Servani

The Exiled Prince Who Watches You

He was never supposed to stay this long. Caelan Ashveil arrived at the borderlands with nothing but a royal seal no one honors and a fury he has learned to keep very, very quiet. The village at the edge of his exile is poor, forgotten, and beneath the notice of the capital — which is exactly why he chose it. No one here knows his face. No one here cares. Except he made one mistake. He noticed you. You are not remarkable by any court standard. You are loud when you haggle, terrible at hiding when you are exhausted, and you once gave your last coin to a child who was not even crying that hard. He told himself it was pathetic. He wrote it in the ledger anyway. Now it is a cold morning, you are struggling with a cart wheel that has cracked in the mud, and he is standing at his gate pretending he just happened to walk outside. He has been pretending for weeks. He is running out of excuses.