Queen Lysandra stood behind the tall arched doors of her chamber.
She didn't open them.
She didn't need to.
The screams reached her anyway—seeping through stone, through silk curtains, through the careful silence she had built around herself.
Her fingers tightened around the goblet in her hand until the metal bent slightly under her grip.
Again, she thought.
She already knew what she would see if she stepped outside.
Knew it as intimately as her own breath.
Men punished for hunger.
Women punished for speaking.
Children punished for existing in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Edward's cruelty was not rage.
It was routine.
She had gone out before.
Gods, how many times had she gone out before?
She remembered the first time—running into the courtyard, skirts gathered in trembling fists, shouting his name, begging him to stop.
"Please," she had said then, voice breaking. "They're starving. Let them go."
Edward had smiled at her.
Not warmly.
Never warmly.
"Mercy from a queen looks like weakness," he had replied, before ordering the punishment doubled.
She remembered the second time—standing beside him, trying a different approach. Calm. Regal. Diplomatic.
"They fear you already," she had said. "Fear alone is enough."
He had leaned close and whispered, "I don't want fear. I want obedience."
And then there were the other times.
Too many.
Each ending the same way.
More blood.
More screams.
More reminders that her crown was decoration, not authority.
Now, standing alone in her chamber, Lysandra closed her eyes.
She could picture Edward clearly—his relaxed posture, the boredom in his gaze, the way suffering never touched him unless it was his own.
The cruelty inside him never faded.
It never softened.
It never cracked.
No matter how many nights she lay awake beside him, staring at the ceiling, wondering how a man could be so empty.
No matter how many prayers she whispered to gods who never answered.
No matter how many pieces of herself she surrendered in the hope that something might change.
Nothing ever did.
A quiet knock came at her door.
She didn't turn.
"Your Majesty," a maid whispered nervously, "the… the punishment has ended."
Lysandra exhaled slowly.
Ended for now.
She set the bent goblet down and walked to the mirror.
Looking perfect as usual.
But her eyes—
Her eyes were tired.
Haunted.
And sharp.
"I won't go," she whispered to her reflection. "Not anymore."
Not because she didn't care.
But because she finally understood.
Edward didn't rule through power alone.
He ruled through hopelessness.
Through the certainty that no one—not even a queen—could stop him.
Behind her, unseen and unheard, fate shifted again.
Because while Edward's cruelty never faded—
Lysandra's silence was no longer surrender.
It was waiting.
And somewhere in the palace corridors, a young Malveric listened, watched, and learned.
The screams had ended.
But the reckoning had not yet begun.