Chapter 15 The Duke is Dead
Chapter fifteen
The Duke is Dead
The chamber smelled of sickness.
The curtains were drawn tight against the spring light, but it still managed to slip through in pale threads, glinting off the gilt frame of the great canopy bed.
The Archduke of Valemont lay propped against a mound of pillows, his once-broad frame thinned by weeks of fever.
His breathing rasped like paper dragged across stone, every inhale a labour, every exhale a quiet surrender.
Aerion lounged in the chair at his bedside, one boot hooked over the arm, a goblet of watered wine dangling from his fingers.
His voice was bright, careless. “If you keep wheezing like that, Father, they’ll start charging admission at the door.
The courtiers will come to gawk at their dying Archduke like it’s some grand entertainment. ”
The Archduke chuckled, a sound brittle but genuine. “You’d sell the tickets yourself, wouldn’t you?”
Aerion smirked, though his eyes softened. “Naturally. I’d make a fortune. Might even cover the cost of all those ridiculous banquets you insisted on hosting.”
“Those banquets kept this duchy fed,” the Archduke murmured. His hand trembled as it reached across the coverlet, but Aerion leaned forward before the effort could become too much. He set his wine aside and caught his father’s hand in his own.
The Archduke’s skin was thin, cool, like parchment stretched over bone. But his grip still held warmth. Still held him.
“I’ve asked too much of you,” the old man whispered. “Too soon. Too heavily.”
Aerion tilted his head, lashes low, his smile sly and brittle. “Oh? You mean the endless lectures? The demands for heirs? The council that squawks like hens at me to breed, as though I were a prize stallion?”
The Archduke’s lips twitched. “Just so.” He coughed, then sighed. “Your mother would have laughed at them. She laughed at me often enough.”
Aerion’s smirk faltered, just slightly. He’d heard little of her—always in fragments, never the whole. “I wish I’d met her.”
The Archduke’s eyes closed, but his voice carried, soft and steady. “She died bringing you into this world. And still… I loved her. Not at first. Our marriage was politics, convenience. But love came anyway. Stronger than I deserved. I think she would’ve loved you fiercely. You have her fire.”
Aerion looked away, blinking too quickly. His mouth curved, sharp as always, but his tone betrayed him. “I suppose I should thank her for the cheekbones, then.”
The Archduke gave a weak laugh that turned into another cough. When it passed, he squeezed Aerion’s hand faintly. “You’ll be Archduke soon. You’ll carry all of this. I only hope you find peace in it, Aerion. Not just duty. Not just war with your own council. But peace.”
“Peace,” Aerion repeated, voice low, mocking and aching in the same breath. “I’ve never been very good at that, Father.”
“Then be better than me,” the Archduke whispered. His eyes slipped half-shut. “Better than we were. Make Valemont thrive.”
Aerion leaned closer, pressing his forehead briefly to his father’s hand. His voice came softer, words trembling even as he tried to sharpen them into jest. “You leave me with a dying duchy, an empty bed, and a council of old men with spittle in their beards. You’re a cruel man, Father.”
The Archduke smiled faintly. “And you’re my son.”
Silence lingered. The only sound was the rasp of the Archduke’s breath and the faint crackle of the hearth.
Aerion stayed by his father’s side long after he drifted into fitful sleep, the mask of mockery slipping at last, leaving nothing but the raw, silent sorrow of a son watching his world unravel.
The bells tolled at dawn.
Not the sharp peal of festival, not the rousing call of alarm, but the slow, deep toll of endings.
Each strike rolled heavy down the cliffs of Valemont, echoing over river and sea like thunder from a distant god.
The sound clung to the stone walls, seeped into marrow, and made even the boldest tongues fall silent.
Servants wept openly in the corridors, their aprons stained with tears and flour alike.
Courtiers moved in sombre processions, their faces composed into masks of reverence that fooled no one.
They whispered as they passed, voices pitched low, hungry even in grief: what would happen now, who would hold the duchy, how long before the king’s hand reached further west.
Priests lit candles in alcoves dark with smoke, chanting prayers that sounded thin against the enormity of the tolling bells. The great statues in the chapel, marble saints long since stripped of names, seemed to stoop lower beneath the weight of centuries, as though even stone could mourn.
In the kitchens, boys no older than fifteen laid black cloths across the silver platters, their hands trembling. One muttered that the wine would taste of ash until the year was out. Another said the river itself would turn dark for mourning.
