The court was no longer a place of order.
It roared.
Beneath gilded arches and a ceiling painted in cherubs and heaven's conquest, the noble assembly hall echoed with rising panic—a discordant symphony of silks rustling, heels striking marble, and voices sharpened not by eloquence, but fear.
The nobles—men in waistcoats heavy with medals, women adorned in veils and sapphire tears—stood in fractured clusters. Their voices mingled like winds across a battlefield, formalities dissolving into something far more primal.
"What has become of Lord Drellwyn?"
"Where is the Queen's Second Minister?"
"They were not ill—they were silenced!"
The court was a hive—no longer golden, but burning.
Its once-gilded air now reeked of panic dressed in perfume. Murmurs swelled like a tide against marble columns, and under the stained-glass dome where sunlight once bathed the nobles in regal clarity, there now lingered only fractured light and louder shadows.
Ladies whispered behind gloved hands, their painted lips trembling with courtly dread. Lords argued in clipped, affected tones—demanding truth, demanding names, demanding that fear be dressed in etiquette, if not logic. The death of two high-ranking officials had shaken the pillars of aristocracy, and now they clung to rumor like moths to flame.
And then—
The chamber stilled.
As if silenced by unseen command.
He had arrived.
Duke Alexandrino.
Not old, but dangerously composed—like a flame locked in crystal. The echo of his polished boots upon the obsidian-veined marble drew all eyes with aching immediacy. He walked as though the floor bowed to him, as though time itself paused to witness him pass.
His attire was no modest show of status—it was hunger made silk.
A high-collared coat of wine-dark velvet clung to his tall form, encrusted with jet buttons that glinted like onyx tears. His cravat, a cascade of ivory lace pinned with a blood-garnet brooch, dripped like the throat of some well-dressed sacrifice. Golden embroidery threaded along his cuffs in curling baroque thorns, suggesting elegance learned from fire.
His hair, a rich chestnut brown, was pulled back into a low ribbon-bound tail—tied with such precise care it might've been the work of a lover's hands. Not a single strand fell out of place, not a single motion wasted.
And those eyes—those cruelly soft beige eyes—calm as sand before a desert storm. They were not dull. They shimmered like parchment warmed by firelight, unreadable, steady, watching the crowd with the grace of a man who could command nations by lifting a brow.
He ascended the court's dais with a languid confidence. The nobles parted like seafoam before a prow.
A nobleman stammered, "Your Grace—what of the assassinations? The ministers—what has befallen them?"
Alexandrino turned slowly, his silhouette backlit by fractured sun and rising fear.
"What has befallen them," he echoed, his voice smooth as aged claret, "is not yet the horror that awaits you, should you continue to play diplomat while death roams our halls in velvet slippers."
A lady swooned.
Another man dropped his ring.
And still, Alexandrino did not raise his voice.
"You ask me what happened," he said, descending one step closer to them, as though bestowing presence upon the trembling. "I ask you—why do you assume it won't happen again? Or worse—why do you pretend your names are not already inked beside the dead?"
His words slithered like silk across a dagger's edge.
He smiled—just barely.
"There is a rot beneath our court," he continued, adjusting his lace cuffs with surgical precision. "One does not disguise poison with honey forever. And now, the blade no longer waits behind tapestries. It walks among you."
A hush bloomed like a bruise.
Gasps filled the scented air. A jeweled fan snapped in half. No one moved. The Duke, so terribly beautiful in his quiet menace, stood above them all—not as a nobleman, but as prophecy.
A baroness, her lip trembling beneath powder and pride, managed: "And… who will be next?"
Alexandrino stepped down to her level. His beige eyes softened just enough to unsettle.
"Depends," he said. "On how many of you believe you're too important to die."
The court fell to silence once more—not by command, but awe. Panic no longer screamed. It whispered.
Outside the palace, wind pressed against the stained glass like breath behind a locked door.
Inside, Duke Alexandrino stood not like a savior—
—but like a man who had seen the list of the damned…
and had the poise to read it aloud.
