and lightning sparks along the horizon.
“Then you shall do a fine job,” she says at last.
Lumine inclines her head, lowering her gaze to the marble floor, and says nothing.
She is shown to her room.
It is tucked deep within the palace, so far in that she knows she would not be able to find her way back outside without help.
One of the maids leads her there; she is quiet, stoic and unflinching. When she speaks, it is soft, mild. She navigates the long, echoing halls with an ease that feels like breathing—an efficient, almost weary instinct, as though she has walked these paths so many times they have etched themselves into her bones.
“You will stay here,” she says when they arrive at the door to Lumine’s borrowed quarters. “For one year, or until you finish the commission, whichever is sooner.”
Lumine nods. “Am I allowed to leave the palace grounds?”
“Not until you are finished,” the maid replies. “Her Majesty would prefer that you not be distracted from the matters at hand.”
She had expected it. It still grates, faintly, but she does not allow it to show on her face. This separation, this clean severance from the outside world—it is a choice she made the moment she heard the announcement. That the palace was seeking an artist who could capture the crown prince’s likeness.
The imperial family lives far removed from the lives of common folk, in a palace built into the side of a mountain. So remote, so difficult to reach, that most would never attempt the journey, not unless they were desperate to seek the empress’s counsel. And even then, those who braved the climb were not guaranteed an audience. The child of heaven is busy, naturally. She does not have the freedom to entertain the complaints of ordinary people.
Lumine had come here knowing that to accept this request is, in a sense, to disappear. To cut herself away from the material world. From all that is worldly, from anything that might trouble her, until she fulfils what she has promised. The journey alone had suggested as much—weeks by horse, stretches on foot, all under the escort of imperial guards. She cannot imagine making the trip alone.
Still. Awareness and acceptance are two entirely different things. Knowing her fate is not the same as surrendering to it. She still has wants. Concerns. Troubles that bleed in from the fragile, fleeting mortal world, casting quiet shadows along the edges of her thoughts.
But she has done what she must to ensure she will not be missed. There is nothing more that can be done.
The maid slides the door open, and Lumine catches her first glimpse of the room that will be hers for the duration of her stay. She lingers at the threshold, balanced between the corridor and the unfamiliar space beyond, and takes it in.
It is beautiful.
Large—larger than anywhere she has ever lived. Simple, minimal, elegant. Tasteful décor. Ink paintings hung along the walls. A ceramic vase set in the corner, from which a bough of sakura rises. There is space, so much space that, for a moment, she wonders if she has been led to the wrong room. Why would she need so much of it?
“This is truly my room?” she asks, turning to the maid.
The maid nods. “Her Majesty said this room would be best for you.”
“Did she say why?”
“It overlooks one of Her Majesty’s favourite gardens,” the maid says, inclining her head.
Lumine follows her gaze. A large bay window sits along the far wall, and beyond it—trees. Leaves swaying in the breeze. Bright green against a sky washed clear, clouds drifting like mist across the blue.
“Her Majesty’s favourite gardens,” Lumine echoes, her gaze still fixed on the view.
“Perhaps you may find some inspiration there,” the maid says.
Lumine turns back to her. “Thank you for showing me the way here,” she says, tightening her grip on her small briefcase, lifting it slightly.
“It is my duty,” the maid replies. “You are an honoured guest of Her Majesty. We are here only to fulfil her will and carry out her orders. There is no need to thank us.”
“Thank you nonetheless,” Lumine says, dipping her head. “I am grateful.”
“Then I will accept your thanks.”
The maid inclines her head once more, then turns and leaves.
Lumine draws in a quiet breath, then steps over the threshold into the room. She slides the door shut behind her; it whispers closed, soundless. The only indication that it has latched is the faint, gentle knock as it settles into place.
Inside, the room feels even larger than it had at first glance. She has never known this kind of space—all of it contained within four walls. It must be half the size of her house, if not more.
She sets her briefcase down in the middle of the room, then crosses to the window. Climbing onto the bay seat, she braces her hands against the sill and leans forward.
