It took nearly two hours for Thalric to sit unaided.
The healer had insisted he remain in bed. The steward had offered to summon a priest. Thalric dismissed them both with a glare and a grunt that hurt more than it sounded. When they left, he counted heartbeats until he was sure no one stood behind the door.
He dragged himself out of bed like a man hauling a corpse.
His legs buckled halfway up. The robe—too tight around the chest, too loose at the waist—scraped along the floor as he gripped the dresser and steadied his breathing. Every step was a duel. Every shift, an insult.
But he moved.
He would move.
The hallway beyond his chambers smelled of varnished wood and forgotten winters. Dust motes swam in shafts of light breaking through narrow windows. The manor was quiet—eerily so. No servants whispered, no footmen passed. Just portraits.
Dozens of them.
Lining both walls.
Thalric stopped before the first: a man in naval blues, sharp-jawed, with sea-gray eyes that had likely never touched a ship's wheel. The brass plate below read: "Lord Barriston Worthing, First Son, Admiral of the Veil."
He moved on.
Another painting: Lady Hester Worthing, a stern woman who held a harpsichord key as if it were a dagger. Her smile was thinner than glass.
Next: General Reginald Worthing—Percival's grandfather, if he remembered the lineages correctly from the half-dreamed memories still rattling inside him.
The Worthings stared back at him with oil-soaked judgment.
And then—halfway down the hall—he stopped.
The frame was smaller. More recent.
The boy in the painting slouched slightly. The artist had clearly tried to flatter him—painted his cheeks less sagged, softened the jowls, straightened the shoulders. But the eyes betrayed him.
They were vacant.
Gray-blue, but dim.
The smile was forced. The background was hazy, unfinished—some kind of garden overtaken by mist.
Prince Percival Worthing, the plaque read. Second Son. Patron of the Teal Choir. The title felt borrowed. The brushstrokes apologetic.
Thalric stared at it for a long time.
He didn't hate the boy.
He didn't pity him, either.
He recognized him.
Percival had died long before the heart attack—crushed not by failure, but by erasure. A prince with no war to win. A son with no seat to inherit. A name meant to be smiled at, never spoken in seriousness.
Thalric leaned forward, breath fogging faintly against the painting's varnish.
"If they couldn't see you," he said softly, "then perhaps it's no wonder you didn't fight to stay."
A soft scuff behind him.
He turned slowly, unbalanced. A maid stood at the hall's edge, carrying a basin and linens. Her eyes went wide—too wide.
"My Lord," she whispered, startled. She bowed so quickly the basin wobbled. "Forgive me, I didn't think you'd… that you could stand."
Thalric held her gaze. There was no malice in her expression. Just fear—and something deeper. Wonder, maybe. Or disbelief.
"I'll return later," she said quickly, backing out of view.
Her footsteps disappeared down the corridor.
He looked back once more at Percival's painted face. The longer he stared, the more he swore the smile faded.
He turned and walked on, one slow step at a time, through a hallway built to remember him—but never see him.