The court had become a beehive drowned in storm—each noble a frantic wing, each whisper a sting.
Voices tangled like lace in the air, thick with dread, suspicion, and delicate rage. Every footstep now echoed with panic, every glance turned knife-sharp with doubt. The chandeliers above trembled in their golden chains, and even the marble beneath seemed to shift with unrest.
"Who will be next?"
"Did you see the blood on the baron's collar?"
"I heard he choked… no, no—strangled in his study…"
The walls of the palace, once gilded in the idle luxury of power, now breathed cold sweat and rumour. The nobility huddled like birds before winter—paranoid, trembling, waiting for the axe in the night.
And yet—
In the far corner of the grand chamber, where the flickering candelabras cast only half-light and shadow curled like smoke at the base of the pillars, she stood.
Alone.
Unmoving.
A woman carved from absence.
She did not speak. She did not whisper. She did not beg for truth or demand protection.
But she saw.
She knew.
She was perhaps in her thirties, though grief—quiet and regal—had pressed its cold fingers to the corners of her eyes. Her beauty was the kind that had once drawn sonnets and scandal, but time and silence had sculpted it into something more reverent. More haunted.
Her gown was mourning-black, but no widow's weeds. It was masterfully tailored—a Victorian masterpiece of baroque defiance. Midnight velvet trimmed in jet beads that shimmered like wet obsidian; a corset cinched with silver boning shaped her waist into melancholy perfection. Black silk roses bloomed along her sleeves, each petal sewn by hands that knew grief's weight. At her throat, a brooch: a cameo of a broken lyre, rimmed in pearls, set against onyx.
Her gloves—black satin, elbow-length—hid every tremble.
Her veil—thin lace dyed with raven's ink—dripped from the crown of a tilted hat and framed her ivory face like a funeral curtain too fragile to touch. Beneath it, her eyes were not red with weeping, but damp with remembering. Almond-shaped, deep grey, unreadable. Like mirrors that once knew fire and now reflected only ash.
She watched them all. Every nobleman pacing, every countess gasping behind fans of feather and pearl. She watched them with a stillness that was not numbness, but discipline.
As if to speak now… would betray something sacred.
They did not notice her. No, they had stopped noticing her long ago. A ghost among guests. A shadow in the crown's reflection.
And yet—
She had seen the guest list change before the blood dried.
She had heard which names had vanished from the parchment.
She had seen his handwriting on a letter that should have never left mystery's.
She knew.
But she said nothing.
Because truth was not always armor.
Sometimes, truth was a blade.
And she—Lady Rhea had already bled.
he morning crept in with the hush of a penitent guest—no trumpets of dawn, no chorus of birdsong, only the soft spill of pearl-grey light pressing through gauze-draped windows. The air was still, as though the manor itself held breath, unwilling to stir lest it wake the dying boy.
Katherine sat beside him, her back straight but her shoulders heavy with sleepless hours. The chair beneath her was stiff with carved dignity, too fine to offer comfort, and yet she did not move. She hadn't in some time. Her gloved hand remained folded in her lap, her eyes fixed on the delicate rise and fall of the boy's chest—too shallow, too fragile, as though even breath had become reluctant.
August lay in quiet agony, his form a pale wisp against the silken bedding. His hair, damp with fever, fanned like moonlight over the pillow. One slender hand had fallen, weak and unconscious, across the center of his chest—as if in some half-formed defense of the heart still laboring within.
Katherine reached toward that hand, hesitated.
She could not bear to wake him—not even from torment.
His lips, those faintly pink petals once so quick to smile in his childhood, were parted now only to gasp. And his lashes, long and white-gold, rested against cheekbones too sharply defined by illness.
The boy had always looked a touch ethereal, like a thing made not of earth but of mist and magic.
But now… now he looked like a memory waiting to be claimed.
Katherine swallowed her grief.
She had rested, yes. But only barely. A few stolen hours in the guest chambers—her corset loosened, her boots discarded, her head upon linen that smelled faintly of lavender and dust. Yet rest had not come easy. Panic had clung to her like wet lace. The weight of maternal dread, sharp and sickening, would not let her drift too far into forgetfulness.
