The Throne of Thorns and Roses

Chapter 2: Stolen Glances

Jasmine did not sleep after the Crimson Banquet.

She lay in her four-poster bed and watched moonlight carve the ceiling into territories she did not own. Every breath tasted like ice wine and threats. Caelen’s words kept circling: Everything in this palace will be mine. The flowers. The throne. You.

Her fingers still felt cold from his rings.

At dawn, she went to the Veridian.

She told herself it was to see the moonlilies in daylight. To confirm they were real, that Kian had not conjured them from desperation and glass. But the truth was simpler and far more dangerous: she wanted to see if he would look at her again.

He was already there.

Kian stood in the eastern bed, shirt damp with sweat despite the morning chill. He had built a lattice of mirrors around the moonlilies, each pane tilted to catch and throw the sun. The flowers glowed like captured stars. He looked like a man waging war against winter.

“You did this,” Jasmine said. Her voice carried in the quiet.

He didn’t startle. Didn’t bow. He just wiped his forearm across his brow and left a smear of dirt there. “They needed help.”

“So do I.” The words slipped out before she could cage them. She stepped closer, silk hems dragging through damp soil. Lady Mirea would have a fit. Good. “Caelen. Last night.”

Kian’s jaw tightened. He set down a mirror with too much care. “The prince enjoys reminding people of their place.”

“Is that what you think this is? My place?” She gestured at the palace walls rising around them, white stone veined with gold, beautiful and suffocating. “Smiling while men compare me to hounds?”

“No.” He finally looked at her. That same assessing stare, not cruel but unflinching. “I think your place is wherever you decide to stand. But the crown makes that difficult.”

The crown. Always the crown. It sat in the treasury under six locks, but Jasmine felt its weight on her skull every hour. “My father says a princess is the bridge between kingdoms. Bridges don’t choose where they’re built.”

Kian made a sound. Not quite a laugh. “Bridges break too. Especially when the weight isn’t balanced.”

For a moment, neither spoke. A bee moved between the moonlilies, drunk on impossible sweetness. Somewhere beyond the hedge, a guard coughed and the palace woke up, piece by piece.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Kian said eventually. Quiet. Not a dismissal. A warning. “If the prince saw you talking to me again”

“Let him.” Jasmine lifted her chin. The way she’d been taught. The way that never felt like armor. “I thanked you. I won’t apologize for it.”

Kian studied her for a long breath. Then he did something no servant should do. He reached out and brushed a fleck of dirt from her sleeve. His fingers were calloused, warm, gone before she could react.

“You’ll ruin your dresses,” he said, “if you keep coming to the dirt.”

“I don’t care about the dresses.”

“Then what do you care about?”

The question hung between them, too honest for the morning. Jasmine had answers prepared for ambassadors, suitors, tutors. None of them fit here, in a garden that shouldn’t be blooming.

Before she could answer, footsteps crunched on gravel. Not Mirea this time. Heavier. Armed.

Kian moved instantly, putting the width of the flower bed between them. By the time Captain Vey of the Palace Guard rounded the hedge, Kian was on his knees, head down, every inch the perfect servant. The transformation was so fast it made Jasmine’s chest ache.

“Your Highness.” Vey saluted, eyes flicking to Kian and dismissing him in the same motion. “His Majesty requires your presence in the war room. The Nordish delegation has made… additional requests.”

Additional requests. That meant concessions. That meant her father would trade another piece of her to keep peace.

Jasmine looked at Kian. He didn’t look up. Dirt on his knees. Silence on his tongue. Just Kian, exactly as the world demanded.

“Very well,” she said. The princess voice. Cool. Empty. She let Captain Vey lead her away.

She didn’t look back. If she did, she might not leave.

The war room smelled like old maps and older men.

King Herrin of House Deyr sat at the head of the sunwood table, his crown on the velvet cushion beside him because even kings got headaches. Prince Caelen stood at his right hand, already home, already assuming. The Nordish ambassadors lined the left, bearded and broad, their furs out of season and aggressive.

“Jasmine” Her father did not smile. Kings rarely did when treaties were bleeding. “The Nordish have concerns about the succession.”

She took her place, hands folded. Never speak first. She’d already broken that rule today.

