"Yuri."
The name left her lips like a breath, fragile and trembling, barely audible above the soft whisper of the night wind.
It carried across the balcony, floated over the edge, and dissolved into the darkness of the city below.
No one heard it.
No one but the moon, cold and distant, indifferent to the grief of a queen who had never learned how to be a mother.
Erza's eyes widened.
Her hand, which had been reaching toward the figure, stopped mid-air.
Her fingers trembled.
Her heart pounded against her ribs with a force that made it hard to breathe.
It was her son.
Yuri.
The one she had hated the most in Atlantis. The one she had blamed for every misfortune that had befallen her, every opportunity she had lost, every dream that had turned to ash in her mouth.
His face, those violet eyes, that black hair, that small, solemn mouth, was burned into her memory, not with love, but with something far uglier.
"Yuri?" she whispered again, disbelieving.
"How?"
