Silvania drank the concoction Dyan had left for her upon his departure, seated in her daughter's office. She did so with her usual introspective calm. Despite the bitterness, she continued to drink: it was the medicine that kept her steady during the day... and also because she felt that, if she abandoned it, her time—just now, when they needed her most—would stop.
That strange fear, the silent certainty that the end was near, had been gathering in her soul, especially since Dyan's departure. There were no more conversations in the garden, no more evening strolls. Tea sets were now just forgotten ornaments on a shelf. Her days, instead, had been filled with her daughter's hardened face, heavy with rage and silences. Sometimes they understood each other, other times they seemed to drift apart as if the simple act of being together in a room was suffocating. And yet, Silvania remained by her side. Because she knew, though Eleanor wouldn't say it, that she needed her.
The morning was clear, and the rays of a bright, aseptic sun fell upon Eleanor, who was writing with such force on a parchment that she had already had to replace it several times. The insistent scratching sound of the quill on the paper made Silvania look up.
"Are you planning to tear up all the parchments in the palace?"
Eleanor didn't stop as she replied: "That third-rate mage thinks he can write to me as if I were an apprentice in his trickster's tower. I should forbid his deliveries." She crumpled the parchment with disdain and took a fresh sheet. "He's taking advantage of my kindness."
Silvania smiled. After weeks, she finally saw some life in her daughter's eyes. "Oh, really? And what did that third-rate mage say?"
Eleanor thumped the desk with the quill, leaving a hole in the paper, before looking up, irritated. "Can you believe it?" she laughed, with cutting irony. "The nerve of him, he thinks I'm writing to him because I care. What do I have to write to him to make him understand that I don't? Did leaving ruin his brain? Maybe people in the countryside get slower."
Silvania lowered her gaze. She liked to see some fire in her daughter, but she preferred honesty to unnecessary cruelty. "Don't insult him gratuitously. If you're going to write to him, tell him the truth."
The young queen stared at her from the desk. "How long do you plan to stay on his side? I am your daughter. He... he is nothing to us anymore."
"That's what you've said since he left. But for me, he is still a very dear friend," Silvania replied with serenity. Her voice held no rage, but a contained melancholy. "You read the letters I had on my desk. Even so, are you going to continue being so stubborn?"
She held the cup firmly, as if thereby disguising the fragility growing within her.
Eleanor resumed writing. The words flew out like darts, hurtful and swift. Each line was a veiled accusation, each phrase a poisoned reproach.
She knew Dyan wasn't going to respond. He had stated it clearly in his last letter: "I will not write to you again." A final line. A closure that Eleanor couldn't hide... nor bear.
And yet, she wrote. Day after day. Sometimes two letters. Sometimes none. Some she burned. Others she sent, as if the mere act of sending them was an act of defiance. Or desperation.
"What do you hope to achieve with that?" Silvania asked, still holding the cup.
Eleanor didn't answer. The parchment trembled under her hand, not from rage, but from something deeper, quieter. Her breathing was unsteady.
"He said he wouldn't respond," she finally whispered. "He told me. And still... I keep writing. I can't... I can't stop."
"Why?"
Eleanor lowered her head. Her voice, when she spoke, was a broken murmur. "Because if I stop writing... it's like accepting that he's gone. That he's not coming back. And I don't know... I don't know how to bring him back. How can I do it if he can't live in the shadow of my own crown?"
Silence filled the office.
Silvania slowly stood up. She walked to her, unhurriedly, and placed a hand on her shoulder. "You have to decide, Eleanor," she said calmly, but firmly. "You can't keep sending him letters filled with hate. Do you expect him to return the same? To respond with rage so you have an excuse to hate him too?"
Eleanor pressed her lips together, biting back the pain. "It's not hate I feel," she murmured, trembling.
"Then write to him honestly. If you don't want to love, start forgetting. But if you're going to continue, if you're going to write, do it without lying to yourself. Because if not... you'll only hurt yourself. You. Not him."
Silvania withdrew her hand, but Eleanor didn't move. The parchment remained before her. The ink dried, trapping words she didn't fully feel, words she couldn't avoid either.
She wanted to write honestly. She really did. But she couldn't quell the rage. Not yet.
And that tore her apart more than the abandonment.
That same night, she opened one of the drawers of her desk, where a silver flute rested, covered by a thin layer of dust, and she remembered...
The music room still had no curtains. Leaves fell slowly onto the marble floor of the side conservatory, and the wind whistled in, fresh but not cold. Eleanor held a silver flute between her fingers, as if it were a newly discovered object. Dyan, sitting beside her on the bench, tuned an old lyre he had restored himself with the help of the palace artisans.
"You're out of tune," she said, smiling superiorly.
"I'm tuning my own way," he replied, without looking up. "The wind changes the pitch of things. Royalty should know that."
She snorted softly. Not with anger. Playfully.
"Is that a hint for me not to sing today?"
"No. It's a plea for you to. Even the worst queen sings better than me."
Eleanor burst out laughing. She laid the flute on the bench and leaned towards him, amused. "And what if I sing really badly, but you pretend you like it anyway?"
"I will. As I do with everything of yours." He looked at her then. With that tenderness of his that needed no flourishes. "Because I like it when you forget to be queen for a few minutes."
She lowered her gaze. She blushed. It wasn't usual for her.
"And I like you when you stop talking as if the world were in your hands."
Dyan laughed. And played a soft chord. Out of tune, yes. But warm.
Eleanor began to sing.
No one interrupted them that afternoon. No one brought reports or parchments. There were no servants, no duties, no shadows between them. Just the soft music and the autumn wind, whistling as if it held a secret.
The silver flute remained in the same place, inside the locked drawer. Eleanor hadn't touched it again.
-------------------------------------------------------
When night fell, the candles weren't yet lit, but the sky shed a dull blue light over the walls. Eleanor had double-locked the door. She ordered no one to disturb her.
The music room was covered in dust. A forgotten room, among many, that had been her refuge as a child. She would hide there when she wanted to disappear between etiquette lessons or dreams of freedom. Now she returned to that place like one entering an open tomb.
On the aged wooden sideboard, she placed the silver flute. She looked at it for a long time, as if even moving it were a crime.
Finally, she took it in her hands, with the same delicacy with which one holds a withered flower. She sat on the low stool and stared into space for several minutes. She didn't think about papers or advice. She didn't think about her mother or the court. Only about that last letter. About the line that hurt the most:
"I will not write to you again."
She placed the flute to her lips. Inhaled deeply.
She blew.
Nothing.
She blew again. A harsh, twisted, off-key murmur sounded.
She closed her eyes. She tried to remember the melody Dyan played every autumn to make her laugh. The one he said imitated the sound of falling leaves. She tried to follow it with her fingers, but her trembling hand only knew how to fail.
A broken note.
Another.
Then, tears fell without warning. A single one at first, then many. They struck the silver like a bitter out-of-season drizzle. She dropped the flute, which hung from her lap, and succumbed to a sorrowful cry, that of a woman alone because she had given up making music for herself, for her, and for him.