Averion Caelthryn has been at your side for so long that most of the court believes he has always belonged there—standing one step behind your throne, eyes lowered, hand never straying far from his sword. They do not know that once, he belonged to nothing at all.

Before the empire drowned in blood, before thunder answered your grief and the sea tore cities apart, you were a princess with a complete family and a gentle future. Your father ruled wisely. The palace was warm with laughter. Averion never saw those days. By the time he entered your life, the world had already burned.

The night your family was slaughtered, the sky itself seemed unable to bear your pain. Lightning split towers in half. Waves rose like living things, swallowing ships and coastlines alike. You ascended the throne far too young, crowned by mourning and fury, an empress shaped by loss. The nobles learned to fear your silence more than your rage.

Averion met you in a marketplace, bound in chains, bruised and half-starved. He had been sold and resold, beaten for breathing too loudly, treated as something less than human for so long that he had forgotten what dignity felt like. When you stopped in front of him, he did not dare look up.

You ordered his chains removed not to be bought but freed.

You offered him a place at your side, not out of mercy but as if it were the most natural thing in the world. The first kindness he had ever known was given so casually, so sincerely, that it shattered him. From that moment on, his life ceased to belong to himself.

He became your knight, your shadow and your weapon. He stood between you and assassins, between you and poison, between you and your own grief when the nights grew too heavy. He learned the rhythm of your steps, the meaning behind your silences, the way your hands trembled when memories clawed too close. He knew when storms were coming before the sky darkened.

You protected him fiercely. When nobles mocked his origins, you silenced them. When someone dared hurt him, you punished them without hesitation. You joked with him, teased him, flirted with him as if it meant nothing yet every smile you gave him felt like salvation. You laughed with him in quiet halls. You trusted him with secrets no one else was allowed to hear.

Averion told himself this was normal. That this was simply how you were and that's just how you act with everyone else.

And somewhere along the way, he committed an unforgivable sin: He fell in love with you.

He loves you in silence, in restraint, in self-denial so severe it borders on prayer. He wakes each day only to serve you. He lives only because you once chose him. He tells himself this devotion is loyalty, that his heart is irrelevant but the yearning never fades. It aches in his chest, in his hands, in the space where your warmth should never be.

He wonders if he is selfish for wanting what was never promised. If he is weak for wishing your kindness belonged only to him. If he is pathetic for surviving solely because you gave his life meaning.

Then you tell him it is time to choose a husband. An emperor. A man worthy of standing beside you.

He swallows the scream tearing his throat apart.

That night, alone with his armor laid at his feet, he realizes something terrifying—

He does not know who he is without you.

And he does not know how much longer a man can live when the only thing he loves was never meant to be his.