Lord Harriot swayed as he walked, his boots scuffing unevenly against the stone floor. The knight at his side—Ser Rodric, ever patient, ever dutiful—kept a steadying hand near his lord’s back but refrained from actually grabbing him. A man’s dignity could only take so many blows in one night.

  “I’ll tell you what, Roddy,” Harriot slurred, rubbing a hand down his face. “That was a damn fine meal. And a damn fine speech. Our host certainly knows how to put on a show.”

  “Yes, my lord,” Ser Rodric said, the crispness of his tone betraying long years of practice in humoring drunks.

  They rounded a corner, the flickering torches casting long, exaggerated shadows ahead of them. Harriot stretched, rolling his shoulders. “Shouldn’t sleep yet, though. Got… got things to do. Paperwork.” He grinned, as if the very word was a joke. “Can’t be putting off the important stuff, Roddy.”

  The knight gave him a ft look as he pushed open the door to Harriot’s guest chambers. “With respect, my lord, you are quite drunk.”

  Harriot waved a hand. “Nonsense.” He stepped inside, nearly tripping over his own feet, but recovered with a grand, sweeping gesture that nearly took out a nearby candleholder. “See? Fine.”

  Ser Rodric sighed through his nose and began unbuckling his lord’s sword belt, guiding him toward the chair near the desk. The desk itself was an unfortunate sight—stacked with ledgers, missives, and accounting scrolls that had been following Harriot for weeks, awaiting his attention.

  Harriot frowned at them, blinking slowly. “Gods, that’s a lot of numbers.” He sat heavily, leaning an elbow on the desk and rubbing his temples. “Maybe just… a quick look.”

  Rodric crossed his arms. “My lord. You’re drunk. Go to bed.”

  Harriot gave a zy grin. “A leader must know when to rally, Ser Roddy.”

  “A leader must also know when to lie down before he falls down.”

  Harriot chuckled, rubbing a hand over his face again. His eyes were already half-lidded. “A fair point…”

  He stumbled toward the bed. Rodric knelt to pull the boots from his lord’s feet and set them aside with practiced ease. By the time he turned back, Harriot’s head had slumped onto a feathered pillow, a soft snore escaping him. The knight exhaled and reached over to straighten the mess of papers on the desk. As he did, his eyes flicked toward the corner of the room, where the candlelight failed to reach.

  For a brief moment, he thought he saw something. A shift in the darkness, a presence just out of sight.

  His hand went to his sword. “Hello?” His voice was quiet but firm as he took a step forward. “Is someone there?”

  Silence.

  As his eyes adjusted, the shape resolved into a marble bust—one of the old Everburn kings, its hollow gaze fixed forward in silent judgment.

  Behind him, Harriot let out another snore, this one absolutely thunderous. Rodric sighed, shaking his head. Damn castle was setting his nerves off. He smirked to himself and gave the sleeping lord a final gnce.

  “Pleasant dreams, m’lord.”

  With that, he stepped out and pulled the door shut behind him.

  The room settled into stillness, save for the crackling of the hearth and the steady rise and fall of Lord Harriot’s chest. A deep snore rumbled from his throat, breaking the quiet before tapering off into a drowsy murmur.

  Then, from beneath the bed, a shadow shifted.

  Qyngmi slid out with practiced ease, brushing a stray speck of dust from his sleeve as he straightened. His keen eyes flicked toward the desk, toward the neat stacks of parchment waiting for his Lord’s attention.

  The real work was about to begin.

  Elves didn’t sleep. Not really. They could rest, certainly—enter a trance, let their bodies recover while their minds drifted elsewhere. Some meditated, others sat in perfect stillness for hours, eyes open but seeing nothing. It was an efficient way to exist.

  Qyngmi, however, had found something better.

  He slid into the chair at Lord Harriot’s desk, adjusting his cuffs as he took in the spread of documents before him. Accounting records, infrastructure proposals, tithes collected from vassals, and even a few personal correspondences Lord Harriot had neglected to answer. All important matters, all demanding attention.

