••{SERAPHINE'S POV}••
The palace is quiet at this hour.
Not the peaceful kind.
But the quiet of a household that has been holding its breath for so long that silence has stopped feeling like peace and started feeling like the space between one catastrophe and the next.
My footsteps echo through the corridor as I walk.
I have been walking these halls for longer than most civilizations have existed. I know every stone, every draft, every place where the torchlight flickers.
I have walked them in joy and in grief and in the particular numbness that comes when you have felt too much for too long and your body simply refuses to feel anything anymore.
But tonight I walk them in something I haven't felt in centuries.
Shame.
Not the political kind. Not the kind that comes from a miscalculation or a poorly chosen alliance or a moment of weakness in front of the court.
Those I have navigated before and know how to carry.
But this is older than that. Heavier than that.
