The great hall glitters with calculated elegance—Duke Phideus's strategic masterpiece, ostensibly celebrating Leander's coronation. Actually something else entirely.
I circulate in my emerald gown, sampling wine I don't taste, smiling at nobles I don't know, maintaining the careful mask of Lady Rosetta while three separate campaigns unfold around me like clockwork.
Duke Phideus works the older nobles first. I catch fragments as I pass—his voice pitched just loud enough to hook nearby ears without seeming intentional.
"Of course, it's merely a rumor. A baby girl smuggled out during the massacre, hidden so carefully that even she wouldn't know her own identity…"
"Surely impossible," a lord responds, but his eyes say otherwise. "The entire royal family was confirmed dead."
"Confirmed by whom?" Duke Phideus asks mildly. "By the same people who benefited from their deaths?"
He gives them nothing concrete. Just enough to make them wonder, to whisper among themselves later, to be fertile ground when the truth finally breaks.
Near the refreshment tables, Maren handles the younger crowd—bright laughter, wide-eyed innocence, romantic speculation about lost princesses that makes the young ladies exchange glances of sudden, hungry interest.
And by the terrace doors, Kyrell drops the birthmark into conversation with a cluster of old soldiers. Casual. Almost offhand. But I see recognition flicker across scarred faces. Some of these men served under King Clement. They remember.
By evening's end, half the court will be discussing whether Ziana's lost princess lives. Not as fact—as possibility. As the kind of question that burrows into the mind and refuses to leave.
Watching myself become political strategy, whispered rumor, carefully planted doubt… the need of air suffocates despite its necessity. I slip through a side door onto a balcony, grateful for the cool night air against my heated face.
"Rosetta." I turn to find Leander standing in the doorway.
He's without his crown, the top clasps of his doublet undone. Without the regalia, without the rigid posture of kingship, he looks younger. More human. More like the boy who once climbed the garden wall at midnight just to leave wildflowers on my windowsill.
The memory cuts deeper than it should.
"Your Majesty." I curtsy automatically, years of training making the gesture effortless despite my racing heart.
"Don't." He steps onto the balcony, closing the door behind him. "Not when we're alone. Not when..." He trails off, moving to the railing beside me.
We stand side by side, staring out at the gardens, and the silence stretches until it becomes its own kind of conversation. The kind we used to have before words were necessary. Before the distance between us grew so vast that no words could bridge it.
"Duke Phideus is very skilled at political maneuvering," he says finally.
"Is he?"
"You know he is. I've spent the evening watching him plant rumors without ever claiming them as his own. Suggesting possibilities without stating facts. It's masterful manipulation."
I join him at the railing, leaving space between us. "Perhaps he simply believes in asking questions rather than accepting convenient answers."
Leander's hands grip the stone hard enough that his knuckles go white.
"I don't know what to think anymore. My father protected you for twenty-four years. That kind of loyalty, that kind of sacrifice… it doesn't come from lies."
"But you still doubt." It's not a question.
Leander's hands grip the stone hard enough that his knuckles go white.
"I doubt everything. I must." His voice breaks slightly. "But I know about the physician who attended both births drowned three weeks later. The head midwife fell down stairs. Two other servants died in accidents."
Something twists in my chest with realisation. "You investigated…"
"Of course I investigated." He turns to face me fully, and moonlight catches his features. "Did you think I just… moved on?" His voice fractures on the word. "That I heard you screaming in the great hall that those were your sons and felt nothing?"
I stare at him, my lungs forgetting their function. He’s looking at me with eyes that are wide open and stripped of every defense, every careful wall he's built between the man he is and the man he was before.
"I had to know," he continues, his voice dropping lower. "I had to know if I'd been complicit in something monstrous. If those babies sleeping in the nursery are… If they're ours. If I let someone steal our children from you."
The word ours cleaves through my defenses like a blade through silk.
Not hers. Not the heirs. Ours.
Something shifts in my chest, hearing the raw pain in his voice.
This isn't the cold, distant king who banished me. This is the man I married, finally seeing the truth he's been avoiding. "Leander…"
"After the third loss." He cuts me off, and now there's something almost desperate in his tone—as though if he doesn't say this now, the courage will abandon him. "After the fourth… Everyone thinks it was a disappointment. That I was disgusted by your failure to give me an heir."
"Weren't you?" The question comes out quieter than I intend. More vulnerable.
Leander flinches as if I've slapped him. Then he lets out a sound—not quite a laugh, not quite a sob. Something shattered that lives between the two.
"I was terrified," he says. "Every pregnancy, every loss… I watched it destroy you a little more. And every time, I knew it was because of me. Because I couldn't stop wanting you. Because I'd come to you knowing the risk, knowing what it might cost you, and I'd touch you anyway. Because being near you and not touching you was the closest thing to death I'd ever felt."
The words land in my chest like burning stones and I grip the railing harder.
"The third stillbirth," he continues, relentless now, "I held that baby. And then I looked at you lying in that bed… so pale you were nearly the same color as the sheets, and I thought—this is my fault. My love is killing her. Every time I go to her, I'm asking her body to do something that might end her. And I decided…"
His voice breaks completely and I watch the King of Reaton's shoulders shake once before he steadies himself through sheer force of will.
"I decided that the kindest thing I could do for the woman I loved was to stop loving her."
The grief in his words is so thick it's almost a physical presence between us. My breath shakes out of me. I'm not crying, but the pressure behind my eyes is building like floodwater against a dam.
My hand moves before my mind can stop it. My fingers find his where it grips the railing—covering, pressing warmth against white-knuckled tension.
I feel his entire body go still. Feel the tremor that runs through his hand into mine. Feel the way his breath catches and holds, as if any sudden movement might make me pull away.
Leander turns his hand beneath mine, slow and deliberate, until our palms press flat together. Then his fingers interlace with mine—sliding between them, locking into place.
His face is so close now. Close enough that I can see the pulse hammering in his throat, can feel the warmth radiating from his skin, can count the silver flecks I'd forgotten exist in the deep blue of his eyes.
His breath ghosts across my lips, and my whole body tightens with a wanting so acute it borders on pain.
"Your Majesty." Kyrell's voice cuts through the moment like a blade. He stands in the doorway, his expression carefully neutral, but I see tension in the set of his shoulders. "Forgive the intrusion. Lady Rosetta mentioned feeling unwell earlier. Perhaps it's time to retire?"
It's the prearranged excuse we discussed. The escape route if I needed it. But looking at Leander's face—vulnerable, questioning, and maybe finally ready to believe… I'm not sure I want to escape anymore.
"Yes." The word comes out too quickly, too eager. "Yes, I think that's wise. The evening has been... overwhelming."
I curtsy again to Leander, avoiding his eyes. "Thank you for your hospitality, Your Majesty."
I'm moving toward Kyrell, letting him place his hand at my back and guide me inside. As we walk away, I feel Leander's gaze following—questioning, searching, maybe finally beginning to see the truth he's been avoiding.
Kyrell's hand is warm against my back, steady and grounding. But I can feel the tension radiating from him, the careful control he's maintaining.
"He was standing very close," Kyrell says quietly as we navigate through the crowd.
"We were just talking."
"Talking." His voice carries something I can't quite identify. "Is that what you call it when you look at each other like that?"
I stop walking, turning to face him. "Like what?"
His hazel eyes are darker than usual, intense on mine, but he doesn’t answer as if it’s obvious.
Is he… jealous?
"That's not…" I start, but the words die because I don't know if they're true.
Looking at Leander without his crown, seeing cracks in his certainty, hearing doubt in his voice… Does some part of me still want what we had before everything broke?