Chapter 56
Alaric tilted his head back, letting his eyes trace the arc of stars above. The night was still, almost too perfect—crisp air, soft rustle of leaves, moonlight slanting over lake. It was the kind of beauty that made a man aware of his own heartbeat.
“Look,” he began, pointing quickly upward. “Do you see that cluster of stars? Just there, past the tallest branches of the willow?”
Evelyne lifted her gaze. The night stretched wide above them, constellations threaded like silver pins across a swath of ink.
“That’s the Crown of Andorin,” he continued. “Named for the first emperor of my homeland. Legend says that when he died, the gods placed his crown in the heavens as a reminder that power, no matter how great, is fleeting.”
Evelyne turned toward him, the faint light from the water catching in her eyes. “You seem passionate about this.”
Alaric’s mouth tugged at the corner. “I like to know things,” he said, trying to be casual, though his voice came out warmer than intended. “To understand the world and everything in it.”
“And what do you like to study most?”
He hesitated, pulse ticking. She was actually asking.
“Many things,” he managed after a beat, his gaze flicking back to the sky because it was easier than staring into her face. “The world and what lies beyond it. What can be seen and what cannot. The things others overlook.”
He gestured toward the sky, voice quickening.
“The thing about stars is they’re more than just lights in the sky. They’re older than kingdoms, older than any story we’ve ever written. Some may not even exist anymore, but their light still reaches us. Something long gone, still shaping the way we see the world.”
They stood close now, shoulder to shoulder. He risked a glance at her. She was watching him, head tilted, lips parted.
“They move, too,” he heard himself say at once, like if he stopped he’d lose her attention. “I mean we move… A dance older than civilization itself. And… um… here we are, trying to make sense of it. Something so majestic, so untouchable. Like you.”
He froze as soon as he said it, breath shallow. A flicker of color rose in her cheeks, and for one dangerous moment, he thought she might run. He nearly did.
He exhaled slowly, heart thudding, and pointed again. “Do you see that one? The cluster in the north? That’s Esharion’s Arrow. Sailors have followed it for centuries—it always points the way home.”
“Always?” she asked.
His eyes lingered on her profile, the way the moonlight traced her cheek. “Always,” he murmured.
“You love this, don’t you?” she dropped her gaze from the sky to his face. “Learning. Understanding. You don’t just speak about it—you feel it.”
Alaric’s mouth curved before he could stop it. “I do,” he admitted. “There’s so much in this world we don’t know, so many questions without answers. How could I not want to chase them?”
She glanced at him sidelong, eyes sharp but softer than he’d ever seen them. “For all the talking you do, I think you might make a better scholar than a prince.”
He barked a laugh, quick and startled. “Perhaps in another life.”
“And in this one?”
“In this one, I’ll have to settle for being an emperor who asks too many questions.”
He tried to make it sound light, but the words sat heavy. Emperor. The reminder curdled the air between them, left the pause stretching longer than he wanted.
It built until it cracked something in him. “I’m sorry,” he said, voice low. “For keeping a secret while asking you to bare your own. Maybe… maybe if I’d told you sooner, things would be different.”
She shook her head and they resumed their walk.
“I understand… in a way,” she murmured. “No one in this kingdom would have listened to you. Even if you screamed it from the chapel steps. That’s what we’re built on, Alaric. Pragmatism. For the same reason it took me this long to trust you.”
Her fingers curled against her robe, a tiny gesture, but he caught it.
Then, quietly, she added, “You knew the Marshal wasn’t at fault. And I didn’t listen.”
“Ravik is not without guilt either,” he shook his head. “He made mistakes—not telling the Crown was one of them. Manipulating events, using you to capture heretics—that was another. But he is not the man behind the massacre. I don’t think so.”
“I don’t know who it could be,” she admitted quietly. “Everyone has something to gain, even the ones who seem innocent. Sometimes I think… it might even be me.”
She looked down. “Not on purpose. But part of me wonders if I’ve helped, somehow—without knowing.”
His brow furrowed.
He had wanted this. Wanted her to see that the polished truth of her kingdom was nothing more than a lie painted over rot.
And he’d gotten it. But instead of triumph, all he felt was the hollow sting of it.
He wasn’t glad she’d broken free—he was sorry she’d had to break at all.
Angry she’d been handed her freedom in shards sharp enough to cut.
She looked at him, and her voice came softer than he expected, softer than he was prepared for.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
Alaric turned his head, brows lifting. “For what?”
