"This will be your study," Alden said, gesturing at the space. The room was small but had high ceilings that vaulted downwards in diagonal lines, made from old planks that had withstood the test of time. In one of the portions of the ceiling was a square-cut hole with a piece of square wood over it and a worn-looking handle on its end. There was a ladder leaning against the rim of the crater, and Elodie assumed that some of the castle staff must have used it as an improvised entrance to the roof. At the end of the room was an oculus window with a plummeting view of the entry courtyard below. As Elodie and Alden treaded through the room, the old wooden floors pleaded to return to their restful state with every creak.

Elodie peered around the vacuous space, unsure what she was supposed to be looking for. After all, it wasn't as if she could turn the room down. At the moment, only a single crate had been pushed back against one of the walls and an iron-wrought garden table with two matching chairs. Perhaps they'd been abandoned after some spring gathering, forgotten to the dust and chill of an old storage space.

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"Or at least, it will be once we have a better idea of the equipment you'll need." Alden moved towards the window, pulled out his little paper pad, and patted himself down. His brow deepened until he noticed Elodie's hand pointing at the left pocket on his sweater. With a scowl, he procured a pen from it and began writing notes about the room. "Your room is already furnished, and I believe your aide, Ann, is making arrangements with the staff for your belongings. Why Braum insisted on giving you this space and not just using one of the old alchemy labs is beyond me. Waste of resources."

Elodie was listening, but she looked down into the courtyard where Emerys and the other wardens were seated atop horses, escorting some merchant caravan out of the castle. His gaze caught hers, and he gave a cheerful wave, calling loudly, "Elodie! Don't let him scare you!" The other wardens turned at the sudden noise, and their gaze turned to the window. Elodie looked away quickly, red burning across her pale cheeks.

Alden rolled his eyes and cleared his throat. "As I was saying, Lady Elodie, a staircase across the hallway leads down to the main entrance for this outbuilding. The door at the end of the hallway connects to the wall rampart. It's relatively secluded, so you can do what you need to do in peace, but the passage does make a shortcut from the second-floor sitting rooms to the front gate, so do check for people before doing anything …" He waved his arms and mimicked a casting motion. "Too extravagant." He then took a long breath and tapped his pen on his pad. "Did you follow that?"

Elodie snapped away from the window to a stiff position, hands clasped behind her back. "Y-yes. Sorry, I'm listening."

Alden didn't respond at first. He began looking her over the same way he did the day they'd found her in the snow. It was a scrutinizing glance that grew so frigid you could feel the frost creeping around your shoulders. "What else am I forgetting?" He trailed off and looked around the space like the answer would reveal itself. "I'm going to find someone to patch that hole, at least temporarily." He looked down and almost seemed to be talking to himself rather than her. "It was supposed to be done before you got here, so I'm sure there's an excellent explanation as to why it's not done yet."

"Oh!" Elodie raised a hand to stop him. "Could I please try?"

Alden raised an eyebrow. "You want to fix the roof?"

"Yes. My father loves architecture, and I think I've seen this style of rafters on some of the gambrel-style roofs."

Alden looked pensive, made uncomfortable by a noble approaching handiwork so readily, but said, "Very well. I'll still need to go get-"

The rest of his sentence ebbed into muddled words as Elodie turned inwards to concentrate. She raised her arms and poised her hands as if to pluck strings on a harp. She closed her eyes to let the world's colors fade into darkness. "Could you please cover this hole with a sturdy material like burlap? Just enough to cover it for the time being."

"What-"

Burlap? What a disgusting, grainy choice, her inner voice said, It will be done, but not with burlap.

Elodie had spent the last three days at home trying small orations to expend her contained magic and build confidence. Once, she had requested a small amount of table salt be created in her palm. Another was, per her sister's suggestion, causing a small patch of fennel to crack through the snow. After working up some courage, she even bewitched a pen to write across a stretch of paper. Through such trials, the orator and her muse had come to at least the idea of a partnership, though the latter rarely thoroughly listened to the former. Most annoyingly, the muse even seemed to misinterpret her requests to its own amusement. In particular, Elodie had noticed that tasks requiring artificial objects like tools and hinges were harder to convince her muse to work with, like trying to get a child to eat a food with a texture they didn't prefer.

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Elodie tapped her foot in annoyance as Alden stared at her, bewildered. Even without being able to see him, she could feel the confusion writhing around him. Her cheeks flushed a little. At home, she'd been able to practice in solitude.

"Would you do it with some other natural material?"

"O ... kay?"

Elodie opened her eyes and smiled apologetically at Alden, which only seemed to confuse him further. It was hard enough for Elodie to converse with a single person, let alone juggling two separate but joined conversations. Her cheeks flushed deeper as she noticed two other nobles standing outside the room, whispering to each other and subtly pointing at her. They were undoubtedly talking about her outburst at the castle three days prior. If it was bad having an audience of Alden, it was that much worse having her first audience of strangers.

