Chapter 16 - The Song That Died With Him
From where I stand above them, the distance should make everything easier to bear.
It should dull the edges, soften the weight of what I'm seeing, give me space enough to breathe without feeling it press so tightly against my chest. But it doesn't. If anything, the height sharpens it.
It strips away distraction and leaves only truth behind, clearer, colder, impossible to ignore.
The hall below is full, every seat taken, every shadow occupied by someone who belongs to this hidden world I am only just beginning to understand.
There is no chaos here despite the number of bodies.
No restless shifting, no idle chatter. The silence is not empty; it is controlled, deliberate, something that has been carefully built over time.
These people are not bound by title or tradition the way the court is.
They are bound by something else. Something quieter. Something stronger.
Loyalty.
It moves through the room like an unspoken current, steady and unbreakable, and I realize with a strange, sinking clarity that this is what Veronica meant. Not power that sits on a throne and demands obedience but power that lives beneath it, unseen, unquestioned, absolute.
Faces I have passed before without recognition now look up at me with quiet awareness.
Some I remember only faintly: a servant who once poured wine at a banquet, a stable hand who lowered his gaze as I passed, a woman who brushed past me in the marketplace without so much as a glance.
They had all seemed ordinary then. Invisible.
Now, they are anything but.
They are watching me.
Not with hostility.
Not even with reverence.
But with something measured.
Something assessing.
As if they are deciding who I am.
And whether I belong.
The thought should unsettle me.
It doesn't.
Because my attention does not stay on them for long.
It drifts inevitably, instinctively back to him.
Achilles sits at the edge of the stage, still as stone, his presence pressing against the room without effort.
He does not need to speak to command attention.
He does not need to move to be feared. Even in silence, the space bends around him, shaped by something invisible and absolute, something that makes every person in that hall aware of him, whether they are looking at him or not.
He is not simply seen.
He is felt.
There is no wasted motion in him. No unnecessary shift, no careless gesture. Everything about him is contained, controlled, precise. Even the way he rests seems intentional, as if stillness itself is something he has mastered rather than fallen into.
And yet...
The more I look at him now...
The more I see what is missing instead of what is there.
It is not just that he is quiet.
It is that the quiet feels... earned.
As if something louder once lived in him.
Something brighter.
And it was not lost all at once but taken, piece by piece, until what remained had no choice but to become this.
Beside him, in stark and almost jarring contrast, Elias shifts easily in his seat, his posture loose, unbothered, as though he has wandered into the wrong scene entirely and decided to stay out of curiosity rather than obligation.
One leg stretches out slightly, his body angled in a way that would have earned him a reprimand in any court in the world.
Here
No one dares correct him.
He leans forward, says something under his breath, something I cannot hear, but I see the way his shoulders shake with barely contained laughter, the way his mouth curves, as if he finds amusement in places others wouldn't dare look for it.
And for a fleeting moment...
Just a moment.
I see it.
The resemblance.
Not just in their features.
In something deeper.
If I strip the years from Elias, darken the silver from his hair, soften the lines carved into his face, erase the quiet weight time has settled into him, and if I take the scar from Achilles, the one that drags his expression into something sharper, harder, less forgiving...
They would look the same.
Not identical.
But close enough that it feels like looking at two versions of the same life lived in different directions.
One who learned how to laugh.
And one that learned how to stop.
It unsettles me.
"They look alike," I murmur, almost to myself.
"Of course they do," Veronica replies beside me, her tone light, though her gaze never leaves the room below.
I don't look at her.
Because I am still watching him.
Still trying to reconcile the man I know with the ghost of the man he must have been.
"They don't just look alike," I say slowly. "They feel alike. Just...it's hard to explain."
Veronica hums faintly, like I have stumbled into something true without meaning to.
"That's because you're seeing what's left."
The words settle heavily in my chest.
What's left?
I repeat them silently, and her lack of elaboration says more than any explanation ever could.
