Moonlight fell on the violet garden solfty. From the solar's tall window, the glass held a pale mirror—half room, half night. On one side: the beds of violet flowers, trimmed and perfect. On the other: a man in his forties, broad-shouldered, long golden hair and beard, a body built for war and long days on horseback. He stood with his weight set, midsection tight, face turned to the window so his own reflection watched him watch the garden.
Behind him, candles guttered. Each wick sank by degrees. Darkness gathered slow as it reached his boots first, then the table legs, then the corners.
Why is this happening. How did this happen. This makes no sense. No sense at all.
He held a small pendant in his fist and let the cool metal print his palm. He breathed once, steady, then looked down at it.
A hospital room rose up in his mind—white, humming, smelling faintly of antiseptic and rain from a window someone forgot to close. A young woman sat propped against thin pillows, cheek pale but eyes bright. Theresa. The ward curtain moved with a soft hand of air. She reached to her neck, slipped a simple pendant free of its cord, and turned it in her fingers.
"My mother kept it beside her until the end," she said, the smile brave and a little breathless. "I want it beside you."
Words stuck. He could only watch her thumb trace the edge. She laughed softly at his silence, like she'd expected it, like she loved him for it. "You're always special to me," she said. "You always will be."
"It's just an operation," he managed, making his voice easy. He leaned in until their foreheads almost touched. "You'll be fine. And I'm bringing you something later. A surprise."
"A surprise?" She lifted a brow. Close enough to kiss. Close enough to feel the tremble of her breath.
He should have told her then. He let the moment hang. Then the kiss, quiet, the kind that says more after it ends.
"Theresa," he murmured now, in the solar, thumb rubbing the old groove on the pendant. He turned his face a fraction so he could see the garden again in the glass. A garden of violet flowers—the color she loved. Strange mercy to find it here, in this life.
I wish this is a dream. Let it be a dream.
He set the pendant against his chest and felt the cord bite as he tied it on. The man in the window's mirror was not him. The scar at the jaw, the heavy line of the shoulders, the stance that never gave its back to a door—none of it was his. Yet the memories that lived under that face came to him as if poured there: a hard voice, hard laws, hard will. He knew the name. He knew the weight of it.
Adrath de Varn. Grand Duke of Golden Varn.
The handle turned. He saw the door open in the window's corner—he always watched the door, even when his body stood at the glass. A figure eased in with a tray balanced like an offering.
"My Lord," said Viscount Lucien Davenford, pleasant, warm. He was the kind of handsome that looked helpful. Creams and soft red at the collar, gold pin glinting. He crossed the room with a smile that showed teeth but not eyes and set the tray down. His fingers straightened the cup. He counted a beat. He set a folded parchment beside it, wax seal stamped with a lion.
"There is a message," he said lightly, palm touching his chest in that graceful gesture he used when he wanted to look sincere. "Also—moonlight tea. To soothe difficult nights." The smile deepened. "Good night, my lord."
Adrath did not turn. He kept his gaze on the garden, on the pale moon that ran along the window's crossbars. Each time he saw Lucien, the old Adrath's memories surface. The good face. The clean hands. The ledger behind the smile. An affable reformer in public—names remembered, charities funded, small mercies staged. In private: chill punishments through law and debt, pressure on throats you never had to see bruise. Control as pleasure.
A man with two faces. A useful man. A dangerous one kept close. Lion with hyenas, he thought, eyes tracking the door as it shut. Hyenas that sing praises while they measure the meat.
He let out a breath and finally turned, moving in a slow half-circle that never gave his back to the door. He touched the cup. Steam rose, carrying a clean, herbal scent. He almost said, Who drinks tea at night? and then lifted it. Warmth slid through him, softening edges he didn't admit he carried.
"Moonlight tea," he said under his breath, and the words felt like something from the life and this one at once. Even a great lord needs help to sleep.
He sat. The chair took his weight with a small wooden creak. He broke the wax with his thumb and unrolled the parchment. The lion stared up from the ribbon's smear of red. He read. His eyes didn't change, but the muscles along his jaw did.
"This is bad," he said, quiet, to the empty room. He let his head touch the chair's back and watched the ceiling beams fade as the candles died one by one.
His mind slid sideways, as it had done every hour since he woke in this body. Back to rain on windshield glass and wipers that couldn't keep up. Back to tail lights smeared by water. The city had been mean that day—angry drivers, horns, a tight clock. He needed to reach her before they wheeled her in. He needed to say what he had saved. On the back seat, wrapped in butcher paper and string, a violet bouquet lay across a small box. The box held a ring. Two, really. A pair. Simple bands. He had rehearsed a line and hated it, then thrown it away, choosing instead to put the words in his eyes and trust she'd see them.
Traffic jolted. A truck too fast in the wet. The white flash of a grill. The sick roll as tires lost grip. The bouquet lifted, petals torn into the car's air, violet confetti. The pendant's cord snapped free of his throat, swung weightless, stamped a circle on the roof liner as the world turned over itself. Sound became metal and glass and a long, long breath of nothing.
He woke to voices that didn't belong to his world Linen that smelled of soap and smoke. Cold compress on his head. Healers in dark gowns. A maid's startled cry cut off with her hand pressed to her mouth.
"The lord— he's awake!"
He had tried to sit, his right knee answering with a stiff burn that wasn't his. Hands pressed him down. Someone talked about two days. Someone else about fetching the Viscount. The candle flames wagged in a draft. None of it mattered. The crash had the solidity of stone. This had the softness of dream. The pendant on the side table had been the only true thing—his pendant, the exact scar on the metal where Theresa's thumbnail had worried it in the hospital light.
He rubbed it now through his shirt, feeling the small circle of it like a seal he had pressed onto this life whether he wanted it or not.
It has to mean something, he thought. The line rose by itself, the old refrain. If it means nothing, then she—
He swallowed. The tea warmed the hollow in his chest and left the rest untouched.
He let his eyes close for a breath and opened them again. Moonlight cut the room into clean shapes: table, chair, window, garden beyond. Somewhere in the keep, a guard changed places with another; the soft thud of boots told him where the watch was heavy tonight. He filed it without thinking.
He reached for the parchment once more and laid his palm flat over the lion seal he had broken. The old Adrath's instincts spoke in a voice low and certain: set the terms before morning, and no one sets them for you. Another voice, the one that still called her Theresa in the dark, answered: do not let the line you draw erase the man she loved.
He stood. Slow at first, knee testing, shoulder tight. He turned to the door.
"Speak plain," he said to the empty room, trying the words on his tongue. His voice had weight now; it carried.
He lifted the cup again and drank the last of the moonlight tea. The night deepened. The last candle died. Only the garden held its light.