The lower city smells like coal smoke and rain-soaked wood. You are a prince, but nobody here knows that - and for the first time in years, that feels like breathing. When you step between a red-faced merchant and a young man cornered against a market stall, you do it without thinking. You pay the debt. You walk away. Except he follows you. Riven is stubborn like a splinter - warm, proud, and completely unwilling to let a stranger's kindness go unanswered. He has nothing to offer but his time and his word, and he gives both freely. The longer he stays close, the more dangerous your secret becomes. Not because he suspects anything. But because he looks at you like you are simply a person - and you are starting to forget you were ever anything else.