I was happy unseen,

  brave behind my veil,

  wise only when carefree.

  How selfish can I be?

  —Berdorf, E. Poems of a Wingless Princess. Unpublished manuscript, Summer.

  People noticed her less each Summer. Eura had learned to walk slowly as Summerfest gathered.

  She passed through the palace corridors without ceremony. Heads turned, then turned away again. No bows. No curtsies. Most of the Nobels did not pause long enough to recognise that the princess’s face changed with adolescence, and she let them keep their mistake.

  Each year, more faces forgot her. She moved through Pollux as another creature among many. The loss of recognition did not trouble her. It left space. It gave her room to breathe. She gained the taste of being unremarkable.

  The day would proceed in its dull routine.

  The court would collect itself along the palace corridors, pressed into order, then set in motion toward the gardens. There, beneath open sky, two improvised thrones would wait. One for her father. One for her. After the speeches, the court would loosen and scatter, polite laughter and music drifting down toward Balma-Saat.

  For now, the halls were still in flux, and Eura walked on at her own pace.

  She was in no hurry.

  The procession would come, as it always did. The slow parade of nobles approaching the makeshift thrones, one by one, bearing gifts chosen to be seen rather than used. Trinkets. Promises spoken loudly enough for witnesses. Requests slipped in with smiles, as if generosity entitled them to more.

  Eura had endured it before. She would endure it again.

  This Summer, at least, the court would not belong solely to itself. Adolescents around her age, survivors of the Long Night from across the Map, would be brought into the festivities. Menschen like her. Faces the court would struggle to look past.

  Her father had called it a present for her mother.

  Eura could not decide whether that was meant as a gesture of generosity or as a provocation.

  That novelty made the day tolerable.

  As she walked, she watched. Who clustered together. Who avoided whom. Who smiled too quickly. Who did not look at her at all. Allies revealed themselves in small ways. Enemies too. Information gathered quietly, without announcement.

  She would need it.

  Soon enough, she would claim her Dois Trae. After that, the throne would no longer be theoretical. The question was not whether she would confront her mother, but when, and by which means.

  The Map could not continue as it was. Too much had been broken. Too many systems left to rot.

  If words were enough, she would use them. If not, she would find another way.

  “Look at you.”

  She turned at the sound of it, searching the corridor, and then she saw him.

  “Hex!”

  She crossed the distance in two quick steps and threw her arms around him. His embrace closed immediately, strong and familiar, lifting her just enough to spin them both before setting her back down.

  “Where have you been?” she demanded, pulling free. “Not even a letter.” She wrinkled her nose as she caught his scent, pungent, almost overwhelming, then she remembered. Different. “Did you forget where I lived?”

  He smiled, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes.

  Hex had grown. Taller, larger, his coat stretched tighter across his belly. Dark shadows clung beneath his eyes, carving hollows that hadn’t been there before. He looked exhausted.

  “I’ve been travelling,” he said. “Business. Here and there.”

  “Business?”

  “I’m trying to take back what’s mine.”

  The words were light, almost casual, but the way he said them closed the subject just as neatly. He shifted, then added, “I brought you something.”

  She tilted her head. “You know I don’t like court gifts.”

  “I know. But this isn’t really a gift.” A pause. “It’s something you’ve wanted for a long time.”

  Her mouth curved despite herself. “A magic box that gives me apple pies whenever I want?”

  He huffed a laugh. “That would have been an excellent gift. Possibly better than this. Shame I didn’t think of that.”

  “What is it then?” she asked.

  “I have an answer,” he said. “For the question that keeps you awake.”

  She studied him. Curiosity sparked, but something else tightened beneath it, a small, instinctive warning. “I have several questions that do that,” she said carefully.

  “I know what the Dual-Headed Fish wants the most.”

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  The corridor seemed to narrow around them.

  “What is it?”

  Hex reached for her hand and closed his fingers around it, firmer than necessary. “Come with me,” he said. “Let’s ask him.”

  Lolth circled the lake in her black robe and mask, steps calculated, gaze focused and never still. She surveyed the shoreline and the paths beyond it, tracking movement, posture, mood. A raised voice. A sudden break in rhythm. The small disturbances that grew into larger ones, if left unattended, like an unhappy farmer, a dangerous heist, whatever the world might recall to disturb the festivities. This Summer, everything was calm. Nothing out of the ordinary.

  The air lay calm over Balma-Saat. Laughter carried easily. Nothing strained. Nothing strange. The world, for once, seemed content to behave.

  People had already begun to gather near the water, forming and reforming loose clusters. Many were young, close to Eura’s age, and maybe the princess would make new friends.

  Her hands remained clasped behind her back as she walked, back straight, shoulders locked into discipline. With each step, the chains at her waist brushed against her knees and hips.

  It was, she decided, a good day.

  Until she saw him.

  He stood among the passing crowd as if he belonged there. Brown suit. A cane resting lightly in one hand. Red hair catching the sun. For a heartbeat, the world narrowed to that single, impossible detail.

  “Orlo?” The name slipped out before she could stop it.

  The space he occupied emptied.

  Lolth’s steps lengthened, just slightly. She cut through the flow of people, eyes searching, breath steady. Imagination, she told herself. Memory playing tricks.

  At the edge of the path, where a bench leaned into the shade of a tree, someone waited.

  She stopped.

  Slowly, she reached up and removed her mask, as if clarity might come easier without it.

  “Orlo?”

  He smiled. “Hi, Little Spider.”

  “What are you… I mean—how… when… Orlo?” The words tangled and failed her.

  She knew this man despised her. She had learned that early. Yet nothing in his face reflected it now. There was only patience there. And something gentler still, almost careful.

  He looked different.

