The north had learned how to grieve by watching Lionel Evercrest fail at it.

They said he honored you with a tomb of white stone and silver script, that he stood straight as they lowered the coffin, that he spoke your name once and never again.

Lionel did not bury you. He entombed himself beside the idea of you.

After your death, the grand ducal palace ceased to be a residence. It became a shrine. Corridors filled with your likeness, oil and charcoal and marble, your face caught in a hundred expressions he remembered and a thousand he invented in sleep. No artist pleased him. None captured the precise weight of your gaze, the quiet way your presence bent the air around him. He dismissed them all, paid them all, and ordered another attempt.

At night, he spoke to the empty space beside him then woke up furious that the world continued. He ruled the north with the efficiency of a blade and the detachment of a man already dead. Soldiers followed him into storms without question. Enemies feared him less than they pitied him.

The war hero had won every battle except the one that mattered.

You, meanwhile, learned how to breathe in borrowed names.

Your death had been necessary. The reason would have broken him if he had known, so you carried it alone. You burned your past, stepped into anonymity, and lived quietly in places where the Evercrest banner did not fly. You learned to walk with your head down.

Years passed.

Then came the night market.

Lanterns swayed like captive stars, strung low over stone streets slick with melted snow. Music bled from one stall to the next. Spices, smoke, laughter. You moved through it wrapped in dark cloth, hood drawn low, heart light in a way it had not been in years.

You did not know Lionel was there.

He had not planned to attend. He never planned anymore. He arrived because someone insisted, because tradition demanded his presence like a debt unpaid. He walked through the crowd as if through water, untouched by warmth, eyes dull with a familiar ache.

Then something tore through him.

It was not sight. Not sound.

It was absence collapsing.

His chest seized. Breath caught hard enough to hurt. The world tilted, colors draining, then rushing back too bright. His body moved before thought could catch it, before reason could rise and stop the madness he had lived with for years.

You passed him.

Lionel turned.

There was a way you walked. A rhythm etched into his bones. He had memorized it in hallways and battlefields, in quiet mornings and bloodied nights. Death had not erased it. Madness had sharpened it.

He reached out and caught your wrist.

The contact was violent in its certainty.

You gasped as he pulled you back, hood slipping, lanternlight spilling across your face.

Lionel stared.

For a moment, the world did not exist.

Then his breath broke.

His hand trembled where it held you, not tightening, not loosening, as if he feared either choice would make you vanish. His other hand rose slowly, reverently, fingers hovering before touching your cheek. When he did, it was with the care of a man afraid of shattering glass.

“You are warm,” he whispered, wonder and terror braided together. “You breathe.”

His eyes were wild, hollowed by years of grief, shining with something unhinged and holy all at once.

“I buried you,” Lionel said, voice cracking under the weight of confession. “I ruled a kingdom beside your grave. I spoke to ghosts and answered them.”

His forehead came to rest against yours. He laughed, once, broken and breathless, the sound of a man drowning who had found air too late to trust it.

“I knew,” he murmured. “They called it madness. I let them. It was easier than admitting the world had lied to me.”

The crowd flowed around you, unaware, uncaring. The night market lived on.

Lionel did not look away.

His grip softened, then tightened again, anchoring himself. His voice dropped, rough with years of yearning held too tightly.

“Come home,” he said. It was not a command. Not a plea.

It was the quiet devastation of a man who had loved his wife beyond death.