The next day, Lynn was awakened by a chipper-sounding voice, breaking through his blurry dream.

“Morning, Princess! It’s a fine day!”

Before Lynn had a chance to gather his wits and reprimand Adan for calling him ‘Princess’, bright light flooded the room as the youth pulled back the heavy curtains blocking the windows. The sudden light caused Lynn to moan as he protected his eyes by disappearing beneath his covers.

“Oh no, you don’t,” Adan countered with a laugh, and seconds later, Lynn found himself lying exposed on his bed with only his sleeping gown to cover his shame.

“Hey!” Lynn growled and made an attempt to grab back his stolen duvet, but to no avail.

“Sorry, Princess, but it’s time to get up. We have a whole castle to explore!” Adan’s voice sounded annoyingly excited, and once Lynn’s eyes had finally adjusted to the light, Adan’s beaming smile confirmed his suspicion.

“You are a one of those morning people, aren’t you?”

Adan laughed and started walking over to the door. “Something like that.”

Without warning, Adan opened the door, only to reveal a serving maid standing on the other side, her hand raised and ready to knock. “Breakfast?” he asked and, without waiting for a response, pulled in the trolley that the girl had brought. “Thanks.”

With that, the door was closed again and Adan gingerly pushed the trolley of food to the gold-lacquered table at the other end of Lynne’s room. “Oh, omelets!” he exclaimed happily as he started to lay out the food on the table.

“What are you . . . doing?” Lynne found himself asking as he stared at the phenomenon that was Adan.

“Preparing to eat my breakfast?” Adan asked back with a look that seemed to wonder if Lynne was an idiot.

For a moment, Lynne felt as though there was something more important that he had wanted to ask, but the more he thought about it, the less important it seemed. With a shrug, Lynne also headed over to the table and snatched the freshly baked bun Adan was about to take a bite out of.

“You mean my breakfast.” He popped the bun in his mouth, savoring the still warm bread.

Beside him, Lynn missed the brief look of sadness in Adan’s eyes.

---

The following days were fairly uneventful at the palace. Before Lynne’s father arrived with more maids, Adan was his only fixed company. Apart from having dinner with the king and a few others once in a while, most of their time was spent familiarizing themselves with their new surroundings. The King had thought it was a reasonable enough request for the future queen to want to know more about what would become her home, and gave them fairly free reign to walk about as they wished.

Lynn couldn’t help but notice that Adan seemed particularly interested in the king’s library, always wishing to return and move back and forth between the book-filled shelves, touching the books as he passed. There would always be a slightly more concentrated look on his face when he did it, as if he were trying to figure something out. It wasn’t until the third time they visited the library, still without Adan actually opening a single book, that a curious notion occurred to Lynn.

“Adan,” he asked as the young man ran his hand along yet another bookshelf. “Don’t tell me you can’t read?”

Adan froze, and the dazed look on his face was enough to make Lynn unable to hold back a laugh. Adan scratched his head, looking a bit embarrassed.

“Come on, bumpkin, I’ll teach you.” Lynn didn’t hesitate. He scavenged through the bookshelves until he found some relatively simple books and a large roll of blank paper. Lynn then pulled the slightly resistant Adan back to his suite and locked the door behind them.

Lynn felt very excited; he had finally found something he could use to at least partially return Adan’s favor of saving him before and helping him escape his fate in the future.

He ignored the faint scent of burnt wood and almonds lingering in the air as he leaned in to start teaching.

---

“No need to be embarrassed,” Lynn urged as he rolled out some blank paper and started scribbling down the alphabet. “I bet you didn’t need to read or write where you lived before, but it’s never to late to learn. Come, come, I’ll explain the letters for you.”

Adan smiled stiffly, unsure if she should laugh or cry. She was certainly embarrassed. For Adan, she only needed to flip through a few dictionaries and her A.I. would be able to piece together almost any written language in the universe and teach it to her. She could of course read Lynn’s langue.

Unfortunately, Adan had been too preoccupied by trying to figure out how to get into the mystery space that her BioArmor sentinels couldn’t enter, looking over structural charts created over days of focused searching and the like. She had already figured out that it had something to do with the library, because her sentinels would always lose and regain the King when he seemingly walked through the wall and disappeared into that unknown space, but neither Adan nor her A.I. could figure out how he did it. Thus, Adan had missed the moment to come up with an excuse to explain her behavior.

