Chapter 106: Chapter-106

“Your Majesty,” he whispered, and his voice broke completely on the words, shattering into pieces that scattered on the morning air.

His hands were shaking where they gripped the railing—violent tremors that traveled up his arms and into his shoulders, his whole body responding to whatever was happening inside him, whatever dam had just broken and was flooding everything in its path.

His knees felt weak, actually ’weak’, like they might give out any second and send him crumpling to the balcony floor.

He looked—objectively, genuinely—like an absolute disaster.

His hair was still a tangled mess, sticking up at impossible angles, strands falling into his tear-wet face and clinging there. His sleep clothes were rumpled and twisted, hanging off one shoulder at an angle that was more chaotic than artistic. His eyes were already red and swollen from crying, his face blotchy and streaked with tears, his nose starting to run.

He was barefoot and half-dressed and completely, utterly falling apart.

And he had never, in his entire life, looked more beautiful.

Because his face was ’glowing’.

Not metaphorically—not in the poetic sense that people use when they want to describe happiness. Actually, genuinely ’glowing’, like someone had lit a candle inside his chest and it was shining out through his skin, through his eyes, through every expression that crossed his features.

Pure, unfiltered joy radiated from him like physical light, so bright and overwhelming that it seemed impossible for one person to contain. It poured out of him in waves, visible in every line of his body, every tremor of his hands, every hitched breath and broken laugh.

His eyes—those brilliant blue eyes that stood out so vividly against his bronze skin—were shining with more than just tears. They were ’luminous’, filled with something that looked like hope and disbelief and wonder all tangled together into something that had no name.

His smile was trembling at the edges, trying desperately to hold itself together and failing beautifully, breaking apart into something more honest and raw and real than any practiced expression could ever be.

Every wall he’d ever built around himself—every defense, every careful mask, every protective layer—had shattered in an instant, leaving nothing but the absolute truth of what he was feeling written plainly across his face for anyone to see.

He looked like someone who had been walking through a desert for years without realizing it was a desert, and had just stumbled onto an oasis.

He looked like someone who had stopped believing in miracles and had just witnessed one happening in real-time.

He looked like someone who had been holding their breath for so long they’d forgotten what oxygen tasted like, and had just been reminded.

He looked like someone seeing the sun for the first time.

—

’’Part 3: The Answer’’

Below, in the garden, Heena watched him fall apart and felt her smile widen.

This—’this’ was the reaction she’d been hoping for.

Not the practiced politeness she’d gotten so used to from her consorts. Not the calculated responses of people who were always thinking three moves ahead. Not the careful neutrality of courtiers who’d learned that showing genuine emotion was dangerous.

This was ’real’.

Raw and honest and completely unguarded.

Perfect.

She raised her voice, letting it carry clearly across the garden, warm and steady and utterly confident despite the tiny flutter of nervousness in her chest.

“Good morning, Prince Larus,” she called up to him. “I hope you slept well.”

The sound of her voice seemed to break through whatever paralysis had gripped him.

Larus let out a sound that was somewhere between a laugh and a sob—breathless and half-hysterical and completely overwhelmed—and more tears spilled down his face.

“You—” His voice cracked. He tried again. “When did you—’how’—this is—I can’t—”

Words failed him completely.

He just stood there, shaking, crying, one hand pressed to his mouth now like he was trying to hold something in that was too big to be contained.

Heena’s smile turned gentle.

“I work fast,” she said simply, as though she hadn’t just orchestrated what was possibly the most elaborate romantic gesture in the empire’s history. As though this was perfectly normal. As though people did things like this all the time.

She gestured at the garden around her—the thousands of flowers, the lanterns, the musicians, the food, all of it—with a casual wave that suggested this level of effort was nothing special.

“I wanted to make sure you knew I was serious,” she continued, her voice carrying easily in the quiet morning air. “About the offer. About wanting you to stay. About—” She paused, just for a heartbeat. “About all of it.”

She lifted the white rose, holding it up so he could see it clearly, the morning light catching the dewdrops still clinging to its petals and turning them into tiny diamonds.

And then, louder now—projecting her voice so that everyone in the garden could hear, every servant and musician and guard bearing witness—she said the words that would change everything:

“So. Prince Larus of the Marus Kingdom.”

The entire garden went silent.

Even the breeze seemed to still, the fluttering ribbons going quiet, the world itself holding its breath.

Every eye turned upward toward the balcony. Waiting. Watching.

“Will you marry me?”

—

The question hung in the air like something solid, something you could reach out and touch.

Larus stood frozen on the balcony, tears streaming down his face, his whole body shaking, looking like he might shatter into a thousand pieces at any moment.

For one long, suspended heartbeat, he couldn’t speak.

Couldn’t breathe.

Couldn’t do anything except ’feel’—everything, all at once, too much and not enough and exactly right.

And then—

“’Yes!’”

The word tore out of him—loud and raw and utterly uncontrolled, his voice breaking completely on it, shattering into pieces that scattered across the garden like flower petals.

“Yes!” he shouted again, louder this time, and he was laughing now, crying and laughing at the same time, the two sounds tangling together until they were indistinguishable. “Yes, yes, ’yes’, of course I will!”

His voice cracked again, going higher and thinner, but he didn’t care.

“Yes!” he repeated, like he needed to keep saying it, like once wasn’t enough, like he needed the word to exist in the world as many times as possible to make it real. “A thousand times yes! Yes!”

—

The garden ’erupted’.

The musicians launched into music—not gradually, not with any kind of buildup, but immediately and at full volume, a triumphant melody that soared and climbed and filled the entire space with sound. Strings and horns and woodwinds all blending together into something that sounded like pure ’joy’ given musical form.

The servants cheered—actual, genuine cheering, their voices rising in a wave of celebration that echoed off the palace walls. They began tossing flower petals into the air by the handful, by the armful, releasing clouds of color that drifted down in slow spirals, catching the morning light as they fell.

The whole garden transformed into chaos—beautiful, joyful, overwhelming chaos. Music and laughter and flower petals raining down like colorful snow, people moving and celebrating and the whole world feeling like it had just shifted on its axis.

Heena stood in the center of it all, and her smile—

Her smile was ’radiant’.

Genuine and warm and utterly triumphant, like she’d just won something far more important than any political victory.

She bowed—deep and formal and absolutely sincere, the kind of bow an empress gives when acknowledging someone as an true equal, not just in words but in actual fact.

When she straightened, she looked back up at him, and the expression on her face was softer than he’d ever seen it.

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