Chapter 13
Lucas
The castle had never been this quiet.
Lucas had always thought of silence as a luxury. In the years after Dian died, he’d craved it. The hush meant no condolences whispered in the hallways, no sympathetic glances from the staff, and no small voices asking questions he couldn’t bear to answer.
Now it felt like punishment. He stood in the center of the great room with his hands braced on his hips while he listened.
Nothing.
No clatter of little feet racing down the stairs. No delighted squeals as they chased each other through the rooms. No Sia’s laughter drifting from the kitchen, bright and warm and alive.
He swallowed hard.
It had been a simple thing for the girls to want to go visit their grandparents. A practical request on Sia’s part. She’d asked him three times if he was sure he didn’t mind.
He had simply shrugged. “Of course not. They should go.”
He hadn’t considered that Sia didn’t ask him to go. He hadn’t even contemplated the fact that she might be running away. He knew she would never do anything to the girls, but if she really wanted to escape him, she could use them as an excuse.
What if she didn’t come back?
He should have talked to her more about the trip. Found out if there was a specific reason she wanted to go home. After their dinner, the wine had loosened them up to where they had a normal conversation.
He felt the same mixed signals that he was convinced she had felt.
He walked through the castle like a ghost haunting his own life.
The dining room table was clear. No crayons, no half-finished homework, no sticky fingerprints on the polished wood.
The playroom was pristine. The girls’ beds were made, stuffed animals lined in careful rows like soldiers awaiting inspection.
He sat on the edge of Stella’s bed and stared at her small pillow. Her favorite bunny was missing from its place of honor, and he could see her cuddling it up in a strange bed at her grandma’s house.
They missed their mother fiercely. He knew that. He felt it in the way they still sometimes reached for someone who wasn’t there. In the way Stella whispered Mama in her sleep or Luna was constantly braiding someone’s hair. Or in the way Celeste tried to mother her sisters.
He had thought he was the steady center for them. Their foundation. He had always wanted to be there for his girls. Sia had filled the gap.
With a sigh, he headed down to get some work done. That was at least a constant steady. There was always some king stuff, as Sia put it, to be done.
Lucas barely looked up from the stack of reports spread across his desk when the office door opened. He already knew who it was. Aldrek never knocked.
The older male stepped inside with the same silent confidence he carried everywhere. Lucas continued reading for another moment and let the quiet stretch. He finished the page, signed the bottom of the parchment, and finally leaned back in his chair.
“What is it?”
Aldrek’s arms were folded across his chest, his expression dark. “There’s talk in the Northern districts.”
Lucas sighed quietly. Rumors were the currency of bored people. “There’s always talk.”
“This one’s different.”
Lucas raised an eyebrow but gestured lazily with his hand. “Go on.”
Aldrek watched him a moment before speaking. “Someone’s been bragging about taking over Crystafalls.”
Lucas let out a laugh and pushed the papers aside. “Of course they are.”
“They’re claiming the mountains will belong to them soon enough.”
“That’s ambitious.”
Aldrek did not smile. “They’re saying the kingdom has no heir.”
Lucas leaned back farther in his chair, not liking where the conversation was going. “Then whoever said it needs a stay in a dungeon.”
Aldrek’s brow twitched slightly.
“Despite the fact that it borders on treason just for slighting my family,” Lucas shrugged. “No one is stupid enough to try overthrowing me. It’s simply loose tongues caused by too much drink.”
“I hope so.” Aldrek studied him for a long moment, clearly weighing whether to argue. Instead he asked, “Where is Sia?”
Lucas didn’t think anything of the question. He reached for another parchment. “She went with the girls.”
Aldrek’s voice stayed even. “Where?”
“To visit her family.” Lucas picked up his pen. “The girls hadn’t seen their grandparents in a while, so I told her to take a few days.”
The silence that followed made Lucas glance up. Aldrek hadn’t moved, but something in his expression had tightened.
“You let her leave Crystafalls.”
Lucas frowned. “She wasn’t a prisoner.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
Lucas set the pen down slowly. “She went with my daughters,” he said, his patience thinning. “Nothing is going to happen.”
Aldrek stepped farther into the room now and stopped just in front of the desk. “It may only be gossip, but it may also mean that you have enemies.”
“It always has.”
“And someone is already speaking like the throne is empty.”
Lucas waved a dismissive hand. “Let them talk. Anyone who tries something will regret it.”
Aldrek held his gaze and his voice dropped lower. “You better hope she comes back.”
Lucas’s brow furrowed. “What is that supposed to mean?”
But Aldrek was already turning toward the door. He paused only long enough to glance back over his shoulder, his expression unreadable.
“Pray we never find out.”
Then he left, the door closing with a quiet, deliberate click.
As the days ticked by since they left the castle, something ugly and undeniable just wouldn’t get it out of his mind. He knew it was because of Aldrek’s reaction, but it still bothered him.
The girls hadn’t called him. They were proving that they were perfectly happy with Sia, just as they had been for bedtime stories and scraped knees.
