Love conquers all!

1-The Return

BLAIR

Today is the day.

After six long, torturous, absolutely endless years, Roan Demetrus, the Empire’s golden knight, the Slayer of the Bone Hydra, Hero of the Frost Campaign, and my best friend in the entire world returns.

Returned.

Right now. This second.

I should have been sitting properly at my desk, reviewing my etiquette notes for the evening banquet. Instead, I was balanced on the wide sill of my East Tower bedchamber, nose pressed to the glass like a child at a sweet shop.

“I'm going to fall out of this window,” I declared, breath fogging the pane.

Behind me, Cassia, my handmaiden, reluctant conscience, and favorite sparring partner was sprawled across the velvet chaise with a book in one hand and an apple in the other. “Please don’t. If you die before supper, I’ll have to dine alone with your mother, and that’s not something I’m emotionally prepared for.”

“He’s here, Cass.”

“So you’ve said.”

“Fourteen times.”

“Sixteen,” I corrected automatically.

Cassia groaned into her book. “Don’t make me count how many of those times involved squealing.”

I squealed again.

Outside, Aragon pulsed like a living heart. Sunlight poured across red-tiled roofs; streamers of gold and white rippled from balconies. From the palace gardens below came the smell of wisteria and dust and the sound of bells every bell in the city, it seemed, tolling his arrival.

Then came the roar.

“ROAN! ROAN DEMETRUS!”

My stomach flipped.

There he was.

Riding through the gates on a stallion dark as spilled ink, armor polished to a sun-bright gleam, cloak cutting the air behind him. Even from here, three stories up, I could see his face, the same straight nose, the same determined jaw, but the boyish edges had been honed away. His expression was calmer now, heavier, but when the corner of his mouth lifted in that half-smile, my heart forgot how to behave.

“Gods,” I whispered. “He looks the same.”

“Except taller,” Cassia said, appearing beside me. “And broader. And very obviously a man.”

“Cassia!”

“I mean it in the most respectable way possible.”

I didn’t wait for more teasing. I leapt from the sill, nearly toppling her, and ran.

“Blair! Wait.. you can’t just .. ”

But I could, and I did.

Barefoot, skirts gathered in my fists, I tore through the marble corridors, ignoring the startled gasps of attendants and the disapproving portraits of ancestors glaring down at me. I had only one thought: he’s here.

The grand staircase appeared before me, a sweep of white stone and gold railing. My heart thundered like the drums outside as I flew down it, hair tumbling loose, breathless and grinning.

I was halfway across the vestibule when a human barricade appeared.

Servants. At least ten of them, lined shoulder to shoulder, polished as the floor itself.

“Princess Blair,” said the head steward in his calm, diplomatic tone the one he used for fires, tantrums, and political scandals. “Her Majesty instructed us not to let you pass.”

“What?” I blinked. “But he’s here! He’s ..he’s right there..”

“Blair.”

My mother’s voice cut through the hall like cold steel.

She stood at the top of the stairs, every inch the Queen Regent: spine straight, eyes sharp, crimson gown trailing behind her like the echo of a wound. Light from the high windows turned the rubies in her crown to flame.

“You are not to see the knight,” she said.

“I just want to welcome him.” My voice cracked on want. “He’s not some stranger, he’s... Roan.”

“You are engaged to Prince Alexander.” Each word fell like a verdict. “The people cannot see you running after a soldier like a lovesick farm girl.”

“He’s not just a soldier.”

“No.” Her expression softened for one heartbeat. “He’s a complication.”

The silence stretched until even the banners above seemed to hold their breath.

“You were children,” she said finally, descending step by step. “That part of your life is over. You are heir to Aragon. You cannot afford sentiment.”

When she reached me, she lifted a hand and brushed a curl from my cheek. Her fingers were cool; the faint scent of lilies clung to her.

“Stay here, Blair. Please.”

A kiss on my forehead ..light, formal, final.. and she was gone.

---

I stayed where she’d left me until the echoes of her footsteps faded.

Cassia found me sitting on the lowest stair, skirt crumpled, dignity in tatters.

“Denied?”

“Blocked. Ordered. Banished.”

Cassia sighed and sat beside me, holding out her apple. I bit it in miserable defiance.

“I hate this,” I said thickly. “I hate the rules, the gowns, the politics, the everything.”

“And the towering wall of servants?”

“And the towering wall of servants.”

For a while, we said nothing. The palace was quiet except for the faint hum of celebration outside. Through the stained glass windows, light spilled across the marble in shards of ruby and gold. Trumpets blared in the distance. His name rose with them again, echoing off the city walls.