  She could not have said how at first. Only that the wrongness crept in slowly. His posture was unchanged, his expression familiar, but the details refused to settle. His cane, for one. The silver was plain, stripped of its elaborate lines that Muna designed, and the engraving of 111 was nowhere to be seen.

  “I came to warn you,” Orlo said. “Though I don’t know if it will change anything.” A pause too long. His grip tightened on the cane. “I’ve tried before. It always ends the same.”

  Her breath caught.

  “From this day on,” he continued, quietly, “you will hate me.”

  Lolth frowned. “Why would I hate you?”

  Orlo looked past her, toward the lake. “Eura is in danger.” He waited, as if weighing the cost of the next words. “Our daughter is the danger. Today…” His voice lowered. “It will happen again.”

  “Our daughter?”Lolth froze. The realisation struck so suddenly it knocked the air from her lungs, as if the ground beneath her feet had vanished. “You knew?”

  She stepped closer. “How long?” The words came faster now. “Why didn’t you say anything? Why weren’t you here to protect her?”

  Her voice rose with each question, sharp and climbing. “Do you even know what she’s capable of?”

  “Yes.”

  The word landed flat.

  Lolth stared at him. “Yes?” A bitter laugh escaped her. “That’s all you have to say?”

  “This has happened too many times,” Orlo replied. “I’m trying to fix it.”

  “Fix it?” Her hands curled into fists. “That child needs love. She needs care. Guidance.” Her voice broke, then hardened again. “I’m not a fucking Sternach. And no one in this palace knows how to protect her.”

  “Little Spider—”

  “Don’t call me that!”

  He didn’t flinch. “Zora.”

  “Zora died.”

  The words tore out of her. “She died the day Eura was born. Her mother is the Winterqueen. Her father is the Elven King and…” Her breath hitched. The rest refused to come.

  She stood close to her Hexe. Too close. And felt nothing.

  No pull. No echo. No shared current. She reached for it anyway, desperate, grasping for some trace of the bond that should have been there. There was nothing. Only his face. The stupid eyepatch. Solid. Unfeeling.

  Her voice dropped. “I knew you hated me,” she said. “But this is torture.”

  “It’s going to happen again,” Orlo replied. “Every time. Always somewhere different.” His gaze flicked away, as if tracking ghosts. “Once it was near the lake. Another time in the training grounds. I don’t know where it will be next.”

  “What do you mean?” Her voice was thin now.

  “Eura is about to burst.”

  Lolth shook her head. “I saw her earlier. She was happy.”

  “Xendrix is here.”

  The name meant nothing. “Who the fuck is Xendrix?”

  Her eyes drifted, just for a moment, pulled by movement in the crowd. When she turned back—

  Orlo was gone.

  Jaer leaned against a column in one of the palace’s emptiest halls. The stone was cool through his Black Robe. He waited without hurry, listening for the first signals that would call the procession into motion, and for Finnegan to finish whatever had detained him.

  Beyond the arches, the rear gardens of Pollux lay open and quiet. Few ventured there anymore. Not since what had happened sixteen Summers ago. The remains of the old Green Mother temple still scarred the ground, stone warped and melted, half-swallowed by time.

  Movement caught his eye.

  Far below, Eura crossed the path beside a young man. From this distance, Jaer could make out little more than the shape of him. Chubby. Soft around the edges. Laughing at something she’d said.

  And yet—

  Something in the way they walked together tugged at him, unwelcome. His thoughts slid backward, to a time when the Meerio River still linked the Great Continent to Ormgrund. When camps of mages and faeries searched riverbanks for dead spiders. To a human who had once been hope, who twisted all that he loved, and left ruin behind. A human who brought the Long Night and its Nightmares into the world.

  A face he refused to name.

  A sudden hand seized his shoulder.

  The world lurched as he was pulled back, his spine striking stone, and then Finnegan was there, mouth warm against his, stealing the thought before it could settle. The kiss was quick, careless, familiar in a way nothing else was.

  Jaer laughed softly against him. “Are you ready?”

  Finnegan’s smile lingered far too long. “I was thinking,” he said, “we could have some fun first, my love.”

  

  There is remarkably little documented material concerning the childhood of the Summerqueen, Eura Berdorf. In the surviving press and private correspondence of the period, she appears largely as a marginal notation, most often confined to brief mentions surrounding Summerfest observances, typically coinciding with her birthday.

  A number of these festivals were accompanied by rumours. Some spoke of a child too powerful to exist. Of sudden rains, of winds capable of stripping stone from Pollux Palace walls. Others, more imaginative still, suggested the disappearance of an entire Menschen encampment, erased without a trace. None of these claims are supported by verifiable evidence. They remain, without exception, unsubstantiated.

  Historians, therefore, cannot say with confidence what manner of child she was. Timid or defiant. Obedient or unruly. Curious or withdrawn. The record permits all interpretations and confirms none. Each generation seems to have selected the version most convenient to its prevailing thesis. The latest was that she was a villain in the making.

  One conjecture, however, warrants closer attention. Namely, the possibility that Sorgenstein authorities did not merely neglect the Summerqueen’s early Summers, but actively excised them. Not through overt decree, but through omission. Through the quiet removal of testimony. Through the discouragement of memory.

  Such practices were not without precedent. The case of Ludovic Berdorf provides a useful comparison. The principal distinction between the Summerqueen and the Sorgenstein Prince lies not in the severity of their circumstances, but in their capacity to resist erasure. One was too young to speak. The other had contemporaries who remembered him. I do.

  When framed thus, the disparity appears less a matter of fate than of access. And, perhaps uncomfortably, less accidental than history has preferred to admit. —The Hexe – Book Three by Professor Edgar O. Duvencrune, First Edition, 555th Summer.