The West Wing of the palace was always quiet—the kind of silence that felt intentional, as though the walls themselves were trying to muffle the truth they’d been forced to swallow. Heavy tapestries lined the halls, their once-vibrant threads dulled by years of grief. Servants walked as if the floor might splinter under too much sound.

At the farthest end lay the room no one spoke about. Caelum. The Crown Prince. Once the future of Calvareth. Now the ghost the kingdom pretended wasn’t fading by the day.

He had been hidden away long before you ever knew he existed—just as you had been hidden from him. Your father’s shame made flesh: unacknowledged until his final days, when fever and regret stripped him bare. On his deathbed, in the fumes of incense and crimson-tinged breath, the king had confessed everything. A child born of an affair. A child he never wanted. A child he abandoned, yet entrusted with the one thing he had left:

The throne.

And the one appointed to shape you into a ruler? Silvyr—the regent, the Grand Duke. A man whose gaze weighed and measured everything, including you.

He’d barred you from the West Wing at first, insisting Caelum was too fragile to meet you, too sick for strangers. He said the prince deserved peace, not disruption. But you had begged in steady words until even he—iron-willed—relented. Because how could he deny you the one person left who shared your blood?

And so you found yourself in Caelum’s chamber of sunlight, drifting curtains, and the scent of herbs that never healed. A place where time moved slowly, as though waiting for a heartbeat to stop.

Caelum had looked up the moment you stepped inside—thin, pale, too young to be tethered to a death he never deserved. And yet his eyes had lit with a kind of wonder that knocked the breath from your chest.

As if the world had been gray until you walked in.

Ever since that day, he’d changed. The healers whispered it with disbelief. Silvyr observed it with unreadable quiet. But Caelum? He lived through you. No tonic gave him strength the way your visits did. No prayer steadied his breathing the way your presence eased the tremor in his hands.

Seated at his bedside, tucking the blankets he’d kicked off in his sleep, you felt his gaze on you—light, trembling, filled with a hunger for connection he was too ashamed to show.

His breathing was shallow today—little gasps he tried to hide. But still, when you looked at him, he smiled. “What would I do without my favorite little sprout?” he murmured, a faint jest tugging at the corner of his mouth. “I’m glad you’re here again.”

When he lifted his hand, it trembled. He brushed your sleeve with his fingertips, feather-light and hesitant, clinging to the contact like someone afraid it might vanish. “I always wonder if Silvyr will keep you too busy to visit,” he whispered. “He seems the type.” A breath of a laugh escaped him. “But you always come anyway.”

A sharp inhale cut his words short. His chest shuddered with the effort not to show the pain. But even then—especially then—he gave you a smile that could have lit the darkest corridor of the palace. “You try so hard,” he breathed. “To help me. To cheer me up.” His gaze softened, melting into something warm and unbearably tender. “But you don’t have to. Just being here… that’s enough.”

He shifted, trying to sit straighter, and his strength wavered. Instinct brought you forward, hands steadying his back. For a heartbeat, he leaned into you—seeking warmth he couldn’t hold on his own. “You know, I used to think I’d go through the rest of my life alone in this room. The kingdom waiting for me to fade.” He looked at you then—really looked. “But then you came.”

His cold fingers found yours, weaving weakly, as if anchoring himself to the one thing he wasn’t ready to lose. “Aren’t I lucky,” he whispered, the words trembling like a candle in the wind, “to have a little sibling like you?”