POV: Evangeline
I don’t visit his grave alone by accident.
I choose solitude because grief behaves better when it isn’t watched.
The stone is cool beneath my palm, the name carved deeper than it needs to be—Alexandro—as if the sculptor understood that some absences demand emphasis. The grass around it has been trimmed too neatly, the flowers replaced too often. The palace likes order. Death resists it.
“I didn’t bring anyone,” I say aloud. “You never liked an audience.”
The wind answers by moving through the trees, soft and restless.
I lower myself onto the bench opposite the marker. My skirts settle. My breathing follows. I am practiced at composure. I learned young.
“I keep replaying it,” I continue. “The dinner. The noise. The way time broke in half.”
I close my eyes, and the memory doesn’t ask permission.
A table set for family. Sebastian speaking. The boys arguing about something trivial. Maximilian smiling in that distant way of his. Alexandro leaning back in his chair, amused, relaxed—unguarded.
Then Henry appears.
Magic snaps through the room like a blade drawn too fast. William’s eyes are burning with something inherited and something learned. Sebastian rises. I reach for him without thinking.
Alexandro doesn’t hesitate.
He steps forward.
He shields. The strike lands. I open my eyes again.
“You didn’t look at me,” I whisper to the grave. “You didn’t even flinch.”
My throat tightens, but I don’t stop speaking. I never stop speaking anymore. Silence kept too many things alive for too long.
“You always moved first,” I say. “Toward danger. Toward love. Toward mistakes.”
I laugh softly, the sound thin. “You were so certain the world would bend if you believed in it hard enough.”
A memory surfaces uninvited—us as children, hiding beneath the east stairwell. Alexandro stealing candied fruit, pressing one into my palm like a secret.
We’ll get out, he told me then. Together.
“We didn’t,” I say now. “Not the way you meant.”
Footsteps crunch behind me.
I don’t turn. I already know who it is.
“You shouldn’t kneel on the cold stone,” Sebastian says gently. “You’ll regret it later.”
“I regret other things more,” I reply.
He approaches but doesn’t intrude. He has learned that much.
“I can come back,” he offers.
“No,” I say. “Stay.”
He does. He always does now.
For a moment, neither of us speaks. The space between us is full of shared memory, shared failure, shared survival.
“I still hear him,” Sebastian says quietly. “When I close my eyes.”
I nod. “Me too.”
“I didn’t deserve—” He stops himself. Swallows.
“You don’t get to make his death about punishment,” I say calmly. “Not anymore.”
He looks at me, startled.
“He chose,” I continue. “That matters. You don’t get to erase his agency because it hurts.”
Sebastian exhales slowly. “You’re right.”
“I loved him,” I say. “But I won’t trap him in my grief.”
I stand, smoothing my skirts. My knees protest faintly. I welcome the sensation. It reminds me I’m alive.
“I used to think closure was forgetting,” I say. “Or forgiving. Or understanding.”
Sebastian tilts his head. “And now?”
“Now I think it’s allowing the wound to exist without letting it rule me,” I reply.
I face the grave again.
“Alex,” I say, voice steady. “I forgive you for leaving.”
The words land heavy—and freeing.
“I forgive you for choosing love over caution,” I add. “For believing in people who didn’t earn it. For thinking the world would reward sincerity.”
I pause.
“And I forgive myself,” I say. “For surviving when you didn’t.”
The wind lifts again, stronger this time. Leaves rustle. Somewhere, a bird startles into flight.
Sebastian shifts beside me. “You never needed permission to live.”
“I know,” I reply. “But I needed to hear myself say it.”
He nods, accepting that this is not his moment to fill.
We walk back toward the palace in companionable silence. Halfway down the path, I stop.
“There’s something else,” I say.
Sebastian turns.
“I kept thinking there would be a last conversation,” I continue. “Some final understanding. Something neat.”
“There rarely is,” he says softly.
“I know,” I reply. “But I kept waiting for it anyway.”
I look back once more at the grave, smaller now with distance.
“This is the conversation,” I say. “It just happens later than we want.”
In the chapel, the light is low and filtered. I sit in the front pew—not because I believe the stone listens, but because stillness does.
The priest nods at me but doesn’t speak. I appreciate that.
I fold my hands and let my thoughts wander where they need to go.
I think of Alexandro as a boy—knees scraped, smile crooked, defiance wrapped in charm. I think of him as a man—tired, hopeful, reckless, brave.
I think of the cost of love when it collides with power.
When I leave the chapel, I don’t feel lighter.
I feel aligned.
Adrian finds me later in the gallery.
“You went to Uncle Alex’s grave,” he says.
“Yes.”
He hesitates. “Are you… okay?”
I consider the question carefully. “I am whole,” I answer.
He nods, accepting that answer the way he accepts most things now—with thought instead of fear.
“I wish I’d known him better,” he says.
“You know him,” I reply. “In the way you step forward. In the way you choose restraint even when passion calls.”
Mark appears behind him, hands in pockets. “He’d have liked you,” he says. “Both of you.”
Adrian smiles faintly. “I hope so.”
“He would,” I say firmly. “He loved without measure.”
Mark shifts. “That’s dangerous.”
“Yes,” I agree. “And beautiful.”
That night—later, when the house grows quieter—I stand at the window in my chamber.
Sebastian approaches from behind, careful, like someone entering a sacred space.
“You don’t have to hold this alone,” he says.
“I’m not,” I reply. “I just need to hold it myself sometimes.”
He rests his hand at my waist, warm and grounding.
“I don’t think I’m angry anymore,” I say.
He doesn’t speak.
“I’m sad,” I continue. “But not furious. Not fractured.”
“That sounds like peace,” he says.
“It’s acceptance,” I correct. “Peace is something you practice.”
He presses a kiss to my temple. “You’ve practiced long enough.”
I lean into him—not because I need support, but because I choose closeness.
Alexandro is gone.
That truth does not change.
But I am here.
And I am not defined by the brother I lost, or the grief that followed, or the years spent enduring what could not be changed.
I am defined by what remained. By love that adapted. By strength that learned to speak. By a life that did not end when the worst thing happened. I turn from the window. Tomorrow, the kingdom will continue. So will I.