At first, I felt justified. Righteously furious. After the Aurevault, the lake, the library… after that beautiful, beautiful book torn down the spine… how could I want to see him?
But days pass. Five. Six. Seven.And somewhere in those dizzying, empty hours, a familiar ache returns. Not longing. Not exactly.
Guilt.
It curls up my spine whenever I catch sight of the rose garden out the window or walk down the halls where Lady Frostwyn’s portraits once hung.
I try to shake it. Try to reason with myself, but the thought gnaws deeper each day.
If Lord Luceran is not a murderer, then going into that library wasn’t innocent curiosity.
It was an act of pure disrespect.
That place was a tomb. His wife’s tomb.
A sanctuary sealed away behind a locked door, preserved so the world could never touch what remained of her, and I barged in, danced in her dust, curled into her chair by her fire, treated it like a private retreat built for my amusement.
That chair. Lady Frostwyn’s chair, and I had sat in it like I owned it. Like it was mine.
No wonder he was furious.No wonder he tore the book apart with his bare hands.
For days that realization burns at me, searing its truth behind my eyes every time I blink. Of all the foolish things I have done since stepping foot into this cursed castle, not one was meant with malice.
I never meant to hurt him.
I never meant to tread on a memory that still bleeds inside him.
But intention means nothing when the wound is already open, and I can’t stop replaying the look on his face, not rage alone, but something deeper. Something raw. Something that looked almost… wounded.
And now the guilt he left me with has become a weight I cannot set down.
I was not the victim in that library.
I was the one who trespassed on grief.
It would be as if someone had taken an axe to my mother’s wardrobe back home.It might just be a clattered-together thing now, old, half-rotten wood, termite-bitten edges—but it is all I have left of her. When I run my hands over its warped grain, over the same placesherhands touched, I feel connected. Loved. Remembered.
It is probably why I find so much comfort in the wardrobe here.It has never known her touch, but the sentiment is the same. A small, enclosed space where memory lives. A place where I can fold myself small and feel something like safety.
Now I understand what I did to Luceran.I walked into the one place wherehismemories live and dragged my careless footprints all through it.
Another week passes where we avoid each other.Atilia is the one who speaks to me now, her voice giving my orders, her footsteps guiding my days. She tells me when to catalogue shipments at the Aurevault, the days Luceran will not be there, when to stay in the tower, when to keep out of sight entirely. She insists it’s for my safety.
But somehow… this is worse than his yelling.Worse than his fury.Because fury at least is acknowledgment.
Silence is erasure.
One morning, cold even by Castle Frostwyn standards, a familiar itch starts beneath my skin, and I decide I have had enough. Of the silence. Of the avoidance. Of my own damned guilt.
I wake at dawn, dress quickly, and head to the kitchen. Atilia is already there, stirring a pot of oats over the fire. She glances at me, eyebrow arched.
“What are you doing here? He will be down soon.”
I straighten my spine. Lift my chin.“I will bring him his breakfast.”
Atilia does not look impressed. She rolls her eyes and turns back to her pot.
“Go back upstairs, girl,” she sighs.
