The wheels groaned against the ruts, each jolt rattling through the carriage floor. I leaned an elbow on the window, cheek propped in my palm, watching the landscape change. The manicured Dorian grounds had already given way to rough scrub and crooked hedges. With them went the last reason to sit stiff-backed and proper.

For two days I’d played the dutiful daughter: spine straight, face smooth, silence measured. Jeanne Dorian’s mask. But there were no more eyes now—no brothers waiting to smirk, no father weighing me like a bad coin, no mother practicing absence. Just me, Vesa, and the driver.

And since Vesa had already noticed—she always did—it seemed pointless to keep the mask on only for her. So I stretched out without apology, legs braced against the seat. More comfortable that way. More me.

By midday the carriage slowed into a small town, houses weathered and crouched around a crossroad. Smoke curled from cookfires, chickens darted under boots, and rough tables sagged beneath fish, vegetables, bolts of cloth.

Before the driver could climb down, I pushed the door open and stepped into the dirt road myself. The air here smelled faintly of brine. Vesa followed, smooth as always, though I caught the smallest flicker—surprise that I hadn’t waited for her hand.

A woman gutting fish looked up, eyes widening before dropping quickly—not respect, more like wariness.

“Good day,” I said lightly. “Has the sea been kind this season?”

Her knife paused mid-slice. “The storms came early. Tore nets, kept boats close to shore. Most won’t risk going far out.”

So—fear and famine in one breath. I filed it away.

“And the land?” I asked, turning to a cloth seller stacking bolts. “Anything worth tending?”

He barked a laugh. “Grow? Not here. Salt’s in the soil. You’ll get reeds, scrub, maybe millet if the gods are kind. Farming’s a fool’s game.” His eyes narrowed. “Why do you ask?”

“Curiosity,” I said with a faint smile. Farmers rarely lied about dirt. They couldn’t afford to.

From another stall, a woman leaned over a basket of herbs. “If you’re bound for the coast, best keep watch. Pirates raid near weekly now—bold as gulls.”

Storms. Salt. Pirates. So the march’s reputation wasn’t rumor—it was truth sharpened by the people living at its edge.

“Thank you,” I said, inclining my head. “That’s good to know.”

Back at the carriage, Vesa waited. She didn’t sit right away. She just studied me, expression unreadable. Finally, she said, “You’re different. Since the ceremony. What changed?”

I tilted my head, feigning thought. “I suppose I decided I could. I’m not a Dorian anymore, am I? Jeanne Baret should be… her own person.”

Neat. Practiced. Entirely unconvincing. Vesa’s gaze didn’t waver. She’d seen the shift before the ceremony ever began. She knew this wasn’t sudden resolve—it was something else.

But I found I didn’t care. The Dorian shadow was already behind us. The march had never met Jeanne Dorian. To them, I would simply be who I was now. And anyway, the thought of new soil and strange plants was far more interesting than keeping up a mask I no longer needed.

The wheels turned again, the town shrinking behind. Hours later, the land dipped, and the horizon opened wide.

The Salt Coast.

The sea stretched vast and restless, waves crashing against jagged rock. The wind carried salt sharp enough to sting, and the land lay low and barren, grasses flattened by storms. In the distance, a cluster of buildings clung to the shore as though afraid to be swept away.

My march.

I exhaled, lips quirking despite myself. “Well,” I murmured—to Vesa, to the horizon—“let’s see if the stories undersold you.”