The First Crown

When Winter Breaks

Lilliana

Spring came shyly, as if it feared my father’s displeasure.

The snow melted first from the south walls, leaving the ground soft and muddy, the stone dark and wet as though the keep itself had been weeping. Then the crocuses pushed their pale heads through the earth, stubborn splashes of color against the grey. Maren begged to walk the grounds every day, and Evelyne perhaps bored of her own company joined her, sweeping along the paths like a queen inspecting her gardens.

I went too, though the air was still sharp enough to sting my cheeks and the grounds still felt like another set of walls. But I needed to move, to breathe, to feel something other than the endless weight in my chest. My sisters chattered ahead of me, their laughter spilling into the crisp air, but I often fell behind, staring at the training yard where the guards drilled.

My routine changed with the season. After prayers, after the long meals and needlework, after my father retired for the evening, I began writing.

Briallen disapproved, though she still delivered the letters. She always made a face when I set quill to parchment, her mouth pulling sideways in a way that made me feel both guilty and defiant.

One night she could hold her tongue no longer.

“I don't know why you are still bothering, he never opens them,” she said, tying the ribbon too tight and scowling at the knot. “I watch, you know. He takes them like a man taking orders pockets them, never reads.”

I set down my quill, my chest squeezing painfully. "So."

"For all you know he chucks them in the fire after I leave." She said.

“He wouldn’t burn them.”

“You cannot know that,” she said, her voice gentler now. “I’ve never seen him open one.”

“I do know,” I whispered, though I had no proof only the strange certainty that the bond between us still thrummed, still tethered us.

Briallen sat back on her heels and studied me, pity softening her features. “My lady… how long will you keep doing this to yourself? How long will you keep writing into silence?”

“As long as it takes.”

She sighed and gathered the letter. “Then I will keep carrying them. But one day you may wish you’d let the silence have the last word.”

The day was soft with new warmth, the kind that hinted spring might finally be here to stay. Evelyne walked ahead, her black braids gleaming like polished jet, chin tilted as though the keep itself should admire her. Maren darted after the first butterflies, laughing, her hands outstretched as if she could catch sunlight between her fingers.

I trailed behind, skirts lifted from the mud, letting the sun warm my face. The air smelled of damp earth and new grass, and for a fleeting moment I almost felt light again.

And then I saw him.

Reade Ashford, crossing the yard with two other guards. His hair had grown longer, wind-tossed, the brown sun-shot at the edges. His back was straight and broad, his stride measured, and there was no trace, no visible trace of the lashes I had pictured a hundred times when sleep would not come.

I stopped as if struck. My breath caught, sharp and sudden, my heart hammering just as it had that night on the frozen path when the bond first snapped tight between us.

He saw me.

His head turned, just slightly, and storm-blue eyes found mine. The noise of the yard seemed to fall away, leaving only the distance between us, a space taut as a bowstring.

For a heartbeat, we simply looked at one another. No words. No movement. Just the heavy, aching recognition that whatever had passed between us was still there, still alive.

Then he stepped aside.

The gesture was courteous, nothing more, and his face remained unreadable. But I saw the muscle jump in his jaw before he turned, saw the way his shoulders squared as though bracing against something unseen.

He kept walking, never looking back.

But my skin burned as if he had touched me, every inch of me aware of him, of the way the air seemed to hum in his wake. I stood there too long, until Evelyne called my name, sharp and impatient, and I forced my feet to move.

“Who was that?” Maren asked, glancing back as we walked on.

“No one,” Evelyne said with a sly smile. “Just the guard who thinks himself too good to beg forgiveness.”

I bit the inside of my cheek. “He owes nothing to us,” I said quietly.

That night, my letter was longer than ever.

Reade,

I saw you today. The sun was warm and the air smelled of wet earth and green things, and for one moment it felt as if winter had never happened. You looked well. Strong. Alive. And when you stepped aside to let us pass, my heart hurt so fiercely I almost reached for you.

I don’t know if you read these letters. Sometimes I imagine you keeping them all, folded and hidden. Sometimes I imagine you throwing them into the fire without a glance. Both hurt, though in different ways.

This will be my last.

I have written to you every night for three months, and in every word I have tried to say I am sorry. Sorry that you bled because of me. Sorry that I did nothing to stop it. Sorry that I cannot seem to stop thinking of you, no matter how many prayers I whisper to the Moon.

I do not know what this thing is that holds me this ache, this tether between us but it will not let me rest. I dream of you. I wake thinking of you. And when I saw you today, whole and standing tall, I thought perhaps that would be enough to set me free. It was not.

So I will set myself free another way.

I will not write again. Not because I have forgotten you, but because I never will. To write again would be to wound myself over and over, and I cannot keep bleeding for a man who will not look at me.

Be well, Reade Ashford. Wherever the road takes you, may it be away from pain, and may you never again take lashes meant for someone else.

Lilliana

When I finished, my hand ached from gripping the quill so tightly. Blots of ink spotted the edge where I had hesitated, unwilling to let the words end.

Briallen came when I rang for her, and I pressed the letter into her hands. Her frown was deep, her brows drawn.

“You’re relentless,” she said softly.

“Yes,” I said, and for once I did not feel ashamed of it. “I am. But not after tonight.”

She studied my face, then tucked the letter into her apron. “Then let this be the last of it, my lady.”

I nodded, though my chest felt hollow as she left. For the first time in months, there would be no letter tomorrow. That night, I cried myself to sleep.

Not the quiet, dignified tears of a duke’s daughter, but the hot, shaking kind that left my pillow damp and my eyes swollen. I wept until my chest ached, until the candles guttered out and the room went dark, until Briallen had no choice but to sit beside me and smooth my hair like she had when I was a child plagued by nightmares.

When dawn came pale and cold, I had no strength to rise. I lay there beneath the covers, staring at the canopy as if it might tell me what to do with this hollow ache that stretched through me.

The door creaked open.

“My lady?” Briallen’s voice was cautious, and I turned my head just enough to see her standing there with something in her hands. A folded scrap of parchment.

I sat up so quickly my braid fell loose over my shoulder. “What is that?”

She crossed the room and held it out, her expression torn between resignation and disapproval. “From Reade Ashford,” she said, as though speaking the name might summon trouble.

My fingers trembled as I broke the seal.

There were only four words, scrawled in a firm, plain hand:

Do not stop writing.

For a heartbeat I could only stare at them. Then my breath left me all at once, and I pressed the note to my chest, laughter spilling out before I could stop it.

Briallen folded her arms, unimpressed. “You look as though he’s just declared his undying love.”

“Briallen, he read them. He read all of them.”

She shook her head and muttered something about stubborn men and foolish girls, but I hardly heard her. My heart felt lighter than it had in months. I scrambled for my writing desk, already reaching for quill and ink.