Autumn read the entirety of Eltanin’s journal in one sitting. Once she was done with it, she gathered her knees to her chest and sat in meditative silence as the sun rose over the vast forest of the dark kingdom. Rosy light bled sluggishly into the room through the veil of red curtains. In one of the seats before the long-cold fireplace, Knight had curled up some hours back and now snored softly.

In the corridor outside, voices were speaking in hushed tones. The other deer construct was telling the hare servants about how she’d arrived for her guard rotation at around midnight, and had been disturbed not to see Knight at his post.

“I thought about knocking,” she said, “to find out if the princess was in there, at least, when I heard their voices coming from inside the room.”

“Wait, whose voices? Deer knight?”

“Yes!”

“Oooooh!”

“I told you—”

“— No you didn’t—”

“— did, remember? I said—”

“— now, I don’t think that he would do that—”

“— wonder if the king—”

“— hope for their sake that he doesn’t—”

“— does it matter? I mean, it’s not like princesses ever—”

“— course it matters! What are you even—”

“— wait, but if we don’t tell the king, are we lying—”

“— more worried for deer knight in any case—”

“— saying a falsehood and we are not saying anything that’s the point—”

“— good for her—”

“— get it, but if He asks—”

“— doesn’t answer the question though—”

“— then we tell him but—”

“— been two years—”

“— if he even asks—”

“— don’t you think?”

Autumn sighed and rubbed her hand over her face. So maybe the all-nighter had been a bad idea. But the content of Eltanin’s journal had been so interesting that she hadn’t been able to put it down. It had described in great details the politics of the kingdoms beyond the mountains, which she had only ever heard about in legends. There had been a war, and a devastating battle, during which Eltanin’s king — a man named Desmond — had tried to stand up to defend his people and had been soundly defeated. Only his wizard’s terrible, gruesome displays of magic had managed to make any dent in their opponent’s forces, and even then, it had only barely bought them enough time to flee.

The story as written by Eltanin was a strange, meandering narrative, more interested in describing the intricacies of his spells than depicting the people involved in any great details, or even in a favourable light. But Autumn had still found herself fascinated by this tale of a younger, not-yet-dark wizard and his brother king, who at times seemed like his mortal enemy, and at others was spoken of like the most important person in the world.

Then she had reached the end of the book, and King Desmond had only just given the order to retreat over the mountains. She knew what happened next, or at least Veld’s version of it; the king and his people travelled to Esternia and founded the four prairie kingdoms. Soon after, the Betrayal took place, during which the Evil Wizard killed his king, followed by the man's heirs, and crowned himself lord of the forest. It was an old story, and one that Autumn had never questioned. It occurred to her, now, that she might potentially become the first person in a thousand years to learn a different version of the tale, one that might not go the same as relayed down through the families of King Desmond’s four sons. But for that, she would need to return to Eltanin’s study and get her hands on his other journals.

Autumn glanced at Knight. She didn’t have the heart to wake him yet, and besides, she probably ought to sleep herself. For a moment, she thought about opening the door to her suite and explaining to the gossiping constructs out there just why, exactly, her deer knight had spent the night in front of her fireplace. Then she decided that it was none of their business, and retreated to her bedchamber with a yawn.

***

She didn’t know what would be the least awkward; to return to Eltanin’s study while he was there, or while he wasn’t. She didn’t want to seem as if she was snooping — even though that was exactly what she was doing — so she ended up dragging Knight back there during the daytime, several hours before dinner. They approached via the parapet this time, as neither of them were comfortable walking through Eltanin’s rooms again.

When she entered the study, Autumn at first thought that it was empty. Then, she noticed light coming from the half-opened door to the war room. She found the king there, standing in front of the large table, both of his hands raised in the air. A shimmering image of the prairies, the forest, and the mountains hovered a few inches over the table. It was an incredible sight; a mirage, crafted out of glittering golden rays, as if stolen directly from the moon. Autumn stopped in the doorway, mesmerized by the beautiful and foreign sight. She had never seen a map such as this, with peaks and valleys sculpted into its shape, entirely at scale. The details were too complex to be an artist’s rendering. This ghostly image was real, somehow, despite being made of magic and light, in a way that Autumn could not explain to herself but knew to be true in her soul. The flat landscape of Esternia was a vision of it as it existed now, on this very day, at this very moment. And it was gorgeous.

Over the countryside’s projection, luminous lines crossed and coiled in strange spirals of glittering gold. They were strong and numerous in certain places, weak in others, and did not make any sense to her at all.

Eltanin, who had not reacted to her entrance, swept his hands over the map. With a flick of his fingers, the lines were replaced with little blue pinpricks of light. Those mostly seemed to be contained to the forest, and they were moving slowly according to a dance known only to the King. Another gesture, and now there were shimmering curves of something almost cloudlike covering the landscape. Having observed these, he brought the spiralling lines back, and started pinching them between his fingers. He pushed and pulled carefully at them, making minute adjustments to their positions, following a logic that Autumn couldn’t understand.

“May I ask you a question?” she finally ventured.

The king didn’t spare her a single glance. “Are you the queen of this land?”

“Not yet.”

“Then you may not ask, yet.”

Fair enough. She hummed in acknowledgement.

