Chapter 49 – A Name No One Knows
The door closed behind them, but the silence in Sirius's chambers did not end.
The moonlight through the high windows fell like glass—unmoving, cold. His mother's footsteps still echoed faintly down the marble corridor, but already, her presence felt distant.
Sirius stood before the canvas, brush poised, yet unmoving.
His father hadn't spoken a word on the way out.
Not even a glance back.
But Sirius didn't need to hear his father speak.
He had heard it in the way the Grand Duke stopped his mother's outburst with a single hand. In the way he looked at the painting—at the woman in it—and did not question what he saw.
Not disbelief.
Not approval.
Only recognition.
And that, Sirius could live with.
He set the brush down and moved to the window, folding his arms along the sill.
The night was quiet. Too quiet for the capital.
Somewhere below, in the gardens of the Ross estate, lilies bloomed in rows. The moonlight brushed them gently. But his eyes saw something else.
A different moon.
A different garden.
A woman whose laughter once tangled in the air like silver threads.
He closed his eyes.
And the memory opened—
She had once touched his face and said nothing.
Not because there was nothing to say, but because in that silence, she had already told him everything.
She had stood beside him when he was not Sirius von Ross, but a king in another world. A demon with the world against him. And still, she had smiled.
She had once cried beside him—quiet tears, her silver lashes trembling, but never asking him to comfort her.
She never had to.
Because her silence spoke in a language he never forgot.
Because her love was not of this world.
Because she had given him back his soul.
The present returned slowly.
He opened his eyes.
The statue still stood in the corner. Half-finished. Draped in a loose cloth that did little to hide the serenity in its shape.
She was in every corner of this room.
Her scarf still lay on the edge of the bed, untouched.
A hundred sketches leaned against the far wall, loose pages of charcoal and brushwork, recording every angle of her that he could remember. Not one was thrown away.
And in the drawers were letters he had written but never sent.
Never signed.
Because he didn't know if she would ever find them.
Because she had disappeared long before the war.
And yet… he lived like she might still walk through that door.
Elsewhere in the estate, the Grand Duchess could not sleep.
She sat by the fire, arms crossed, robe drawn tightly around her shoulders. Her tea had gone cold. The flames cracked, casting long shadows against the walls of her sitting chamber.
She could not get the image out of her head.
That room.
That scent.
That girl.
That face.
And Sirius's voice.
"She is your daughter-in-law."
As if it were a settled matter. As if he had already sworn it to the stars and had no intention of consulting her.
Her jaw clenched.
"Daughter-in-law," she muttered under her breath, disgusted. "Of what house?"
She had sent dozens of invitations over the years. Daughters of dukes. Princesses. Noblewomen trained in etiquette and diplomacy. He hadn't looked at a single one.
Not once.
He had gone to war at sixteen, returned at eighteen—and instead of ambition, or empire, or alliances—he came home to paint a ghost.
"What power does she hold over him?" she asked the flames.
She stood suddenly and crossed to her desk, pulling open one drawer after the next.
Sketches.
Letters.
Old letters. Some unopened. Invitations returned with polite refusals. All signed with Sirius's name.
All timed around one point in his life.
The months after that girl first appeared.
The months before he went to war.
"She's not even noble," she whispered. "She has no name. No history. No family. Just a pretty face. That's all."
But the way Sirius had said it—
"No. I am the one who is not worthy of her."
That wasn't infatuation.
That wasn't weakness.
That was reverence.
She turned toward the fire again, and her voice trembled—
"Who the hell is she?"
Meanwhile, Sirius lit a single candle and returned to his sketchbook.
He did not weep.
He did not smile.
But his fingers moved again. The page accepted the charcoal.
Another face.
Another image of her.
Still no name.
But her eyes—her eyes he never forgot.
And as the candle burned lower into the hours of silence, he wrote three simple lines beneath the sketch:
She gave me peace.
Then left with it.
And still—I wait.