Chapter 31: A Room That Was Never Theirs
The door creaked open.
No resistance. No spells. No sound of defiance.
It looks like it was no expecting someone .
The Grand Duchess stepped forward first, anger propelling her into the forbidden space her son had locked to the world for years. The Grand Duke followed, slower—less from hesitation, more from dread.
They had never crossed this threshold since Sirius turned twelve. Not once.
No servants had ever entered. No guards. No tutors. Even the finest maids feared stepping too close to his door, as if something sacred—or cursed—lay behind it.
Tonight, all that fear melted into fury.
Their son had humiliated them before the entire court. And now he had the audacity to disappear, retreating into the sanctum he'd built for himself like a fortress.
But the moment they stepped inside, that anger faltered.
The chamber was vast, far larger than either of them remembered. The childhood bedroom was long gone. What remained bore no resemblance to a noble's quarters.
It wasn't a bedroom.
Not a study.
Not a training room.
It was a shrine.
To her.
Every inch of the room—every surface—was covered. Not with weapons or tapestries of imperial pride. Not with books or tomes of swordcraft or magic.
But with her.
Portraits. Statues. Sculptures. Sketches. Paintings—some massive and stretching wall to wall, others as small as coins—but all of the same woman.
The same face.
She was more than beautiful.
She was otherworldly.
Pale silver hair that cascaded like moonlight. Eyes that shimmered even in paint, seeming to glow with secrets not meant for mortals. A smile that was soft—almost sorrowful—but so perfect, so untouchable, it wounded the soul to look at her.
She was the kind of beauty that did not belong in this world.
A divine beauty.
A forbidden one.
And she was everywhere.
Etched into the carved frame of the massive window. Sculpted into the marble pillars that supported the high ceiling. Painted across the floor, her hair fanning out like threads of starlight around Sirius's bed. Even the bedsheets bore her image in delicate silver embroidery.
The very air smelled like her—the faint sweetness of night-blooming jasmine, memory, and moonlight.
The Grand Duchess stopped walking.
Her chest constricted. Her eyes flicked from canvas to sculpture, from stone to silk.
Statues of her stood in the corners. One in white marble with her gaze lifted skyward. Another in obsidian, carved so delicately the strands of her hair rippled as if caught in a wind. Others made of silver and dark wood, every one shaped with reverence.
There were no names.
But none were needed.
Her image alone said everything.
The walls were lined with calligraphy in an old, forgotten language—one she couldn't read. But the script flowed like water, wrapping around the room in poems. The ink shimmered faintly, etched by magic and something else. Longing. Devotion. Love.
And there—at the center of it all—
Sirius.
He sat before an enormous canvas, brush in hand, his posture still, focused. His robe fell like a shadow around him, his hair spilling over his shoulders, bathed in soft moonlight from the high arched window behind him.
He didn't hear them enter.
Or rather, he didn't care.
He was painting.
Her.
One hand moved in slow, steady strokes. His other hand held a cloth stained with silver and ash-blue paint. His eyes were locked on the canvas—not with a warrior's focus, not with a mage's calculation—but with devotion. Silent, endless, all-consuming.
He looked at her image like she was the only light in the world.
The Grand Duchess took a breath—and froze.
He looked gentle.
Not just quiet or distant. But gentle in a way she hadn't seen since he was a child.
She had almost forgotten he could look like that.
His lips moved slightly, mouthing words to no one. His eyes softened, shimmering like the sky before dawn.
She stepped closer, her heels echoing once on the polished stone.
He didn't flinch.
Didn't turn.
He was too immersed—too in love.
The Grand Duke stopped beside her.
And for a long moment, they said nothing.
Because there was nothing to say.
This was not infatuation. Not curiosity. Not the fantasy of a young man who had never loved before.
This was reverence.
Their son, the boy they had raised—the one the world bowed to, the one whose power eclipsed nations—was in love.
And it wasn't with anyone they knew.
It wasn't with the girl they had chosen for him. Not with a noble daughter, or princess, or mage. Not with anyone human.
It was with her.
Whoever she was.
The Grand Duchess clenched her jaw.
She stared at the softness in Sirius's expression, the way his hand moved with a lover's grace. She looked around the room again, at the endless depictions of that woman. Beautiful didn't begin to describe her.
She—whoever she was—couldn't be rivaled. Not by any woman in the empire.
Not even by Sirius's mother.
And that thought settled like ash in her heart.
For a moment, she hated her.
Then, she hated him.
Because in this room, surrounded by a hundred visions of a woman the Grand Duchess could never become, she realized—
He never looked at me like that.
Not once.
Not even when he was a boy.
And somewhere in her mind, that final thread—the part of her that once called him son with warmth—began to fray.