The clock struck seven, its chimes hollow in the study where Adrian sat unmoving. Papers lay across his desk, untouched. The ink in his pen had dried into a clot. Since Evelyn's death, words — his greatest weapon — had abandoned him.
Grief was no simple ache; it was a boulder on his chest. Every morning he woke with it pressing down, every night it pulled him into restless dreams where Evelyn's laughter echoed and then faded, leaving only silence. He longed for her voice, her hand upon his arm, the quiet certainty she carried. Without her, the house felt like an empty stage after the actors had gone.
But the council did not pause for grief. New Albion marched forward, bills passed, decrees drafted, alliances tested. Even in mourning, Adrian could feel the weight of politics tugging him back. If he stayed away much longer, he risked being written out of the very future he had fought to build.
And so, at last, he dressed in black and forced himself into the carriage that would take him to the council chamber. His reflection in the glass startled him: hair disheveled, eyes sunken, the faint tremor in his jaw as though it struggled to hold itself firm. This was not the man who had once commanded the chamber with his fire. This was a widower dragged into daylight before he was ready.
The chamber doors opened, and a hush fell. Men turned their heads, whispers rustled like dry leaves. Sympathy painted their faces, but beneath it Adrian sensed something else — hesitation, pity, and the faint glimmer of suspicion.
He walked to his seat with measured steps, spine straight, refusing to let them see him falter. His voice, when he finally spoke, was hoarse but steady.
"Gentlemen, New Albion cannot wait for grief to run its course. Neither, therefore, can I."
It was a short address, a shadow of his usual thunder. Still, some nodded, some looked away. But one man met his gaze unflinching: Sebastian Crowne, seated across the chamber, his expression perfectly neutral, his dark eyes unreadable.
Adrian felt the old fire stir faintly in his chest — hatred, rivalry, the knowledge that Crowne watched for weakness like a hawk circling prey. That, more than duty, kept him upright. He would not let Crowne win.
After the session, the corridors buzzed. Colleagues murmured condolences, pressing his hand, offering platitudes. Adrian accepted each one with a polite nod, though his stomach twisted at the undertones in their voices. He caught fragments as he passed: "Tragic business… so sudden… some say she was not herself…"
Rumors. He had heard them before but dismissed them as idle talk. Now, in the aftermath, he felt their claws digging in. Evelyn's memory was being twisted, their love reduced to whispers of scandal.
He returned home that evening more weary than before. Sitting in Evelyn's chair, he pressed his forehead to his palms. He had gone back to the council, yes — but he had not returned whole. His grief clung to him like ash, and the world, ever merciless, already conspired to use it against him.
Still, he whispered into the silence, "I will not let them take you from me, Evelyn. Not your memory, not your place in history."
The words trembled, but in them was the seed of resolve.
The lamps burned low in Adrian's study when the butler announced Lord Gray. Adrian almost sent him away— his grief was raw, his head aching — but something in Gray's voice carried through the hall, firm and unyielding.
"I will see him," Adrian said at last.
Gray entered with the solemnity of a man accustomed to both power and sorrow. His hair, once dark, was streaked with silver, and the deep lines at his eyes spoke of nights spent staring at ceilings much like Adrian had of late.
"I should have come sooner," Gray began, settling into the chair opposite. "But grief is a private country. No map, no guide, no law of return. One must walk it alone."
Adrian looked down at his hands, knuckles white against the armrest. "And yet here you are."
"Because I know its roads," Gray said softly. "I lost my mother at fifteen. My wife at thirty-seven. There are wounds that never close. You learn only how to live around them."
Adrian's throat tightened. He had heard of Gray's losses in passing, but the man rarely spoke of them. To hear him now was to glimpse the beating heart beneath the statesman's armor.
Gray leaned forward, his eyes sharp. "Listen to me, Adrian. Grief makes us wish the world would pause. But it does not. And if you pause too long, the world moves on without you. The vultures will circle. Crowne, especially, is watching for you to stumble."
Adrian's jaw clenched at the name.
Gray's voice grew steady, deliberate. "Evelyn loved you, yes? Then she saw what you were meant for. You dishonor her if you let sorrow make you small. Take your grief with you into the chamber. Wear it like armor, not chains. Speak, even with a broken voice — it will remind them you are human, but not defeated."
Adrian closed his eyes. For the first time since Evelyn's death, something stirred within him that was not despair. Not hope — not yet — but a flicker of resolve.
"You make it sound simple," he murmured.
Gray gave a dry smile. "It isn't. But it is necessary. I crawled back to my place when my wife died. And when I spoke, even in pain, they listened. They will listen to you, too — if you remind them who you are."
Silence stretched between them, heavy yet strangely steadying. Adrian thought of Evelyn's hand resting on her stomach, of her quiet faith in him. He thought of Crowne's watchful eyes, of the whispers already creeping like smoke.
When he finally spoke, his voice carried a fragile steel. "You're right. She would not forgive me if I yielded now."
Gray rose, placing a hand on Adrian's shoulder. "Then don't. Grief will never leave you. But neither will ambition. Learn to carry both, Vale. That is the price of leadership."
And with that, he departed, leaving Adrian in the dim glow of the study, a man still broken but no longer undone.