  And all ripe with opportunity.

  He flipped through the records, noting where road maintenance funds had been allocated, where soldiers’ wages had been calcuted, where merchant tariffs were adjusted for “unexpected” expenses. He tapped a finger against a tax ledger, where a small discrepancy could easily be smoothed over. He considered the shipments of fine cloth for courtly attire—perhaps a few bolts of silk had gone “missing” in transit. And, of course, there was always the matter of warhorse acquisitions—an easy pce to pad the numbers.

  His lips quirked.

  Dipping his quill into the inkwell, he let his script loosen, mimicking the zy scrawl of his lord. A deliberate slip of the wrist here, an uneven loop there—convincing enough to pass, yet still within the realm of pusible drunkenness.

  As he worked, his eyes flicked toward the bed, where Lord Harriot y sprawled, mouth slightly open, lost in whatever blissfully empty-headed dreams occupied him.

  “It’s a good thing I’m around,” Qyngmi mused, scribbling down another adjustment. “Had you been left to your own devices, the treasury would have been drained by parties and hunting expeditions years ago.”

  Qyngmi leaned back in the chair, stretching his fingers before cracking his knuckles. "All right," he murmured. "Almost time for the fun part."

  He reached for the ink pot, dipping his quill with a careful flick of his wrist. With the same fluid grace he used in his stage performances, he kept shifting numbers, nudging sums between accounts like a street magician shuffling cards. A little extra grain surplus paid for by a nonexistent merchant, a road repair that had already been funded st year—just enough skimming to be invisible under the weight of real expenses.

  Then came the final trick. He hopped the silver through a web of transactions, each one bouncing through different ledgers, until the coin nded safely in an account across the sea, tucked away for a future where no lord could call on him, no king could cim his life with the wave of a hand. Just a little nest egg, growing bit by bit, waiting for the day when the fox finally left the henhouse.

  He tapped the final sum with his quill and grinned. "What a bargain. A dedicated banker would charge much more for the work I do."

  Then, with a sigh, he stood and rolled his shoulders. "Time for the less fun part."

  Qyngmi rolled up his sleeves as he walked over to the bed, the dim candlelight casting long shadows across the stone floor. The ink of his tatoo on his forearm caught the light—a crescent moon wrapped in spiderwebs, as if the night itself had been caught and woven into his skin. His mother had given it to him when he was just a boy.

  He never thought about her much anymore. Not unless he had to.

  He climbed onto the bed with practiced ease, settling himself beside the snoring Lord Harriot. The man smelled of wine and roasted meat, his breath heavy with the remnants of the evening's feast. Qyngmi wrinkled his nose but didn’t hesitate as he reached out, pressing his palm against Harriot’s forehead.

  The inked moon on his arm pulsed with a faint glow. The air in the room shifted—just slightly, just enough to feel as though something unseen had turned its attention toward them.

  Qyngmi grinned.

  "Knock knock," he murmured. "I'm coming in."

  Qyngmi’s breath hitched as his vision swam, his eyes rolling back into his skull like a man drowning in a tide he had no hope of fighting. The sensation was always the same—like stepping off solid ground and plunging into a depthless void, his mind stretching and pulling, unraveling into something weightless and untethered. It was never smooth. Never natural. The waking mind wasn’t meant to walk through the architecture of dreams, to slip between the cracks of another man’s subconscious. But Qyngmi had done it for years, and he’d learned to ride the discomfort like a ship rolling over rough waters.

  The world around him twisted, colors bleeding together before snapping into pce. He took a slow breath, feeling the air shift, the scent of damp earth and pine filling his lungs.

  A forest.

  In the distance, the sharp cries of hounds cut through the quiet, followed by the rhythmic pounding of hooves against dirt. The hunt was already underway.

  Qyngmi exhaled through his nose, unimpressed.

  Lord Harriot was hunting in his dreams again. Of course. That’s what he always did.

