The morning light spilled across the high windows of the solar as Eva and Lucarion finished breakfast. Their conversation had been short, punctuated by the soft clink of silverware and the distant rustle of servants. Lucarion outlined the week ahead—engagements, ceremonies, lessons on protocol, private meetings. His tone was calm, efficient, unyielding in its rhythm.
Eva asked only what she needed to: what she must wear, how she must behave. Lucarion answered with crisp clarity. She accepted the structure without protest—steady as a road underfoot.
After breakfast, he rose and said simply: "Come with me. There is something I would show you."
They walked through the quieter halls of his private wing. He opened a door she had not yet seen, revealing a long gallery washed in morning light. Paintings lined the walls—landscapes, portraits, studies of both myth and memory. Some were centuries old; others smelled faintly of fresh varnish. Small brass plaques were fixed beneath each frame, neat type announcing the work and hand.
"I procured these personally," he said. "You may visit whenever you wish."
Eva didn't miss the weight beneath the words. He rarely opened private spaces. This was permission—deliberate, meaningful.
She stepped forward, letting the hush of the gallery draw her deeper.
The first painting she saw was impossible to ignore.
An enormous canvas dominated the leftmost wall: a great black horse reared, muscles coiled as though carved from smoke and thunder—a wild force that refused mastery. Atop it clung a woman—naked, wild, her body thrown into an ecstasy that felt almost violent. Her hair streamed behind her in a fiery torrent, eyes closed, surrendering completely to the frenzy that possessed her.
Nothing about the scene was restrained.
It was abandon made flesh.
The plaque beneath read: Frenzy of Exultations — Władysław Podkowiński.
The rawness of it startled her.
It felt indecent—not in its nudity, but in its honesty.
As though she had stumbled into someone else's unguarded soul.
And the thought struck her, unsettling and unbidden:
He chose this. He keeps this. What part of him answers to this?
But another question rose beneath it, quieter, sharper: What part of her did it reach?
Because the longer she stared, the harder it became to pretend she felt nothing.
The horse's violent motion, the woman's surrender to something fierce and consuming—it struck a place in her she did not have words for. A place she'd kept sealed beneath discipline and expectation. A place that responded not with fear, but with heat.
Her throat tightened.
Her palms prickled.
She felt suddenly too aware of her own breath.
Was it envy she felt?
Curiosity?
Recognition?
The painting did not merely show abandon—it demanded the viewer confront their own lack of it.
And she hated, briefly, how deeply it unsettled her.
Hated more that part of her leaned toward it.
She moved on, pulse still unsteady.
A solitary figure stood atop a jagged peak in the next canvas, his back to the viewer, facing a world drowned in fog. Mountains rose and vanished beneath the shifting mist, a landscape half-formed.
The man's stance was calm, resolute, unafraid of the vastness before him.
But what might have seemed like conquest was actually solitude.
The world wasn't revealed—it was concealed by the mist.
There were no answers.
The plaque read: Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog — Caspar David Friedrich.
This was Lucarion too. A watcher on the edge of the world. But how much of it could be controlled?
She lingered, feeling the contradiction between the two paintings—power disciplined vs. power unbound—and wondered how both lived inside him.
When they left, the room lingered in her mind long after.
—
The next morning unfolded in a blur of introductions, protocol lessons, and strategic guidance. Lucarion's voice remained even, measured. Eva followed, absorbing what she must, feeling the gaze of the court on her as she passed. Some regarded her with curiosity. Others with calculation. A few with something colder.
By mid-afternoon, when she was at last released from obligations, her feet led her toward the quieter corridor without conscious decision.
She wanted—needed—to return to the gallery.
As she walked, a low whisper from a half-cracked door caught her attention. Two voices, urgent though muted. She could not hear the words, only the edge in them. She tucked the moment away, a mental note she would not forget.
When she stepped into the gallery again, the room welcomed her with its quiet warmth.
She drifted deeper this time, exploring corners she hadn't reached before.
A small canvas near the far window drew her in: a scholar bent over celestial charts, his hand poised above a globe. Sunlight fell over his shoulder in a soft, reverential glow, illuminating the pages before him.
Knowledge as discipline.
Knowledge as control.
The plaque read: The Astronomer — Johannes Vermeer.
Only a few steps away, the world changed.
A river stretched beneath a sweep of deep blue night. Stars burned above—and trembled in the water below, perfect reflections broken by the faintest ripple. Across the river, soft lamps glowed, their golden paths wavering on the surface like fragile veins of light.
Eva barely registered the couple walking along the shore. Their presence blurred into insignificance the longer she looked.
What she saw instead was Lucarion.
Not as one of the lovers.
But as the river itself: Steady on the surface. Holding its depths quiet. Trembling only in the places where light touched it.
A stillness that was not still at all—merely contained.
The plaque read: Starry Night Over the Rhône — Vincent van Gogh.
Something tightened low in her chest.
This painting held his longing—the part of himself he kept locked behind discipline. The quiet ache of someone who watched connection from a distance, never entering the scene.
She lingered long before moving on.
At the far end of the gallery hung a darker, massive canvas. A titan loomed over a scattered landscape, villages small beneath its shadow. Panic churned below, but the giant was not charging—not roaring. It simply existed, heavy with its own isolated burden.
The plaque read: The Colossus — Francisco Goya.
Eva studied it in silence. It did not strike her as monstrous, only lonely—an echo of a life too large to be held entirely in compassion. A season of someone's existence, she thought.
Perhaps his.
Near it, a procession of mounted figures moved through a shadowed landscape—solemn men, composed and grave, their posture adherent to duty more than vanity.
The plaque beneath read: The Just Judges — Panel from the Ghent Altarpiece.
Here was his discipline again. His precision. His unyielding sense of order.
The gallery felt different now—not merely a room of curated works, but a confession painted in oil and shadow.
She stood in the fading afternoon, feeling the outlines of a man who had shown her this place. She was beginning to understand what that meant.
—
The last light of dusk faded from the windows as servants cleared the dining room. Lucarion's movements were precise, deliberate.
"If you would, join me," he said softly.
Eva followed him into the study, her mind still full of canvas and color. Lucarion closed the door behind them, crossed to the desk, and withdrew a folded letter sealed in unfamiliar wax.
"This came for you," he said. "From your mother."
For a moment she couldn't breathe.
She opened the letter with shaking hands, her mother's script leaping into life after twenty-five silent years. No excuses, no explanations—only love, steady and certain.
Lucarion waited as she read, neither pressing nor withdrawing, his restraint somehow more intimate than comfort.
When she finished, she whispered, "Thank you."
He inclined his head, then added, "If you wish, I can deliver your reply to her before she arrives."
The offer was practical, efficient—but beneath the practicality lay something quieter, something like care.
"You have returned to me something I believed forever lost," she said, voice soft but steady.
Something flickered behind his eyes—gone almost before she caught it.
Later, alone in her chambers, she smoothed the letter gently on the table. And as she lay down, she understood that Lucarion's measured restraint, the quiet power he offered, and the unexpected tenderness of this gesture were forming their own kind of memory.
She dared not name it kindness.
But she felt its outline as surely as she felt her mother's script beneath her fingertips.