Sunlight dapples the grounds outside. Trees and greenery greet her—flowers blooming below, tall trunks standing proud and unbending, sheltering the more fragile blossoms beneath. A path winds through the grass, curling into a small, sandy clearing. A rock garden. The stones rise tall and twisted, stark against the green, yet elegant in their austerity.
The garden is expansive, enclosed on all sides by towering walls, one of which forms the boundary of her room. More windows punctuate the remaining walls. Other rooms, perhaps. Other occupants. And yet, there is no one in the garden now. It lies empty, still, holding only trees and flowers and stone.
She lifts her gaze, looking beyond the rock garden.
Something catches her eye—an edge that does not belong. A structure, perhaps. Not one of the enclosing walls. She blinks, leans forward, trying to see past the obstruction of stone.
Her gaze follows what little she can make out, tracing the line of it upwards.
A roof. Terracotta tiles. Burnt red, deep umber against the sky.
Her gaze drops again. She tilts her head, squinting slightly, trying to piece together the shape of it from what she can see between the rocks.
A building, she thinks. A terrace, perhaps.
The rock garden obscures the rest. She cannot see clearly.
For a moment, she lingers there, caught between curiosity and practicality.
She cannot help but be drawn to the building. Why would such a thing exist in the middle of the garden? It does not seem to belong. What little she can make out—the lines of it, the colour—none of it blends into the landscape. The red is too loud. Too arresting. The kind of red that recalls fire, that looks as though it would burn the moment sunlight touches it.
Or perhaps that is the intent.
Perhaps this structure—this pavilion, whatever it is—is meant to be the focal point. The thing that sets everything else into contrast. The point around which the rest of the garden arranges itself into quiet harmony.
It tugs at her. This glimpse of something that does not quite fit. Of something that resists balance. It plucks at the strings of her need to know.
That need—her need to see, to understand—had been what led her to art in the first place.
Lumine has always liked to capture things.
Permanence. Impermanence. In ink, in colour, in line. In sketches that ghost across paper, across canvas. Transient, fleeting things. Paper can crumble. Ink can fade. Charcoal can be brushed away. Nothing endures.
And yet, in the act of fixing something into form—of etching what she sees, what takes shape within her mind’s eye—she grants it a kind of permanence all the same. An eternity, perhaps. Even if it is a small one. A selfish one.
She has always needed to know things. To understand them. To reach out and touch them in ways that are not always appropriate, because if she does not touch, if she does not feel, if she does not connect, then she cannot immerse herself in her work. She cannot truly grasp what stands before her.
And now, that same impulse, the one that makes her reach for what she should not, stirs again.
It pulls at her from the burnt umber rooftop. A faint instinct, coiling low in her gut, urging her forward. To look closer. To see properly what she thinks she has glimpsed.
But that is that. Then is then.
That was before she stepped into the palace. Before she accepted a commission she knows carries a risk she may not be able to meet. Before she chose to set aside her own curiosities for the sake of something that may not even be hers, in the end.
She had never wanted to sell her art.
And yet, here she is. Materials in hand, answering the call of the imperial family, because she has no choice but to offer a piece of herself if she wants the money she needs to keep her brother alive.
Lumine exhales, then turns away from the window.
She climbs down from the bay seat and walks back towards her briefcase, sitting squat and small in the middle of the room. It looks almost pitiful there, dwarfed by the elegance around it, like something out of place. Like someone who does not belong, trying to pretend that they do.
She should not indulge in curiosity. In inspiration.
She is here to do one job. Nothing more.
The sooner she finishes, the sooner she can return to what is important. To what she came here for in the first place.
So far from home. So far from everything that truly matters.
She is not here to indulge herself. Curiosity is a luxury—one afforded to those who do not have to worry about survival. About money. About the fragile thread upon which the life of her only remaining kin hangs, waiting to be secured by whatever worth she can prove in herself.
She lifts her briefcase and carries it to the study table tucked into the far corner of the room.
There, she opens it and begins to lay out her tools—brushes, charcoal, pencils, paper, ink. She arranges them carefully, each piece placed where her hands will expect to find it. Order, familiar and grounding.
When she is done, she steps back, looking over the beginnings of her work.
