She stayed.There, beneath a sky neither of us could claim, in the quiet of a place neither of us had built, Violet stayed and that... was enough.I stepped toward her. Not like a king reclaiming space. Not like a wolf circling a prize. Just a man. Answering a call that had never needed words.One s
(Violet’s POV)The stars had long since claimed the sky by the time I heard him.I didn’t turn. I didn’t need to.There was a kind of silence that only belonged to Lucian—a stillness that filled the space rather than left it empty. The kind that didn’t ask for permission. It simply was, undeniable a
The room beyond was immaculate. Of course it was. Not a paper out of place. Not a single pen askew. The curtains were drawn to soften the light, lending everything a fragile hush, as if I’d entered a sanctuary rather than a seat of power built on other women’s silence.The desk stood at the center—p
(Violet’s POV)The gates opened with the same seamless precision I remembered—quiet, unhurried, and far too graceful for a house built on silence and subjugation. They welcomed me now as they had for years, but without purpose, without anyone left to perform for. The guards were gone. The servants,
Not in the sense that I was abandoned but that this moment was mine alone. The doors opened without command. The light beyond them was blinding, not from sun, but from flash after flash of press drones, media sigils, nobles’ personal archivists crowding the threshold, all of them desperate to catch
(Violet’s POV) They stood when I entered.Not out of respect or fear but out of awareness. The kind that settles into the bone when a room realizes the air has changed—when every whispered theory, every hushed debate, every what-if and no-she-wouldn’t finally walks through the doors wearing real s