Page 151 of Haunted Crowns
In the mirror, shadows gathered and took shape. She did not move, even as the glass breathed.
Four figures appeared, silent in the glow. Her uncle. Her father. Her mother. Her aunt. They stood where the living did not belong.
Her throat tightened, and her fingers clenched around the vanity. She had believed her tears were gone.
She was wrong.
The candle flickered. The shadows remained.
A lump formed in her throat. She swallowed it.
Not tonight.
She would not grieve the dead. She would become the reason they were remembered.
Her pulse steadied as her spine lifted. When she spoke, her voice was clear.
“I will not fail you.”
It was a vow, a war cry.
The candle flared. The dead vanished, but the power stayed.
She rose with quiet strength, back straight, eyes lit from within. Her breath was steady. She had become sovereign. The storm had come, and she stood at its center. Victory was the only truth left. Victory for the blood that cried from the earth, and the names carved into her marrow.
Tomorrow, the enemy would fall because she would not.
She turned from the mirror, no longer seeking reflection but legacy. A slow smile curved her lips.
Kareon’s voice moved through her, like wind stirring flame. “You changed everything.”
Yes, I did.
Thank you, Kareon, for helping me become what I was always meant to be.
She turned to the combat uniform draped over the armchair, Stephan’s armor—a king’s second skin.
Her fingers brushed the fabric, feeling the weight of responsibility stitched into every thread. The world would remember him as a warrior king. But before all that, he was hers. And she needed him, not only armed, but steady, unshaken, and beside her.
Her gaze settled on the empty space next to her bed, still untouched. Waiting. Stephan had not come to her. He had not sought rest before war.
She exhaled, long and steady. If he would not come to her, then she would go to him, and remind him of who he was, of who they were and why tomorrow still belonged to them.
Eris moved like a shadow, her bare feet whispering against the cold marble. The palace was hushed. The halls stretched vast and still, as though even the air feared what was coming. Then came the sound, low and haunting, a melody unraveling through the corridors, threading sorrow into silence.
She followed it. A song aching with memory, tugging something ancient and buried loose inside her. Through a cracked door, candlelight flickered, casting long shadows across the chamber.
There he was.
Stephan sat bare-chested at the piano, his back drawn tight, as though the music held him captive. His hands moved across the keys with ferocity, each note a confession too sacred for words. It was a song only a king could play, the sound of a man breaking beneath the weight of his own crown.
Eris leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, her gaze fixed on him. She did not watch as a lover, but as a queenmeasuring what remained of her king. She waited, unmoving. The final note trembled in the air, suspended. Then he stopped.
Her voice shattered the silence, commanding. “Come to bed.”
Stephan barely moved. The weight of the world, the war, the dead, the living, all of it pressed into his spine, drowning him.
His whisper came distant and hollow. "Go, Eris. Get some rest. I won’t be long."
