Chapter 37 – Ashes in the Wind
*
I watched you fade, then rise again, Through grief that broke like summer rain. A thousand nights, I kept the flame, Though time and pain erased my name.
You lost the light you once had known, a swordless queen, a heart alone. Yet in your womb, a spark held true. A heartbeat soft, a soul of you.
I stayed unseen, yet always near, A shadow made of love and fear. I could not touch, I could not speak, Just guard you when your world turned bleak.
And when you named her after stars, you stitched your wounds, you healed your scars. For every step you chose to take, I trained for all I’d one day break.
Now here we stand, ten years too late, Two lives shaped hard by war and fate. No grand confession, no bold vow Just quiet hope, and here, and now.
You hold the necklace, threads of grace, A tether through the time and space. And though the past still pulls like sea. You’re not alone. You’ve always had me.
*
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After that day, I did as my mother asked.
I trained.
I didn’t argue. I didn’t beg. I didn’t fall to pieces the way I wanted to. I just nodded. I promised her I would stay away from Bellatrix… and I kept that promise.
But gods, it broke me.
So I threw myself into training. Every morning, every night, until my hands bled and my magic screamed. Until the ache in my bones became louder than the ache in my heart. I needed to control the fire inside me—not just the magic, but the grief, the guilt, the unbearable longing. It had nearly killed me once. I wouldn’t let it again.
And all the while, I watched her. From the shadows. From the hallways. From the far corners of the gardens where she sometimes sat, motionless, staring at the sky like it might give her back everything it had taken.
I watched her grieve.
The woman who once charged into battle with a sword in one hand and a shield in the other…
Now struggled to get out of bed.
Her eyes stopped seeing.
Her voice lost its strength.
The life in her drained like blood from a wound no one could close. What little light remained in her eyes flickered like a candle left in a storm.
And I—I couldn’t touch her. I couldn’t hold her. Not even whisper her name.
I saw the way her hands trembled when she thought no one was looking. I saw the bruises she left on her arms, the shaking in her shoulders, the half-eaten food on her tray. I saw it all. And I kept my distance.
But the first time she collapsed to her knees, shaking in the grass, I nearly broke every promise I made to my mother. I had to grip the edge of the railing until my knuckles bled just to stop myself from running to her.
She wasn’t crying because she was confused anymore.
No—this was the kind of pain that comes when you finally understand something too cruel to forget.
That it wasn’t a dream.
That it wasn’t a nightmare.
That it was all real.
Her husband… the knight she had run away with. The man she had chosen above kingdom, titles, and war. She watched his head fall, just like that, in front of her eyes. And her son—her little boy—taken by cloaked hands, dragged into the smoke and blood, never to be seen again.
And she couldn’t stop it.
She couldn’t save them.
No one could.
I remember the day she tried to take her life.
When she first tried to throw herself from the balcony, I moved.
I had placed an alert ward days earlier, just in case. When it flared, I teleported instantly. She never saw me. I froze her mid-step with a soft spell of paralysis, that normally wouldn’t even work on someone of her caliber. Then I whispered for one of the mages to “check in on her.” They found her confused and dizzy, and I stood unseen behind the archway, heart pounding like thunder, shaking so hard I thought I might shatter.
It wasn’t the only time.
There were days when she wouldn’t eat. Nights where she lay too still, as if daring death to take her in her sleep. And always, I was watching. My magic laced the corridors of her wing like silent eyes. The healers I trusted, the mages I summoned… they knew to keep her safe. I made sure of it.
Still a knife in her bath. A sleeping draught on her bedside. Always silent. Always alone. But not truly—not while I still breathed.
Each time, I intervened from the shadows. Quiet spells, silent warnings, whispered messages to the healers. And every time, I felt myself sink a little further into helplessness.
Because no matter how many times I pulled her back from the edge, I couldn’t stop her from walking toward it again.
I was saving her life, yes—but I was powerless to give her a reason to live it.
