The walk back from the palace gates was a lesson in the architecture of silence. The corridors, which only an hour ago had been vibrating with the frantic energy of departure, were now hollow and cavernous. Eris moved through them with a steady, rhythmic gait, her spine a frozen line of imperial duty, but her arms felt unnervingly light.
She was no longer carrying a child; she was carrying an absence. It was a specific, localized weight in the center of her chest, right where Rael's head usually rested. It wasn't the dramatic, crashing grief of a sudden loss, but the quiet, persistent ache of a mother who has just handed her heart back to a life she is no longer permitted to inhabit.
She passed the tall, arched window where Rael had once pressed his face so hard against the glass that his nose turned white, mesmerized by the snowfalls of the season.
