Chapter 74 Only a step
Amara POV
I do not mean to go far.
At first, I only mean to walk. To let my thoughts settle. To give myself something else to focus on besides the weight of tonight and the strange ache still pressing at my chest after everything Tomas said.
The castle is quiet in this part of the night, the kind of quiet that does not feel empty so much as watchful. Torches burn low in their iron brackets. Shadows stretch long over the black stone.
Somewhere far below, I can hear the faint clatter of dishes being cleaned away and the soft murmur of servants finishing the last of their duties before dawn begins to think about creeping in.
But the farther I walk, the less it feels like I am choosing the path.
At some point, I stop paying attention to the turns. My bare feet carry me over cold stone and old rugs faded by centuries, past tall windows showing nothing but darkness beyond the glass, past carved doors and portraits whose painted eyes seem to follow me in the torchlight. I do not know where I am going until a pull starts low in my chest.
It is subtle at first.
A small, strange tug.
Then stronger.
Not the mate bond. Not Sebastian.
Something else.
Something older.
I slow near the end of a long corridor I do not remember passing through before. There is only one door there, set slightly apart from the others, painted a deep ivory that stands out against the black stone walls around it. Gold detailing curls around the edges, delicate and feminine, worn only a little with time. No guards stand outside it. No servants pass by it. The whole hall feels still in a way the rest of the castle does not.
My heart starts beating harder.
I do not know why.
But I reach for the handle anyway.
The second my fingers brush the metal, a chill runs straight through me.
Death.
Not fresh. Not sharp. Not the hot metallic scent of blood spilled moments ago.
Old death.
A lingering stain in the air so deep the room itself seems to have swallowed it and never let it go.
My breath catches as I push the door open.
The nursery is beautiful.
That is the first thing that hits me. Not the grief. Not the death. Not even the coldness creeping over my skin.
Beauty.
Moonlight silver and torchlight gold spill together across pale walls painted with curling vines and tiny stars. A cradle carved from white wood sits in the corner, draped in delicate fabric that has not gathered dust the way it should have after so much time.
Shelves line one wall, stacked with old toys made from polished wood and stitched cloth. There is a rocking chair near the fireplace with a folded blanket placed neatly over the arm, and beside it sits a small table holding a dried arrangement of flowers that look as if someone changed them long ago and then never touched them again.
The room feels untouched.
Preserved.
Not abandoned. Not forgotten.
Kept.
My throat tightens.
I step inside slowly, like I am afraid the room will vanish if I move too fast. The door closes behind me with a quiet click that seems far too loud in the silence. Every part of this place feels frozen in time, trapped in the final breath before something terrible happened. And beneath the faint scents of old wood, linen, and the herbs tucked into bowls to keep the room sweet, that other scent lingers.
Blood.
Not enough for a human nose to find.
But I am not only that.
I feel it everywhere.
In the floorboards.
In the walls.
In the cradle.
A violent end soaked so deeply into this room that no amount of cleaning could ever truly erase it.
My hand trembles as I brush my fingers over the edge of the crib.
Unused.
He said unused.
My chest burns so sharply I have to pull in a slow breath to steady myself. I can see it too easily without wanting to. My mother here. Waiting. Nesting. Breathing life into this room with soft hands and quiet hope while she waited for me.
Maybe she stood where I am standing now. Maybe she touched this same railing and imagined laying me down to sleep. Maybe she sat in that rocking chair and smiled to herself, hand resting over her swollen stomach, thinking she had time.
Gods.
The grief in this room does not feel distant. It feels alive. Like it has been sleeping under the surface all these years and only needed someone to walk in and wake it.
I do not hear him come in.
Not at first.
I only realize I am no longer alone when the air in the room shifts.
I turn.
My father stands in the doorway.
Leviath does not look like a king right now.
He still wears black, still carries that same effortless authority in the set of his shoulders, but something about him is quieter here. Dimmer. The sharpness I have come to expect from him is not gone, but it is buried beneath something heavier.
His gaze moves over me briefly before drifting to the room itself, and for a moment I see it with painful clarity.
This is not a room in his castle.
This is a wound.
“I wondered when you would find it,” he says softly.