He was out there.

Just out there.

And I was trapped here, a princess in her gilded cage.

“I could sneak out,” I said.

“You could try,” Cassia replied, too casually.

I frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“That your mother probably posted guards on every back stair and bribed the kitchen staff to tattle if they see a swirl of pink silk.”

“She wouldn’t.”

“She absolutely would.”

I groaned and buried my face in my knees. “It’s not fair.”

“Nope.”

“I just wanted to see him.”

“I know.”

Her voice was gentle, and for a while we just sat there, listening to the muffled joy of a city that wasn’t ours to join.

---

When Cassia finally coaxed me back to my chamber, the sun had shifted westward. The air smelled of parchment and lilacs and the faint, metallic tang of armor oil, a gift my brother had sent from the front, still sitting unopened on my shelf.

Cassia lit the sconces and fussed with the curtains. “You should change before dinner.”

“I’m not hungry.”

She raised a brow. “You’re never hungry when you’re dramatic.”

“I’m mourning, Cassia. That’s different.”

“Mourning what?”

“The death of my freedom.”

She laughed softly, leaving me to sulk.

When she was gone, I wandered toward the mirror. The tall glass stood framed in gold filigree, reflecting the faint blush of evening light.

For a moment I didn’t recognize the girl staring back.

She was taller now, her frame slender but stronger than before; her hair, that pale gold my mother prized fell in waves over her shoulders. The sun had kissed her skin a little darker this summer. Her eyes my father’s blue seemed wider, older.

I tilted my head, studying the woman I was supposed to become: future queen, polished diplomat, ornament of the Empire. My gown was wrinkled from running, one curl hung rebelliously across my forehead, and I realized not for the first time that I would never look as effortless as my mother.

Still, I reached for my dressing table, dabbed a touch of rose balm on my lips, smoothed the fabric at my shoulders.

He’d notice, I thought. He always noticed.

Once, when I was twelve, he’d said I looked like dawn when I smiled. I hadn’t smiled properly since he left.

My reflection smiled now, tentative, almost shy.

“You’re ridiculous,” I told her.

But my pulse was a drumbeat in my throat.

Because beneath all the anger and duty and frustration, something else had woken a quiet, dangerous wanting I didn’t dare name.

He was older now. A knight. A legend.

And I was no longer a child.

That truth sat heavy in my chest, sweet and terrifying.

---

Cassia returned with a tray of tea and honey cakes. “You look less like you’re planning treason,” she observed, setting it down.

“I’m reconsidering the form of my rebellion,” I said primly.

She snorted. “What’s the new plan, Your Highness?”

“Patience.”

“Never heard of it.”

“Neither have I,” I admitted, and sipped my tea.

Outside, the cheers were fading into evening song. Somewhere below, the palace gates closed with a resonant clang. He was inside the walls now ,maybe speaking with my mother, maybe stabling his horse, maybe walking the same corridors I had just raced through.

The thought made the room feel smaller, the air thinner.

“Cassia?”

“Mm?”

“Do you think he’ll remember me?”

She looked up from the cakes. “You’ve been impossible for six years. I’d wager half the Empire remembers you.”

I laughed, but it came out softer than I meant. “Not like that. I mean — me. The girl who used to chase him through the orchards. Who scraped her knees trying to keep up.”

Cassia’s expression gentled. “I think he’ll remember the way you made him laugh.”

The words warmed something deep inside me.

I turned back to the window. The courtyard below was empty now, banners fluttering lazily in the dusk. The sky burned orange and violet above the western towers.

He was somewhere in that light, and I couldn’t reach him.

Not tonight.

But soon.

Because I could feel it already, the shift in the air, the way the world held its breath when I whispered his name.

Roan.

It was both a memory and a promise.

---

That night, as the palace prepared for the feast in his honor, I stayed by the window, listening to the faint hum of music from the great hall below. Cassia had fallen asleep in a chair, book half-open on her lap.

I traced the glass with my fingertip, drawing invisible patterns.

Somewhere beyond those walls, he was smiling, drinking, maybe looking up at the same moon.

And though I wasn’t allowed near him, though every rule of court and crown pressed against my ribs, I felt it — that spark, small and defiant.

The kind of want that could start wars if I let it.

So I didn’t cry. I didn’t beg.

I just waited.

Because soon enough, the world would stop treating me like a child.

And when it did, ’d make sure Roan Demetrus saw me.

Not as a memory.

But as something impossible to forget.