Chapter 17
The morning sun filtered through the tall windows of the Windsor estate, pale and golden, painting the breakfast table in a soft, drowsy warmth. Dust motes danced in the beams like idle memories, suspended in time. The gentle clink of silverware on porcelain echoed faintly, fragile as the peace October had come to mistrust.
She sliced a piece of her poached pear with careful grace, eyes fixed on her plate, only half-listening to the cheerful hum Elina offered beside her. It was a morning ritual—a false tranquility October had learned to mimic,
if not inhabit.
Across the table, Scheuer cleared her throat.
“I’ve accepted the marriage visit,” she said, her voice calm and steady. “In the Northern Kingdom. I leave in a fortnight.”
The silence that followed was absolute. Like a stone dropped into a still lake.
Elina’s spoon clattered against her saucer. “The North?” Her voice was thin with disbelief.
Even Duke Theodore, hidden behind the stiff rustle of his morning paper, froze mid-fold. Slowly, he lowered the page. “That’s unexpected.”
Scheuer, always unbothered by scrutiny, sipped her tea with infuriating serenity. “A formal invitation arrived from the Northern court. It finalizes my wedding schedule for the winter season. On the marriage alliance.”
Her tone was neither proud nor coy—merely factual. Detached.
October’s grip tightened around her fork. The Northern Kingdom. A place from the edges of stories, all snow and steel. Mountains blanketed in silence. Wolves that didn’t fear fire. The cold throne of Emperor Baldwin, draped in rumors and ice.
She had never been. Few from the Southern Capital had. But something inside her stirred at the thought.
Not fear. Not quite.
Something sharper.
Something like possibility.
\---
She found Scheuer hours later in the southern garden, where ivy strangled one of the old stone walls. The midday light glinted off the shears in Scheuer’s hands as she worked with swift, practiced movements—cutting back overgrowth with quiet precision.
October’s boots crunched softly against the gravel path as she approached. The sound was swallowed by the high hedges around them, casting the garden into cool shadows.
“You’re really going,” October said, her voice quiet.
Scheuer didn’t look up. “I am.”
“To the North?”
“To where I’m wanted.”
October lingered in silence. The vines Scheuer cut lay in curled green heaps along the walkway. There was something oddly symbolic about it—the pruning of a path, the clearing of overgrowth. The choosing of direction.
“Is it what you want?” October asked finally. “To go so far from here?”
Scheuer paused in her trimming, tilting her head slightly toward October. “I want peace. And purpose. The court has neither.”
October’s gaze dropped to the garden floor. “And the North has both?”
Scheuer resumed cutting, her rhythm unbroken. “Perhaps. But it has order. Fewer masks.”
“You hate the masks,” October murmured.
“So do you.”
That silenced her.
A long pause passed, filled only with the snip of shears and the rustling of disturbed ivy. Then, from somewhere deep and certain, October spoke.
“Take me with you.”
Scheuer’s hands stilled.
“You don’t mean that,” she said, turning to face her at last. Her expression was unreadable.
“I do.”
“You’re trying to run from something,” Scheuer said. “I’m going to something.”
October stepped closer, the cool garden air biting gently at her arms. “I’m not running. I’m choosing.”
Scheuer stared at her, eyes narrowing faintly. “It’s not simple. You know that. Nobles don’t leave the capital without permission. Not unless they marry. Or are exiled.”
“Then I’ll marry,” October said.
The words came out faster than she expected. They tasted unfamiliar, but not wrong.
Scheuer blinked, surprise cracking her composure for the briefest moment. “October…”
“I mean it.”
“You don’t even know who—”
“I’ll choose someone,” she said, voice low, firm. “Someone powerful enough to let me go where I want.”
Scheuer shook her head, setting the shears down on a nearby bench. “That’s a dangerous game.”
“So is staying here,” October said.
They stood in silence again, this time taut with something unspoken. Scheuer sighed and finally stepped back, brushing stray leaves from her gloves.
“I’m not saying no,” she said. “But think carefully. The North may offer fewer masks—but that doesn't make it kind.”
October nodded slowly. “Kindness isn’t what I’m after.”
\---
That night, the Windsor halls seemed colder, as if the garden’s shadow had followed her indoors. October sat alone in her chamber, the firelight flickering across velvet drapes and polished stone. Her gown pooled around her like spilled ink, and on her desk lay the invitation—its seal a gleaming imperial gold, catching the light like an omen.
The royal banquet.
A gilded celebration of the coming winter. Whispers said Emperor Baldwin himself would attend—a rare appearance, made all the more striking by its unpredictability. Some thought it meant nothing. Others thought it meant war.
October traced the edge of the envelope with her fingertip.
“If I can’t leave freely…” she murmured, “then I’ll find someone powerful enough to let me.”
The words weren’t born of desperation. Not anymore. They came from something else—something sharper than fear.
Desire.
Not for love. Not for romance. But for agency.
For once, she didn’t want to react. She wanted to act.
October rose and walked to the mirror above her vanity. She stared at her reflection, tilting her chin, studying the woman who looked back. There were pieces of Lady Windsor in her still—the softness around the eyes, the curve of a once-timid mouth.
But something new lived in her gaze now. Something steel-hard and diamond-cold.
Scheuer had said the North had fewer masks. October was beginning to realize she didn’t need to wear one anymore.
She stepped closer to the mirror and whispered:
“I won’t be the girl they sent to the scaffold.”
She reached for her comb and pulled her hair back tightly, exposing her neck, her cheekbones, the line of her jaw. She looked like her mother this way—sharp, elegant, dangerous.
A Windsor.
But also something more.
A survivor.
A strategist.
A player.
\---
Later, long past midnight, she drafted a letter in secret. She wrote it in careful script, its language ambiguous enough to pass inspection but clear enough for the right eyes to understand.
She signed it not with her name, but with a symbol.
A moon over water.
The invitation to the royal banquet sat beside her as she folded the parchment and sealed it shut.
It would go to a name only the Northern Kingdom would know. A whisper passed to her by Elina weeks ago—buried in gossip, half a dare, half a warning.
A Northern merchant-lord with ties to court.
One who “owed a favor to clever women.”
She would call it in.
The winds were shifting.
And this time, October would not be swept away by them.
She would ride them.