“The concern,” Caelen said, stepping into the silence like it was his, “is clarity. The Deyrani line has grown… tangled before. We would not see a dispute arise if, gods forbid, the king were to fall before an heir is produced.”

If the king were to fall. Meaning: if you die, old man, and your daughter inherits, we want insurance.

Jasmine’s blood went cold, then hot. “I am the heir. The law is clear.”

“Laws,” said the oldest Nordish ambassador, stroking his beard, “are written by men. Men can be persuaded. Or removed.”

Herrin’s hand curled on the table. Not a fist. A king’s restraint was a different kind of weapon. “My daughter will wed Prince Caelen before winter. The alliance will be sealed in blood and oath. That is clarity enough.”

“With respect, Your Majesty,” Caelen said, and the respect was a thin veneer, “oaths are stronger when tested. The princess should be removed from court until the wedding. A northern convent. For her safety. And to prevent… distractions.”

Distractions.

Jasmine thought of dirt under fingernails. Of we made heat. Of two words that had been a declaration of war.

“I do not need protecting,” she said. Rule one, broken again.

Caelen’s smile was all teeth. “Everyone needs protecting, my bird. Even bridges.”

Her father said nothing. That was the worst part. He just looked at her, weighing, measuring. A king first. A father somewhere far behind.

The meeting dissolved into logistics. Dates, dowries, the number of guards required to transport a princess to a cage with different curtains. Jasmine heard none of it. She heard only the sound of gravel under her slippers this morning. The way Kian had said your place is wherever you decide to stand.

When they dismissed her, she walked, but not to her chambers.

She walked to the servants’ corridors.

They were narrow, windowless, smelling of lye and baking bread. The opposite of gilt and glass. No one stopped her. No one could imagine why a princess would be here, so their eyes slid past her like she was a ghost.

She found him in the potting shed behind the kitchens. Kian sat on an overturned barrel, sharpening a pruning knife. His shirt was off, hung on a nail. The scar through his eyebrow wasn’t the only one. Silver lines mapped his ribs, his shoulder. Old wounds. Bad ones.

He didn’t look surprised to see her. Only tired.

“You can’t be here,” he said, but he didn’t tell her to leave.

“Caelen wants me sent away. To a convent until the wedding. So there are no distractions.”

The knife stilled. “Am I the distraction?”

“Yes.” She stepped inside, closed the door. The space was small, air thick with soil and green things. “Is that why you have those scars? Because you distract people?”

Kian set the knife down. Slowly. “I have those scars because the world is not kind to men without names.”

“Tell me.” She wasn’t asking as a princess. She was asking as the girl who had seen him make summer happen with mirrors.

He was quiet so long she thought he wouldn’t answer. Then: “I was born in Vareth. During the border wars. My mother was a Deyrani healer who crossed the line to tend the wounded. My father was a Vareth general. That made me a problem for both sides.”

Vareth. The enemy her father was marrying her off to avoid fighting.

“They sent me here as a boy,” Kian continued. “As a gesture. A hostage, but no one calls it that. I’ve been in this palace ten years. Groundskeeper, stablehand, whatever role keeps me visible and harmless. The Master of Grounds thinks I’m an orphan from the low districts. The king knows better. He likes having a Vareth knife he can point at his own throat if negotiations fail.”

Jasmine sank onto a sack of fertilizer. Her legs didn’t want to hold her. “You’re a prince.”

“I was a bargaining chip. Now I’m a gardener.” He finally looked at her, and there was no deference in it. Only exhaustion. “And you’re a princess who should not be in a potting shed.”

“But I am.” She stood again, reckless. “And I’m tired of places. I’m tired of bridges and cages and men deciding where I stand.”

Kian stood too. Too close. She could smell soap and soil and something metallic, like rain on swords. “Jasmine.”

Her name. Not Your Highness. Not princess. Just Jasmine , in his mouth like a secret.

The door burst open.

Lady Mirea stood there, two guards behind her, her face the color of ash.

“Guards,” Mirea said, and her voice shook, “remove him.”

Kian didn’t fight when they took him. He went still, all those scars gone quiet. But his eyes found Jasmine’s over the guards’ shoulders.

We, that look said. Wenare in trouble now.