Right. No point in getting distracted.
She is here for one purpose: to paint the crown prince.
So that is all she needs to do. Not gardens. Not strange buildings that refuse to blend into their surroundings. Just the prince. Find him, persuade him to sit for her, finish the work, collect her payment, and leave.
She hopes it will not take long. She has no intention of remaining here for a full year, cut away from the rest of the world. She does not know if she has that kind of time to spare. Does not know if she can afford to stand still while everything beyond these walls continues to move without her.
She is still rooted in the material world.
She cannot let go of it so easily.
She does not consider herself an artist.
Not first and foremost, at least. There are other aspects to her identity. Other things she believes matter more.
A daughter. A sister. A caretaker. A friend.
She is many things, and nothing at all.
Nothing in the face of what life chooses to throw at her. Nothing amidst the churn of it all—time passing, circumstances shifting, things so careless and fleeting. She is only one life among many. One small existence swallowed in the current.
She is nobody.
Lumine weaves baskets to sell in the market.
Day in, day out. Rattan threaded between her fingers. She weaves, and she weaves, until her skin splits and bleeds, until the wounds harden into callouses. She weaves as her mother did before her, and her grandmother before that. A lineage of weavers. A craft passed down through generations, as much inheritance as it is survival.
She knows nothing else. She has nothing else.
Then one day, her father died.
An accident, they called it. He had been an escort—an armed guard, hired to guide merchants through dangerous roads. He was ambushed by bandits. No one survived. Her father was no exception.
After that, the money ran dry.
Then her mother fell ill, and she died too. They did not have the means to afford the medicine she needed. She passed on a winter’s night, cold and quiet.
Lumine buried her beside their father, in a grave marked only by flowers. They could not afford anything more.
Still. She has her brother.
Smarter. Gentler. Aether—her twin, older by fifteen minutes. The pride of their family. A provincial scholar, well on his way to passing the state examinations, to earning a position within the imperial court.
Lumine had always been proud of him. So, so proud. He would be the one to lift them out of poverty. She had believed it without question.
Until Aether fell ill with the same disease that had taken their mother.
It is rare, the doctor had said, back when he tended to her mother. A familial illness. A coin toss of inheritance, half chance it would pass on.
Lumine, by some mercy, had been spared. For now.
Her brother—Aether, always the weaker of the two, always more fragile—had not.
It was Aether who taught her art.
Aether, who had access to books and ink and brushes through the support of the state magistrate—the sort who looked out for those with academic promise. Aether, who could read and write. Who was known as the most gifted among all the scholar candidates in their village.
The magistrate loaned their family books. Supplies. Paper and scrolls. Nothing more than that, because their interest lay only in cultivating those who might one day serve the imperial court. Everything else, Lumine and her family had to provide for themselves.
But it was enough.
It was enough because Lumine knew how to weave, and she wove beautiful baskets. In time, she began to weave other things too—whatever people asked for, so long as they paid enough coin. Chairs. Tables. Hats. Anything that could be made by hand, she would make.
Not just rattan. Fibres. Silk. She taught herself to work with them all. Her fingers wove and wove, splitting and bleeding, the threads biting into her skin. Everything cut. The weight of the loom. The ache in her back, her shoulders, from long hours spent hunched over her work.
She did it without complaint.
Aether had to read. Their mother needed medicine. She was the only one who could provide, and both she and her mother agreed—Aether must not be taken from his studies.
Lumine was willing. She had to be. Aether was their future, and their mother was their mother, and there was only one person who could hold everything together.
Herself.
And yet, one day, Aether pulled her aside.
“Put aside the weaving,” he told her. “Just for today.”
He pressed paper and charcoal into her hands despite her protests and led her out of the village, through the woods, until they reached the river.
She asked him why. Why he had brought her here.
Aether only smiled. He gestured towards the water—churning, rushing, its roar loud enough to swallow sound itself—and then he said:
“Do you think you can draw it?”
“Draw?” she echoed. “What does that mean?”
“To capture the likeness of the river, little sister,” he said. “To make it live and breathe on the paper you hold, with nothing but charcoal and your mind’s eye.”
