Phoebe startled. Elder Mira was beside her, materialized from nowhere as was her habit, robed in flowing cream and pale orchid with small blossoms woven into her white-lavender hair and her walking stick planted in the snow.
"How long have you?—"
"Long enough." The Elder’s lavender-grey eyes twinkled. "The choir has reached my ears, Phoebe. Your blending of Earth songs with Evergleam traditions is exactly what this festival was built for." She reached out and took Phoebe's hand between bothof hers, and the contact was warm and carried an ambient calm Planifites like her radiated. The anxious static in the back of Phoebe's skull went quiet at the touch. "I hope you know how much your presence has meant to this community. Not your voice, child. Yourpresence."
The distinction landed.
Mira's eyes crinkled. The twinkle intensified.
She leaned in, whispering conspiratorially, "I have also heard other things… about a certain security officer who has been smiling more than anyone on Evergleam has ever witnessed him smile.” She squeezed Phoebe's hand and patted it once before releasing it. "You know what a rare gift that is."
Elder Mira smiled and walked away into the snow, silent and unhurried.
Phoebe stood beneath the Pine with the warmth still on her skin, and the first real sense she belonged here settled into her bones. Not as a visitor. Not as a headliner booked for a season and then gone. But as someone the place itself had claimed.
The bioluminescence above her pulsed gold.
She turned to leave and saw the woman from the bakery walking toward her.
"Phoebe Calloway,” the woman said, her voice precise and clear. "My name is Selene. I was a cultural liaison on Evergleam several years ago." She paused.
Phoebe’s stomach tightened. She wasn’t sure where this was going.
“Welcome back to Evergleam and the Frostfall Festival,” Phoebe said as politely as she could muster. “What can I do for you?”
“Actually, there’s something I think I should do for you.”
The woman’s eyes dropped to the frost-art peeking above Phoebe’s collar. “I recognize those markings. I wore them on my own skin once.”
Phoebe’s stomach clenched.
"Thorne and I were involved a long time ago. I know what his frost does when he’s emotional and can’t hide it behind his walls."
His name hit Phoebe's sternum like a bell struck in a quiet room, and her hand went to her collar before she could stop it.
"I don't?—"
"I'm not here to cause drama." Selene's mouth curved. Her expression was kind. "I'm here because I've been where you're standing, and I wish someone had been honest with me before I spent years trying to fit inside a life that would never bend."
Phoebe's jaw tightened. "You don't know anything about my life."
"I know you have one somewhere else." Selene tilted her head. "That's enough."
She spoke carefully, without malice, and described Thorne's truth-sensing not as a gift but as a kind of surveillance.
"It's not that he means to invade you," Selene said. "He doesn't. But you can never have a private feeling around him. Every smile you put on when you're tired, every reassurance that costs you something… he reads it. He knows. And he can't help knowing, and you can't help performing, and the space between those two things erodes you. I loved him. I loved him very much. And I could never justbe sadin his presence without it becoming a conversation about why the sadness didn't match what I was saying."
Phoebe's body rebelled before her mind could.
Three hours ago that same truth-sense had been open on her while she moved above him in the morning light. It had read her and answered exactly what she needed. Not what she performed. Not what she shaped. Just the raw, unedited truth of her body and her wanting. The intimacy of being known so completely that performance was impossible was still alive in her skin. Stillfading in frost-art on her collarbone. The wordsurveillancetried to land on top of it and could not find a hold.
"He is rooted here," Selene said. "Permanently, completely. His duty, his identity, his entire sense of self is this place. And that's beautiful. I mean that. But a man who will not leave is a man who requires you to give up everything else. Your career. Your world. The life you built before you ever heard of Evergleam." She met Phoebe's eyes. "I chose myself. He called it leaving. I called it survival. We were both right."
Nothing she said was a lie.
That was the worst part.
“I just… I wished I had known the cost. That’s all.”
