Chapter 3: The Empty Room (#1)

Willfrost Palace

The crackling fire in the large fireplace of the East Wing wasn't enough to dispel the cold that clung to the walls. Not the cold of winter—which hadn't arrived yet—but a quieter, more intimate chill. Like the one left by an absent body in a too-familiar chair.

Eleanor was alone.

It wasn't unusual. The map room was usually filled with courtiers, strategists, diplomats feigning agreements. But that morning, she had given the order for no one to approach. No one. Not servants, not advisors, not even old Meliora, who usually disobeyed all orders except that one.

The letter trembled slightly in her fingers. Not from the cold. Not from fear. But from the damned mix of wounded pride and regret that gnawed at her chest like a silent plague.

She had finally found it that morning, on the desk Dyan had occupied for almost a decade. No one had dared to touch it since he left. Not even her.

Her eyes returned to the first paragraph.

"My pain is like a deep, calm lake, though sometimes dark, I admit. Yours, however, was always a burning fire..."

"Coward..." she murmured, but her voice broke, more hurt than furious.

The letter continued, each word like a polished, sharpened dagger. Not out of cruelty, but out of honesty. And that was worse. Eleanor knew how to recognize the truth when she read it, even when she wished she could tear it with her nails from the page.

She reread the postscript. For the fourth time.

"I have left some unfinished projects... I hope your anger won't prevent you from seeing their value."

"Anger? Is that all he thinks I feel?" She stood abruptly, her royal robe falling with fierce elegance over her figure. She walked to the window overlooking the palace's high courtyard. The place where Dyan used to pause before entering, as if he needed to breathe before seeing her.

She had cast him out.

No: she had screamed at him, disheveled by a mix of rage, fear, and betrayal. Her words still echoed like a condemnation:

"If you are not willing to stay, then leave! Guards, get him out of my sight!"

There was no farewell. No embrace.

Only the image of his back, walking between columns escorted like a criminal. He didn't even dare to look at her one last time.

"What did you expect, Dyan?" she asked the wind now.

But the answer was written with a steady hand:

"You were my light for many years."

Eleanor sank into the armchair in front of the fireplace, the letter on her lap. For a moment, she was not the Queen of Willfrost. Nor the heir of a dynasty that didn't know how to love. Nor the ice woman that so many feared.

She was just Eleanor.

A woman who didn't know how to keep the only man who looked at her without asking for anything in return.

And for the first time in a long time, she cried.

She cried in silence, as those who wear a crown do, even in sorrow.

Not for him, not only.

She cried for what they were, for what they could have been. For the words she didn't say.

And for the ones she did.