  The dream pulled him forward as he followed the echoes of barking hounds and the rhythmic pounding of hooves. Moonlight, cool and silvery, dripped through the canopy of twisted branches above. Leaves crunched underfoot as Qyngmi weaved through the trees, stepping over roots that hadn’t been there a moment ago. The forest was a shifting thing, an imperfect memory pieced together by an imperfect mind.

  He crested a small hill and spotted him—Lord Harriot, perched atop a great bck steed, bow in hand, eyes locked ahead. His hounds surged forward, their bodies barely more than streaks of shadow. And in the distance, just beyond the trees, a figure darted between the trunks. His quarry. Quick, graceful, unmistakable.

  Princess Everburn.

  Qyngmi let out a short, dry ugh. “Oh, that’s rich.”

  Harriot paid him no mind, too absorbed in his quarry to notice the intruder in his head. Qyngmi rolled his shoulders, sighed, then cupped his hands around his mouth.

  “Hey! Idiot! I need you to sit at your desk for just a moment!”

  The dream stuttered. The sounds of the hunt—snapping twigs, rustling underbrush, the eager whimpers of hounds—cut off like a breath held too long. Then, as if summoned by decree, a desk materialized in the clearing beside Qyngmi. Sturdy oak, ink pot, quill—everything as it should be.

  Dream logic. Gotta love it.

  Lord Harriot blinked, confused, but the command overrode his instincts. With a grunt, he dismounted, stepping past his hounds without a gnce, and dropped heavily into the chair. He didn’t question it. Didn’t even hesitate.

  A simple man, with simple dreams, and a simple mind.

  "Go on, then. Start writing," Qyngmi said, waving a zy hand at the dream-desk as if motioning a servant to pour him wine. "Or draw pretty little pictures. I don’t care. Just keep that hand moving. I’ll tell you when you’re done."

  Lord Harriot, ever the obedient fool within his own mind, picked up the quill and set to work. His brow furrowed with an intensity that suggested he thought this mattered. The tip of his tongue peeked out between his lips in deep concentration, the way a child’s might when scrawling his first letters.

  Qyngmi leaned against the desk, watching for all of two seconds before losing interest. He whistled a low tune, something with a meandering melody. Examined his nails. Picked something unseen from beneath one. Then sighed, checking an imaginary sundial on the desk.

  The trick was simple: get Lord Harriot to spend enough time dreaming that he was working at his desk. When he woke, his mind would stitch the false memory into reality, leaving him with the comfortable illusion that he’d done the work himself. No questioning. No second-guessing. Just another task he could pat himself on the back for completing.

  It was a simple job. Should take five minutes. Max.

  Qyngmi looked up, expecting more of the same—the dull routine of Harriot’s mind going through the motions.

  Instead, he found her.

  Princess Everburn stood at the edge of the clearing, just beyond the reach of the dream-desk’s flickering candlelight. She had moved from the trees without a sound, slipping through the cracks of awareness like water through cupped hands. He hadn’t seen her move. Hadn’t felt the shift.

  But there she was.

  She stared at him, wide-eyed, unblinking. Expressionless in a way her waking self never was. That version of her, the real one, was always a storm brewing beneath royal poise—sharp-tongued, sharp-minded, sharp in ways Lord Harriot would never see coming. But this thing?

  This thing was different.

  Qyngmi shifted, rubbing his thumb over the crescent moon on his forearm as if to reassure himself. "Uhhhhh…" he muttered. "That’s a new one."

  The dream Princess said nothing. Did nothing. Just stared.

  Qyngmi frowned. His usual amusement slipped, repced by something colder. He raised a finger and made a small, dismissive motion, like he was shooing away a stray cat.

  "Your royal highness," he said, forcing his voice into an easy lilt. "Could you not?"

  The dream-Princess said nothing. She didn’t blink. She didn’t move. But a small fire sparked to life on the fabric of her shoulder, flickering against the night-dark forest behind her. She didn’t react. Didn’t seem to notice at all.

  Qyngmi narrowed his eyes. “That’s also a new one,” he muttered.

  This… wasn’t normal.

