Back to past; After Aria's suicide.
The morning broke with a sky as heavy as lead, the horizon swallowed in a mournful gray. Frost clung to the edges of the Acherley estate, the stillness of winter broken only by the occasional groan of trees under the weight of snow. The lake, far beyond the gardens, wore its sheet of fractured ice like a cruel monument, holding beneath it the truth that would unravel everything.
It was an old fisherman who found her. He had come before dawn to break through the ice for his nets, but what he saw instead was a pale hand beneath the frozen surface, caught in the cruel embrace of winter. He stumbled back, whispering a prayer, before rushing to the town watch. By the time they dragged her body from the black waters, the news had already begun to spread, traveling faster than the chill wind that cut across the land.
"Lady Aria Acherley is dead."
The words leapt from mouth to mouth, growing sharper with every telling. By the time they reached the mansion, they carried the weight of scandal.
Henry arrived at the lake before the sun had fully risen, summoned by Darcy's urgent call. He had not even fastened his coat properly; he had simply run. His boots slipped on the snow as he pushed through the crowd that had gathered at the shore.
And then he saw her.
Aria lay upon the snow, her body too still, her skin pale as porcelain, framed by the dripping strands of her dark hair. Her dress clung to her form, frozen in delicate folds, like a shroud made of ice. For a moment, Henry's world tilted—everything around him blurred, voices became echoes.
"No…" His voice cracked as he fell to his knees beside her. "No, no, no."
He touched her face with trembling hands, his breath fogging in the frigid air. Her lips were blue, her lashes frosted with tiny crystals. She looked both fragile and untouchable, as if carved from marble.
"I'm sorry." His whisper broke into the silence.
He remembered her tears
The way she had looked at him whit hope. But now she was gone.
Henry pressed his forehead against her cold hand, his shoulders shaking. "I should have stopped you. I should have—" His voice broke. "God, Aria…"
Clara placed a hand on his shoulder, but Henry shook it off violently. His grief was raw, feral. He gathered her lifeless body into his arms, heedless of the cold that seeped through his clothes. For the first time in years, the mask of the composed heir shattered completely.
When Aria's parents arrived, their grief did not resemble Henry's.
Her mother gasped and fainted upon seeing her daughter, but it was more from shock than sorrow. Her father, Charles Acherley, clenched his jaw so tightly that the veins stood out in his temples. His eyes did not linger on Aria's body for long; instead, they shifted quickly to the crowd of onlookers.
"This is a disgrace," he hissed under his breath. "Do you see them? Staring at us like carrion birds. Whispering. Already judging."
His wife, pale and trembling, clung to his arm. "Charles, our daughter—"
"Our name," he snapped. "That is what she has destroyed. Do you realize what they'll say? That we could not control her. That we failed as parents. That the marriage we forced upon her was doomed."
Henry, cradling Aria's body, looked up at him with eyes blazing. "She was your daughter. And all you can think of is reputation?" He could not believe how her father react.
Charles's face hardened, but he said nothing. His silence was answer enough.
When the Lannister family was informed, Henry's mother wept openly, but his father, Lord Lannister, merely sighed, as though this tragedy were an unfortunate inconvenience.
"Do you realize what this means for us?" he told Henry later that day, in the privacy of the study. "The papers will be filled with accusations. They'll say our house drove her to this. Investors will withdraw. Allies will question our stability."
Henry's fists clenched. "She's dead, Father. Aria is dead. And all you care about is business?"
Lord Lannister's gaze was cold. "I care about survival. If you had been wiser, more careful, perhaps this could have been prevented."
The words struck Henry like a blade. His father's blame was merciless, but what hurt more was the truth Henry carried in his own heart: he had been blind. He had seen Aria as a burden, as a stranger, when all along she had been drowning.
By nightfall, the story had spread like wildfire.
"Lady Aria Acherley found dead beneath the ice."
"A tragic accident, or something darker?"
"Did the pressure of high society push her to despair?"
Drawing rooms buzzed with gossip. Some blamed Henry, whispering that he had been cruel and unfeeling. Others blamed Aria, painting her as weak, unstable, unable to handle the life she had chosen. Still others pointed fingers at her parents, at the cold, controlling household that had raised her.
But regardless of the details, one fact remained: Aria's death was a scandal that could not be silenced.
That night, Henry returned to the mansion, after a year. His steps heavy, his soul hollow. The corridors were silent, the air heavy with absence. He went to her room, pushing the door open slowly, as if expecting her to still be there, waiting for him with her quiet grace.
But the room was empty.
Her dresses still hung neatly in the wardrobe, her books stacked in careful rows on the shelf. On her vanity, a single hairpin glinted in the candlelight. The faint scent of her perfume lingered, bittersweet and piercing.
Henry sat on her bed, his hands buried in his hair. His chest ached as though the weight of the world had collapsed upon him.
"I should have seen you," he whispered to the empty air. "I should have known."
His eyes fell upon the drawer of her bedside table. With trembling fingers, he opened it and found a small leather-bound journal. He hesitated only a moment before opening it.
The first pages were filled with neat handwriting, notes about skating routines, dreams of returning to the ice. But as the pages went on, the words grew darker.
"I am invisible."
"They don't see me, not really."
"Henry looks at me like I am a stranger. Sometimes I wonder if I even exist to him."
"If I disappeared, would anyone notice?"
"I love him. But he loves another woman. Why not me...I love him since I was a little girl...I loved his soul..."
Henry's vision blurred with tears. Each word was a knife, each confession a wound he had unknowingly inflicted. She had been crying out for help in silence, and he had been deaf to her pain.
Closing the journal, he pressed it against his chest, his voice hoarse. "I failed you. God forgive me, I failed you."
For the first time in his life, Henry wished for something impossible. He wished for time to turn back, for another chance to hold her hand, to tell her she mattered, to undo the cruelty of his indifference. To say sorry.
"If I had only told you sooner," he whispered into the empty room. "If I had only loved you the way you deserved…Please god...forgive me."
---
By that time, Aria heard a melancholy melody.
It took a heartbeat longer for reality to settle in.
She was reborn.