“What for? Why? It sounds like a waste of time.”
“Because you create beautiful things with your hands,” he said, taking one of hers, his fingers brushing over her calloused skin. “I think this would be no different.”
Lumine laughed. Thought nothing of it.
She had work to return to. This was a waste of time—she was certain of it. But Aether was insistent, so in the end she sighed and sat, her back against a tree, her head tipped back as she glanced between the sky and the rushing river.
“I still think this is pointless,” she told him. “But since you asked, I will do it.”
She lifted her hand, smudged dark with charcoal, and brought it to the page.
And then she began.
At first, it was nothing. Then—something.
The river shifted in her mind. Whispered. Her hand moved without hesitation, knowing where to press, where to lift, where to curve the lines and coax them into shape. It was not like weaving, and yet—
There was something familiar in it. That same slipping state. That same quiet absence. The way the world fell away when she worked, when she wove and wove until she blinked and something had come into being beneath her hands, as though she had willed it into existence.
And here, again.
The charcoal moved. The paper darkened. And when she finally stopped, something like a river lay on the page, close enough that it felt as though it might begin to move if she looked at it long enough.
Aether laughed when he saw it.
“See, sister?” he said. “You are an artist.”
She does not recognise that identity. Not even now.
But it has its uses.
Aether had taught her how to sign her name. And sometimes, when she draws—when she signs it, when she flips through the pages of her notebook and sees what she has made, all of it hers—
It makes her feel… strange.
As though her hands are capable of something beyond weaving. Beyond survival. Beyond things made only to be sold, used and forgotten.
Art is different.
Her art is hers. She will not sell it.
Weaving—those things she can sell. But this, what she creates with brush and ink, with time and thought and the wordless shaping of something into being—
This, she will keep.
“This is for you, miss.”
Lumine blinks, stepping aside as the maid enters the room carrying a tray. Small dishes are arranged upon it—rice, soup, meat, vegetables. The fragrance reaches her almost at once, and her stomach clenches, letting out a faint, involuntary growl.
“For me?” she asks, moving behind the maid, peering at the tray as it is set down carefully on the round table near the centre of the room, a few paces from the bay window.
“Yes,” the maid replies. “You are a guest. Of course you would be fed.”
Her tone is even. Neutral. No warmth, no impatience—just a statement, delivered without inflexion.
Lumine hesitates.
She is not used to seeing this much food laid out at once. Not even during the new year, when her family scrapes together enough coin for a single dish of meat. This—this is abundance. Quiet, effortless abundance.
The maid finishes arranging the dishes and steps back. Lifts her head. Looks at her, waiting.
And under that gaze, under a pressure she cannot quite name, Lumine sits.
She picks up the chopsticks. Begins to eat.
The flavours are gentle. Subtle, but precise. A kind of harmony that spreads slowly across her tongue, filling her mouth with warmth and taste.
She is not used to this.
Food, to her, has always been simple. Functional. Something to fill the stomach, to keep the body from failing. There has never been space to think about flavour, or texture, or the way something lingers. She eats what is there. Eats what she must. Eats because if she does not, she will grow weak, and if she grows weak, she will not be able to continue.
But here, the food blooms against her senses. It unfolds, layer by layer, unfamiliar and overwhelming all at once. She does not know how to respond to it, does not know what to do with something that is meant to be savoured.
So she keeps eating.
Reaching for more. For another bite, another dish. Rice, still warm and fragrant. The quiet savour of meat. The softness of vegetables, simmered until they yield at the slightest pressure. Soup, light against her tongue. Tofu, delicate, crumbling as it dissolves. Green tea, freshly brewed, faintly sweet, leaving only the barest trace behind.
She eats, and eats, and says nothing.
The maid waits. She stands to the side of the room, silent, patient. She does not speak. She does not move. She simply watches and waits.
Only when Lumine sets her chopsticks down—only when she leans back, full to the point of discomfort, certain she cannot take another bite—does the maid step forward.
Efficient as ever, she begins to gather the dishes. Bowls and plates are returned to the tray, one by one. Most of them are empty.
The few that are not—
Lumine feels a small, sharp twist in her chest as she watches them be taken away.
