In that very same garden, Lady Evelyn was tending the roses while her maid leaned in to deliver a piece of fresh gossip.
A sly smile spread across Evelyn's face. She asked whether the rumour was really true.
Out on the gravel walks, in the full sun, Flora could hardly believe what was happening. The Emperor of Nordvein had actually agreed to come and look at flowers with her.
Her astonishment did not survive very long.
Ottol set a brisk pace, the pace of a man who walked everywhere as though the walking itself were an obstacle, and Flora struggled to keep up. Every hurried step drove her shoe into the same raw place on her heel.
A voice out of her past spoke up in her head, the way it always did. Endure it. Say nothing. Pain is not an excuse.
She gritted her teeth and forced herself forward.
Just as she felt her resolve beginning to crumble, Ottol stopped dead in the middle of the path and turned to face her, his expression unreadable.
Her cheeks flushed. She hurried the last steps to close the gap, pushing the ache down where it would not show, determined not to complain about anything.
He had halted their walk entirely. Confused, she asked what the matter was.
His sharp gaze dropped and took in the whole of her — the careful way she had stopped, the tightness around her eyes. Flora quickly forced a smile and apologised for being slow, and urged him to go on ahead.
He looked at her for a long moment. Then he simply hummed, low in his throat, and stood there beside her, and did not go anywhere at all.
When they started again, he was walking differently.
He had shortened his stride to match hers. Flora glanced up at him, stunned by so small a thing, and a warmth spread through her chest as she understood that he had noticed her struggling and had said nothing about it, and simply fixed it.
Perhaps he was kinder than the rumours said.
She let herself hope for more moments like this one — quiet, unhurried, the two of them walking in the sun.
They had found something like a rhythm when a bright voice called the emperor's name across the roses.
Lady Evelyn came toward them waving enthusiastically, and the quiet bubble around them popped.
She greeted Ottol with startling familiarity, as one greets a person one has known since childhood. Then she caught herself, remembered his title, and launched into an extremely elaborate formal salutation instead.
Ottol cut her off before she reached the end of it. That was enough, he said. Raise your head.
Watching, Flora concluded that this woman must be someone of very high standing indeed, to be so comfortable in front of him.
Brushed off, Evelyn finally turned her curious gaze on Flora and asked outright who she was.
Flustered by the directness of it, Flora clutched at her skirts.
Before she could answer, Evelyn's eyes widened with recognition. Was this Princess Flora, of Pedania?
Flora shyly agreed that it was.
Evelyn smiled and introduced herself: the duke's daughter, and a childhood friend of the emperor.
Ottol's cold voice cut across the pleasantries. He instructed Evelyn to address his wife by her proper title, which was Her Imperial Majesty.
Flora tried to defuse it, saying quickly that she really did not mind.
Evelyn only laughed and linked her arm through Flora's, remarking on how kind she was — nothing whatsoever like the emperor.
Then her gaze dropped to Flora's collarbone. She admired the necklace lying there, and asked, pointedly, whether it was a gift from him.
Flustered, Flora's hand drifted up to the pendant.
Evelyn smiled. It was such a relief, she said, to see Ottol treating someone kindly for once. He had always been so terribly cold with her.
From further down the path, the emperor's voice cut in, furious. How long, he demanded, did she intend to stand there talking nonsense?
Evelyn winked at Flora and whispered that His Majesty was angry again.
Flora, mistaking the bickering for intimacy, felt a small ache of envy and hoped that one day she might be able to joke with him so freely.
But Evelyn was not finished. She asked Ottol why he was out taking a walk now, when he had ignored every single invitation she had ever sent him, and accused him of being cold to her on purpose.
That was the last straw.
He warned her not to say another word, and then he pushed her bodily away from Flora.
Evelyn stumbled back a step, exclaimed that it had only been a joke, and pivoted smoothly into a question about politics.
Back in her rooms, Vishi was helping Flora out of the gown when she stopped, and made a small sound, and pointed.
There was a crimson stain at the hem.
She cried out in alarm and asked whether the empress was hurt. Flora assured her calmly that she was perfectly fine. Vishi pointed at the blood again and flatly refused to believe her.
It was only a blister, Flora explained. From the shoes.
To her surprise, Vishi's eyes filled with tears. When Flora asked what on earth was the matter, the maid began to apologise — devastated, she said, that her empress should have had to endure even the smallest amount of pain while in her care.
Flora tried to comfort her. It was not Vishi's fault in the least; she had chosen the shoes herself.
The tearful maid refused to be consoled and ran out of the room to fetch help, and Flora sat down on the edge of the bed, quite stunned by how deeply the girl cared.
Cecil arrived at speed, asking whether Her Majesty was injured.
Flora downplayed it as a simple blister. The imperial physician did not treat it as a simple blister. He knelt down in front of her and asked politely whether he might examine the area, and his calm professionalism cut straight through the panic in the room.
He took her foot carefully and told her he would be gentle.
The inflammation was quite bad, he said. She had reopened the same spot before it could finish healing. He would need to apply disinfectant now.
Flora agreed nervously.
He warned her that it might sting, and it did; she winced as the medicine touched the raw skin.
She thought, watching the top of his bent head, that this focused, unhurried care was a very kind thing. And immediately behind that thought came a different one, and it began with a quiet apology.
Cecil's gentle manner disappeared, replaced by something more serious. He asked her why she had not said anything about the pain.
Looking away, Flora insisted she had not thought it was a big deal.
The physician blamed himself. He apologised for having been the one to suggest that she walk in the garden with the emperor at all.
Flustered, Flora denied that it was his fault in any way, and an awkward silence settled between them while he finished dressing the wound.
Elsewhere in the palace, Ottol sat at his desk and could not focus on a single line in front of him.
In his office he listened to the report. Cecil explained that the empress's injury was serious — it was showing signs of a bacterial infection, and it would require extended rest.
Ottol slammed his pen down on the desk. Why, he demanded, would she hide it?
Cecil confirmed that she had refused to explain herself.
Haunted by the memory of her face in the garden, of that quick forced smile and the apology for being slow, the emperor grew more and more agitated, and could not understand for the life of him why she would not simply have told him.
Five days later, Flora sat by the window with her bandaged foot propped up on a cushion, thinking that Cecil had wildly overdone it with the wrappings.
Her mind wandered where it had been wandering for five days. She wondered what Ottol was doing. She pictured him in the garden with Evelyn, laughing at something, walking at his own pace, and concluded that a man like that would find someone as boring as her very easy to forget.
A wave of sadness went through her, and it could not disguise the truth underneath it.
More than anything else, she just wanted to see him.