Below, Elias leans closer again, speaking with that same careless ease, and Achilles responds not fully, not openly, but enough. A slight tilt of his head. A subtle shift of attention.
It is small.
Controlled.
Easy to miss.
I want to understand what exists between them and why it feels like something that survived when so much else did not.
"He wasn't always like this," Veronica says quietly.
I finally turn to her.
"I know."
But knowing and understanding are not the same thing.
She studies him in silence for a long moment, her expression unreadable, before something softer, something almost distant touches her voice.
"He used to be worse than Elias."
That startles a breath out of me.
"...worse?"
"Oh, yes," she says, almost fondly. "If you think Elias is insufferable now, you should have seen Achilles then."
I try to picture it.
I really do.
But the man below is too still, too controlled, too carved into something unyielding for me to imagine him laughing without restraint, causing chaos simply because he could.
"I don't believe that," I admit.
"And yet it's true." Her lips curve faintly, but it fades quickly, like the memory cannot hold its shape for long.
"He and his brother were inseparable," she continues, her voice lowering as if the memory itself demands a different kind of respect. "You never saw one without the other. If one was in the room, the other wasn't far behind. If one spoke, the other had something to add. If one started trouble..."
"The other finished it," I say.
Her eyes flick toward me.
"Exactly."
I look down again.
At Achilles.
At the man who now speaks only when necessary, who moves only with purpose, who wastes nothing, not even emotion.
"They were always laughing," Veronica says. "Always doing something they weren't supposed to. The court despised it."
I almost smile.
"I can imagine."
"You should have seen it."
Something in her tone tightens my chest.
"They used to play music in court," she continues. "Not when they were told to. Not for ceremonies. Not for show. Just... because they felt like it."
"Music?" I ask, surprised.
She nods once.
"Achilles would play anything with strings, mostly. He liked instruments that required control. Precision. Something that responded exactly the way he wanted it to."
"That sounds like him."
"It does," she agrees. "But not the way you think."
Her gaze drifts, unfocused, as if she is seeing something far removed from the present.
"He didn't play for power," she says. "He played to irritate people."
I blink.
"...what?"
Her mouth twitches faintly.
"He would sit in court, surrounded by nobles arguing about matters they believed were important, and instead of engaging... he would lift his violin and play the most dramatic, miserable tune he could think of."
"That sounds like Elias," I murmur.
"It does," she says again.
I glance down again, then ask quietly, "...and...his brother?"
Veronica's expression shifts subtly, but unmistakably.
"The opposite," she says. "Stricter. More composed. More... what the court wanted."
I frown slightly.
"Then why wasn't he king?" The question leaves me before I can stop it.
The answer comes easily.
"Because Achilles was stronger."
The simplicity of it makes it heavier.
"The kingdom wanted a certain kind of king," she continues. "One who commanded fear. One who could not be challenged. One who would not bend."
Her gaze lowers again.
"They didn't want laughter. They didn't want music. They didn't want someone who treated the court like something to endure instead of something to control."
I swallow.
"They wanted him to be this."
"Yes."
"And they got exactly what they asked for...and they regret it," she says. "They demanded it," she continues. "Pushed for it. Shaped him into it."
A pause.
"And now they remember what he used to be... and wish they hadn't."
My chest aches with something I can't quite name.
"They never gave him time," Veronica adds. "To grieve. To breathe. To be anything other than what they needed."
"Life took everything from him," she continues. "His father. His mother. His brother. The woman he loved. And every time he lost something, they gave him less time to feel it."
"They called it strength," she murmurs. "Resilience. Duty."
Her voice sharpens slightly.
"But all they did was teach him how to bury it."
And suddenly
I understand.
He is not empty.
He is not unfeeling.
He is full.
So unbearably full of everything he was never allowed to process that there is no space left for anything else.
"They kept asking for more," Veronica says quietly. "More control. More power. More distance. More time. As if time alone could heal what he lost."
"...but it doesn't," I whisper.
"No, he just learned to live with the pain," she says.