Winter deepened.
Days bled into weeks, weeks into months. The snow never melted, only shifted from white to grey beneath the boots of soldiers and servants.
Aedric was gone more often than he was present, to the border keeps, the barracks, and the council chambers that never seemed to empty. When he returned, it was usually at night, smelling of steel and frost, his face drawn and unreadable.
They shared a table but not a life.
Polite words, distant meals, two strangers wearing crowns.
At first, Maria had waited for a gesture, for warmth, for anything that might bridge the space between them. But time taught her that some walls were not built of stone but of habit.
He spoke to her with courtesy, never cruelty, but the distance stayed. He never touched her, never demanded what was his by law or crown. and never came to her chambers. and she never asked why. Their unspoken peace became its own kind of devotion: cold, but dependable. It became their unspoken truce.
Maria spent her mornings with the census ledgers he had granted her. She corrected the figures, traced the movement of grain and coin, and found quiet satisfaction in the numbers no one else seemed to understand.
In the afternoons she walked the outer gardens, where the snow gathered like a secret no one dared touch. The guards bowed as she passed but never met her eyes. The world of men went on without her, with wars planned, alliances drawn, and decisions sealed.
At night, she prepared for the ritual.
It came every lunar cycle, as it had since her birth, a covenant between her and what lingered inside her. She could hide from the priests, from her husband, from the world, but never from that vow.
When the moon turned full, she locked the doors, drew the curtains, and lit a single silver candle. A bowl of water stood on the floor before her, a mirror of stillness.
She did not have to call him. Eldrin was already there, a presence that slipped through the stone walls, a concentration of shadow in the deepest corner of her chamber. He was the anchor she used to perform the rite, his ancient, cold essence stabilising the wildness of her own fire.
She whispered the old words, not spells, not prayers, but something between the two and touched her palm to the surface. Light rippled outward, faint and blue-white.
The pain came next: a tightening in her chest, a heat along her spine, as though the magic was testing her resolve. She endured it silently, keeping her breathing slow.
It was her binding. Her curse. Her inheritance.
When it ended, she always felt hollow and clean, like winter rain washing through ash.
Sometimes, Maria would stay by the bowl of water long after the light had faded. She would look toward the corner where Eldrin waited, letting the stillness of his being wash over her. He was the only remnant of her past life, the only one who truly knew the weight of her silver blood. The only one who knew she was a queen hiding a terrible power.
Then she would wipe the traces away, unlock the doors, and return to her bed before dawn.The fire had long died down, leaving Maria's chamber in the deep, freezing cold of a Northern night. Maria was awake, sitting wrapped in furs near the window, the faint moonlight barely outlining the frost on the glass. She had dismissed Mara hours ago.
She didn't need to call him. The air in the deepest shadow of the room coalesced; the scent of ozone, earth, and something impossibly cold a scent she recognized as home.
"You came," Maria breathed, her voice a fragile sound of profound relief. She spoke to the shadow with a quiet intimacy reserved only for him.
Eldrin stepped forward, his form taking on a greater density, a darker silhouette against the dim room. "You knew I would, Maria."
Maria stood and walked a few careful paces toward him, stopping well short of the area where he stood but close enough for her words to carry the full weight of her feeling.
"I grow weary, Eldrin. These months are a constant performance," she confessed, her voice thick with fatigue and suppressed emotion. She looked at him, and the longing in her eyes was palpable, a testament to the fact that he was her true anchor. "I need to know you are real."
He paused, a palpable hesitation in his presence. "I am bound to your secrets, little flame. I am real only in the parts of you they cannot touch."
"Tell me you have not thought of me," she challenged, her golden eyes dark with emotion, daring him to lie. "Tell me these months of silence haven't tortured you as much as they have tortured me."
Eldrin's form shifted, a low, guttural vibration that was his true expression, a resonance of profound sympathy and shared suffering. "You know better, Sunlight. I see every breath you take. That is my torture. Being forced to watch."
She held his gaze, the silence stretching taut with all the love she could never speak aloud. She was content simply to see him, to feel the comfort of his unique, cold presence. She didn't move to touch him, but every line of her body was focused on him, radiating an unwavering devotion.
"I sit beside him, Eldrin, and all I can think is that the heart I pledged in the sunlight belongs only to the shadow I see at midnight," she confessed, the whispered words a private vow of love that the King could never claim.
His shadowy presence intensified slightly, a silent acknowledgement of her profound honesty.
"I must go, Maria," he said, his voice dropping to a final, definitive murmur. "Be strong. I will not doom you."
He receded, merging back into the deep, loyal shadows that knew their place.
Maria sank onto the furs, wrapping them tight around herself, burying her face. She felt the emptiness where he had been, but the core of her spirit felt renewed by their brief, loving contact.
Sometimes, while she worked by candlelight, she would hear the King's footsteps pass her door, slow, steady, never stopping. And she wondered if he ever thought of her at all.
But she never asked. She had learnt that some silences were safer than answers.