And through it all, the keep carried the name.
Archduke Hadrian Valemont.
Father of the West. Keeper of the Red Coast. Lord of Five Rivers.
Dead.
In the upper chambers, where the dawn light crept across cold marble floors, his youngest son sat alone.
Aerion had not wept.
He sat in a carved chair pulled close to the bed, where the body lay swathed in linen, the face wrapped and hidden from view. The air was heavy with incense and fading breath, but Aerion’s expression was unreadable—neither soft with grief nor sharpened with rage.
The courtiers who came to offer condolences found no words to meet his silence. The servants who passed with basins and cloths bowed low, then fled the chamber quickly, unnerved by his stillness.
Aerion’s fingers rested against the arm of the chair, jewelled rings glinting faintly in the candlelight. They drummed once. Stilled.
The bells tolled again.
He said nothing.
Because if he spoke, he feared the mask would break. And if it broke, there would be no putting it back together.
So Aerion Valemont—heir now, Archduke in all but ceremony—kept his silence while the world shifted beneath him, and let the sound of mourning roll on without him.
The coronation came four days after the bells first tolled.
Four days of hushed courtyards and shuttered windows. Four days of courtiers draped in black damask, whispering over wine cups with eyes too bright for mourning. Four days of servants padding through the halls as though afraid their footsteps might rouse the dead.
And then the chapel doors opened.
There was no parade. No fanfare. No jewelled circlet lowered onto golden hair for the city to cheer.
Instead, the court gathered in the old stone chapel, its air damp with age, its walls lined with weathered effigies of Valemonts long buried.
The scent of beeswax and incense clung to every surface, but it could not mask the faint smell of dust and tombs.
Aerion stood at the altar in silence.
He wore black velvet, heavy as midnight, a cloak lined in red silk that dragged across the flagstones with each step. The red was not bright, not celebratory. It was the red of blood dried in the dirt, stitched into mourning. No rings glittered on his fingers. No jewels crowned his brow.
Only the weight of a thousand watching eyes.
The chamberlain called the roll of bannermen, each kneeling in turn, their hands pressed to Aerion’s as they swore oaths of fealty. Their voices echoed off the stone, solemn, careful, though each stole glances at the young lord’s face, as if seeking some crack in his composure.
They found none.
Aerion’s eyes were flat, distant, like polished glass that revealed nothing beneath. He accepted each vow without ceremony, without smile, without even the cutting remarks that once had been his armor. He did not jest. He did not sneer. He did not tremble.
He was stillness made flesh.
And the stillness unnerved them.
Grief they would have understood—grief would have softened him, humanized him, marked him as breakable. Anger, too, could have been tolerated, explained away as passion. But this silence, this refusal to break at all, sat in their stomachs like a stone.
He did not weep. He did not rage.
He simply endured.
When the last oath was sworn, the priests draped the mourning cloak around his shoulders. Its velvet folds whispered against the floor, the red-stitched hem catching the light like veins of fire. He lowered his head, allowing the weight of it to settle, but his expression did not change.
“Rise, Aerion Valemont,” the priest intoned, “Archduke of Valemont, Keeper of the Red Coast, Lord of Five Rivers.”
The title echoed in the chamber. The court bowed.
Aerion did not bow back.
He only stood, straight and unyielding, the velvet falling like shadow around him. His lips curved once—faint, sharp as a blade unsheathed—but it was not a smile.
It was a warning.
And in that moment, every noble in the chapel knew this coronation had given them not a grieving boy to mould, but a man carved of glass and steel, dangerous in his silence.
That night, after the chapel doors shut and the last oath had been spoken, the court gathered in the hall.
Black banners draped the rafters. Candles blazed in chandeliers of iron, their light catching on silver goblets filled with wine that tasted sour no matter how sweet the vintage.
Platters of food appeared as tradition demanded—dark bread, salted fish, roasted fowl glazed in honey—but no one ate with appetite.
Instead, they talked.
They whispered in corners, behind jeweled hands and feathered fans, in voices meant to be low but pitched just loud enough to carry.
“Too thin for an Archduke,” muttered Lord Halford, chewing bread as though each bite soured in his mouth. “A crown would look ridiculous on those shoulders.”
“He didn’t even kiss the body,” Lady Marrisol said into her goblet, the rim brushing painted lips. “Not once. Not a tear shed before the bier. Heartless.”