Adan had been too focused and totally didn’t consider how her behavior would seem from Lynne’s perspective. Who wouldn’t guess that she was illiterate after returning to the library so many times without ever reading anything? Now she would have to “slowly” learn the written language together with Lynne or risk raising his suspicion yet again.

“Why didn’t you help me come up with an excuse?” Adan accused her A.I..

“Sai has logged a recent uptake in instances where you ignore Sai’s advice regarding interactions with the native Lynne.” The A.I.’s voice sounded almost smug. “Sai deemed it unnecessary to attempt advising you again.”

Adan mentally rolled her eyes. At the same time, she couldn’t help but smile a little when she saw the eagerness in Lynne’s eyes as he explained how letters sounded differently depending on how they were arranged. She picked up the pen Lynne had offered her and started to make shaky copies of Lynne’s elegant writing.

“I guess there are worse things I could be doing.”

And boy, she was right.

Later that afternoon, Adan was sprawled across the fainting couch, chewing on a grape, feeling like a bored noble. Her thoughts drifted not to the hidden room in the library but the unknowing look Lynne had given her at breakfast days before.

Lynn stood at the mirror, frowning at her reflection. “You’re slouching again. If someone doesn’t fix your posture, the priestesses will think you were raised by wolves.”

Adan gave a lazy grin. “I was raised by wolves. They had excellently practical postures.”

Lynn rolled his eyes and turned to face her. “Stand up.”

Adan blinked. “Are we fighting?”

“No. I’m going to teach you how to bow like someone who doesn’t terrify servants.”

“I terrify servants?”

“Only the sensible ones.”

Adan rose with a theatrical groan. Lynn stepped behind him, adjusting his stance, tapping her back straight, guiding her arm. Adan felt enveloped by a crisp scent of crushed mint and white cedar, rich and fresh. Like breathing in mountain air in winter.

Distracting.

“Now, tilt your head slightly. No—not like that. You’re not challenging someone to a duel. Lower. Gracefully.”

Adan tried again, this time adding a dramatic flourish and a wink at the end.

Lynn pinched the bridge of his nose. “That was not graceful. That was… seductive.”

“I know.” Adan beamed. “Do I pass?”

Lynn groaned. “We’re doomed.”

---

Like this, the first week passed quickly. The quite rhythm of their days seemed to lull Lynn into something dangerously close to comfort. Which, given the circumstances was not good.

Adan might not managed to figure out what was inside the impenetrable box but she had gained a lot of insight into what was going on at the palace. She couldn’t help but feel a bit saddened by Lynne’s fate; the boy was fighting an uphill battle and he didn’t even know the half of it. She wanted to help but it was, sadly, not up to Adan to decide his fate.

She was not allowed to.

The more information she received from her spying sentinels, the more she realized how important Lynne’s future was for the fate of the country; even helping him a little bit was bound to affect thousands of lives. With this information at hand, the A.I.’s restrictions would make it difficult for her to engage at all without facing even more serious consequences.

Meanwhile, Adan was growing increasingly fond of Lynne. Although he did his best to hide it, there was no doubt that he was a very thoughtful guy. He would appear cold and distant in front of everyone, but he kept asking Adan to learn more about the palace servants’ well-being behind their back. He often spoke about escaping, but privately worried about what consequences it would bring for others, even taking Adan into consideration. It was a novel feeling, having someone so significantly weaker fearing for her safety. It made Adan eager to help, but her hands were tied.

“Adan!”

Lynne’s annoyed voice roused Adan from her distant thoughts. He was leaning over her as she sat cross-legged in her small room.

“What’s with you, Adan? I called twice without any response, only to find you here, meditating? Some bodyguard you are.”

Adan smiled wryly. It wasn’t like she hadn’t heard him, but she and her A.I. had been busy going over the more obscure protocols in hope of finding some loophole for her to use. Lynne’s calls had been purposefully blocked out.

“What can I help you with, Princess?”

Lynne clicked his tongue, something he always did when Adan teased him about his cross-dressing. “Stop playing around! I was just informed that my family has arrived; we are to greet them in the grand hall.”