She had left him—only because she trusted the boy now sitting vigil across from her.
Elias.
Yes, Elias had not moved either. He sat by the hearth, one hand curled into a loose fist beneath his chin, the other still resting—absently, protectively—on the edge of his thigh His black hair had fallen forward over one eye, and his shirt hung in slight wrinkles across his broad frame. His expression was unreadable, sculpted in quiet exhaustion, but there was something in the shape of his mouth. Something wounded. Something watching.
He had obeyed her word without question.
Keep your eyes on my angel, she had whispered before leaving. And he had.
When she returned hours later, Elias had not left the room. Not even to wash. Not even to eat. He had simply remained—steadfast, sleepless, and silent. His devotion was not loud, not romantic, not even conscious. It was something older than language. Something sacred. As though some part of him had been born solely to stand between August and the dark.
Katherine breathed in deeply, brushing a curl from her temple.
Morning had arrived.
But it brought no peace.
The poison still threaded itself through the veins of her beloved boy. The physicians had done what they could. The elixirs had been given. Prayers had been whispered into linens. But still he slept, caught in some haunted interval between breath and silence.
And all Katherine could do was remain.
Watch.
Pray.
Endure.
She reached for a cloth, dipped it into the rosewater bowl beside her, and wrung it carefully between trembling fingers. Then, with reverent grace, she dabbed it against August's brow.
"My darling," she murmured softly, her voice like an old lullaby cracked with use. "You must fight now. Your aunt is here. Do not let go."
And in the stillness of that chamber, as the sun bled gold against grey, time did not move.
It merely waited.
As they all did.
For breath.
For hope.
For August.
Katherine remained still.
The morning light had fully bloomed now, spilling through the tall windows in solemn gold, catching in the crystal vials upon the bedside table and wreathing August's unmoving form in something that resembled divinity—or mourning. His breath was still shallow, still uncertain, each exhale a whispered gamble between this world and whatever waited beyond it.
Her fingers brushed once more against his forehead, cool with dampness. She had replaced the cloth not long ago, folded it with the care of a mother dressing a child, smoothing it against the fevered curve of his temple. The boy's skin was too pale. His lips bore that faintest tremble of blue at their edges. And still he did not wake.
She should have risen hours ago.
The court would be stirring by now—stirring not with the grace of empire, but with the froth of scandal. Nobles flinging questions like daggers, ministers laced in perfume and poison, truth diluted by ten dozen mouths. She could already hear it—the orchestra of panic swelling in ornate corridors, masked faces demanding reason, demanding blood.
"I need to attend the court," she whispered aloud, though no one but the sleeping boy could hear her. "I must."
Her voice trembled as if the very air resisted the notion.
But her hand did not move from August's.
She looked down at his fragile fingers resting upon the coverlet, so light, so still. Her own hand enclosed his once more, curling around it like a cage too soft to contain.
How could she leave him now?
He was her boy. Her Brother's blood. Her only light in a world too often cloaked in marble lies and ceremonial cruelty. And here he lay—poisoned by cowards who had not the decency to declare their blade nor their purpose.
"No," she breathed. "Not yet."
The court could wait.
Let them bark and bray and bicker.
Let them shatter their wineglasses with indignation and stain their gloves with inked suspicion.
Let them choke on their titles and their trembling pride.
For all their grandeur, none of them lay here, on this bed, between life and oblivion.
None of them knew what it was to watch someone precious unravel by the hour.
Her gaze softened.
August's lashes fluttered, though no dream stirred behind them.
"Forgive me," she said gently, tucking a wayward curl behind his ear. "I was never meant to be made of steel. Only love."
She would go soon. She must. But not yet.
Not until he stirred.
Not until he gave her a sign that he would stay.
Until then—let the court wait.
Let the world wait.
Let it all burn, if it must.
But she would not leave her angel behind.
Not now.
Not yet.