They buried the Goddess Queen beneath the orchard she loved — the garden where dawn first found Lumiel's laughter clinging to tangled branches and half-buried roots.
It was early spring when they laid her down. The ash tree under which Lumiel had learned the names of worms and grass now sheltered a stone tomb so pale it seemed carved from a frozen tear.
Hundreds gathered that day. Nobles draped in heavy black silks lined the marble paths in tense, rigid rows. The orchard's blossoms dared to bloom anyway — as if defying the hush that pressed down like a suffocating hand.
Lumiel stood at the edge of the grave, Caelum just behind him, his ever-shadow. The boy prince's boots sank into the damp earth, soaking the silk hem of his mourning cloak. His small fingers twisted in the folds of Caelum's sleeve — gripping tight enough that the stable boy's arm would bear faint bruises by dusk.
The priests sang. The air hummed with incense and the distant wail of flutes. Above it all, the sky was a blank, endless gray — no sun to be seen.
Thalior knelt beside the tomb. His hair, once dark as a raven's wing, seemed shot through with new white in the weak morning light. His eyes never left the stone, as if daring it to open, to give her back. But death had never been a thing even kings could command.
When the last hymn faded into the orchard's hush, Lumiel stepped forward. His feet stumbled once in the soft earth — Caelum caught his elbow before he fell. He pulled free, straightened his spine. He could almost hear her voice in the wind.
Stand tall, my dawnstar. You are the sun. The wind bows to you.
He pressed a single bloom — a white lily, shivering in the chill — against the polished stone. The tomb's surface was cold enough to burn.
"Mother," he whispered, the word cracking like old glass, "I will keep the garden blooming. I promise."
A hush fell over the gathered lords and ladies. Some wept openly. Others turned away, ashamed of tears. Only Thalior remained unmoved — a statue carved from grief and unspent rage.
The burial did not end with the priests' final words. In Aetheris, mourning was ritual — a hundred days of silence, a thousand candles burned from dusk to dawn, fresh garlands laid each dawn upon the orchard path.
Each day Lumiel came, never missing a dawn. Caelum trailed behind him, carrying baskets of blooms — lilies, pale roses, vines of star-bells Seraphine had loved to weave into her hair.
Some days the boy prince sat cross-legged in the orchard dirt, back against the cold marble, whispering secrets to the grave as if she might yet answer.
"Today Caelum tried to teach me to whistle," he murmured one gray morning, breath fogging the polished stone. "I can't do it right. He says I blow like a startled goose."
Behind him, Caelum snorted, dropping another wreath of flowers at the tomb's base. "You do. Like this — pffft!"
Lumiel turned, mouth curling into the faintest smile. "You're supposed to protect my honor, stable boy."
"I'm protecting the orchard's ears, Your Highness. If you keep that up, the trees might uproot themselves and flee."
Their laughter was soft — a thread of gold against the iron hush of mourning. Neither noticed Thalior watching from the distant path, cloak heavy over his broad shoulders, shadow falling long across the orchard grass.
At night, the king's chambers echoed with a different silence. Lumiel's small bed, once a nest of warmth and half-read storybooks, felt hollow now — sheets too crisp, pillows too cold. The whole palace, so vast, so echoing, seemed to breathe grief in and out like an old, sick hound.
One night he found Thalior in the council hall. The king sat alone at the head of the long obsidian table, maps unfurled before him like pale entrails. Iron candelabras guttered in the drafts that slid under the ancient doors.
Lumiel hovered in the doorway, bare feet cold on the polished stone.
"Father?" His voice was small, softer than the whisper of the wind rattling the stained glass.
Thalior did not look up. His hand traced the borders of the kingdom — Aetheris, marked in gold ink, a shining heart surrounded by a dozen ragged scars: rival thrones, border wars, hungry baronies.
Lumiel stepped forward. The firelight threw his shadow long across the war table.
"Father… can you come sit with me? Just tonight?"
A pause. Long enough that Lumiel's small heart fluttered like a trapped sparrow.
Then Thalior's voice — low, rough with sleepless hours: "There is work, Lumiel."
The prince's hands curled into fists. "Mother would not want you alone."
Now Thalior looked up — and the weight in his eyes made Lumiel flinch. Cold iron. No dawn warmth. No orchard sun.
"Your mother is gone because I was not strong enough." The words fell like dropped stones. "Strength is all that remains now."
Lumiel's mouth opened — but whatever he meant to say caught in his throat like a thorn.
Thalior turned back to the maps. Dismissed him without a word.
The door swung shut behind Lumiel with a sigh that echoed through the empty hall.
Weeks blurred into months. Spring crept toward summer. The orchard bloomed riotous, an insult to grief that clung like a shroud to marble and velvet drapes.
In those months, Lumiel grew quiet. He no longer raced barefoot through the palace halls. His laughter softened, edged by the steel his father forged in silence.
But Caelum would not let him sink entirely into marble shadows.
One dawn, they stole away from the orchard path and climbed the old parapets overlooking the eastern fields. Lumiel perched on the crumbling stone, boots dangling over a drop that could swallow him whole. Caelum sat beside him, shoulders brushing.
"Do you ever wonder," Caelum asked, picking at a crack in the parapet, "why the orchard grows so wild? Even now?"
Lumiel's eyes traced the riot of blossom below — white and gold, soft as his mother's hair. "She said… the garden would keep blooming. Because that's how the world remembers love."
Caelum nodded, solemn. "Then let's make it bigger. So big the whole kingdom drowns in blossoms. So big no one forgets her."
Lumiel turned, a faint spark catching behind the gold of his eyes. "Together?"
"Together."
They clasped wrists, a warrior's grip, the orchard breeze catching their hair.
At dusk, Lumiel visited the orchard alone.
He knelt by the tomb, fingertips brushing the cool stone.
"I will keep my promise, Mother. I will stand tall. I will not let them break the garden."
In the hush of twilight, he almost imagined he heard her voice — not a whisper, not a ghost, but a memory tucked safe behind his ribs.
A dawnstar never dims. Not truly.
And far away, within the fortress walls, Thalior's generals sharpened blades and inked secret oaths — seeds of betrayal sowing roots deep into the orchard's soft, unsuspecting earth.