"How about pine branches?" she said, more quietly this time.

Pine will do.

As the last word echoed in her mind, tiny seeds dotted her fingers like tea percolating in water.

Press them into the wood.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm ... patching the hole. I know what I'm saying is confusing, but I can do it."

Elodie took measured steps while Alden stared, gripping his pad and pen to his chest. With the delicacy of a maiden offering her heart to the moon during the spring solstice, Elodie stepped onto the ladder and raised her hands high enough until she could press a finger into the wood. The seeds pressed into the frayed wood as though it were soil, and thick pine branches laced with snow began to twist and writhe from each dot. They stretched and pulled at an alarming speed and soon overtook the hole and blotted out the gray sky behind it. The square board that had once blocked out the winter cold was snapped in half as the branches dipped in and out of its surface.

The woody branches kept going, coiling along the rafters and shaking snow onto the room's floor like powdered sugar on a pastry. Icicles condensed on the bottoms of the rafters and set gentle snowflakes into the space around them. The wooden roof groaned under the sudden weight of the branches, and Elodie stomped a foot against the ladder. "That is enough, thank you."

Very good. The branches froze, snakes preparing, tensing but never striking.

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Show off, Elodie thought. She clapped her hands and announced, "That should at least cover it until- Oh!"

Beside her, Alden stepped backward, head positioned between two curved branches. His pen and paper had fallen to the floor, his arms up in a defensive position. He reached up to push them out of the way, grimacing as he did so. In the hallway, one of the onlooking nobles carefully called, "Lord Alden? Are you alright?" They entered the room as knights errant, rushing to Alden's sides. Elodie thought she recognized them as two higher-ranking nobles, son and daughter of a wealthier house, but she couldn't place which one.

The man on the left sneered at her and said, "Planning to take out the whole inner court, are you?"

Embarrassment crept up her arms and back like ants. "They're only branches..."

"Only branches?" he cried, incredulous, "Next, I supposed you'll tell me axes are only metal."

Elodie's mouth snapped shut at that, hands balling into fists but unable to fire anything back.

"I am unharmed, though I thank you for your concern, Lord and Lady Pederson," Alden said coolly, pushing back his hair and tucking it behind his ear. The two looked pleased with his praise and their noses upwards to cast a shadow over Elodie. She hated this kind of noble most of all. The ones that thought of court life as a game and spent all their time bullying others out of boredom. "I will also remind you," Alden continued, "That as of today, Lady Elodie Auclair is also a member of the inner court. Are you saying that she plans to strike down a circle she is a part of?"

The Pedersons shrank back into the hallway quickly, weasels hiding in the brush. "Yes, of course, we were only worried for your safety," Lord Pederson said.

"And as you can see, I am quite safe," Alden assured them.

The lady spoke again, this time with her head bowed. "He didn't mean anything by it, Lady Auclair. Please forgive his outburst."

They both looked at Elodie so expectantly that she had no choice but to smile and wave a hand through the air, dismissing it altogether. "It's no trouble..."

The two gave polite half-bows and then excused themselves down the hallway, but Elodie could hear their chortles and whispers even without making out the words. She was sure by that alone that every noble in the castle would know about this moment by the end of the day.

Elodie and Alden were silent as they left, and the silence lingered too long afterward. Elodie realized only too late what Alden had said in her stead and gave a half-bow in gratitude. "Thank you ... for-"

"Let me make one thing clear." Alden spoke decisively, his eyes hooded as he bent down to pick up his dropped pen. His voice was quiet, to not carry into the hallway. It carried in it a fear held steady by many years of experience. "I do not trust you as an orator. As Lady Elodie, you've barely been a footnote in my records, but as an orator, you've become a constant source of unpredictability. You've put our prince's life in danger, and that is enough for me to distrust you." He spat the sentiment out like a bile, sucked in a breath, and continued. "I voted against you joining our inner circle because although I think you are a perfectly unobtrusive person, you have demonstrated three times now that you cannot fully control limitless power."

Alden's face barely moved as he spoke, his lips making just enough of a hole for air to pass through and nothing more. He said the words like they were a bothersome gnat to be swatted away, and never once did he release any of the tension in his shoulders. "That being said, I despise festering gossip, and perceived division amongst the inner circle will lead to a headache for us both. So don't think this means I intend to sabotage you." His maroon eyes seemed colder than the icicles dripping onto the ground beneath them.

"What do you want me to do?" Elodie retorted, anger finally welling up and spilling over. Just when she'd thought she'd finally made progress towards a workable solution, a new obstacle presented itself. "Leave?"

We could eat him.

"Prove to me that you're worthy of Braum's appointment. That is all I ask of any steward."