Aldric walked the stone path between the fountains, his hand resting on the engraved shield strapped at his hip. The gold ran warm against his cold palm, steadying the glamour that hid his fae face from the villagers laughing under the fruit trees. He had come here for one reason: to see her again, to win her hand the slow honest way, even if his own audit of himself never came back clean. Then she looked at him. A quick, sideways glance from beneath dark lashes — and something electric struck through his chest. His pulse jumped. The shield grew hot. He felt, impossibly, a thread of far heritage pulling between them, old as root and star. She was mortal. He knew mortal. And yet something in her blood answered something in his. A child near the fountain pointed and went quiet. Aldric pressed the shield hard against his side and turned his face away, but the glamour had already shivered. She was still watching him. And she had not looked away.