  He turned to Lord Harriot, who was still hunched over the desk, lost in his own oblivious little world. He had abandoned any pretense of paperwork and was now sketching what appeared to be a hunting dog—if hunting dogs had six legs, mismatched ears, and the expression of a man just realizing he’d bet his entire fortune on the losing horse.

  Qyngmi sighed and rubbed his temple. "Wonderful," he said dryly.

  He turned back to the Princess—

  And the fire had spread.

  The fme licked down her dress, consuming the rich fabric as though it were dry parchment. The hem ignited next, and the ground beneath her caught soon after. Grass curled into embers. The air shimmered with heat.

  Still, she didn’t move. Didn’t scream. Didn’t react.

  Qyngmi swallowed, a prickling unease settling at the base of his spine.

  "Right," he said to himself. "That’s definitely not normal."

  The fmes roared higher, swallowing the Princess in a wall of searing orange and gold. Soon, all that remained visible were her eyes—piercing, unblinking, cutting through the inferno like twin nterns in the dark.

  Qyngmi felt a bead of sweat form on his brow. That was also new. That was very new.

  "Shit," he muttered.

  The heat pressed against him, unnatural and suffocating. His body—his dream body—wasn’t supposed to feel things like this. That wasn’t how it worked. He shifted uncomfortably, resisting the urge to step back.

  His foot tapped against the ground.

  "Five minutes," he reminded himself. "This needs to go on for five minutes."

  How long had it been again?

  The fire crept closer, the heat growing unbearable. Qyngmi clenched his jaw, forcing himself to hold still. Just a little longer. Just a few more seconds.

  Lord Harriot, blissfully unaware, kept scrawling away at his nonsense, the scratch of quill on parchment the only sound beyond the crackling fmes.

  Qyngmi’s foot tapped faster.

  The fire had reached his boots now. He swore he could feel it licking at the edges of his ankle bells, searing the air around him.

  Enough.

  The crescent moon tattoo on his forearm fred, and in the span of a breath, the world lurched—

  —And he was back in the dim candlelight of Harriot’s guest chamber.

  Qyngmi yanked his hand away from the sleeping lord’s forehead like he’d been burned. He stumbled off the bed, breath coming short. His pulse was hammering. His skin was cool to the touch, but he swore he could still feel the fire’s heat.

  That had never happened before.

  That wasn’t supposed to happen.

  Qyngmi wiped a hand down his face and exhaled sharply. Then he looked at Harriot, still snoring away, drool pooling into the pillow. None the wiser.

  “Never a dull moment,” he muttered.

  Qyngmi exhaled and pushed away from the bed, making his way to the window. The cool night air hit his face as he leaned against the frame, gazing out at the darkened spires of Castle Everburn. From here, the vilge below flickered with nterns and distant hearths, the wealth of the kingdom stretching far beyond these stone walls.

  He’d come here with Harriot for one reason—to see if there was profit to be made. The lord was an easy mark, a simple man with a simple mind. The kind who needed someone like Qyngmi to keep his pockets from emptying too fast. Or too slow. But the Everburns? They were different. Smarter. He’d expected that.

  But what he hadn’t expected was… whatever that had been.

  He ran a hand over his arm, fingers brushing the still-warm crescent moon of his tattoo. That dream—it had felt like something more. Like a premonition. And he didn’t like that.

  Still, he let his gaze drift back into the room, where gilded candleholders lined the walls and imported furs draped over the furniture. Even the guest quarters were dripping in wealth.

  Wouldn’t it be a damn shame to write this pce off just yet? If Harriot became king, Qyngmi might never even need to fiddle with the mind of the princess or her father.

  He exhaled through his nose, rolling his shoulders. Best to give it another day—let the whole thing simmer before making any rash decisions.

  With practiced ease, he slipped onto the windowsill, pausing just long enough to gnce back at the snoring Lord Harriot. A smirk tugged at his lips.

  “Your faithful servant bids you adieu, m’lord.”

  And with that, he vanished into the night.