Oryn Pale stood on the black marble steps of the manor with a signed betrothal in one pocket and an unsigned ring hidden under his coat. The signed paper bound him to a foreign ruler's chosen bride. The ring on the chain against his chest was meant for someone else — the girl he had climbed orchard walls with as a boy, who still had no idea he loved her. Tonight, at his father's engagement gala, he had to get the ring into her hand without a single guest seeing. He knew the cost of a mistake. His father had signed away alliances Oryn only half understood, tied to debts his father would not name. Break the match in public and those debts would come due on people who could not pay them. So the ring had to move in silence, and her answer had to come before he lost the nerve to ask. He stepped through the red doors into gold light and violin noise. Servants carried trays between guests in stiff coats. He scanned the room for her and did not find her. He found, instead, a small blonde girl with pointed ears and painted glitter on her cheeks, crouched beside a tall potted fern, feeding cake to a pink fox. "You're not supposed to be back here," Oryn said. "Neither are you," Breukelen said. She did not look up. "You're sweating through your collar." He had met her once, at a different house, with her foxes. She had latched onto him the way she seemed to latch onto anyone who moved. He had not expected her at his father's gala. A second fox, white and edged in small flames, stepped out from behind the fern and sat on his boot. "Call it off," Oryn said, low. "It won't burn you." Breukelen stood. "The pink one knows who you love. That's what she does. Point her at the room." He stared at her. "That's not private." "It's quiet," Breukelen said. "No one watches a fox." He thought of the ring, and the crowd, and his father across the hall shaking a stranger's hand. He unclasped the chain. He slid the ring off and pressed it into the pink fox's collar ribbon. "Find her," he said. The fox slipped between skirts and boots and vanished. Breukelen watched it go with a level face. "If she keeps it," Breukelen said, "she wants you." "If she doesn't?" "Then the fox comes back and I never saw you tonight." Across the room, a violin note ended. Oryn's father turned from the stranger's handshake and looked straight at him, and at the empty chain still swinging from his fingers.

His father crossed the hall before Oryn could close his hand over the empty chain. Oryn shoved the chain into his coat and met his father halfway. His father said nothing about it. He only touched Oryn's elbow and steered him out of the ballroom, past the servants, into the black-walled study at the back of the manor. His father shut the door and sat behind the red-trimmed desk. He did not offer Oryn a chair. The throne-like seat behind the desk swallowed him. He folded his hands on the wood and waited. "Where is it," his father said. "Where is what." "The thing you were wearing an hour ago." Oryn kept his face still. He had one problem now, and it was simple. He could not leave this room until he knew whether the pink fox had found her. If it had, he needed to reach the orchard gate by midnight. If it had not, the gate was empty and going there would ruin everything. He had no way to check. Breukelen was in the ballroom. The fox was somewhere in a crowd of two hundred coats. "I lost a button," Oryn said. "Off the chain. I'll find it after." His father studied him. Then he stood and walked to the black piano against the far wall. He lifted the fallboard. A folded paper sat on the keys. He picked it up and held it out. "A servant found this in the west hall," his father said. "Addressed to you. Unopened." Oryn took it. He knew the handwriting before he broke the seal. He had known it since he was nine. Three words inside, in pencil. Orchard gate. Yes. His knees went soft. He sat down on the black couch behind him without meaning to. The pillows shifted under his weight. She had the ring. She had kept it. She had answered. His father was watching him read. "Give it here," his father said. Oryn folded the paper once and put it in his mouth and swallowed it. The pencil scraped his throat going down. His father's face did not change. He sat back down in the red-lined chair. He opened a drawer. He took out a ledger and set it on the desk between them. "Then you should see what you'd be breaking," his father said. He turned the ledger around. "Read the third column." Oryn read one line. He read the next. The numbers were larger than he had guessed, and the names beside them were people he knew. A cook. A tenant. His old riding tutor. Debts his father had spread across the household staff to keep them off the public books. His father closed the ledger. "Midnight," his father said. "Decide before then." Oryn had his answer. He also had a price he had not known the shape of until now. He had to find her. She kept it. She loves him.

Oryn left the study without asking to leave. His father did not stop him. The ledger stayed closed on the desk, but the numbers stayed open in his head. A cook. A tenant. His riding tutor. He walked past the ballroom without going in and took the servants' stair down to the side door. He had until midnight. He had a girl at the orchard gate who had kept a ring he gave her through a fox. He had no horse waiting, no coin sewn into his coat, no house at the end of any road. He had a signed contract in his father's drawer and debts spread across people who had raised him. He stopped at the boot room and stripped the gold stitching off his coat with a paring knife. He cut the ceremonial braid off the shoulders. He left the coat looking like any coat. He kept the knife. On the gravel path behind the kitchen garden, a small figure sat on the low wall. Pink dress. Purple hair down past her waist. Pointed ears. He had seen her earlier in the ballroom near Breukelen, standing in a window without eating anything. She was watching him now the way someone watches a clock. "You're going to the gate," she said. "Who are you." "Glitter Bug. I tend nightbloom. It grows where things die." She swung her feet. "Your father sent two men down the orchard road ten minutes ago." Oryn's stomach dropped. "Why tell me." "You gave the fox a ring. The fox belongs to a friend." She shrugged. "Go the back way. Through the south hedge. The hedge has a gap by the stone bench." "What do you want for it." "Nothing tonight." He believed her because she did not sell it. He started to run. He took the south hedge. He found the gap. He came out into the orchard from the wrong side and cut through the rows in the dark. Apples brushed his shoulder. He heard the two men on the main path, boots on gravel, going the long way. He reached the gate first. She was already there. She had the ring on her hand. She had a satchel at her feet and a stableman's cloak over her dress. She looked at his stripped coat and did not ask. "I have nothing," Oryn said. "No house. No money. My father will call in every debt he spread through the staff to punish me." "I know," she said. "I brought a horse." "It won't be a soft life." "I didn't ask for one." He put his hand over hers on the gate. The two men's boots turned onto the orchard road behind him. He heard them coming. He climbed the gate. They rode out before the men reached the bend. He had left the manor with nothing, and he had left with her. The debts stayed behind him, uncollected, waiting.