Amara's POV
The way he walked off that stage… Head high. Shoulders unbending. Eyes like a storm bottled up behind a crown. That was my husband. The man the world feared. The man I had vowed to stand beside.
But as we entered the private hallway behind the press room, I could feel something else simmering beneath the surface — exhaustion. Grief. Fury he had swallowed just to keep face.
"Chris," I called softly, catching his arm before the guards fully surrounded us.
He stopped, looking at me with eyes that hadn't blinked since he faced the nation.
"Was it too much?" he asked. His voice was low, like he was asking not as the ruler, but as the man beneath it all.
"No," I said. "It was exactly what the Empire needed."
He stared at me a second longer, searching for something — reassurance, maybe. Trust. He found it in my eyes. And when he turned to keep walking, I followed, but my mind was racing.
Skylar.
Even in death, her presence lingered in the palace like smoke that refused to clear. The guards had cleaned the chamber. The blood was scrubbed. The shards were gone. But something still pulsed in those walls. Resentment. Doubt. Legacy.
And now with the press conference, the world knew what we had done. What he had done. I supported him — I always have. But there's a difference between support and blind obedience.
As I returned to my quarters, Rheina was waiting at the door. She stood up straight, holding a tablet in hand — reports, updates, citizen reactions pouring in by the second.
"They're scared," she said simply.
"Good," I replied. "They should be."
But as I walked past her into my room, something clenched in my chest. A whisper in my gut that hadn't spoken in weeks.
It asked me the one question I hadn't let myself answer yet:
Was I building a future… or helping burn one to the ground?
I didn't respond.
Because in the Blackwood Empire, questions like that get you killed.
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