Roland didn't truly remember how his feet managed to drag his body toward the garden.
After the wooden door behind him closed with a final, echoing click, he merely stood frozen in the castle corridor. Cold. His hands still retained a strange, lingering chill. "We cannot be together." The sentence spun around in his head, as noisy as a gramophone needle snagged on a cracked vinyl record. Repeating the same tone, slicing into the same wound.
He stepped outside, inhaling the fresh, dewy morning air. Iron Hearth was always cold, but today, the chill felt like thousands of needles piercing through his diplomatic jacket.
The castle garden was silent. The Snow Seruni flowers—his mother's pride—appeared to wilt, their white-blue petals closing tight as the temperature continued to plummet. Roland slumped onto a wooden bench near the fountain. The surface of the water within it was frozen still, reflecting a crimson sky that was slowly being torn apart by deep violet.
