The Sections were almost repaired as we walked around the island. In the middle of all that, Darling walked ahead of us but didn't look back.
The funeral for the dead was held near the plaza where the attack had been the worst. Three thousand were dead. Rows of caskets were spread out. Those able to come were greeted by a wonderful sight.
When Darling stepped forward, the entire crowd went silent without anyone telling them to. That was just how it worked. He wasn't wearing anything extravagant—just his usual regal attire—but the moment he stood on the platform, every eye turned to him.
I could feel his Boon even from where I stood. It spread like a gentle pressure through the air,. From Mortals, Immortals, even some lower Divine, all of them relaxed without realizing why. It wasn't mind control. It was more like being hugged by someone you trusted more than yourself.
He started speaking and his voice carried effortlessly across the holograms broadcasting it and the people who were there. He spoke about loss, about rebuilding and how Richinaria did not abandon its people. He named the fallen not as numbers but as citizens that mattered. I'd heard him give speeches before but watching the civilians' faces change from hollow and panicked to teary but relieved hit different this time.
He looked insanely cool doing it.
A few people in the crowd started crying. Some even smiled through their tears. That was the effect he had on people. To them, seeing a Dynasty Monarch in person was already rare enough. Seeing one stand there and talk like he actually cared? That was something they'd probably tell their grandchildren about.
I glanced at Adela, and she exhaled slowly, muttering, "Show-off," under her breath. But there was pride in her eyes and I knew mine probably looked the same.
After the ceremony, he didn't retreat to some palace or let the others handle things. He rolled up his sleeves—literally—and got to work with the Levenees Section mages. Reconstruction Runes shimmered across broken walls, Repair Runes stitched cracked foundations back together. The air kept flashing with those soft sapphire glows that meant he was using his own power to reinforce the runes.
Watching him work was kind of mesmerizing. He didn't just throw mysticism around. He coordinated with the mages, corrected their rune matrices when they were inefficient and even showed a few apprentices how to stabilize a collapsing structure without overloading their energy on them. He was a Monarch and still took the time to teach like an academy instructor.
Kids started approaching him after a while.
At first it was just one little girl tugging on his sleeve, asking if the monsters would come back. He crouched down to her level like he had all the time in the world and answered her seriously.
Then more children gathered. They asked about his glaive, about whether Divine Beings slept, about whether he was stronger than the Krepsunas and Deities from the stories. He answered all of them, even the stupid ones, and when one boy shyly asked if he could have something to remember this day, Darling actually formed small sapphire figurines with his own power and handed them out like candy.
I watched a tiny sapphire dragon take shape in his palm and land in a kid's hands. The kid looked like he'd just been handed a star.
The entire time, though, he didn't speak to us.
We followed, helped where we could, did all the Duchess and helpful things we were good at. But to him, we might as well have been part of the scenery. And weirdly, that hurt more than if he'd just yelled at us again.
Adela leaned closer to me at one point while we were moving debris and whispered;
"He's doing it on purpose."
"Yeah, I can tell."
It wasn't like we were children needing his approval. We were both powerful, independent and fully capable of ignoring him and living our lives. But that wasn't how this worked.
Our whole relationship—our messy, chaotic, very not-normal polyamorous thing—ran on this weird mix of devotion, trust, love and emotional masochism. We fought, we teased, we pushed boundaries just to see where they were, and somehow we always circled back to him like he was the axis of our entire existence.
And he always came back to us too. Even when we pissed him off. Especially when we pissed him off.
I remembered all the times the five of us had tried to make him angry before. It had become this stupid, unspoken competition. Nari once tried to provoke him by publicly talking with a soldier from Richinaria just to see if he'd react. Ely had deliberately ignored his orders during a training session after leaving the Islands of Inexpelcae. Adela had stolen his glaive once and hid it just to see if he'd lose his composure.
Every single time, he'd stayed calm. Annoyed, maybe. Exasperated, definitely. But he was never mad.
So yeah, seeing him like this now, pretending we were irrelevant, felt strangely thrilling. It was proof we'd finally pushed him far enough to break that endless patience of his.
At one point, Adela bumped her shoulder into mine lightly and murmured.
"You realize this is a historic moment, right?"
"We got him mad. We should commemorate this with a monument."
"Worth the hangover and the accidental cheating."
I winced at that word but couldn't deny the truth. The kiss, the bite marks, the drunken haze, it had been stupid and reckless. But if I was being brutally honest, part of me still felt a twisted sense of accomplishment.
Were we masochists? Probably. Normal people didn't find satisfaction in being emotionally lashed out by their beloved because they'd broken a rule.
Still, even while my chest felt tight watching him walk past us without a glance, there was this unshakeable certainty sitting at the back of my mind. He came back. He always did. He might drag it out, might make us wallow in guilt and anticipation, but eventually he'd sigh, pull one of us into his arms, and mutter something about how we were pretty and he couldn't stay mad forever.
And when he messed up—and oh, he has done that before tons of times—we did the exact same thing. We'd glare, complain, maybe ignore him for a day or two, and then end up crawling back to him like nothing had happened because that was just how deep the bond ran.
It wasn't a clean, perfect kind of love.
It was messy, stubborn and borderline toxic from an outsider's perspective. But it was also stable in a way most relationships weren't. None of us were scared of being abandoned. None of us doubted that at the end of the day, we'd still be together in the same bed, arguing over blankets and teasing each other like idiots.
The only real suffering was the process before the reconciliation. And this time, he was doing it brutally well.
He spent the rest of the afternoon coordinating large-scale reconstruction, issuing orders to mages and knights alike, and comforting civilians who approached him. To everyone else, he was the perfect Monarch.
To us, he was an unbreakable wall.
By the time the sun set and the island looked almost whole again, my nerves were fried. Adela looked just as tense, even if she tried to hide it behind her usual cool composure.
"Okay, I take it back. Maybe pissing him off wasn't worth it."
She shot me a sideways glance. "Too late to regret it now."
We both watched him from a distance as he handed another sapphire figurine to a child and ruffled the kid's hair with a small, gentle smile. It was the kind of smile he used to give us without thinking.
I felt a stab of guilt right then. It wasn't because we'd broken some abstract rule, but because we'd hurt someone who genuinely adored us.
Still, even with that guilt, there was also anticipation because when he finally decided we'd suffered enough and turned his attention back to us, the confrontation was going to be explosive.
And knowing us, we were probably going to enjoy every second of it.