“Duchess,” he says.
She only laughs, low and delighted, and pulls him straight into her arms.
“My boy,” she breathes out, voice thick with tenderness. “How I’ve missed you.”
The embrace doesn’t last long, but it lingers when Sylvin lowers his head to rest on her shoulder for just a second. Long enough to see the child within him letting his guard down while in the arms of his mother.
I’ve seen him brutal and commanding, smirking through strategy, cloaked in elegance and coldness alike. But this…this is different.
There’s no crown on his head here. No throne behind his back. Just a son in the embrace of a mother who never stopped missing him.
And for the first time, I understand him. He didn’t just fight to protect the Winter Court last night. He didn’t choose that harbor massacre for power alone. He chose it because if he let the humans think the fae soft, they would want to strike the other courts. A court where the woman who raised him–who still watches him like he’s her whole heart–would be fighting without him.
I exhale slowly, the truth settling heavy and warm behind my ribs.
He isn’t just a king. He’s a son. A protector of his family.
The Duchess steps back, smoothing her hands down the front of her dress as she glances between the two of us. That same warmth lingers in her eyes, but there’s a more calculating look stirring now.
“I think,” she says gently, “the two of you need to have a conversation.”
Sylvin arches a brow, the corner of his mouth twitching like he’s about to inject a usual quip, but he doesn’t. Instead, he nods once and when he turns to me, his gaze is quieter than I’ve ever seen it. Almost…bracing.
“Shall we?” he murmurs, extending a hand toward a path.
I follow him through the curve of the clearing, past flowering trees and into a grove where the light is dappled and the sounds of the court begin to fade behind us. The air grows cooler here, filtered through shade and silence, the grass soft beneath our feet. It feels like a pocket tucked away from the rest of the court, and an image strikes me of him as a child, coming here for quiet reflection.
He pauses beneath a tree with silver bark and smooth, curling roots, one hand brushing the low-hanging branches aside for me as I step through.
When we’re both settled on the ground, the quiet stretches, each of us waiting for the other.
He breaks the silence first, vulnerability steeping in the slight catch of his voice as he speaks. “You’re…not one of us, are you?”
There’s no arrogance or judgment in it, just the faintest edge of personal disappointment, as if he already knows the answer but hoped he was wrong.
I don’t answer right away as I take a deep breath and stare at the ground.
A part of me wants to lie to ease the weight of his dashed hopes, but I can't pretend to be anything I’m not.
“No,” I say quietly, glancing over at him. “I don’t belong with the Seasonal Courts.”
He stares at some fixed point beyond the trees.
“I didn’t want it to be true,”he says after a moment. “Even when I suspected you weren’t after your admission of changing fate.”
His mouth twists, but it’s not quite a smile, more of a grimace.
“I told myself maybe the courts were changing. That maybe you were the first of something new. That you could still…belong with us.”
The silence stretches again, but this time it’s heavier with his unspoken words.
With me.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
At that, he turns to face me fully and shakes his head.
“Don’t be,” he says. “You’ve done nothing wrong.”
