☕ Support the story → ko-fi.com/cielomilo

Join the Circle of Firstlight 💫

Chapter 10

The Years Between

Elisana left the palace at dawn.

There were no royal announcements, no ceremonial farewells, no grand procession of guards.
Only silence — the kind that follows after a long storm, when even the wind seems afraid to stir.

She walked through the silver gates alone, her veil brushing the morning mist. The air smelled faintly of rain and lilies — the same fragrance that once clung to the palace gardens where she used to wait for him.
But this time, no one came running after her.

Behind her, the palace loomed — vast, gleaming, and heartless. Before her stretched the long road to De Claire, veiled in fog and memory.

As the carriage rolled away, Elisana did not look back.

The Return to De Claire

The sea greeted her before the manor did — wide, endless, whispering against the cliffs like an old friend. The Grand Duchy of De Claire was older than the empire itself, a place of quiet seas and ancient halls wrapped in ivy and solitude.

Her father met her at the steps.
Laurence Jan De Claire said nothing at first — only took her trembling hand in his and brushed his thumb against her ring finger, where the imperial band had once rested.
“It’s time to rest, my daughter,” he said gently. “No crown can follow you here.”

Her mother, Elisabeth, wept softly behind him, her tears half joy, half grief.
And when Elisana finally fell into their arms, the tears she had refused to shed in the palace came freely — cleansing years of silent ache.

That night, she removed her crown and placed it into a sealed chest lined with blue velvet.
The weight left her hands, but not her heart.
From that day forward, she was no longer the Empress.
She was simply Elisana Laurel De Claire — a woman who had loved and lost a king.

The Life Beyond the Crown

Seasons passed. The empire moved on — or pretended to.
But Elisana did not vanish into quiet despair.
She rebuilt.

In the De Claire estate’s southern fields, she opened a small academy — not for nobles, but for orphans and children of farmers, the forgotten voices of the empire. She taught them to read, to write, to dream.
Her hands, once adorned with jewels, now bore ink stains and calluses. Yet, for the first time in years, she smiled with warmth that reached her eyes.

“Why do you teach us, Lady Elisana?” a little girl once asked, clutching a tattered book.

“Because knowledge,” she said, brushing the child’s hair from her face, “is the only crown no one can take away.”

The villagers adored her. The children called her Lady Moonlight, for she often stayed up late, reading stories to them by candlelight. Her laughter returned — soft at first, cautious, like someone relearning the sound of joy.

But some nights, when the sea winds howled through the cliffs and the moonlight streamed across her desk, she would pause in her writing and whisper his name.

“Marcus.”

Not with anger.
But with that aching tenderness reserved for memories too precious to curse, yet too painful to keep.

The Emperor’s Hollow Throne

In the capital, Marcus Alastair Von Salastian reigned — but not as he once had.
The empire still hailed him as “The Sun of Salastian,” yet his light had dimmed.

At first, he filled his days with duty — court meetings, council debates, and endless decrees meant to keep his hands busy. But the palace had grown colder without her, its marble halls echoing with ghosts.
The laughter that once filled the mornings had vanished, replaced by the scratching of pens and the whispers of courtiers.

He kept her chambers untouched.

The Empress’s garden, where the jasmine once bloomed, remained locked. He ordered the servants never to prune the vines that climbed the archway — and so they grew wild, spilling over the marble path like silver threads unraveling a forgotten story.

He found himself wandering there at night, drawn to the scent of rain on stone. The moonlight would spill over the empty bench where she used to sit, her laughter soft as bells.

One night, he whispered into the dark, “You used to call yourself the moon.”
He looked up at the pale glow above him, eyes burning.
“I thought I was the sun. But the sun only burns what it cannot hold.”

The words broke something in him.
He bowed his head, the weight of his own crown pressing harder than ever.
He had not lost his Empress.
He had destroyed her — and with her, the man he might have been.

Two Worlds Apart

The years moved like tides — slow, inevitable, carrying them farther apart and yet binding them through unseen threads.

Elisana’s academy flourished. Nobles sent donations in secret, for even the highborn admired the fallen Empress who had chosen grace over vengeance. The children grew under her care — bright, fearless, compassionate.

Marcus, meanwhile, ruled in name but not in peace.
Lady Alessandra Torresano remained at court, her smile sweet, her ambition sharper than any sword. For a time, the Emperor sought solace in her company — but it was a hollow refuge. Every gesture Alessandra made reminded him not of comfort, but of comparison.

Her laughter was too loud. Her perfume too heavy. Her affection too practiced.
And when she called him Your Majesty in tones too smooth to be sincere, he thought only of the woman who had once said his name with quiet reverence — Marcus — as if it were sacred.

In council meetings, he began to falter. His temper grew short; his advisors murmured of fatigue, distraction, weakness.
“The Emperor is losing his clarity,” they said.
But what he had truly lost was himself.

The Weight of Regret

One winter’s night, three years after her departure, Marcus found himself in the imperial garden once more. The vines had claimed the paths entirely now, curling over the broken fountain where she once placed white lilies.

The moon hung low, a perfect coin of silver in a frozen sky.

He sank to his knees beside the bench. His voice cracked as he whispered her name.
“Eli… I was a fool. I was blind. I did not see you.”

He pressed a hand to the cold marble.

“I have lost everything.”

And for the first time in years, the Emperor wept — not as a ruler, not as a husband, but as a man stripped bare of pride.

The tears froze before they reached the ground.

The Whisper of the Past

In the countryside, Elisana stood by her window, the same moonlight spilling across her desk.
She had been correcting her students’ essays — but her quill stilled, her thoughts drifting far away.

A sudden wind swept through the room, rattling the windowpanes.
She closed her eyes and whispered, “Marcus.”

The name felt foreign now — not bitter, but distant, like a melody she had once known by heart.

“He may regret it,” she murmured to herself, her gaze soft. “But regrets cannot undo betrayal.”

Yet as the night deepened, she found herself gazing toward the capital — toward that same moon that had once connected them across distance and time.

And somewhere in the palace, a man looked up at that same moon, whispering the same name into the cold.

Two hearts — divided by pride and loss — bound still by a promise neither had spoken aloud:
That love, once real, never truly disappears.
It only waits — quiet, patient, beneath the years.