And that was what pained me the most.
So I did the only thing I could.
I asked the court healer to tell her what she hadn’t yet realized.
Mother had told me, days ago—Bellatrix was pregnant. The child of the man she… she loved. A final memory growing inside her while she mourned both him and their stolen son. She didn’t know. Not yet.
But that changed
I wasn’t there when they told her—not directly. But I was in the corridor, just beyond the veil of light, when I heard her.
A sound—deep and strangled and raw—echoed through the palace like thunder from a wounded sky.
It wasn’t a scream.
It wasn’t sorrow that fell from her lips that day. It was something deeper. Something raw. The cry of a woman pulled back from the edge of a cliff, a cry not of despair… but of disbelief.
She wept. Gods, she wept—loud and raw, echoing through my chest.
But it wasn’t mourning.
It was life.
There was life inside her. A heartbeat. A spark. A fragile, impossible piece of hope blooming in the ashes.
She clung to that knowledge the way drowning men cling to driftwood. And slowly—so slowly—it began to hold her above the water.
And when I saw her the next morning—truly saw her, not just from afar—something had changed.
She was still broken. Still grieving. But for the first time in weeks, her steps weren’t aimless. She touched her stomach like it was something sacred. She ate her breakfast, even if slowly. She combed her hair. She looked out the window, not at it.
And I knew.
It was for her child.
His child.
Adriel. Even in death, he still held her heart. Still knew how to bring her back from the darkness, even without being here. He had given her something I never could—a reason. A piece of him, still alive inside her.
And gods, how I envied that.
But I pushed the thought aside. This wasn’t about me. Not now.
Because Bellatrix—
She finally had something to live for again.
This child was her tether. Her reason to keep going. Her reason to live.
And for that, I was grateful.
More than grateful. I was grounded.
Now every step she took toward healing reminded me why I had to keep training. Why I had to master the fire within me. Not just for myself. But for Bellatrix and the child who had saved her life before they were even born.
Even though I couldn’t hold her. Couldn’t speak to her. Couldn’t confess my love to her. Not yet.
But I could keep my distance.
And I could keep my promise.
So I did.
Day by day.
Breath by breath.
Watching the woman I love begin to live again.
…
Just like that, ten years passed.
Ten years of silence. Of distance. Of restraint.
I didn’t master my magic—not truly. But I no longer needed the six artifacts my mother forged to keep me from falling apart. The fire inside me had learned to simmer, to flicker quietly beneath my skin without turning everything I touched to ash. That had been the agreement—ten years, and not a day less. And when that invisible clock finally ran out, I didn’t walk to her.
I ran.
But in all that time, Bellatrix never once saw me.
She didn’t ask for me. Not because she didn’t care—but because she didn’t want to hope again. I had vanished like a ghost in a short time, like a promise too dangerous to believe in.
She had a child to raise, a war-torn world to survive in, and memories of a life that had crumbled in fire. She didn’t know if I still cared enough to see her.
But I had watched her from afar. I knew.
I knew that when her daughter was born, Bellatrix cried—not in sorrow, but in joy so raw it left her trembling. They said she held the child against her chest and whispered over and over that she was beautiful, perfect, her light in the dark. That tiny heartbeat became her reason to wake each morning, her anchor in a world that had tried to take everything. And for the first time in years…
I got to see her smile.
She named her Anne — after the Star of Anareth, a pale blue light that appears only once every decade, said to guide lost souls through darkness. In the old stories, it was a star that never faltered, even in the blackest sky.
They said Bellatrix saw it from her window the night Anne was born. And when the midwife asked for a name, she simply smiled through her tears and whispered, “She is my light. My reason to keep walking.”
Anne. Not just a name — a vow. A single, shining promise that even in a broken world, something beautiful could remain.
After she was born Bellatrix raised her in a small house on the far edge of the capital, where no one asked questions and everyone knew to stay away. She taught the girl to read, to laugh, to wield a blade that gleamed like moonlight. She never once faltered as a mother. She gave everything she had and more.
