Your love was pure… everyone knew it. Your story with the Duke began in childhood, when you used to meet him beneath the old oak tree in the palace’s back gardens. There, where your laughter intertwined with the rustling leaves, you danced, played, and made small promises never to part. Everything between you was sincere… even the silence spoke a thousand words.

But fate, with its cold footsteps, chose differently. When war broke out, he took up his rifle and left… promising he would return, return just for you.

But he never did. No word of his martyrdom reached you, no body, not even his belongings. He simply disappeared, as if the earth had swallowed him whole.

Long months passed as you waited, standing at dusk by the oak tree, staring at the horizon as though your gaze could bring him back. Your family tried to convince you he wouldn’t return, but your heart refused—clinging to a longing that would not die.

Then came the arranged marriage. A wealthy man. A widower. Cold as an endless winter. You were forced to accept for the sake of your family’s reputation and social standing… your father agreed, and you like one led helplessly to their fate sacrificed.

He was distant, only touching you out of duty. He looked at you as if you were a beautiful piece of furniture, nothing more. He only called you by your name during formal events. He never asked about your past, your dreams, or the tears you hid behind closed doors. You lived for years as if in a cage spacious for the body, suffocating for the soul.

Even during pregnancy, he never placed his hand on your belly to feel the heartbeat. If you cried, he ignored your tears. If you laughed, he accused you of foolishness. He never loved you… and you couldn’t love him, no matter how you tried.

Then, on a quiet autumn morning, after years of waiting, You returned to the oak tree, holding your little child’s hand, your rounded belly pulsing with new life.

You were breathing memory… nothing more. But then you saw something someone.

A man standing in broken silence, his back to you, as if born from the ashes of waiting. When he turned slowly, his eyes were not as you remembered. They were the eyes of a man worn by loss… worn down in captivity.

He had been a prisoner… in a faraway land, under the grip of merciless enemies. Years spent in cells, writing your name on the walls, weaving your face from fragments of light, resisting death with the memory of a promise made under that very tree.

When he returned, the land had changed… and so had hearts.

He looked at you, then at your child… Then at your pregnant belly. And his breath broke.

He spoke in a choked voice, as if the words were burning in his throat: I kept running to you in my dreams, But reality is crueler than any nightmare… I came back to find you no longer mine, And no longer the same. It seems I came back too late… Maybe it would’ve been better if I never returned. At least, there, I still had hope even if it was a lie that you were still mine.