She is not someone who can afford to waste food. Her family has never wasted food. They cannot. Every scrap is earned. Every morsel fought for.
“What will you do with the leftovers?” she asks before she can stop herself.
The maid pauses, glancing up briefly as she places another bowl onto the tray. “The kitchen will settle them,” she says. “You need not ask too much, young miss. It is not something that concerns you.”
Lumine hesitates. “I’m just worried,” she says. “There’s still food left. It feels… like a waste.”
“You need not concern yourself with this,” the maid repeats.
Lumine lets the matter drop.
Instead, she asks, “Do you know where the crown prince is?”
The maid shakes her head. “He very rarely shows his face around the palace.”
“You mean he is usually outside?”
“Not exactly.”
Lumine tilts her head, frowning. “Then if he has not left the palace… how can no one know where he is?”
She had spent the afternoon searching. Asking. Following every suggestion offered to her.
Some said he might be in his study, reading. Others claimed he would be at the training grounds, practising his swordsmanship. Others still suggested he might be in council.
She had gone to each place in turn and found nothing.
“He does not keep a personal servant,” the maid says. “So no one keeps track of his whereabouts.”
Lumine blinks. “The prince has no attendant?”
The maid shakes her head. “He is quite adamant about not wanting one.”
She finishes gathering the last of the dishes and lifts the tray, balancing it easily in her hands. “Is there anything else you would like to know, miss?”
Lumine searches for a question.
There are many she could ask. Too many.
But faced with the maid’s unreadable expression, with her quiet patience, every thought slips from her grasp. Her mind empties. Leaves her with nothing but the sound of her own heartbeat, steady and insistent in her chest.
The maid continues to wait.
At last, Lumine shakes her head. “Nothing,” she says.
The maid inclines her head. “Then I shall take my leave.”
The door whispers open. And then it closes again just as softly as the maid disappears, taking with her the tray, the dishes, every trace of the meal. Leaving the room as though nothing had happened at all.
Lumine moves to the bay window. She looks out.
The garden is unchanged from hours earlier, only now it is steeped in twilight. The setting sun casts orange-red light across the grounds, shadows stretching long and languid over the rock garden. They spill across the grass, shifting, writhing in ways that almost seem alive. As though they claw at the earth, straining against their confines, yearning to slip free of the material world.
It is her first day here, in the palace, and she does not know what to do.
She does not know how to fill her time. Does not know how to approach a task like this—how to capture the likeness of someone who does not wish to be seen.
When she first heard the announcement—that the palace was seeking an artist willing to paint the crown prince—she had thought about it for a long, long time.
The reward was generous. Money, so much of it that she would have no trouble affording the medicine Aether needed. On that front, it had seemed almost foolish not to step forward.
But then, what of everything in between? Who would weave and sell at the market? Who would earn enough to buy food, supplies, the small necessities that kept Aether comfortable?
To leave for the palace—it had felt absurd. The kind of choice only someone unburdened could afford to make. Someone without obligations. Without a family to sustain.
She is not that person. She carries what remains of her household on her shoulders. She cannot simply set it aside and chase the promise of something uncertain, no matter how enticing it may be.
And then, there is the crown prince.
She knows little about him. No one does. What scraps of information she has come from Aether—secondhand, passed along from scholars and officials, from whispers carried through the magistrate’s circles.
Proud. Haughty. Aloof.
He does not show himself to those he deems unworthy. Even in council, he sits behind a silk screen, his presence obscured. No one knows what he looks like. No one knows anything of substance at all, only that he is the empress’s only son, and that their relationship is… strained.
The future ruler of their nation. And yet, he makes no effort to be known.
No presence. No image. No reputation beyond rumour. No one can say what he excels at, what he enjoys, what he desires. It is as though he does not care to rule. Does not care for the people or the world beyond the palace walls.
He might as well be a ghost. A shadow wearing the weight of a name. A figure so determined to remain unseen that he has become little more than an idea.
And yet, people are meant to paint him?