“Sai,” Adan prompted as she stood up and indicated for Lynne to lead the way.

“Affirmative; altering focus,” the A.I. responded, and an area of Adan’s field of view blurred slightly before a recording from the main hall took its place. Adan could see two men standing at the center of the hall, the King seated in front of them and a minor horde of people kneeling in an orderly manner behind them. They had brought quite a substantial group of servants, probably for Lynne’s use.

Adan’s gaze traveled to the older of the two men. He was a bulky man, built for war and tested through countless battles. His eyes were sharp as he exchanged superficial pleasantries with the King. The man next to him was too young to truly be called a man, sixteen at best, but his eyes were just as sharp as his father’s; clearly, he had already seen plenty of battles.

Both men bore a striking resemblance to Lynne, but none of them carried his softer, more exotic air. They might gain attention within a crowd, but they didn’t demand it like Lynne did.

‘At least he demands my attention.’ Adan’s lip curled into an amused smile before she shook her head to dismiss the thought.

“When we greet my father, let me do the talking,” Lynn suddenly demanded as he hurriedly turned another corner. Most would just assume that he was eager to meet his family, but Adan could tell there was more to it. His adrenaline was up. Heart rate accelerated. Worry. She wondered if Lynn himself knew his mood had changed.

“Sure,” she replied absentmindedly and had to grind to a halt as Lynne abruptly turned around, his clear blue eyes prying into hers with rare seriousness.

“Promise me, Adan. No speaking without my say-so.”

Surprise danced on Adan’s golden brows and she tilted her head quizzically. “What is he afraid of?” she wondered, but held back the question in the end.

“You have my word, Lynn.”

Lynn held his gaze a little longer before finally sighing and turning around to once again hurry down the corridor. With his pace, it didn’t take long before the pair reached the main hall. Adan watched as Lynn stopped outside the big doors, adjusted his dress and took a deep breath, trying to force his heart to beat a little slower. It wasn’t helping. Lynn clenched his fists.

“I’ve got your back,” Adan blurted out before she could stop herself.

Lynn shuddered before slowly turning to look at the young man behind him, an odd look on his face. Adan stared back at him before sheepishly raising her hand to cover her misbehaving mouth.

“Sorry! Not a word, right?” Adan apologized with muffled words from behind her hand. “My silence begins now, promise.”

Lynne snorted and, no longer hesitating, strode into the main hall.

“You are unable to resist helping him,” the A.I. stipulated. “Sai must stress that punishment protocols are still heightened with regards to this nation’s affairs.”

Adan’s eyes flicked to the side.

Emberon stood halfway down the corridor, in partial shadow, speaking to one of the palace guards. He didn’t look at them directly—but Adan had noticed the way his voice paused, the subtle tilt of his head. Listening.

“Sai,” Adan murmured, subvocalizing. “Tag him. Heat and microexpression tracking.”

“Already done,” the A.I. confirmed. “Heart rate accelerating. Emotional spikes: amusement, tension, aggression. Possibly premeditated intent.”

Adan just sighed softly before following Lynne into the hall.

The youth ignored everything else and headed straight for his father, stopping a pace in front of the latter. With fluid elegance, Lynne curtsied deeply and then refused to raise his head.

“This daughter greets her honorable father!” Lynn managed to keep his voice steady, but Adan noticed that his body had tensed up again; he didn’t want to look up.

“Or perhaps doesn’t dare. . . .” Adan mused.

Her gaze shifted to Lynne’s father. The man’s eyes had softened for a brief moment when he saw his son and at Lynne’s greeting sadness had filled them, but they were back to their sharp determination by now. Standing next to his father, Lynne’s younger brother was slightly less adept at hiding his emotions, but he covered it with a laugh, breaking the silence in the hall. He stepped forward and helped his “sister” stand up.

“Father will feel sad if you greet him so distantly; why not give him a hug like you use to?” the brother urged, a clear teasing tone in his voice.

“Branton!” Lynne retorted, finally looking up from the ground, all his nervousness gone. “Manners!”

Adan shifted her weight to hide a stifled laugh. She was discrete about it, but the motion still caught the attention on Lynne’s father, who suddenly seemed to notice her for the first time. The man didn’t even try to hide how he inspected her from head to toe, his gaze constantly darkening as he took in her lean figure.

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