Chapter 4

Château Falaises Brumeux, the next morning.

It is the next morning at Château Falaises Brumeux, and the dawn arrives softly — first as a pale wash of silver over the Outeniqua peaks, then as a slow blooming of colour, like watercolour spilling gently across the sky. The cliffs still hold the quiet of night, their stony faces cool and hushed beneath a thin veil of lingering mist. Tiny threads of light slip between the tall pines and the great yellowwoods, catching on dew-beads and turning them into scattered jewels.

The forest wakes gradually. A breeze stirs — light, unhurried — brushing across needles and leaves with the sound of distant surf. The pines answer with a deep whisper, and the yellow woods sway with long, lazy grace. A Cape robin-chat sends out the first call, tentative but bright, soon joined by the chattering excitement of sun-birds dancing through the canopy. Woodpeckers tap rhythmically like polite knocks on an unseen door, while Knysna loeries (Turacos) sweep from branch to branch, their feathers flashing soft green and blue-grey. Their heads crowned with white.

There’s something quietly theatrical and mystical about a Knysna Loerie. In the still forest canopy its rich green plumage blends seamlessly with the leaves — almost invisible. Then, with a sudden hop or leap, it takes to the air and reveals a flash of deep red beneath its wings — vibrant and electric against the forest’s and age-old giant ferns green gloom.

As the sun finally breaks free of the horizon, the château glows — stone warming from blue to gold, windows winking like they share a secret with the morning. Shadows shorten, colours deepen, and the world feels freshly laundered, new and full of promise. Light pours over the terrace, spills down the cliff side, and floods the forest floor where ferns uncurl like waking animals.

It becomes a bright sunshine day — clear, generous, endless. The air tastes of pine resin and wet earth. Birds weave bright ribbons of song through the trees, and the mountains stand watch, serene and ancient, beneath the widening sky.

The château rests in the heart of it all, calm and content, as if it too is breathing in the sweet, golden morning.

I stood on the balcony of my room, a mug of steaming coffee in hand, watching the mist recede — thinning into the sun like breath on cold glass. The air bit at my skin, cold and startling and wonderfully clean, chasing away the cobwebs of a short sleep and the remnants of strange dreams I couldn’t quite remember. Below me, the forest breathed — glossy leaves dripping with last night’s dew, branches shifting with the weight of early-rising birds. Light struck the east-facing needles of the pines, turning them into spears of gold.

For a moment, I wondered if I’d imagined the voice in the hallway last night. A whisper, low and close, like someone leaning just behind my ear: “... You’ve done good...”

Standing now in the bright, chirping certainty of morning, it felt absurd. Nothing supernatural survives in daylight — not ghosts, not guilt, not praise you don’t believe you deserve. Probably the old beams settling, or a memory playing itself back like an echo trapped in my skull.

But then I looked down at the terrace below.

Lena was there.

She stood with her shoulders hunched inside a thick wool blanket — the white one from the guest wardrobe, the one that smelled faintly of cedar and old winter — her feet swallowed by those monstrous sheepskin slippers we all pretended weren’t ridiculous. Her breath fogged in the cool morning air. She wasn’t admiring the sunrise, or the forest, or the endless sea of treetops rolling down into the valley like green surf.

She was staring straight up at the West Wing.

Her head was tilted back, pale jaw angled toward the crumbling masonry of the clock tower — that broken tooth of a structure clinging to the structure of the château like it might fall with the next strong wind. The place no one had visited in years. No one sane, at least. She stood so perfectly still she could have passed for one of the moss-worn statues in the garden — frozen mid-breath, mid-thought — if not for the slow ribbon of steam rising from her mug, or the wind tugging playful, careless strands of red hair from her messy bun.

I felt something then — the kind of shift you notice only if you’re sober and quiet enough inside your own head. A sense that the day, for all its sunshine and birdsong, was tilting toward something else. Something sharp. Something inevitable.

I drained the last of my coffee in one swallow, the bitterness biting my tongue. Peace was a luxury, and I’d already indulged it longer than I should have. The mission hadn’t changed, no matter how gentle the morning pretended to be. And from the looks of her — blanket, slippers, hair like a flaming banner in the wind — Lena was already mapping her assault on the ruin of the clock tower.

The Princess never waited for permission.

I set the empty mug down, turned back into the room, and reached for my boots. Leather creaked, laces pulled tight, the familiar ritual grounding me like a hand on the shoulder.

It was time to go to work.

Stepping out onto the terrace, a cool breath of morning air touched my face — damp with the remnants of dawn mist, scented faintly with pine and old stone. The château stood silent behind us, like some ancient creature waking slowly, and below us the valley swam in rolling veils of white. The sun was only just beginning to burn through, turning everything gold at the edges.

She must have heard my footsteps on the old slate. Lena turned, framed by fog and the rising sun like a painting no gallery could ever afford.

“Good morning, Ruan. I can see why the château is called Misty Cliffs.”

Her voice was soft but amused, as though she already knew I was standing there admiring the scene — or perhaps admiring her. I cleared my throat, suddenly aware of how foolishly proud I felt simply for arriving first to greet her.

“Good morning, Lena,” I answered, stepping closer. “Yes — I forgot you speak French above all, and thus know the meaning of ‘Falaises Brumeux’.”

I tried to keep my tone light, conversational. Court etiquette was something she mastered in childhood, but for me it still felt like walking through a room full of crystal with too-large boots.

“You?” She arched one perfect eyebrow at me, sceptical, playful. There was a challenge in her voice — or maybe I imagined it.

I grinned and threw out my best attempt at charm.

“Je peux me débrouiller en français pour me déplacer et commander un hamburger.” (I can manage in French to get around and order a hamburger.)

Her smile widened, bright as the breaking day. “Cute.”

For a moment she simply stood there with the mist curling around her hair, the breeze whispering against the stone balustrade. wrapped in the a little to big night robe. A princess — yes — but also far more human in that quiet hour than any court portrait ever dared paint her. She turned back toward the valley, voice thoughtful.

“Besides Afrikaans, English, French and Russian, do you speak any other languages?”

My answer came easily. “Ukrainian, and Romanian...”

She turned sharply. If she had been poised before, now she was lightning, eyes wide, mouth parted ever so slightly — astonished, but curious rather than impressed. Emerald fire in her green eyes.

Perhaps she had only just realised that I was not merely a soldier, a pilot or convenient owner of the château she needed to investigate.

“You know that most Ukrainians can speak and understand Russian, but not many Russians can understand or speak Ukrainian?” she asked, her tone shifting — no longer morning-soft, but pointed. Testing me.

I leaned against the rail, watching the mist thin. “Is that why Putin is losing the war?”

Her eyes narrowed, though only by a fraction. A duellist measuring distance, wind, intent.

“You don’t like Putin, but yet your government takes Putin’s side in the war...”

I breathed out slowly — not irritated, exactly, but aware of the ground beneath us thinning like the fog. Politics was a minefield dressed in silk.

“Is that the diplomat or the politician side of the Crown Princess?” I asked, meeting her gaze without flinching.