She drew a long breath, steadying herself.
“For being on my side anyway. And for the book,” her thumb brushed the edge of her sleeve, slow and deliberate.
“I hadn’t had the opportunity to thank you properly until now.
Gifts aren’t exactly… honored in the same way here, but I still wanted you to know that I appreciate it. ”
His heart did something silly. “Do you like it?”
“I do.”
Warmth caught in his chest, quick and unguarded.
“It’s a popular book in Varantia. Most children grow up with those stories at bedtime.
” He paused, studying her carefully. “I know your mother was from there. Not Varantia itself, but Lysitha still shares the same tales. I thought she might have told you some of them.”
Her steps slowed. She turned to him fully.
“She did read them to me,” she admitted, voice low. “I lied to you on our first walk, I know Lysithan myths well.” A breath slipped out of her, bittersweet, and he felt the echo of it in his own chest. “You helped me to remember something I didn’t even know I had lost.”
Alaric’s throat tightened. “Then I suppose it was the right gift.”
She swallowed, chin tilting up as though she could press back whatever had risen in her chest. “And I must admit you’re a good dancer.”
The laugh broke out of him before he could contain it. “It was harder than memorizing the constitution of my country—and that’s a thousand pages long.”
Her smirk tugged sharp and knowing. “Perhaps because you insist on improvising.”
He sighed theatrically. “A flaw, I’ll admit. But only because I approached it wrong.”
She raised a brow, a spark of intrigue in her eyes. “Oh?”
“Yes.” He rubbed at his jaw, the habit buying him a heartbeat.
“I respected where you came from. I studied your customs before I came. But I made the mistake of looking at them through my own lens. In my homeland, young people meet tradition with a pinch of salt. I assumed—wrongly—it was the same here.”
She studied him without flinching. And it made him restless in a way he couldn’t name. Her eyes lingered. On his face. On his eyes.
She tore her gaze away before it lingered too long. He swallowed against the silence it left.
“I pushed too hard,” he admitted finally. “And I apologize for that.”
The wind picked up, curling grass around their feet.
“I misjudged you, too,” she murmured. “I was too quick to assume the worst. I didn’t make things easy for you. That’s not how I usually am. I apologize for being too harsh.”
Alaric caught the pale shimmer of moonlight in her eyes. “It’s alright,” he said. And he meant it. “I’m the guest here. I came to stand by your side, not impose myself. You deserve the highest respect.”
He felt the words as soon as they left his mouth—too honest, too clumsy, like stepping barefoot onto ice and hoping it would hold.
“If I’m being honest,” he confessed, fingers fidgeting through his hair, “I also acted the way I did because I wanted you to like me.”
Her single, baffled blink was more dangerous than any retort. “What?”
He forced a rueful shrug, the only armor he had left that didn’t look unbearably performative. “I mean it. I know I can be… a lot. Loud. Dramatic.” He laughed, too quick and too thin. “I was trying to make a good impression. Maybe too hard. It’s… a performance, sometimes.”
She studied him, expression narrowing as though weighing the truth of his words. He caught the subtle motion and, absurdly, thought she resembled a magistrate assessing the worth of a coin.
“Then why the performance?”
He shifted his focus, letting it rest on the lake rather than the stars above.
“When I was a boy, I asked too many questions,” he confessed.
“Not just treaties and bloodlines. I wanted to know why the stars move, why languages split like rivers, how old a book could be.” He swallowed.
“Every time I leaned too far into it, someone would say, ‘You’re going to be emperor. You don’t need that. ’”
He let the lesson sit between them, ugly and raw. “Later, when I earned the words, they said it was easy for me. That it was handed to me. Golden Boy. Crown polished beforehand.” He tasted the small, private anger again—ridiculous for a prince, perhaps, but true.
“So I tried,” he admitted. “Hard. Obnoxiously hard. To prove them wrong. To prove I was more than the robe they measured me at birth. Maybe I went too far. I still do.”
When he finally faced her, moonlight gentled the edges of his expression, softening a confession that cost him more than he showed. “I don’t like being disliked. So I…” He hesitated. “I fill the space. Because simply being Alaric never seemed sufficient.”
He stopped, with nothing clever left to follow it. Maybe it had been too honest. But if there was one thing he had learned, it was this: if you wanted the truth from others, you had to begin with your own.
“And now?” she asked.