Chapter 128: STAY

DIANA’S POV

The road reopened after noon.

The distance between Diana and Raigoro remained.

Blackharrow had spent the morning removing half a mountain from the road.

Diana stood beside the relay shelter while crews shifted broken stone with sledges, pry bars, draft horses, and language Mistress Hale would not have permitted inside the household corridors.

Raigoro apparently permitted it on mountains.

One crew leader glanced toward him after a particularly creative sentence.

Raigoro said nothing.

The storm had cleared completely. Sunlight struck the snow along the ridge hard enough that Diana had to narrow her eyes.

Below them, the road curved through dark pines toward Hollow Bridge. Workers were already using it again. A grain sledge traveled south while a medical cart moved north, and two children walked beside a woman carrying a covered basket toward the relay settlement.

Ordinary life had resumed before the road was completely repaired.

Diana had seen Blackharrow this way once before, during the journey north after the wedding.

Back then, every road had been unfamiliar. Every fortress had carried her farther from Valence, and every Northern village had belonged to a world she did not understand.

Now she recognized things.

The black-painted snow stakes marked the road edge. She understood the alarm symbols on the relay wall and the way the shelter stores were organized by emergency category. Nearby, two road workers argued over whether a cracked retaining block needed replacement today or could survive until spring.

Diana knew why the medical cart received priority over the grain sledge at the narrow section. She knew which signal would sound if the road failed again.

Blackharrow had become legible to her.

Diana cared whether it kept working.

Raigoro came from the roadmaster’s table.

"Engineers are opening the route to riders first. Wagons in approximately two hours."

Diana nodded.

"Daric will remain at Hollow Bridge until the evidence cases are sealed."

Another nod.

Raigoro started to turn away before speaking again.

"Was the stove warm enough after midnight?"

Diana looked at him.

The question had nothing to do with the road.

She wrote: EVENTUALLY.

Raigoro nodded.

"The relay keeper considers smoke a form of heat."

Diana suppressed a smile.

A trace of amusement answered on his face before the moment passed.

They continued down the road.

At the edge of the settlement, an old woman sold travel bread from beneath a covered stall.

Diana recognized the kind from her first journey north.

Dense, dark, and hard enough to survive several days or injure a poorly defended enemy.

Raigoro bought two.

Diana looked at him.

"What?"

She wrote: WE HAVE FOOD.

"This is food."

Diana examined the bread before looking at him again.

"It becomes softer in soup."

An inadequate defense.

He handed her one anyway.

Diana accepted it.

Several steps later, she realized she had taken something from him without wondering what accepting it might require in return.

She kept walking.

By early afternoon, the inspection group had returned to Hollow Bridge.

Daric had sealed the relevant records into separate evidence cases. The missing seal impression remained unexplained, although an old inventory notation suggested one reference impression had been removed for replacement years earlier. No surviving record confirmed anyone had received it afterward.

Negligence remained possible.

So did unauthorized access.

The question stayed open, where it belonged.

The convoy started north.

Diana rode inside the smaller carriage until the road flattened in the middle valley. Then she asked to walk.

Her guards dismounted.

Raigoro did too.

Perhaps he had done it because the Household Guards were now on foot.

Diana preferred not to decide.

They passed a maintenance crew resetting ward markers damaged by the storm. Farther ahead, a mill wheel turned beneath a crust of ice.

A Dragon Host patrol crossed overhead, its shadow passing over Diana before continuing east.

Nobody screamed or stopped working.

A little girl beside the mill pointed upward and announced something to her father. He barely glanced up.

Dragons belonged here.

So did wardstones, mountains that closed roads, and workers who opened them again.

Blackharrow was no romantic castle Diana had mistaken for freedom because one powerful man treated her kindly.

She knew too much about it now.

Blackharrow was cold, difficult, bureaucratic, and frequently infuriating. People died here. Systems failed. Officials argued. Roads collapsed.

Healers overruled Grand Dukes. Engineers closed bridges while quartermasters complained. Clerks demanded signatures. Families grieved in the Winter Court.

Diana had watched Blackharrow disappoint people.

She had helped repair some of those failures and had been unable to repair others.

She loved it with that knowledge intact.

Diana stopped walking.

Raigoro continued several steps before turning back.

"What?"

She looked along the road behind them.

Hollow Bridge had already disappeared beyond the first rise. Farther south lay Valence.

Warm weather. Bright corridors. Her father. Maerissa. Selena.

Her old room.

The gallery where she had learned to watch other people live.

Maerissa’s message remained inside a locked drawer in Blackharrow, carrying an old fear Maerissa had known exactly how to sharpen.

For months, Diana had treated one fear as the center of everything.

If Raigoro discovered her name, perhaps he would send her back.

He had promised he would not.

He had promised before asking for the truth and kept the promise after she lied to him.

The fear had survived anyway.

Diana took out her slate.

She knew what she wanted to write and disliked how difficult the words were.

I DO NOT WANT TO GO BACK TO VALENCE.

Raigoro read them.

The sentence had begun somewhere inside her while she watched Blackharrow repair a road and continue living around it.

The Winter Court. Master Marlon and his impossible files. Master Clair correcting her observations. Tavia appearing where she was least useful and most necessary. Vharos.

Alma building a life that did not depend entirely on protecting Diana.

Work Diana understood. Problems she had chosen. People who expected her to return.

Diana looked south.

Valence existed beyond too many mountains to see, but the palace still contained rooms where she had once waited for someone else to decide what happened to her.

She turned north again.

Home was a dangerous word.

Diana was not ready to write it.

But she had finally written the place she did not want to return to.

She lowered the slate.

The argument between her and Raigoro had not disappeared inside one storm shelter. He remained angry, and Diana still had not given him the truth he had asked for.

Raigoro read the sentence again.

"Then don’t."

Diana turned toward him.

He mentioned neither their marriage nor the covenant. He did not ask for her real name as the price of the answer.

Raigoro looked toward the northern road before meeting her eyes again.

"Stay."

Diana could only look at him.

Raigoro began walking.

After a moment, Diana followed.

The road curved north toward Blackharrow.