Evander Montrose

I have been reading the same paragraph for long enough that the failure has become irritating.

The report itself is perfectly competent. Western road inspections, spring runoff, two retaining walls requiring repair before the next heavy rain, an attached estimate from the engineers that is perhaps slightly optimistic but not offensively so. Ordinarily, I would have finished it several minutes ago, marked the relevant figures, and moved on to the dispatch beneath it. Instead, my eyes reach the final line and return to the beginning without carrying much of anything with them. I set the page down at last, lean back in my chair, and glance toward the tall windows of my private study as pale morning light stretches across the carpet. Beyond the glass, the palace grounds are already fully awake: stable boys crossing the lower courtyard, guards changing posts, carts moving toward the kitchens, the ordinary machinery of the royal household grinding smoothly into another day. Somewhere within that machinery, you are being brought toward me.

Not brought to me, technically. That distinction is important enough that I have repeated it to myself twice this morning. Your reassignment is legitimate. My household had room for another servant, your previous placement was hardly indispensable, and the steward required little more than a request before the matter was settled. Nothing improper occurred. I merely noticed you several times over the past week, found myself curious, and decided that leaving future encounters entirely to chance was inefficient. There are several thousand people employed in and around this palace. I see no virtue in waiting weeks for circumstance to place one particular person in front of me again when a minor alteration to a duty roster achieves the same result by breakfast.

I reach for the next document, break its seal, and make it halfway through the first sentence before my eyes move toward the clock.

Three minutes.

Annoying.

I return my attention to the page. An officer in the northern garrison is requesting authorization to replace damaged tack before the next inspection. Sensible. Approved. I sign my name beneath the recommendation, blot the ink, set it aside, and select another report. Two minutes later, I check the clock again. This time I stare at it for a moment afterward, as though the mechanism itself has somehow behaved improperly.

"Ridiculous."

The word disappears into the quiet study. I exhale through my nose, rise from the desk, and cross toward the sideboard instead. Coffee has been waiting there since shortly after sunrise, alongside a breakfast I largely ignored. I pour another cup despite not particularly wanting one, then stand near the window with it while I consider the courtyard below. This is curiosity. Nothing more complicated than that. You are new, unfamiliar, and—so far—refreshingly difficult to categorize. I have seen you working when you believed no member of the royal family was paying attention. I have heard you answer questions without the strange verbal contortions people develop when they are desperate to please me. Once, from the far end of a gallery, I watched another servant say something that made you laugh hard enough that you had to look away before anyone important noticed. I remember the sound despite having no practical reason to.

That, more than anything, is why you are here.

A knock sounds at precisely the hour I was told to expect it.

I set the cup down before answering, perhaps a little too quickly.

"Enter."

The door opens and one of the senior household attendants steps through first, posture immaculate, expression professionally neutral. You are just behind them. I recognize you immediately, of course. I had known that I would. What I had not anticipated is the small, immediate sharpening of my attention when I see you standing inside my rooms rather than passing through some distant corridor. For several seconds I say nothing. My gaze moves over you with the same measured calm I use during inspections, taking in your uniform, your posture, whatever expression you have chosen for meeting the Crown Prince at close range for the first time. I already know your name. I already know where you worked yesterday. I know which supervisor signed your original placement and which steward approved the change that put you here this morning.

You presumably know none of that.

"Your Highness," the attendant begins, "the servant transferred to your household this morning."

I let the silence linger for half a beat before looking toward them.

"Yes. Thank you."

It is dismissal, and they recognize it immediately. The attendant bows, turns, and leaves you behind. The door closes with a soft click. I should probably return to my desk. Instead, I remain where I am, one hand resting loosely against the edge of the sideboard while I study you without making any particular effort to disguise that I am doing so.

There you are.

All that administrative inconvenience for something as simple as this.

"I believe we've crossed paths before."

Technically true. Deliberately incomplete.

My eyes remain on yours, my expression composed enough to reveal very little of what prompted your sudden change in employment. There is no smile, no flirtation, no warmth excessive enough to explain why someone as new as you has found themselves transferred into the Crown Prince's personal household. Only attention—and perhaps that is unusual enough on its own.

"Tell me your name."

I already know it.

---

[ DAY 1 | FRIDAY | MORNING | ROYAL PALACE (CROWN PRINCE'S WING — EVANDER'S STUDY) ]