Mira stood at her window and watched the suitors arrive. She had ruled alone for years, and now she wanted a husband who could match her. Tall, brown-haired, kind, strong, wise. She had seen flashes of him in dreams. She had not yet seen him in her court. Every man bowed the same way. Every man smiled the same smile. Their words were polished stones, smooth and warm and empty. She could not tell the true ones from the practiced ones. So she stopped meeting them in the throne room. She built a hidden place instead. A small stone arch covered in lilacs grew at the edge of her garden, near a wide rock bench worn smooth by weather. From inside the arch, she could see the bench. From the bench, no one could see her. She invited the suitors to walk her gardens alone. Each one found the bench. Each one sat. The stone seemed to pull at them, asking quiet questions they did not hear out loud. One man kicked at a winged puppy that wandered close. Another spoke cruelly to a gardener who could not answer back. A third sat in silence and lifted the small lavender creature into his lap. He had brown hair. He had broad shoulders. He did not know he was being watched. Mira pressed her hand to the cool stone of the arch. She had found her window at last. Now she had to learn if the man on the bench was the same man on his third visit as his first.