Most do not even know if he truly exists. For all anyone can say, there may be no one behind the silk screen at all. Some whisper that this is a test. That the crown seeks to expose the greedy, the foolish. After all, the reward promised for something so simple—a portrait—is absurd. Enough to sustain a person for life.
An impossible sum. An unsettling one.
Which is why, even weeks after the imperial decree was issued, no one had come forward. Not the renowned painters. Not the masters whose names even Lumine has heard, despite how little she knows of that world.
And so she wondered. Could she do it? If no one else would—if the opportunity remained open, waiting for someone willing to try—should she step forward?
It is impractical. Unrealistic.
What does she have to her name? What could she possibly rely on? She is not someone who can simply leave. She cannot afford to.
And yet, it lingered. The promise of it. The unspoken whisper, coaxing, persistent. Offering a way out. A way to resolve everything, if only she dared to reach for it. If only she risked everything she has.
A selfish gamble. A selfish chance.
She spoke to Aether about it at length.
He was still sharp then. Still himself. Not yet as frail as their mother had been. Not bedridden, not entirely. He could still study. Still think, still reason. The illness had taken hold, but it had not yet hollowed him out.
The magistrate, he had told her with a wry smile, was unwilling to let his most promising student fade away so easily.
They would not pay for his medicine. But they would spare him grain. Enough to keep him alive. Enough, he believed, to last a few months.
He could still write. Still help the villagers draft letters. Still sell the occasional poem. It was not much, but it was enough to survive.
Aether would not yield so easily.
And he believed in her. Believed in her art enough to say, without hesitation, that she could do it. That she could fulfil the imperial request.
“It will carry your name far,” he had told her. But only—only—if she succeeded.
Are you sure that’s what you want, sister?
The question had weighed on her. Heavily. Impossibly so. Because she is not an artist. Not in a way that matters, not in any way she would claim.
She does not sell her art. Does not create it for anything other than herself—for the quiet, selfish pleasure of it. She is not someone who would hang her work for others to see, to price, to purchase. She does not believe it holds that kind of value.
These sketches—the ones she fills in the quiet of night, in the small notebook that holds her scattered hopes and smaller dreams—they are hers. Private. Untouched by the world. And because of that, she has never felt guilt for not turning them into coin.
But if she takes this step—if she paints for money—what would that make her?
Still. She needs the money. Aether needs the money.
He is all she has left.
Weaving can only bring in so much. It is never enough. Not for medicine, not for time. And she cannot bear to watch him fade the way their mother did. Cannot stand by and do nothing as he withers away.
She does not want to bury him. Not a third grave. Not another shallow stretch of earth. Three graves, side by side, marked by nothing but flowers.
So she thought about it. Turned it over and over in her mind until there was nothing left to consider.
And then, finally, she agreed. She tore a page from her notebook—one of her favourites, a study of her mother’s loom, the way it had gleamed under the afternoon light—and asked Aether to help her send it to the palace.
They replied within a week. They offered her the commission, and she accepted.
And now she is here. In a room too grand for her. Too clean, too spacious, too far removed from the life she knows. She is only a villager, someone who wove baskets and whatever else she could sell at the market. Someone trying, desperately, to save her brother.
A village girl. One who knows only the simplest courtesies. Who knows not to offend. Who knows not to reach too far, not to draw attention to herself.
She is only Lumine. A girl who can draw. A girl desperate enough to gamble everything on a promise, on a man who might not even exist, because she would do anything, anything, to keep Aether alive.
Lumine folds her hands in her lap. Her fingers tighten, bunching the coarse fabric of her dress between her calloused knuckles.
She exhales and looks out at the garden. At the long, shifting shadows. They stretch and flicker across the ground, dark edges blurring as they move, as though something beneath them stirs. As though they might rise from the earth itself if she dares to look away.
She watches. And watches.
The sun sinks lower, spilling orange light across the grounds. It casts everything into extremes—too bright, too dark. The glow catches on the red roof she had noticed earlier. Terracotta tiles, burning against the dimming sky. Bright. Almost aflame.
She keeps looking. Until the light fades. Until the sun slips behind the walls, and the air cools, and the world softens into evening.
Then she moves.