But she never forgot.
She still asked the guards, always in whispers, always when no one else could hear.
“Have you found them? The ones who burned the villages?”
And sometimes—“Any news… about the children they took?”
And that pained me because the Emperor had promised. I had promised. But promises meant little in a world where kingdoms bled across borders. Three years ago, the western empires declared war, and everything changed. Troops were sent. Cities fell. The palace no longer echoed with Bellatrix’s name—it trembled with marching boots and reports soaked in blood.
The search for her son became a line in a dusty ledger. Forgotten. Abandoned.
I couldn’t let that happen.
So I turned to the only kind of magic I trusted anymore—my own. I forged a necklace of sapphire and silver, woven with runes carved so finely they shimmered only under moonlight. I infused it with her blood—easily taken from the bandages she left behind when she’d cut her hand. With it, I could trace the child’s heartbeat, feel his warmth through the aether, even catch glimpses of pain through the bond. A promise remade.
And when the time came, I gave it to her.
Our official reunion took place beneath a clear sky, ten years too late. I wore formal robes, stiff with embroidery. She stood at the gates of the mansion I’d built with her in mind—every archway carved like branches, every hall lined with star-shaped lanterns. Her daughter stood at her side, tall and proud, a mirror of her mother’s fire.
I said nothing of love. Nothing of the years I had counted alone. I only offered the necklace with careful hands and a quiet smile.
She didn’t take the necklace at first.
Her fingers hovered above it, trembling, as if afraid it would vanish the moment she touched it. I stayed still, holding it out in silence. A sapphire crystal, chains carved with quiet runes, humming faintly with the blood-bound magic I’d poured into it. Her blood. Her son’s.
“This will help us find him,” I said, my voice steady.
Bellatrix didn’t look at me. Her eyes were locked on the gem, wide and wild and wet with disbelief.
She reached out, stopped, and then curled her hands into fists against her chest.
“I was starting to think…” Her voice caught, thin and hoarse. “That maybe he was gone. That maybe… hope was just a cruel thing I kept alive to punish myself.” She didn’t look at me. Her eyes stayed on the necklace, wide and disbelieving. “I never stopped asking. I just… stopped believing anyone would answer.”
I said nothing. What could I say that wouldn’t splinter her?
She wasn’t weeping — not the way she had ten years ago when she woke up, or the way she must’ve cried holding Anna for the first time. This was something quieter. Something deeper. Her body shook, but not a single tear fell.
Finally, she touched it. Her thumb brushed the sapphire like it was glass too fragile to hold.
Her knees buckled.
I caught her before she hit the ground. And only then did she cry. Not loud. Not broken. Just the kind of crying that had no sound — the kind that came after too many years of silence and pretending to be strong.
She clutched the necklace to her chest like it was her son’s heartbeat.
I didn’t hold her or tell her it would be okay.
I just knelt beside her. And stayed.
And in that moment, I hated myself — for waiting ten years. For letting my magic, my power delay this. For not being there when she needed me most.
Finally, when she’d gathered herself enough to speak, I asked her to come live in the heart of the capital with me. Not as an order. Not as a favor. But because I could help her now — and more than that, because I owed her the peace she’d been denied.
She accepted.
Not with a smile. Not with joy.
Just a single nod, quiet and slow, like she was too tired to speak. Like she didn’t trust her voice not to crack.
And I knew that look — not because she missed me, but because she missed the friend I used to be.
She never said it, but I saw it in her eyes: the guilt for leaving. For walking away without a word all those years ago.
And I never said it either — that I forgave her the moment she left.
She didn’t need to know how I felt.
She never had to.
As long as I could stay by her side… that was enough, for now.
And maybe this wasn’t how we imagined it — not the reunion we once dreamed of when we were reckless and young and thought the world would never change.
But she was here now.
Her daughter was safe.
And her son — her son — was still alive.
That was enough.
That had to be enough.