Lucas exhaled slowly. Sia had become the emotional center of his family, but not by replacing Dian and not by forcing anything, but by loving them quietly, steadily, without asking for anything in return.
And what had he done? Kept her at arm’s length and retreated when her fingers brushed his. Reminded himself that she was only there for the girls.
Despite what his dragon rumbled, he had told himself it was loyalty but now, in the depressing quiet of the castle, it felt like fear.
He let out a long sigh and ran his fingers through his hair. There was one place he wanted to go. Somewhere he needed to go. So he walked out before he could talk himself out of it.
The cemetery sat in the royal cemetery near the base of the Silver Snow Mountains. Cool winds blew through the tall grasses as he went along. Lucas knew the path by heart.
He stopped in front of Dian’s grave where her name was carved in clean, elegant letters. Beloved wife. Devoted mother. He lowered himself to his knees.
“I’m sorry it took me this long,” he said softly. The wind answered by lifting the edge of his coat. He stared at the stone and felt something inside him unravel.
“They miss you,” he whispered. “God, they miss you.” His voice cracked. “Just like I do. And I thought I was doing right by them. By you.”
He scrubbed a hand over his face.
“I didn’t let anyone get close. I didn’t let myself get close.”
Because loving again had felt like betrayal and moving forward felt like leaving her behind. But the truth had crept up on him slowly. He had already fallen.
“I’m in love with her,” he finally admitted. The words broke free something that had been long imprisoned in his heart.
The wind stilled.
“Sia. Your sister.”
The admission felt fragile and enormous all at once.
“I tried not to be. I pushed her away. I told myself she deserved better than a man who still talks to his wife’s grave.”
His throat tightened.
“But she loves the girls. She loves them the way you would want someone to love them. She holds them when they cry. She sits up through fevers. She laughs with them. She sees them.”
His voice dropped to a whisper.
“And she sees me.”
That was the most terrifying part.
“She’s your sister,” he said, the guilt rising sharp and sudden. “I don’t know how to do this without feeling like I’m stealing something that was yours.”
He bowed his head. “I don’t want to replace you. I never could. I never would.”
The huge gust of wind roared faintly in the distance.
“But I don’t want to push her away anymore either.” He closed his eyes. “The castle is empty without her. Not just the girls. Her.”
He let that truth settle.
“I thought I was protecting everyone. But I was just afraid. Afraid that if I loved again, I’d lose again. Afraid that if I let myself be happy, it would mean I loved you less.” His fingers traced the edge of the stone. “But loving her doesn’t erase you.”
It didn’t. Dian would always be the first. The foundation. The history. But Sia… Sia was the present. The warmth in the rooms. The softening in his daughters’ eyes.
“She’s become their safe place,” he whispered. “And mine.”
His chest ached, but it was no longer the sharp grief he’d carried for years. It was something gentler.
“I don’t want to spend the rest of my life pushing away the woman who’s already part of us.” He swallowed hard. “If you can hear me… if there’s any way you can give me peace about this… I need it.”
Silence.
But this time, it wasn’t empty. It felt… open.
A memory surfaced of Dian laughing in the kitchen, flour on her cheek, telling him once that if anything ever happened to her, she wanted the girls surrounded by love.
“Don’t let them grow up in a house of ghosts,” she had teased.
He let out a broken laugh. That memory hadn’t just popped into his head randomly. “I think I’ve done enough haunting.”
The wind moved again, softer this time. Lucas rose slowly to his feet.
“I’ll always love you,” he said. “That doesn’t change.” He pressed his palm briefly to the stone. “But I’m going to let myself love her too.”
And for the first time since the funeral, the decision didn’t feel like betrayal.
It felt like permission.
When he returned to the castle, it was still quiet, but it no longer felt suffocating. He walked into his office and picked up his phone. He stared at Sia’s name for a long moment, thumb hovering.
He could already imagine her expression if he pulled away again. The way she’d try to hide the hurt. The way she’d convince herself she’d imagined the closeness between them.
No more. He hit call.
She answered on the second ring, breathless. “Lucas? Is everything okay?”
He closed his eyes at the sound of her voice.
“Everything’s fine,” he said, and this time it was true.
In the background he heard one of the girls giggle. The others argued about something in the way only children can. His heart squeezed.
“I just…” He paused. He had faced storms. Negotiated treaties. Buried his wife.
But this felt harder.
“I miss you,” he said simply. “All. I just wanted to check in.”
Silence. He could only imagine the stunned expression on her face.
Then her voice came back softer, “The girls miss you too.”
She had misunderstood. That was his fault for all the rejection he had sent her way. He smiled faintly.
“No,” he started. “I miss–”
“Here. Celeste wants to say hi to you.”
And just like that, Sia was gone. For the next hour, he learned all about every detail of his daughters’ trip. And somewhere deep inside, Lucas felt something unlock.
He would talk to Sia when they returned. No more pushing away, no more guessing how he felt. He was not abandoning the past but rather choosing the future.
And for the first time in years, the castle didn’t feel like a monument of loss. He smiled as he hung up the phone.
It felt like a home waiting to be filled again.