“…What?”

“There is no Padma,” she repeated, slower now. As if it were fact. As if her word alone could erase someone from the world. “You don’t need to worry about her anymore. She seduced a prince, Gabin. She exploited her position - being close to you, being the daughter of your nanny. She used that. And that’s not something the world will forgive easily.”

Gabin shook his head. His heart thrashed.

“No - no, that’s not what happened,” he whispered. “You’re twisting it. She didn’t - ”

“We can’t appear soft,” the Queen interrupted, icy. “We can’t let a breach like this go unpunished. The people must see order restored.”

Her voice was still echoing through the room, but Gabin barely heard her.

It was all turning into white noise - like sound underwater.

His ears rang. His throat burned.

The light from the chandelier above shattered into sharp reflections on the polished floor. Each one too bright, too fractured. It felt like something inside him had cracked and let the cold in.

He tried to breathe.

Nothing moved.

His lungs pressed tight, his chest barely rising. The air was too thick. Too heavy.

His fingers twitched at his sides, scraping uselessly against the seams of his jeans. He felt like he was falling out of his own body - hovering slightly behind himself, watching a boy in a tailored navy jumper quietly come undone.

He stared at the floor. A jagged crack in the marble caught his eye. Crooked. Ugly. Permanent.

And the tears fell.

Not cleanly. Not beautifully. They came fast and quiet and wrong. Blurring the world. Blurring everything.

His heart pulsed wildly - not like a rhythm, not like life. Just noise.

Noise and guilt and grief, pounding against the walls of a body that no longer felt like his.

Padma was gone.

And he had no idea where she was… or who he was without her.

“W-what… what do you mean, Mom?” The words clawed up his throat, broken and breathless. “Where is she? Please - please tell me where she is.”

He stepped forward, but his legs weren’t steady anymore. His voice - already cracked and hoarse from crying - had thinned into something almost unrecognizable. He sounded like a stranger begging for something he wasn’t allowed to want.

The Queen didn’t flinch.

“We sent her and her mother away,” she said plainly. “It’s better this way. For both of you. No more contact.”

Gabin blinked. His vision blurred, not from tears now but from disbelief. His knees buckled slightly as his breath hitched, wheezing through parted lips.

“How… how could you do this to me?” he whispered, shaking his head over and over like that would undo it somehow, like this was just another one of her mind games.

His chest convulsed, and a strangled sound tore from his mouth - something between a sob and a scream. His face crumpled, grief pouring out in ugly, misshapen gasps.

The Queen’s lips pulled downward, her expression turning from icy to vaguely annoyed. As if his tears were inconvenient. As if emotion itself was some uncouth, embarrassing thing that civilized people had grown out of.

“Stop this weeping,” she said sharply, her voice clipped with disgust. “Look at yourself. You’re hysterical.”

She said it like it was a curse. Like she couldn’t fathom why he’d cry at all. Like she hadn’t just exiled the one person who made him feel human.

“One day,” she continued, “you’ll thank me. When you’re king, when you’re standing on the balcony addressing the nation with a wife chosen for you and a crown on your head, you’ll understand that this - all of this - was necessary.”

Gabin didn’t speak. Couldn’t speak. Couldn’t even cry anymore. His throat burned, swollen and hollow, as if all the oxygen had been sucked out of the room.

“So now,” she added with clinical precision, “now that you have no more reason to stay locked away with your books and private tutors, no more girls hiding under your mattress, you will begin Saint-Rémy. It’s time you started mixing with people who understand what it means to be noble. To protect their image. Padma was a distraction - a stain, Gabin. This school will help you repair that.”

He couldn’t hear her. Not really. Her voice reached him like a broadcast from underwater - distant, warped, inhuman.

She stepped back toward the door, giving him one last look that was neither cruel nor kind. Just… void.

“Take a shower. Fix yourself up. Eat something. Louise will be waiting for you outside the door. Camille and the legal team are ready - you’ll write your public address with them.”

She adjusted the sleeve of her suit, then turned and walked out as if nothing had happened. As if she hadn’t just carved out the only real part of his soul and thrown it into the cold.

The door clicked shut behind her.

And then… silence.

For one long, unbearable second, Gabin stood there.

Then the weight of it - all of it - rushed in at once.

His knees gave out.

He dropped to the floor.

Hard.

No ceremony. No grace. Just a seventeen-year-old boy collapsing like the sky had fallen through his chest.

And he broke.

Not in a clean, cinematic way.

But completely.

Tears spilled down his cheeks, soaking into the silk lapel of his sweater. His hands trembled violently in his lap. He folded in on himself, chest heaving, forehead pressed to the icy floor. His sobs weren’t elegant - they were guttural, gasping, raw. The kind that left you hoarse for days. The kind you never spoke of again.

He didn’t care about Saint-Rémy.

He didn’t care about statements or crowns or titles or legacies.

There was no Padma anymore.

So what was the point?