His voice is so low it nearly disappears into the room.
I swallow. “I did not mean to.”
“I know.”
He steps inside, and even that seems careful. Measured. Like he is entering a sacred place instead of a nursery. His eyes move to the crib, then to the rocking chair, then finally back to me.
“I kept it exactly as it was, after having it cleaned.. of course,” he says after a moment.
I look around again. “Why?”
A faint shadow passes over his face. “Because I could not bear to make it into something else.”
The honesty in that answer presses at something tender inside me.
I look at him more closely. “You come here.”
It is not a question.
He is quiet for a beat, then gives the smallest nod. “Less now than I once did.”
Less now.
Not never.
The thought makes my chest ache in a way I do not know what to do with.
I let my hand fall from the crib rail and turn fully toward him. “Did she love it?”
His expression shifts.
Not dramatically. Just enough for me to see that I have reached something real.
“Yes,” he says. “She chose everything herself. Every blanket, every toy, the paint on the walls, the carvings on the cradle. She changed it three times because she could not decide what felt right.” The faintest hint of something bittersweet touches his mouth. “She was impossible about details.”
Despite everything, a tiny smile tugs at my lips.
That makes his gaze soften.
“She said if our child was to be brought into a violent world, then the first thing they should know was gentleness.”
The room blurs for a second and I blink hard.
“She sounds nothing like you,” I murmur.
A breath that could almost be a laugh leaves him. “No. She wasn’t. She was soft. Kind. Loving.”
Silence settles between us again, but not the sharp kind. Not the dangerous kind. This feels different. Fragile. Like one wrong word could shatter it.
I glance back at the nursery. “It still feels…” I trail off, pressing my lips together. “There is death here.”
His face changes instantly.
Every trace of softness turns to grief.
Not rage. Not coldness.
Just grief so old and deep it has become part of him.
“Yes,” he says quietly. “There would be.”
The way he says it makes my throat tighten.
I turn back to him fully. “Tell me.”
His jaw flexes once. He looks at me for a long moment, as if measuring whether I truly want the answer, whether I understand what I am asking for. Then his gaze drifts past me to the crib.
“I thought you were dead,” he says, and his voice is so calm it hurts more than if he had shouted. “The night I lost you both, They carved you out of her and left nothing behind but blood. There was so much blood, and you had the same scent, because you hadn’t been born yet.. I didn’t realize you were taken. I did search, I had hope.. but I never could find you.”
My breath leaves me in a quiet, broken sound.
He closes his eyes briefly. Not long. Just a second. But it is enough to show me how much it still lives inside him.
“My family was gone in one night,” he says. “My mate. My child. The future I thought I had. I held what was left of her in my hands and there was so little left to hold.”
Tears burn at my eyes so suddenly I do not even feel them until one slips free.
He notices.
Of course he notices.
And for once he does not look pleased by it, or curious, or calculating.
He looks stricken.
“I should not have told you like that,” he says, voice rougher now.
“No,” I whisper, shaking my head. “I asked.”
He watches me, then steps closer. Not enough to crowd me. Just enough to feel less far away.
“She was kind,” he says after a moment, quieter now, like he is offering me something precious. “Annoyingly kind at times. She saw good in creatures that had never earned it. She argued with me constantly. She hated when I killed too quickly because she said death should mean something.” His gaze shifts to the rocking chair. “She laughed often. At me, mostly.”
A broken laugh escapes me through the tightness in my throat.
That, more than anything, seems to undo something in him.
The hardness eases from his face. He looks younger for it somehow. Or maybe just more tired.
“What was she like finding out about me?” I ask.
His eyes return to mine and hold there.
“In love,” he says simply.
My chest caves inward.
“You were not even born and she was already impossibly in love with you. She spoke to you when we were alone. Read to you. Sang when she thought no one was listening.” His mouth tightens. “She would place my hand on her stomach and tell me to feel you move, then get angry when you stopped the moment I touched her, as though it were somehow my fault.”
A tear slips down my cheek. Then another.
He lifts his hand like he is going to wipe them away, but stops halfway there.
I see the hesitation.
The uncertainty.
The fear that he has not earned it.
So I close the distance for him.
Only a step.
But enough.