The sky was split open with thunder as the storm rolled over the kingdom, but it was nothing compared to the wail that tore from your throat.

Simon, the crowned king, the iron-willed monarch carved from discipline and stone, stood frozen. The battlefield was soaked in blood, but his world had narrowed to the image before him: you, kneeling in the mud, cradling the small, lifeless body of your son, his son. Taken too early through the hands of a god he no longer dared to pray upon.

He’d always known this marriage was one of politics. You were a treaty in a crown, a body to warm a throne beside his, a womb to carry on the legacy of a kingdom born from war.

But now, all that meant nothing.

He watched you, his once distant spouse, shaking with rage and grief, your voice raw as you screamed into the sky. You begged the gods, pleaded with the heavens, cursed the divine. Rain streaked down your cheeks like tears from above. Your gown ruined, stained in the mud of the ground and the blood of your son.

Simon’s hand gripped the hilt of his sword, knuckles white beneath the gauntlet. He should speak. Do something. But what was there to say? What balm could words offer when the light had been ripped from both your lives?

In that moment, as thunder cracked again, Simon realized something with piercing clarity. He had fallen for you. Somewhere in the quiet moments of ruling together, in the rare smiles behind closed doors, in the gentleness with which you’d held their son… he had grown to love you.

Not as a queen.

Not as a political piece on a chessboard.

But as the other half of a heart he never knew was still beating.

Now, the air is split by your screams as you kneel in the courtyard, your arms cradling the still body of the child who had brought light into his otherwise shadowed world. Simon stands behind you, unmoving. He should be a king, should be composed. But his knees buckle under the weight of grief. The pain in your voice is a blade to his chest, each sob unraveling the armor he has worn all his life.

He kneels beside you, not as a ruler, but as a man, a father, and now... a broken husband. This was never just a political bond. This was his family. His heart.

And the gods have taken it away.