Chapter 4:
[Seraphina's POV]
Even when he was present, he never made an effort to lift a finger, treating the realm as if it were a toy he had grown tired of, something to be set aside and forgotten until it demanded his attention once more. And even when Aurelia came along, the both of them simply left everything to me while doing as they pleased, disappearing for weeks at a time to one of the country estates while I remained trapped within the stone walls of the palace, buried under the endless responsibilities they had abandoned.
I had served them both, sacrificed my youth and my energy and my very identity to keep the kingdom functioning, and this was my reward.
Being chased from within a carriage through a blizzard, only to plunge off a cliff right after, now forced to struggle pitifully until death in this frozen wilderness.
If not because of him... I said while silently glancing at Sebastian, a man I had long since branded my most loyal aid. I might've died before now.
Moreover, if not for my late husband, dying unexpectedly in the war against the demon folk forces, I still would have been forced to carry on such a heavy task indefinitely.
Rather than a queen, I would've become a beast of burden dressed in silk and jewels, working myself into an early grave for a man who had long since stopped looking at me with anything resembling affection.
To think a time would come when I would feel relieved at my late husband's demise. The admission shamed me, even now, even after everything.
I wanted to chuckle at the absurdity of it all, at the twisted path my life had taken, but my lungs hurt so much that I simply could not.
The cold air seared my throat with every shallow breath, that and the fact that my body was simply too weak to do so.
The energy required for even that small expression of dark humor was beyond my reach, and so I simply lay there in Sebastian's arms, a burden and a witness to my own slow decline.
Within those vast castle walls, with their endless corridors and echoing chambers, filled with thousands of servants, to think the only one who truly cared for me was the very man now risking his life to protect mine.
The irony was not lost on me. He possessed no noble titles, medals of honour, nor backing from any powerful house or influential family.
He was but a simple servant of mine who had been by my side through it all, through the endless days of ruling and the lonely nights of contemplation, through the quiet moments of despair and the rare flashes of contentment.
He had brought me tea when I forgot to eat, had stood guard at my door even when he didn't need to, had listened to my worries without judgment when the weight of the crown grew too heavy to bear alone.
And I, in my obliviousness, had accepted his devotion as simply part of the natural order, a service rendered by a servant, nothing more, nothing less. How blind I had been.
I stared at him in silence, watching as the snow collected in his dark hair, his breath forming clouds that were instantly snatched away by the wind.
Even then, his arms held me with a strength that seemed to defy his own exhaustion.
Without knowing when, a light smile crossed my features, a fragile thing that flickered and faded almost as soon as it appeared, but it had been there nevertheless.
Even now when I could not offer him anything, whether protection, wealth, nor even a warm place to rest his weary body, he still refused to give up on me.
He trudged forward through the deepening snow with no destination in sight, nor guarantee of survival, with every reason to simply set me down and save himself, and yet he carried on, driven by something I could not name but desperately wanted to understand.
If even he was this persistent about me, then what right did I have to give up on myself, I thought to myself.
The realization settled into my chest like a small flame, fragile and flickering but undeniably present.
If this man, this servant with no title and no power and no reason beyond his own inexplicable loyalty, could believe I was worth saving, then perhaps I was.
Perhaps the years of thankless service, the betrayal of those I loved, the loss of my crown and my home and my future, none of it meant that I was worthless.
Perhaps Aurelia's judgment, the court's judgment, even my own harsh self-assessment, could be wrong.
The thought was terrifying in its implications, for if I had been wrong about myself, then what else had I been wrong about? What other truths had I buried beneath layers of self-doubt and resignation?
It was not long before I felt my eyelids growing heavier as exhaustion threatened to overwhelm me, the small flame of resolve no match for the crushing weight of the cold and my injured body.
I tried to fight against it, clinging to consciousness, in an attempt to remain present in this moment with the man who carried me through the storm, but I was simply too weak to emerge victorious.
Nevertheless, if we were able to survive this hurdle, if by some miracle we found shelter and warmth and a path forward, as my eyes grew weak and his image slowly ingrained itself into my mind, burned there like a brand that no amount of time could erase.
I promised myself that from now on, I would live for no one else but him. Not for the kingdom that had cast me out, nor for the memory of a husband who had never truly valued me.
And certainly not for the approval of the kingdoms nobles who saw me as nothing more than a placeholder.
But For him. For this man who had given everything when he had every reason to walk away. He would be my new reason to live, a man who was after my own heart in ways I was only beginning to understand.
And then, I slowly fell unconscious, the world fading to black around the edges as the last of my strength deserted me, as for whether we would truly make it out of this alive, I had no idea.
All I could do was trust in the arms that held me, in the steady rhythm of his heartbeat that I could feel even through the layers of our frozen clothing.
I belived in the impossible, inexplicable devotion of a simple servant who had somehow become the most important person in my world.
As the snow continued to fall, the wind howling all around us, I slipped away into darkness, leaving my fate and my future in the hands of the only man who had ever truly seen me, Sebastian.