Behind her, she felt Knight press closer to peek over her shoulder. This prompted her to leave the doorway and fully walk into the room, where the two of them settled to watch the Wizard King work his magic in silence. Eventually, he cupped his hands as if cradling something in his palms, then spread them outwards. The image seemed to follow the movement, growing larger to focus on one single part, the rest dissolving into shadows. With a start, Autumn saw that it was Veld which now hovered in front of them. The king, having apparently finished fiddling with the glowing lines, attacked the curving clouds. He wasted no time in rearranging the shimmering veils of gauzy whiteness around.

She could not hold on to her silence. “What are you doing to Veld?!”

He shot her a cursory look and replied, testily: “I am ensuring that their crops do not wither. That was part of the reason for marrying me, was it not?”

“… it was. So these cotton trails really are clouds, then?”

She reached out to touch the display, and as she did so the King inhaled sharply and twitched. This prompted Knight to clamp down a hand onto her arm, alarmed, but not before Autumn had already poked one of the fluffy white puffs. Her finger passed right through it, encountering nothing physical to touch, and yet the little magical cloud still quivered, turned grey, then seemed to entirely dissolve. All three of them stared at it with varying amounts of dismay.

“… congratulations,” deadpanned the King. “You’ve made it rain very suddenly over one single pasture. I’m sure the cowherd must be thrilled.”

“Ah. I see.”

She slowly pulled her hand back and curled it to her chest. Knight’s grip remained on her, although it relaxed and slid down to her elbow, where it rested quite naturally. Autumn mulled on what she had just learned, then decided that perhaps it would be better to mull on it while not in the presence of the king, just in case her face went and did something that she didn’t want it to. She curled her lips into the forced shape of a smile.

“I see. Weather. Well done, then. Carry on.”

With a curtsy and a wave, she turned tail and fled into the study, where she proceeded to grab as many notebooks as she could before leaving. She had things to think about.

***

Autumn wanted to return to the privacy of her rooms so that she and Knight could go over what they’d just learnt and try to figure out what it meant. But she remembered the gossiping hares, and she didn’t feel that it would be prudent to throw more oil onto the fire just then. She ended up taking the journals (and Knight) to the gardens, where they found themselves a nice bench to settle on, tucked out of the way in between a pair of enormous evergreen bushes. The sun was still high enough in the sky that she didn’t have to worry about being called in to dinner yet, and the temperature was pleasant.

She threw the books down next to her, stapled her fingers under her chin, and thought hard.

“You seem unsettled,” offered Knight after a full minute of silence. He, of course, appeared entirely unruffled about what they had just seen.

“He’s mucking about with the weather. The weather, Knight! Of Veld!”

“… he is. But it seemed to me that he did it for a good reason?”

“What good reason could there be?! It’s the weather! Nobody should— he should leave it well enough alone, is what he should do!”

The construct frowned at her. “You are upset,” he said slowly. “I am missing context.”

She sighed and rubbed her hands down her face. “Yes, you are. Do you know about the droughts? The famines?”

He shook his head.

“Every few centuries, when the Wizard King is angry at us, the rain stops. The prairies dry up. People die, Knight. Because of him! Because he’s messing with the weather! And now I am supposed to— to be happy? That he’s sending rain this time, instead of stopping it?!”

“Do you know that he’s the one stopping the rain?” he replied, frowning. “Has he said?”

“He doesn’t have to say it, it's pretty obv—” She stopped. Swallowed. Then she took a deep breath and finished: “We assumed,” because she understood the point that Knight was making, but she wasn’t pleased about it.

He nodded, but thankfully remained quiet.

“Very well, then. Let us put aside past incidents for a moment, given as we can’t confirm or deny that they were his doing,” she began again, picking another track to approach her unease from. “We did see him do it this time, and therefore it begs the question. Why Veld? Why now? Does he make it rain often, or just now, specifically because of me?”

“That is what he said.”

“But was he lying? He told me just the other day that he was familiar with Veld’s climate. What did he mean by that?!”

Her companion frowned at her. “When did he say that?”

Autumn swallowed. “You weren’t there. It was after the—” she gestured at his back.

“Oh.”

She looked away, feeling strangely guilty, not for the wound but for having dined with Eltanin without Knight present. Which was a ridiculous thing to feel odd about, and yet she’d been attached at the hip with the construct for as long as she’d been here. The idea of doing anything without him seemed almost like a betrayal of their— their bond, or whatever it was that was growing between them. She wondered what would happen to Knight after the wedding, thought of joining the King’s side without him, and felt extremely ill at ease.

A memory popped up into her mind, of Knight standing next to Eltanin’s bed and looking at her with a flush on his face. Of him standing guard at her chamber's doors; in the throne room; at dinner. Then the image turned into a sudden vision of Knight’s calm gaze on her and Eltanin as they put the seal on their marriage contract and finalized the grand act of magic for which she had been sent here. Of her handsome knight escorting her to her marital bed after the ceremony and entering the room behind her, closing the door against the outside world, and settling in to watch over her even as the Wizard King took her for his own…

Autumn gasped as she felt heat sizzle all the way down to her toes. She shook her head, willing the damning, grotesque, tempting images to leave her mind at once.

“Is everything—” began Knight, and in blind panic Autumn grabbed at the journals next to her and brandished one up in the air between them.

“Perhaps the answers are in this!” she blurted, and started paging through before he could say anything more. “Let’s see, ah, here we go—”