The scent of wild mint and drying lavender always felt like a shield.
Inside her small, stone-walled cottage at the very edge of Moonridge’s territory, Mira breathed in the familiar herbal aroma and let the exhausting heat of the day drain from her shoulders. For a few brief hours, the stifling political tension radiating from the inner palace could not touch her.
Mira smoothed down her linen apron and looked out the small kitchen window. Her garden was a vibrant, sprawling patch of green earth, carefully tended despite the blistering sun. She had built slatted wooden sun-shades to protect the delicate, shade-loving medicinal roots from being scorched, ensuring that even when the heat threatened to wither the valley, life persisted.
Mira walked into the garden and saw her granddaughter
