“The Prince has returned!”

Jovine woke with a stunned start when the shrill cry of her maid echoed through the room. Dazed and half awake, she saw the petite girl she grew up with frantically preparing a robe to dress her in.

“Erin? What is it?”

Erin stopped rummaging through the wardrobe and turned wide brown eyes towards the Princess. “Prince Richard is back! He’s out—”

Jovine jolted off the bed, her heart hammering at the news. Ignoring the shocked objections, she sprinted out the door, hardly concerned that she was simply dressed in a thin nightgown that bared her body to the chill in the air.

Richard was back. That was all that mattered.

Her surroundings blurred as she wildly descended the grand marble staircase. She had to see him now, had to hold him in her arms to confirm that he had returned to her alive and well.

The Palace staff bustled around frantically, but Jovine stopped a maid scurrying towards the back and asked breathlessly, “Where is he?

The maid, to her surprise, was crying. With trembling lips, she quivered out, “T-the courtyard, Your Highness.”

Without another word, Jovine ran towards the palace entrance, where the doors were already open, with a crowd of people gathered at the steps.

“Let me through,” she pleaded, a sick feeling constricting her lungs.

Several startled outbursts sounded around her as the crowd parted, but she had no care to listen to them. All she could see was him.

Richard. Standing in the dark and soaked through by the harsh sheet of rain pouring down on him.

Jovine rushed down the steps, indifferent to how the rain drenched her shaking body. With her vision tunneled down to a single point, she started to quicken her pace towards the man she had been waiting endless months for, but the sound of a painful wail stopped her in her tracks.

A few steps away from where her husband stood, Empress Helene crumpled over an encased body she hadn’t noticed before. But, who’s body—

No.

Jovine trudged through the puddles, the freezing water soaking through her torn slippers. When she neared the bawling Empress, she saw what she had feared.

Emperor Alexander de Tristaine was dead.

Jovine covered her mouth in horror at the sight of the lifeless corpse splattered in the mud. Slowly, she turned towards Richard, trembling uncontrollably from the shock. But the sight of him provoked a new sense of terror.

For years she had known him. She even thought she could pride herself in saying she knew him better than most. So, never had she ever thought she would find her husband to be one who was unrecognizable.

He looked the same—almost as if time hadn’t passed at all. His face, his hair, even his clothes. Nothing had changed, yet everything seemed different.

He was a stranger.

As horrible as it was to think, that’s what he felt like to her now as he stood there unresponsive, unfazed by the excruciating lament of his heartbroken mother, or the rotting corpse of his father. Jovine knew he was a cold man, but nothing could prepare her for the pure look of darkness on his face.

Frightened, Jovine hesitated before she took a tentative step towards the man she had been yearning so fiercely for.

“Richard?”

At the sound of her voice, he visibly flinched, and her heart dropped. He had never reacted to her like that before.

Jovine reached out, needing to feel him to assure herself that this man truly was her beloved returning back to her, but Richard tensed until she thought one touch from her would shatter him. She quickly retracted her hand.

His father is dead, and he’s in a state of mourning. Of course he could act like this, she told herself. But it didn’t soothe the sting.

Swallowing the lump in her throat, Jovine opened her mouth to attempt speaking again, but the sudden high-pitched bray of a wildly approaching horse stopped her.

Arriving with the rumbling sound of clapping thunder, a large, dark hooded figure arrived at the Palace gates. With a bark of order to his horse, the figure made its way over, stopping at Richard’s side to dismount hastily.

“Richard,” a deep voice sounded underneath the dark hood.

Richard’s face distorted in loathing. With a tense nod, her husband gestured his head towards the castle and walked past a disoriented Jovine.

Out of pure instinct, she grasped onto his arm, not wanting him to leave her like that.

Richard’s arm trembled, as if he wanted to shake off her touch. “Not now, Jovine,” he forced out through clenched teeth.

Shaking to her core, she released his arm, and he marched away from her without another glance.

Jovine watched him disappear into the Palace, the shivers consuming her body pounding in erratic beats. She wanted to disintegrate in the rain and wake to find that this was all a terrible dream. She wanted to wake in the arms of her warm husband or even to find that he hadn’t returned yet. Not like this.

The weight of a heavy cloak dropping onto her shoulders pulled her out of her thoughts. Alarmed, she looked behind her to find that the dark figure was a man with silver hair and glowing amber eyes.

“Please make your way back inside, Your Highness. I fear the rain will come to ail you.”

Jovine could only stare back at the towering stranger, who gazed back with unreadable measure. When it was clear she had no words for him, he bowed to her before following Richard into the Palace.

Standing in the rain with the grieving Empress and the remains of the late Emperor, Jovine was left in a state of shock.

I don’t understand, Jovine thought. What has happened?

Shrieks of panic echoed in her ears, and distantly, she watched the Empress collapse into the puddles of rain flooding the Palace grounds.

Closing her eyes, the tears she had thought were droplets of rain swimming down her face, fell faster. In this darkness, she could swear she heard the fractures of her heart cracking along with the thunder.

She didn’t know it yet, but this was the first of many ways in which she lost her husband.

As her body frosted over in pain, Jovine fell, and the darkness enveloped her.

Until there was nothing.

Nothing, but despair.