I watched Serin reach for the parchment with steady hands, his face a mask of royal composure as he read. Not a muscle twitched, not an eyelid flickered, but I saw the subtle tightening around his mouth - the way his lips, normally curved in that perpetual hint of a smile, drew into a hard line.
The connection between us thrummed with shared pain, and I felt his anguish as if it were my own. The message could only contain one piece of news terrible enough to reach us here, urgent enough to breach the sanctuary of paradise itself.
“Your Majesty,” Myris said softly, his formal address confirming my worst fears. “Please accept my deepest condolences on your loss. King Dorin was a… formidable ruler.”
Serin set the scroll aside with movements that spoke of iron control barely maintained. “Thank you for your courtesy in delivering this message personally.”
“Of course. I should also extend Eletheria’s offer of assistance; our fastest vessels could have you home within two days, should you wish to claim your throne with all speed.”
“That is most generous,” Serin replied with the diplomatic grace that had been drilled into him since childhood. “But I must respectfully decline. We have our own arrangements to consider.”
Myris bowed deeply. “As you wish, Majesty. Please know that you and yours will always have sanctuary here, should you ever have need of it.”
The priest withdrew with flowing steps, leaving us alone with the weight of changed circumstances. In the silence that followed, I felt the last threads of our impossible dream beginning to unravel like silk in flame.
I sank to one knee before Serin’s chair, bowing my head as protocol demanded when addressing a newly-crowned king. “My deepest condolences on your loss, Your Majesty.”
The formal words felt like ash in my mouth, but they were necessary. Serin was no longer merely a prince seeking freedom; he was King of the Three Isles, heir to a legacy written in blood and steel. The weight of that crown would change everything between us, as I had always known it must.
“Rise,” he said sharply. “I’ll have none of that formality. Not yet.”
I remained kneeling, unable to meet his eyes. “The crown changes things, whether we will it or not.”
“Does it?” His voice carried dangerous edges I’d rarely heard before. “And what else might change, I wonder?”
Something in his tone made me look up, and what I saw in his grey-blue eyes made my blood freeze. Knowledge. Suspicion. The terrible understanding of betrayal dawning like a blood-red sunrise.
“Perhaps it is time for us,” I said carefully, feeling each word cut my throat as it emerged, “to go home.”
“Perhaps it is time for you to tell me about the missing piece of your uniform.”
The question hit me like a crossbow bolt to the chest. I opened my mouth to deny it, to spin some tale about misplaced buckles or forgotten straps, but the words died unborn beneath his piercing stare. How had he known? How had he seen through the careless lie I’d told him?
“I… that is… there was a message…” I stammered, scrambling for explanation that wouldn’t sound like the betrayal it truly was.
Serin raised one hand for silence, and I fell mute like a trained hound responding to his master’s command. The gesture was perfectly royal, carrying all the authority of his bloodline, and I realized with crushing finality that the laughing young man whohad writhed beneath me in passion was already disappearing beneath layers of kingly responsibility.
“No matter,” he said with cold precision. “I expected my whereabouts to be betrayed by you sooner or later, old friend. It is the way of Kings of the Three Isles; we are surrounded by those who would trade our secrets for favor or coin. It is befitting that I should begin my reign with a dagger in my back, for surely that is how it will end.”
Each word was a blade between my ribs, cutting deeper than any physical wound ever could. He thought I had betrayed him. Thought I had sold his location for personal gain, had violated the trust built over eight years of faithful service. The accusation was so far from truth yet so close to the reality of my duty that I couldn’t even protest.
He rose from the chair with fluid grace, every movement speaking of royal breeding and inherited authority. At the doorway, he paused without turning around.
“Do not follow me, shadow. I wish to be in peace.”
The dismissal was absolute, final as a tomb’s sealing stone. I remained frozen on my knees as his footsteps faded down the corridor, taking with them everything bright and precious that had briefly illuminated my world.
The connection between us still hummed in my chest, but now it carried only pain - his betrayal andabandonment flowing through our link like poison in my veins. I pressed my fist against my heart, where the crumpled message still burned like an accusation, and tried to breathe through the agony of watching everything we’d built crumble to ash.
This was what I had always known would come, the moment when duty and love collided with the force of falling stars, leaving nothing but destruction in their wake. I had thought myself prepared for it, had spent years building walls around my heart to cushion the inevitable blow.
But I had never imagined it would hurt this much.
I had never imagined that love, once found, could be so completely destroyed by truth. And I had never imagined that doing my duty would feel so much like tearing out my own heart and casting it from the highest cliff to shatter on the rocks below.
The morning sun climbed higher outside our windows, painting paradise in shades of gold that now seemed to mock my desolation. Somewhere in this maze of marble and silk, the man I loved beyond life itself wandered alone, believing himself betrayed by the one person who would gladly die before causing him pain.
The cruelest part was that he wasn’t entirely wrong. I had betrayed him, not for coin or favor, but for something far more abstract and equally implacable. I had betrayed him for duty, for the oathsworn to protect not just his body but his kingdom. I had chosen the needs of the many over the desires of the one, just as I’d been trained to do.