She slips down from the bay seat and crosses the room, reaching for the study table. Her fingers close around a piece of charcoal. She opens her briefcase and retrieves her notebook—the only thing she has not yet unpacked—and holds it close against her chest.
For a moment, she pauses.
Then she turns her head, looking back out through the window. The palace at night. The quiet garden. The lingering glow of dying light.
Her hands ache to move. Restless from stillness. Restless from waiting.
She cannot find the prince. Not today.
But she can find something else to do.
Her feet take her there almost without thought, to the red roof.
It reveals itself slowly in the dimming light. A shape emerging from shadow, edges sharpening as her eyes adjust. She recognises it all at once—a pavilion. That had been one of her guesses.
The air in the garden is soft. Light, faintly fragrant. She inhales, deep and unguarded, and feels something loosen in her as she steps further in. The grass brushes against her ankles beneath the hem of her dress, cool and yielding.
It is that strange hour between sun and moon, when the world feels suspended. Neither bright nor dark. A moment where things might happen, if one is careless enough to let them.
As though she might be spirited away if she lingers too long. As though something might reach out from the unseen and take her before she can even draw breath.
Lumine shivers. Then keeps walking.
She passes the rock garden, the long shadows twisting across its surface. Passes the enclosing walls, the blooms gathered in their shade. Step after step, until she stands at the edge of the pavilion, on the cusp of entering.
Inside, there is very little. A stone table. Two seats. Nothing else.
Bare. Stark. And yet, in that sparseness, something deliberate. Something not unlike the rock garden itself—an austerity that feels, in its own way, complete.
She steps in. Sits at the stone table and looks out at the garden.
It is… peaceful.
There is something about it—the stillness, the quiet, the way the wind moves through the space, brushing against her skin, slipping between the pages of her notebook where it rests upon the table. The pages flutter, turning, as though the wind itself is curious.
Curious about what she has drawn. About the sketches she keeps hidden, tucked away in these pages that she rarely shows to anyone. Not even Aether, most of the time. She is embarrassed, in a way she cannot quite explain.
Because they are too close. Too raw.
Aether knows this. Knows her better than anyone else. Knows that her drawings are not just drawings.
They are how she sees the world. How she understands it.
She is no genius. She has never claimed to be. She cannot parse literature or poetry the way Aether can, cannot unravel meaning through words alone.
But she has her own way.
When she encounters something she does not understand, she draws it. She reaches for it. Circles it. Studies it from every angle until she can commit it to the page, because that is how she remembers. How she learns.
She takes things apart. Dissects them in the silent confines of her mind. Then puts them back together again in charcoal and ink.
Even her own thoughts. Her frustrations. Her small grievances. The things she does not say aloud. All of it finds its way into these pages. Pressed into the paper, sometimes too hard—charcoal smudging, ink bleeding, marks left behind that cannot be erased.
She leaves them. The mistakes. The stains. The uneven lines. They make the work feel lived, real. As though it breathes in some soft, fragile way.
As though, through them, she might glimpse a world she does not yet fully understand.
Lumine inhales. The scent of flowers fills her lungs, sweet, faintly intoxicating. The air is cool now. Crisp against her skin.
And then, without thinking, almost as though answering something unspoken, her hand lifts. Charcoal poised. The page before her is blank—fresh, waiting. The wind has turned it there, as if offering it up to her.
She presses the charcoal down and begins.
The walls. The grass. The flowers under the gentle, fading light. The trees, tall and unyielding, stretching towards the sky. The pavilion around her. The stone table. Two empty seats, one occupied.
The surface of the table is wide and unmarked. She wonders what it is meant to hold. If it has ever held anything at all. If anyone ever comes here.
She has not seen a single soul in the garden.
She wonders why she came. Why she left the safety of her room instead of resting, when the journey here had been long and exhausting, when she still feels the weight of it in her bones. Why she chose this instead—sitting here, drawing.
Drawing takes from her. She loves it, and yet, it consumes.
She slips into it, loses herself in it, until time dissolves. And when she emerges, when she blinks and returns to herself, hours have passed. She is drained, hollowed out, and yet there is something new in her hands. Something she made.
