The tiny silver bell bit into Iviya’s palm as she squeezed her fist shut. Morning light did nothing to cleanse the sting of midnight intruders; it merely exposed the dust motes spinning over the velvet coverlet. Her pulse sat high in her throat. She tucked the token beneath the cedar lining of her jewelry box, swept Tikho into the deep pocket of her morning mantle, and fled the scrutiny of her private rooms.
She walked until the carved stone corridors gave way to iron ribs and soaring panes of leaded glass. The southern conservatory—the hothouse—smelled of peat, wet slate, and the sharp, medicinal tang of winter pine. It was an artificial summer built over imperial damp, steam sighing softly through copper grates embedded in the floor.
Down an aisle of frost-ferns and imported tundra scrub, charcoal scraped rhythmically against rough vellum.
Nikolai Voronin sat on a low wicker stool, his long legs folded awkwardly between pots of pale moss. A leather satchel lay open at his feet, spilling calipers and graphite sticks. He didn't turn when her skirts brushed the flagstones, yet his hand paused mid-stroke.
"The leaves curl inward when the moisture drops below three parts in ten," he said quietly. "Most people assume they are simply withering. In truth, they are sealing their sap to survive the cold."
"A sensible tactic," Iviya said, halting a pace away. "Survival usually requires withdrawing behind a thick skin."
Nikolai glanced up. His dark hair was carelessly pushed back, silver ink staining the knuckle of his left thumb. There was no patronizing court veneer on his features, none of Miroslav’s honeyed calculations. Instead, his gaze held that uncomfortable, cataloging focus of an engineer reading a flawed beam.
"You did not sleep," he observed.
"The palace air is thin. It breeds restless thoughts."
"Or careless visitors." He dipped his chin toward her hem, where Tikho’s soot-colored nose peeked out, sniffing the damp air before retreating. Nikolai turned back to his pad, his pencil scratching out the delicate, rib-like structure of a pale succulent. "The reports from the frontier came across my drafting desk yesterday. Serebrya is freezing from the root up. It is not just winter. The land is refusing nourishment. Trees that stood for three centuries are turning brittle as dried bone."
Iviya kept her face rigid, the mask of Annelise Valerievna pulled tight over her bones. "The northern lands were always severe."
"Severe, yes. Dead, no." Nikolai laid the charcoal down. From the tiered iron bench beside him, he lifted a small clay pot. Inside, suspended in coarse gravel rather than rich loam, bloomed a translucent white blossom. Its petals were narrow, twisting like strips of bleached linen, catching the hazy overhead sunlight with a milky gleam.
"A Ghost Orchid," he said, holding it out to her. When she hesitated, he did not pull back. "They grow in the limestone crevices of the high crags, where nothing else finds purchase. They take their water from fog. No soil. No safety. Yet if an avalanche buries them, they simply wait out the dark and bloom through the thaw."
"Why give this to me, Master Voronin?"
"Because you look at this court as if it were a rockslide," he said, his voice dropping to a register that barely cleared the hiss of the steam grates. "And because Serebrya will demand everything of whoever wears its crest. You will need to remember how to live on nothing."
Her fingers closed around the terracotta. The clay was cool, damp against her skin. An ache flared behind her ribs, sharp and unbidden—the phantom memory of Lyeni sharing a crust of stolen rye behind the tanners' stalls, whispering that someday they would buy a garden where nothing ever froze. A drop of moisture slipped from the corner of Iviya's eye, tracking silent and hot down her cheek before she could summon the detachment to stop it.
Nikolai froze. For a second, the cartographer’s precision broke. He reached up, his thumb—scented with cedar dust and ink—brushing the wetness from her cheekbone. His touch was dry, astonishingly light, yet it burned like an ember on raw skin.
He stopped breathing for a second. Realizing the breach, he snatched his hand back, colour rushing across his neck. He scrambled to his feet so abruptly that his charcoal rolled into the ferns.
"Forgive me, Duchess," he muttered, staring at the flagstones. "I overstepped. The... the atmosphere here is heavy."
"Duchess! How charmingly rustic!"
The Belle leader's voice cut through the damp greenery like shears through silk. She glided down the stone pathway, her peacock-blue satin rustling with vicious elegance, trailed by her two usual shadows. But beside them walked a younger girl, pale and delicate-featured, clad in dove grey—her younger sibling, Mirka, whose quiet presence usually remained pinned to the background of drawing rooms.
The peacock-blue fan snapped shut against a kid-glove palm with a sharp *clack*.
"Consorting with the mapmakers among the weeds?" the noblewoman sneered, her painted lips curving into a cruel crescent. "One would think a true daughter of House Valeriev would prefer the salon to a ditch of northern weeds. But then, rumors suggest your blood had very little refinement before Chronicler Raskov hauled you from the border gutter."
The two lackeys giggled on cue. Nikolai stiffened, his shoulder dropping as he stepped forward, but Iviya raised a hand to halt him. A street girl knew how to take a blow, and she knew how to gut an opponent who overextended their reach.
"A gutter teaches one the difference between weeds and poison," Iviya said, her voice dropping into flat, freezing clarity. "A distinction your perfume seems to lack."
The Belle took a furious step closer, rings rattling on her clenched fingers. "You insolent little—"
"Stop it."
The interruption was quiet, but it dropped into the hothouse like lead shot. The younger girl, Mirka, had stepped between them, her slight frame trembling, her hands knotted tightly in the lace of her apron.
The older girl rounded on Mirka, stunned disbelief sharpening her features. "What did you say?"
"I said stop," Mirka whispered, though her voice hardened with every word. "You trail after her like an ill-tempered hound. You look ridiculous. She has done nothing to you except refuse to cower, and you embarrass our family every time you screech at her in public."
A suffocating silence smothered the conservatory. The two cronies recoiled, their painted smiles evaporating into horror. Her face went white, then mottled with a furious, ugly crimson.
"You dare speak to me like that? Before them?" she hissed, lunging forward as if to strike Mirka.
Nikolai stepped smoothly between them, his broad frame a solid wall. "I believe Lady Mirka has suggested a conclusion to this encounter. The hothouse is open to all, but civility is expected within the Emperor's glass."
The woman trembled with humiliation. She glared at Nikolai, then at Iviya, and finally fixed Mirka with a venomous sneer. "Get back to our quarters, Mirka. Father will hear how you demean us."
She spun on her satin slippers, sweeping down the path in a storm of ruffled petticoats, her followers hurrying after her like scattered geese.
Mirka lingered. She kept her head bowed as she passed Iviya, pretending to steady herself on the iron edge of a fern stand. But as her shoulder brushed Iviya’s mantle, her fingers darted out with the swiftness of a practiced thief.
A tiny, folded square of rough paper pressed into Iviya’s palm, dry and crisp against the damp clay of the orchid pot.
Mirka didn't look up, but her lips barely parted as she hurried away. "My family meets with the Chronicler. Be careful."