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.
