Alric
No one told him that love could begin with silence.
Not the grand, aching kind sung in ballads. Not even the sharp heat he'd felt when he first laid eyes on her. But a quieter thing — the kind that bloomed between empty chairs filled night after night, in the way her tea always sat untouched until it cooled, or how she removed her gloves with the same three flicks of her fingers each evening.
She had not spoken much since their wedding night.
Nor had he.
But every morning, she was there — seated in the sunlit corner of the East Hall, a book in her lap, always the same seat, always the same time.
He did not disturb her. But he watched.
Once, she glanced up.
Only once.
Their eyes met — a flicker, nothing more — and she returned to her page like it hadn't happened. But Alric carried that look with him the rest of the day.
Not affection. Not hostility.
Curiosity.
A week passed in measured silences and shallow courtesies. The duchy sent gifts. Nobles visited and whispered. The King remained distant. The Crown Prince colder still.
But between Alric and Saren, something invisible shifted.
She began asking small things at dinner — "Will you pass the salt?" or "How was the hunt?" — questions with no weight, no intimacy. Yet each one was a crack in the wall between them.
He answered every time. And always honestly.
One evening, when thunder rolled in the distance and the windows trembled with wind, he found her on the balcony, barefoot, arms wrapped around herself.
"The storm will ruin your book," he said.
She turned slightly, and for the first time, smiled. Not wide. Not soft. But real.
"Then perhaps I'll remember it more clearly," she said.
He stepped beside her, silent.
She didn't move away.
Rain hadn't started yet, but the scent of it curled through the air — earthy and cold. Saren's hair was slightly tousled by the wind, and without her circlet or pins, she looked... young.
Not imperial. Not untouchable.
Just tired.
"I thought you hated the rain," Alric said, his voice gentle.
"I do," she murmured. "But it's honest. It never pretends to be anything but what it is."
That made him pause.
"So you come out here to remind yourself what honesty looks like?"
She glanced at him, half-smiling. "Something like that."
He watched her for a long moment.
She didn't ask why he stayed beside her. She didn't tell him to leave. There was something raw in the air — not romance, not yearning, but something human. It rested between them like the mist rising from the stones.
"You could have refused the match," he said softly. "You're a princess. A dozen lords would have begged for your hand."
"I didn't refuse," she said. "And you're not just a lord. You're the youngest Duke in the kingdom. The king doesn't marry his daughter to a man without ambition."
"But I didn't seek you."
She tilted her head. "Did you not?"
The wind caught her hair, and for a moment, he didn't know what to say. Because truth be told—no. He hadn't. And yet now, he could not imagine another beside him.
Before he could speak, she added, quieter this time, "Do you regret it?"
"No." He didn't hesitate. "Do you?"
Silence.
Then, "Not yet."
It wasn't affection. It wasn't a promise.
But it was something.
She turned her gaze back to the storm, and he stayed at her side — the two of them watching the first drops of rain strike the balcony stones in rhythmic taps.
No words.
No lies.
Just the beginning of something neither of them could name yet.
...to be continued...
Author's Note:
Not love. Not yet.
Just silence, rain, and something unnamed.
Thank you for walking beside them —
even when they don't speak.
—Your author