And she never quite knows how to feel about it.
The strange tangle of it—pride, and quiet joy. Frustration. A flicker of resentment. The sense of having been taken somewhere beyond herself, and returned only after something has been pulled loose.
As though creation demands something in return. As though every time, it asks her to bleed a little.
She always knows how it goes. Exactly how it goes.
She will finish this sketch, and it will take something from her. A piece of herself, pressed into paper. A fragment of what makes her Lumine, fixed there in ink and line. As though every stroke she lays down is drawn from her own blood—her life, her breath, her soul, given form.
As though, with each piece she completes, she slips a little further away from herself.
And yet, she cannot stop.
Once she begins, she must continue. Once she starts, she cannot bring herself to look away until what she sees in her mind’s eye has been captured—until it exists outside of her, until it can be seen even with her eyes closed.
As though the image burns itself behind her eyelids, and when she opens them, it spills out onto the page. As though, in these thin sheets of paper, everything she loves can be made to last.
Lumine draws. And draws. And draws, like someone possessed.
She sits beneath the deepening night and sketches—lines forming, shading filling, light and shadow folding into one another. Moonlight. Grass. The garden. The shadows stretching, lengthening, darkening. The world softens at the edges, blurs into something dreamlike.
Nothing makes sense anymore.
There is only this. Only her, and the page, and the quiet breath of the world around her.
Lumine, nothing and everything.
And then—a rustle.
Her hand stops. Everything stops.
Her heart lurches, then slams hard against her ribs. The sound fills her ears, loud, insistent. Blood rushes, surging up, then down, leaving her dizzy, like she has been dragged suddenly from deep water.
That sound. It is not the wind. Not anything she recognises. Not something that belongs in the stillness of this place.
She pushes to her feet, the motion abrupt, her fingers trembling as the charcoal slips from her grasp and clatters against the table, smearing dark across the page.
She does not care. She turns, scanning the garden. Looking, looking.
She does not know why.
It should not matter. Being interrupted is nothing new. She can return to it later. She always can. It is difficult, yes, but not impossible, to sink back into that state, to let herself be taken under again.
She does it all the time. While weaving. While working. While moving through the days that blur into one another. She drowns in it, drowns until she no longer has to think, until her body moves on its own, until everything dulls into something manageable.
She knows how to return.
And yet, something here grips her. Tight. Sharp. An instinct that strips away reason, leaves her with nothing but the certainty that something is wrong.
This is not the wind. This is not harmless.
Perhaps it is because she is somewhere unfamiliar. Perhaps it is because she cannot afford to be careless, not now, not with everything that rests on her shoulders.
Her brother. His life, held in the fragile balance of what she can achieve here.
She knows nothing of this place. And because she knows nothing, she steps forward. Out of the pavilion, into the grass.
Her gaze sweeps the garden, searching for something—anything—that might have broken the silence.
It is night now, she realises dimly. The moon hangs full and heavy overhead, its silver light spilling across the grounds. It lingers like something suspended. Like something watching.
Still, nothing.
The tension begins to ease, loosening its hold on her shoulders. For a moment, she wonders if she imagined it. If she is simply on edge, letting her mind wander too far.
Perhaps she should return. Gather her things. Go back to the safety of her room.
And then she sees it.
A shadow. A flicker of movement along the garden wall. Something almost human—no, not almost. A figure, slipping through the dim light.
Her breath catches. Sharp, sudden.
And then she runs.
The figure does not turn, but it moves faster. Gliding across the grass, swift and soundless, more mist than flesh. She cannot make it out clearly, not from this distance, but she sees enough.
Slender. Clad in dark robes. Long hair, tied back. The unmistakable glint of a sword at the hip.
She runs harder.
But by the time she reaches the spot where she last saw it—by the time she reaches the wall—it is gone. No trace. No sound. Nothing left behind.
And Lumine stands there, alone in the garden, bathed in silver light.
Her breath comes ragged, uneven. She drags air into her lungs, hands braced against her hips as she forces herself to steady.
She breathes. And breathes. Tilts her head back, looking up at the moon. Wonders what it was she saw.
And whether she will see it again.