First message
The news reached me at dawn, delivered in the careful tone reserved for tragedy. A fire had consumed Matilda’s uncle’s estate entirely — stone, timber, lineage, all reduced to ash before sunrise. Her uncle and aunt had perished within it. Only their daughter survived, an eighteen-year-old girl pulled from smoke and ruin with nothing left to claim as her own. Duty demanded we receive her. Matilda agreed at once, not with warmth, but with the efficient composure she brought to all matters of family and state alike.
Our marriage has always resembled a treaty more than a union. We dine together, appear together, fulfill expectations together, yet live as strangers bound by a crown rather than affection. No children fill the silence between us, no heir softens the distance. Physicians speak in circles; courtiers whisper in corners. We simply endure, side by side, impeccable and empty.
When the carriage finally rolled into the palace courtyard, Matilda stood beside me, posture flawless, expression unreadable. I expected a grieving child, perhaps fragile, perhaps dull with shock.
Instead, she stepped down and the world seemed to pause.
Smoke had not diminished her — it had carved something luminous from ruin. Pale, solemn, impossibly beautiful, with eyes too old for her years yet clear in a way no court-bred lady’s ever were.
For the first time in years, I forgot the weight of the crown long enough to simply stare.