Rain began to fall over Vareth just before dawn.
It started as a drizzle—soft, hesitant, like the sky was grieving in silence—then deepened into a steady downpour that blanketed the city's spires and cobbled streets. The palace roofs wore it like a veil, silver threads cascading over domes and gargoyles. Somewhere beyond the gates, carriages rolled slowly through the wet streets. The city stirred, hushed and watchful, as if unsure of what to do now that its Empress was no longer behind the palace walls.
Lucien stood in his private study, untouched by the cold, soaked morning.
The room was elegant in the way all imperial rooms were: floor-to-ceiling bookshelves with hand-stitched leather bindings, an obsidian fireplace, and paintings of ancient Valerian battles. Yet it felt hollow, like the architecture itself had shifted in her absence.
He stared out the arched window, arms folded behind his back, his black robe loosely belted.
"She didn't even hesitate," he murmured.
He hadn't meant to speak aloud, but the words clawed their way out.
Five years. Five winters. Five Harvest Feasts. Five imperial banquets. Five years of sitting side by side in form, though rarely in spirit.
And she had walked away from it all like she was shedding an old skin.
He should be angry.
He should summon the Council, crush the murmurs blooming in court, parade Seraphina before the nobles and declare an heir to secure the line.
But all he could do was remember the way Aurora had looked at him—those eyes, calm and mournful, not pleading but grieving.
He had not known grief could look so composed.
He had not known it could haunt him.
A soft knock.
He turned. "Enter."
Seraphina stepped in, her gown clinging wetly to her figure, emerald silk damp from the storm outside. Her hair was twisted elegantly, her hands resting on her rounded stomach. She didn't wait for him to speak. She crossed the room slowly and placed herself in the chair across from his desk.
"She's gone," Seraphina said simply. "Why haven't you claimed me?"
Lucien studied her without a word.
"I have done everything you asked," she continued, not letting silence cow her. "I was discreet. I remained in the shadows. I carried your child without demanding acknowledgment. But now the Empress is gone. You owe me—"
"I owe you nothing," Lucien said, voice quiet but lethal.
Seraphina's jaw tensed. "You promised me—"
"I promised you nothing," he cut in. "You assumed."
Her nostrils flared. "And what of your son?"
Lucien looked down at his hands. Strong hands. Cold hands. "When he is born, he will be provided for. You will be housed. Honored. But the crown is not a reward for ambition, Seraphina."
She stood suddenly. "You think she was better than me? She bore you no child. She gave you no heir—"
"She gave me five years of dignity," Lucien said sharply. "She never begged. Never manipulated. She wore the silence I forced on her like armor."
He stepped closer.
"She deserved better."
Seraphina's voice cracked. "And what do I deserve?"
He didn't answer.
Because he didn't know.
She turned and stormed out of the room, her exit as loud as Aurora's had been silent.
The door slammed behind her.
Lucien stared at the space she left behind and felt… nothing.
Meanwhile, across the city, Aurora walked through the courtyard of her estate with a shawl over her shoulders and rain in her hair.
She didn't rush inside.
The air smelled clean, and the water was warm against her skin. It was the first rain she'd felt without needing permission to be seen.
Mireille appeared at the arched doorway, holding an umbrella. "You'll catch a cold."
"I've been colder in that palace," Aurora replied softly, lifting her face to the sky.
"You're poetic today," Mireille said, stepping into the rain beside her.
"I'm alive today."
They walked in silence for a while. The rain slicked their gowns to their ankles, soaked the flowers in the garden, and puddled at their feet.
Aurora's hair was wet, curls falling loose around her face.
"He'll try to paint me as a traitor," she said suddenly.
"Let him," Mireille replied. "Anyone who says a woman walking away from silence is betrayal was never worth the crown she wore."
Aurora gave a small, tired laugh. "Do you know what I regret most?"
"That you stayed too long?"
Aurora shook her head. "That I didn't stay long enough to learn to fight back with power, not just dignity."
"You still can."
"I don't want to fight him," Aurora said. "I want to live… in a world where I don't have to."
Mireille nodded. "Then let's build that world."
Later that evening, Aurora sat in her library—her library, not the Emperor's—sorting through boxes of books and relics she had brought with her. Among them was a smaller box wrapped in silk. She opened it slowly.
Inside were tokens of a life she no longer belonged to: a comb from her wedding day, the vow parchment signed at their coronation, the emerald brooch she had once worn when Lucien smiled at her during a festival.
It was the only time he had ever looked at her like she was more than duty.
She stared at the brooch for a long time.
Then set it aside.
She reached instead for the quill and parchment and began to write again.
This time, not to herself.
But to her people.
To the women who sit quietly at grand tables, watching men decide their worth.
To the daughters taught to serve, not lead.
To the ones who think love means being less…
Let me show you what rising looks like.
She didn't know what she would do with the letter.
But it was a start.
The next morning, whispers reached the Court of Ministers: Aurora had rejected her titles not in shame, but in strength. A rumor spread that she had spoken with noblewomen. Another claimed she would start a school. Another, that she was writing.
Lucien heard them all.
He read a transcript from a merchant's daughter who said Aurora had smiled at her in the market. That she had said, "You are not small because he says you are."
That was when he realized: she hadn't just left.
She was becoming.
The woman who had once been his Empress was now something else entirely.
Something dangerous.
And strangely, something glorious.
That night, Lucien walked the halls of the palace like a ghost. No one dared speak to him. The ministers watched him pass with wary eyes. Even the guards saluted with hesitation.
He ended up, somehow, in the Winter Garden.
It was where she used to read.
Even in snow, Aurora would sit in the glass-roofed solarium with tea and three books beside her. He had once asked why she didn't use the royal library.
"Because no one watches me here," she had said. "No one corrects how I turn the page."
He sat where she had once sat.
The glass above him blurred with rain.
He closed his eyes.
"I didn't know how to love you," he whispered to the air.
And he was finally beginning to realize that not knowing would cost him more than an empire.