The Erenhart carriage passed through the gates of Solaris at six in the morning, while the city was still quiet.
Kael von Erenhart looked out the window. Golden palaces, gardens in bloom, white stone streets bathed in the light of dawn. Beautiful, probably. People often said Solaris was the most beautiful city on the continent.
He wouldn't know. Not because he was blind—his eyes worked perfectly. He saw colors, shapes, and light. But he felt nothing when he looked at them. It was like reading a list of ingredients without tasting the food.
“We've arrived, Your Grace.”
Sir Ethan Blackwood rode alongside the carriage, his armor immaculate, his expression that of a man who hadn't gotten enough sleep and was determined not to show it.
“I know,” Kael said.
“I just thought you'd like to know.”
“I have eyes, Ethan.”
“And I have a duty to be useful, even when you don't need me.”
Kael didn't answer. Ethan hadn't expected him to. After twelve years of friendship—if you could call something only one of them felt that—Ethan had learned to read Kael's silences the way other people read faces.
The carriage stopped in front of the Erenhart residence in Solaris. A mansion of dark stone, austere and free of the golden flourishes decorating the neighboring houses. It looked like its owner.
Kael got out without waiting for the door to be opened. The servants bowed. He walked past them without looking—not out of arrogance, but because it made no difference. Faces were faces. Bows were bows. Everything worked the same way, and he didn't need to observe what he already knew.
“Prince Lucien sent a letter,” Ethan said, following him down the hall. “He wants to have dinner with you tonight.”
“Accept.”
“Lady Beatrice Ashford sent a letter too. She wants—”
“Decline.”
“I hadn't finished.”
“You don't need to. Whatever Lady Beatrice wants, the answer is no.”
Ethan tucked the letter away with half a smile Kael didn't see. Or saw and didn't register. With Kael, it was hard to tell.
The residence's study was exactly as Kael had left it during the last season. Clean desk, orderly bookshelves, not a single decorative object. Damian Cross was already there, sitting in the shadows as if he were part of the furniture.
“Damian.”
“Your Grace.” Damian stood. He had the kind of face people forgot immediately after seeing—which was extremely useful for a spymaster. “I have the season's report.”
“Speak.”
“House Ashford brought twice as many guards this year. Duke Victor had three secret meetings with Cardinal Magnus over the past month. And the Emperor canceled two audiences last week for health reasons.”
Kael processed the information the way he processed everything: efficiently, without emotion. Pieces on a chessboard. Predictable moves.
“And the Rosenthals?”
“They arrive this afternoon. The duchess, the heir, and the two daughters. Duke Arthur stayed in the eastern region.”
“Why?”
“Officially, border affairs. Unofficially... I'm still looking into it.”
Kael nodded.
“Keep watching the Ashfords. And find out what Arthur Rosenthal is doing at the border.”
Damian disappeared as silently as he had appeared. Kael was left alone in the study, staring at the map of Solaris on the wall.
Pieces on a chessboard. That was how he saw the world. Every person was a piece with a movement pattern. Nobles wanted power. Merchants wanted gold. Soldiers wanted glory. Priests wanted influence. If you understood the pattern, you could predict the move. And if you could predict the move, you could control the game.
Simple. Clean. No surprises.
Kael liked things without surprises. Or rather—he neither liked nor disliked them. He simply functioned better when the world behaved predictably.
Ethan returned with a tray of tea Kael hadn't asked for.
“You haven't eaten since yesterday.”
“I'm not hungry.”
“You're never hungry. But your body needs food, regardless of what your head thinks about the matter.”
Kael looked at Ethan for a moment. If he could feel anything, he would probably feel gratitude. Or irritation. Maybe both at the same time. He had read that it was possible to feel contradictory things simultaneously, which struck him as profoundly inefficient.
“Thank you,” he said, because he had learned that was what people said in these situations.
Ethan set the tray on the desk.
“You know you don't have to thank me.”
“I know. But you get strange when I don't.”
“I do not get strange.”
“You furrow your brow and breathe more deeply. It's the same reaction you have when someone mistreats a horse.”
Ethan opened his mouth, closed it, and decided it wasn't worth arguing with someone who analyzed facial expressions like a naturalist studying insects.
“I'll prepare your clothes for dinner with the prince.”
“The black ones.”
“You only have black clothes.”
“Then any of them will do.”
Ethan left. Kael drank the tea without tasting it. He looked out the window. The sun of Solaris came through the glass and warmed his skin, but the heat was merely information—elevated temperature, nothing more.
Eighteen years. It had been eighteen years since the last time he had felt anything. He had been seven. His mother was dying on the dining room floor, and he had been screaming, and then the darkness came, and when he woke up, the world was... quiet.
Not silent. Quiet inside.
As if someone had switched off a part of him that never started working again.
He remembered what it was like to feel. Vaguely. Like remembering a dream from a long time ago—you knew it had happened, but you could no longer access it. He knew the sun was supposed to be pleasant. That food was supposed to have flavor. That seeing the face of someone you loved was supposed to stir something in your chest.
But it didn't. Nothing did.
The doctors found nothing. The priests muttered about curses and refused to say more. His Aunt Helena, who had taken over his guardianship after his mother's death, said he was “strong” and that he “didn't need emotions to rule.” Kael suspected she preferred it that way—a nephew who felt nothing was a nephew who wouldn't rebel.
