The observatory was inaugurated on a night of crystalline clarity. Freya, for once, was the center of attention, her usually distant eyes alight as she explained the telescope's specifications to a small, rapt audience of scholars and royals. Sultan Argenthelm hovered at her elbow, his booming voice softened to a respectful murmur, asking questions that were both intelligent and deeply personal.
"So, Princess, if one were to view the moons of Jovian from here, would the emotional resonance of the moment be altered by the knowledge of the glass's refractive index, or does true beauty transcend its mechanism?"
Freya had actually laughed, a soft, surprised sound. "A philosopher's question, Sultan. I think it is the pursuit that transcends. The mechanism is merely… the vehicle for wonder."
Watching them, Hadrian felt a pang of complicated empathy. Here was another circuit trying to close. Argenthelm, the earthy desert king, drawn to the coldest, most distant star in their constellation. It was a mirror, warped and strange, of his own situation.
The real spectacle, however, was not in the dome. It was on the observatory's small, wraparound balcony. Hadrian had stepped out for air, the press of bodies and the scent of star-charts and wine becoming oppressive. He stood in the shadow of a stone pillar, unseen.
Below, on a gravel path silvered by moonlight, Seraphina and Rian walked. They were far enough from the party to be private, close enough to be seen from his vantage. They weren't talking. They had stopped walking. Seraphina had her arms wrapped around herself, not against the cold, but as if holding her composure together. Rian stood facing her, not touching, his posture one of utter, focused attention.
Then, Seraphina's shoulders began to shake. Silent, wrenching sobs that seemed to tear from a place of profound exhaustion. Hadrian stiffened, an instinct to go to her firing in his nerves before it was brutally extinguished.
Rian did not pull her into an embrace. He did not speak. He simply closed the small distance between them and, with a heartbreaking gentleness, rested his forehead against hers. A gesture of shared weight, of bearing a burden together without words. It was more intimate than any kiss Hadrian could imagine. It was a communion of despair.
He watched, a ghost at his own feast, as his wife wept against another man's brow, finding a solace in shared silence that she had not been able to find in a decade of his spoken love. After a long minute, Seraphina nodded, drawing a shuddering breath. Rian stepped back, his hand coming up to briefly, fleetingly, brush a tear from her cheek with his thumb. Then he offered his arm. She took it, and they turned, walking slowly back towards the lights and music, their figures merging with the shadows of the garden.
Hadrian remained frozen. The cold of the stone pillar seeped through his formal jacket. The romantic void was no longer an abstraction. It had a shape, a temperature. It was the space between two foreheads, sharing a pain he was not permitted to touch.
He did not return to the party. He went to his studio, the one place that still felt like his. But even here, her presence was inescapable—in the model of the conservatory, in the early sketches for The Crest pinned to the wall, all testaments to a love that had calcified into legacy.
Driven by a masochistic impulse he couldn't name, he went to her study. He needed to see it again, the evidence in her own hand. The journal was not on the desk. He found it in the top drawer, unlocked. He opened it, flipping past the entry he'd seen, his eyes scanning others.
"...Rian understands what it is to love a ghost. He loves Freya's brilliance the way one loves a constellation—with awe, and with the certain knowledge you will never touch it."
"...Talked with H. about Leo's tutor today. It was like negotiating a trade agreement. Efficient. Soulless. I miss the man who would get so excited about a new jointing technique he'd talk my ear off over dinner. Where did he go?"
"...Sometimes I think Margaret has the right idea. To live in the spark of possibility, to feel the heat of a glance, even if you never let it catch fire. At least you feel warm for a moment."
And then, on the most recent page, dated just three days prior, an entry that stopped his heart:
"I cannot continue like this. The lie is a weight that will drag us all under. I must speak to Hadrian. I must tell him that while my heart has broken no vows of the flesh, it has taken refuge in a port that is not his. That I am drowning, and Rian is the air. It is not fair. Not to Hadrian, not to Freya, not to the children. I will write it down first. Find the words. Then I will have the courage to say them."
Below that, the page was blank. The confession had not yet been spoken. It existed here, in this private vault, and in the silent communion on the moonlit path.
He closed the journal, his hands trembling. This was it. The precipice. She was gathering the courage to formalize the void, to name the unnamed third entity in their marriage. Once spoken, it could not be unspoken. The perfect façade would not just be cracked; it would be declared a ruin.
A desperate, survivalist clarity cut through his despair. She was planning to speak. But she hadn't yet. The blueprint of their dissolution was drafted, but not yet built. And he was still the architect.
He left her study, a new, grim purpose settling over him. He would not wait passively for the demolition. If the void had been allowed to grow in silence, then perhaps it was in action, not more words, that he must fight. He needed to build a new connection, not between foreheads in the dark, but in the glaring, complicated light of day. He just had no idea where to find the materials.