The air between the King and the Crown Prince felt ready to snap.

Then the Queen moved.

"I am delighted," she said smoothly, her voice cutting through the tension like a silk blade, "that the two of you are so eager to discuss the welfare of the kingdom. But before we continue this entirely predictable performance, may I remind you that we are standing in public for a sacred celebration, and not in the council chamber?"

Her tone was light, almost amused, and deliberately nonsensical enough to break the momentum of the argument.

A few nobles blinked.

The crowd below, only seeing the smiles, cheered again sensing the royal family still united enough to perform civility.

The Queen smiled more brightly, as though she had not just rescued the balcony from the edge of a political quarrel.

"How fortunate," she said, turning her gaze first to the King and then to Theron, "that both of you are dressed beautifully enough to survive one another."

For a split second, nobody spoke.

Then, because the tension had nowhere else to go, the nobles erupted into applause and cheers, joining the crowd, interpreting the Queen’s words as affectionate wit rather than an expertly placed diversion.

Theron said nothing.

The King said nothing.

But the Queen, serene and shining beneath the sun, had already shifted the entire current of the morning with one graceful interruption.

The King continued his speech beneath the bright ceremonial light, his voice carrying easily across the square as though the kingdom’s devotion were a thing already assured.

For a few measured moments, everything remained properly ordered.

Then the disruption began.

At first it was only a murmur in the distance, an ugly disturbance rippling through the crowd like a stone thrown into still water. Voices rose. Someone shouted. Then another. The movement spread too quickly for the nearest guards to contain it, and the calm illusion of the celebration fractured all at once.

Water surged from the edge of the square.

A group of rebels, many of them water benders, broke through the crowd in a sudden burst of force and panic, their attack crude but desperate, as though they had chosen the festival deliberately because the crowd offered confusion and cover.

The air changed instantly. Cheers turned into screams. People shoved backward. The guards moved, but the attack had already been launched.

A sharp sheet of water cut through the air toward the balcony.

Theron reacted before thought could catch up.

He stepped forward and blocked the blow with his Aurelion lattice. The impact struck with enough force to jolt him back half a step, cold energy cracking against his shielded stance and splashing harmlessly aside.

For a breathless instant, all the noise in the square seemed to narrow into that one moment, the Crown Prince standing between the King and the attack while the rebels’ intentions hung exposed in the air around them.

The nobles stared in awe, while Ingrid and Alaric couldn’t decide what their reactions should be. They saw that sharp sheet of water that could have cut the King in half, and how Theron instinctively stepped in front of it, protecting his father.

It was indeed heroic.

Standing behind Theron, the King’s lips curved to a smirk, his thoughts a secret.

The guards surged at once.

Steel flashed. Bending shifted. The square turned chaotic in seconds, bodies scattering in every direction as the royal guard closed in on the rebels and began driving them back.

A few of the attackers were caught almost immediately, dragged down before they could escape. Others slipped into the confusion, vanishing into the crowd and the twisting press of bodies before the guards could reach them.

And then, just as quickly as it had begun, the King’s voice rose again.

He continued the speech as though nothing had happened.

His tone did not rise. It did not falter. It did not even sharpen.

He simply went on, calm and composed, speaking over the lingering cries below as if the interruption had been no more than an inconvenience. The crowd, startled into silence, slowly seemed to remember where they were.

The guards regrouped. The rebellion in the square was not over, but the public face of the kingdom remained intact for the moment, and that mattered more than any single burst of violence.

Theron stared at his father for a fraction of a second longer than was wise.

There it was again.

That impossible steadiness.

That infuriating refusal to acknowledge the danger unless it suited him.

Theron’s jaw tightened, his pulse still high from the force of the attack he had blocked. Below, the kingdom watched the balcony with wide eyes and trembling breath, and above them, the King spoke on, polished and unshaken, as if even rebellion were something he had already folded neatly into the performance of power.

-----

Aelion and Aveline decided to take a stroll through Eryndale since the entire city was draped in festival colors and noisy with celebration. The streets were crowded, lively, and bright enough to make even the more irritated corners of the city feel festive, but Aveline was not in the mood to enjoy any of it. Her annoyance only deepened every time she saw a stall she could not buy from, a sweet she could not taste, or a trinket she could not claim. She had no coins on her, which meant she could look at everything she wanted and possess absolutely nothing.

It was, in her opinion, a deeply offensive state of affairs.

"The King is making a speech. Do you want to listen?" Aelion asked.

Aveline looked at him as though he had just suggested she sit through a lecture on mold.

What exactly was she supposed to gain from that?

Then a different thought crossed her mind.

"The royal family is making a balcony appearance?" she asked.

Aelion nodded. "The entire city will be there."

Aveline considered that for only a moment. Why should she go crush herself into a crowd full of elbows, shoulders, and sweaty strangers just to glimpse Theron from far away when she could hold him as much as she liked if she found him alone?

"Never mind," she said at once.

Just then, a group of people came running toward them, their faces pale and panicked. Aelion stepped in front of her instinctively, and Aveline immediately tucked the gold chain and medallion beneath her clothes. She was not about to let something that valuable get stolen in the middle of a festival. It was gold. In her opinion, that made it practically sacred.

Aelion’s attention sharpened at once. His gaze caught on one of the fleeing men, and without another word, he moved after him.

Aveline’s heart gave a hard, uneasy thud.

Voices rose around them in fragments, wild with shock. The rebels had attacked. Someone said they had gone after the King. Someone else said they had tried to kill him. Aveline slowed, the laughter and irritation draining from her face as the meaning settled in.

So Aelion really had been telling the truth.

The kingdom was not some untouched paradise. There really were people suffering badly enough to rise up in rebellion, badly enough to attack the crown in the middle of a public festival. That thought sat heavier than she expected. She had already seen how ugly Greenvale could be beneath its polished surface, but hearing it confirmed so bluntly made it feel less like rumor and more like a wound.

Aelion guided her through the side streets with quick, sure movements, steering her away from the gathering chaos. They slipped into narrower alleys where the noise of the festival dulled behind them, and eventually he brought her to a speakeasy-style door with a small opening cut into it.

He leaned toward the opening and spoke with quiet certainty.

"What light cannot reveal, shadows can."

Aveline blinked at the dramatic phrase and could not help thinking, Whatever.

Still, the door opened.

Aelion stepped inside without hesitation, but Aveline paused on the threshold. Something about the place felt wrong to her in a way she could not yet explain. Not hostile exactly. Just hidden. Dense. The kind of place where people said things they did not want repeated. The kind of place where secrets did not merely exist, but lived.

Aelion turned and held out his hand.

"Come in, Ava. You are going to meet someone important," he said. "My uncle."

Aveline looked at him.

Then at the dim opening beyond him.

"The leader of the rebels," he added.

Her expression changed at once. Not into fear, exactly, but into something far more careful. Her fingers tightened faintly beneath her robe where the medallion rested. She did not know whether she was walking into a meeting or a trap, but Aelion’s tone left no room for doubt that this was not an accident.

Slowly, she took his hand.

And let him lead her inside.