He learned to compensate. He studied human behavior the way others studied mathematics. Memorized which expressions corresponded to which emotions. Learned when to smile (rarely), when to incline his head (as a sign of respect), when to shake someone's hand more firmly (to demonstrate confidence). It was a constant performance, and he was good at it.
So good that most people didn't notice. They thought he was cold by choice, reserved by nature. The “Silent Duke”—a title that sounded respectful, almost admirable.
No one knew that the silence wasn't a choice. It was all he had left.
Kael finished his tea, placed the cup on the tray with millimetric precision, and stood.
The season began tonight. Pieces would move. Alliances would form. Conspiracies would take shape in the dark corners of the golden halls.
And he would be there, watching everything with eyes that saw perfectly and felt nothing.
As always.
Dinner with Prince Lucien took place in the private chambers of the imperial palace—a smaller room, without the suffocating formality of the official halls. Lucien had insisted on it. He said he hated eating with twenty servants watching him.
“Kael!” Lucien stood when he entered, a broad smile lighting up his entire face. He was twenty-two, with blond hair, blue eyes, and the kind of charisma that made people want to follow him. “I thought you were going to make up an excuse.”
“I never make up excuses.”
“True. You just say ‘no’ and expect people to accept it.”
“It works most of the time.”
Lucien laughed. Kael sat at the table. The food had already been served—roast, bread, wine. Lucien ate as if every meal were his last, with an enthusiasm Kael observed with the clinical curiosity of someone studying a phenomenon he couldn't reproduce.
“My father is getting worse,” Lucien said suddenly, his smile disappearing. “He won't admit it, but I can see it. He sleeps more. Eats less. Forgets names.”
Kael didn't say “I'm sorry,” because he wasn't. He said what was useful.
“What do the doctors say?”
“That he needs rest.” Lucien turned the wineglass between his fingers. “But how is an emperor supposed to rest when half the court is waiting for him to fall so they can leap onto the throne?”
“Are you preparing?”
“I'm trying. But preparing to be emperor is like trying to learn to swim by reading a book. You understand the theory, but when the water reaches...”
Lucien looked at Kael with the expression Kael had cataloged as “controlled vulnerability”—when someone wanted to seem strong but needed at least one person to see that they weren't.
“I need you this season, Kael. Not as a duke. As a friend.”
Friend. Kael knew what the word meant. He knew Lucien was probably the person closest to that in his life, along with Ethan. He knew he was supposed to feel something upon hearing that request—loyalty, perhaps, or affection.
He felt nothing. But he gave the correct answer, and would have done so regardless, because Lucien was the most important piece on the board and protecting him was strategically necessary.
And perhaps—just perhaps—for a reason he couldn't name.
“You have me,” Kael said.
Lucien smiled again. This time, the smile was smaller, more genuine.
“Thank you.”
They ate in silence for a while. Then Lucien, because he was Lucien and couldn't stay quiet for more than five minutes, said:
“By the way, the Rosenthals arrived today. The eldest daughter, Lady Elena, is going to be formally presented tomorrow at the opening ball.”
“And?”
“And nothing. I'm just informing you.”
“You never ‘just inform’ anyone. There's always a second intention.”
Lucien smiled with the practiced innocence of someone who had been caught.
“They say she's extraordinary. Intelligent, beautiful, kind. My sister Isabelle already wants to meet her.”
“Isabelle wants to meet everyone.”
“True. But this time she might be right. The Rosenthals are important allies, and a good relationship with Duke Arthur's daughter would be—”
“Political.”
“I was going to say ‘useful.’ But yes, political too.”
Kael cut a piece of meat with surgical precision.
“I'm going to the ball because it's necessary. I'll greet whoever is necessary. And I'll leave when I'm no longer needed.”
“You're the most entertaining person I know, Kael.”
“I know that's sarcasm.”
“Only partially.”
Kael didn't answer. Lucien went back to eating, and the silence between them was the comfortable kind—at least for Lucien. To Kael, all silences were the same.
But as he finished dinner and prepared to return to the Erenhart residence, something happened.
It was brief. So brief he almost didn't register it.
A sensation. In his chest. As if something had moved—not his heart, which beat at the same rhythm as always, but something behind it. Something that hadn't been there before.
It lasted less than a second. Then it disappeared.
Kael stopped in the hallway. He placed a hand over his chest. Felt the regular, constant, predictable beat.
Nothing.
It must have been the wine. Or the fatigue from the journey.
He lowered his hand and kept walking.
On the highest windowsill in the hall, invisible to any mortal eye, a small winged creature watched the duke walk away. He was the size of a cat, with translucent wings, tousled golden hair, and an expression of absolute panic.
Lumen clutched his bow to his chest and swallowed hard.
“Oh, no, oh, no, oh, no. He felt it. He felt something. That's good, right? That's good. It means... I think it means it's good. Unless it isn't. Unless I made everything worse. Did I make everything worse? No, no, calm down. Breathe, Lumen. Breathe.”
He breathed. It didn't help.
“Okay. The plan is simple. I missed with the arrow. I fix the arrow. I bring the two of them together. No one up there finds out. Simple. Easy. No problems.”
A gust of wind nearly knocked him off the windowsill. He grabbed the stone with both hands, his wings beating frantically.
“No problems at all,” he repeated, in the voice of someone who had every problem in the world.
Far below, Kael's carriage disappeared into the night of Solaris.
And somewhere in the city, in another residence, a young woman with reddish-brown hair touched her own back through her dress and looked out the window, unaware that fate had already begun to move.