Chapter 56: Chapter 56: Dead

The gala ended without a hitch. Everyone looked pleased – polite smiles, satisfied sighs, the kind of public harmony Palatine loved to sell as proof of stability.

Even Emperor Otto congratulated Sirius on his professionalism. It wasn’t empty praise. Otto hinted – carefully, with the elegance of a ruler who knew how to say a warning without calling it one – that he hadn’t missed Caelan’s history of stalling, and that he knew his son well enough to understand why Dean had reasons to doubt him.

Arion, after all, had always been more at home on a battlefield than in a ballroom.

Two days later, the ’blessing’ happened.

Caelan died in his sleep, so clean and quiet it felt almost unreal. When Sirius heard, he laughed. Not because death was funny, but because the ending was so right it finally loosened something in his chest.

At last, he was free to rule. The weight on his shoulders lifted in a single breath.

Ethan was ready to throw a party out of sheer relief and spite, but Sirius didn’t let him.

—

The Fitzgeralt manor was still awake when the news arrived.

Dean and Arion were already gone.

Their farewells had been quick, clean, almost military. A final embrace from Lucas that lasted one heartbeat too long. Trevor’s hand on Dean’s shoulder, saying everything he wouldn’t say out loud. Sebastian’s brief, rough clap at the back of Dean’s neck that pretended not to be a blessing. Sylvia trying not to cry and failing in a way that made her furious with herself.

And then the car. The convoy. The gates.

The house had exhaled after, like it didn’t know what to do with the silence left behind.

Lucas, Trevor, Serathine and Sebastian, ended up in the same sitting room by instinct, as if being together was the only way to keep the day from swallowing them whole. There was tea on the table that none of them drank. There were untouched sweets that looked almost insulting in their prettiness.

Serathine sat upright, gloved hands folded, face calm in the way storms were calm before they decided where to land. Lucas leaned against the fireplace, eyes distant. Trevor stood by the window like he was still watching for a convoy that had already left.

They would see their son again soon, of course they would. The trip to Alamina was already being discussed, already being shaped into dates and security routes and polite invitations that weren’t really invitations.

But knowing they could visit wasn’t the same as knowing Dean had another home now.

That was the part that hurt.

Not because they didn’t want him to have it or because they doubted him. Because it rewrote something old and private inside them, that no matter how far Dean went, Palatine was still the place he would always return to without thinking.

Now he would return by choice.

And even when the choice was good, even when it was necessary, it still left a hollow behind it that needed time to be acknowledged.

So they sat in the silence and let it be gut-wrenching for a while, because pretending it wasn’t would have been the real weakness.

Lucas’s phone lit first.

One message.

He glanced down, and nothing changed on his face until he finished reading. Then his jaw tightened in a way Trevor recognized, less surprise than confirmation.

Trevor’s gaze snapped to him. “What happened?”

Lucas exhaled. “Caelan is dead.”

The room went still.

Serathine blinked once, slow, as if a door had finally closed somewhere in her mind. Sebastian’s posture tightened, eyes sharpening on instinct, searching for the catch.

Trevor just stared at Lucas for a beat, then dragged a hand through his dark hair and let out a quiet breath that was dangerously close to a laugh.

“Well,” Trevor said, and the wicked curve of his mouth didn’t apologize for itself, “Arion is a lot better than I thought.”

Sebastian’s eyes narrowed. “That’s not funny.”

Trevor didn’t look at him. “I didn’t say it was funny. I said the man is better than I thought.”

Lucas stayed still for another beat, phone still in his hand like it weighed more than it should. His gaze flicked once toward Serathine… checking.

Serathine didn’t give him grief. She didn’t give him shock. She didn’t give anyone the soft performance Palatine expected from women when a powerful man died.

She sat upright, gloved hands folded, and let the silence settle until it belonged to her.

Then she said, calmly, “Good.”

Sebastian’s head snapped toward her. “Serathine…”

“Don’t,” Serathine cut in, voice quiet. “Don’t ask me to mourn a man who spent decades using me.”

Her eyes didn’t shine. Her expression didn’t tremble. If anything, her calm looked sharper now, like she’d been waiting for permission to stop pretending this ending would hurt.

“He wanted my loyalty without my voice,” Serathine continued, as if reciting facts in court. “He wanted my presence because it made him look civilized. He wanted my patience because it bought him time. And he wanted my silence because it made him comfortable.”

Trevor’s gaze stayed on her, attentive and unflinching.

Serathine’s mouth curved in something close to satisfaction. “He took and took, and called it ’family.’”

Lucas’s jaw tightened. “He never deserved you.”

Serathine looked at Lucas for a moment, and something in her eyes softened for a moment before it hardened again.

“I knew what he was,” she said. “I just kept hoping intelligence meant he could change. I kept mistaking capability for character.”

Sebastian’s hands clenched at his sides. “And now he’s dead.”

“Yes,” Serathine said, and there was relief in it, naked and unashamed. “Now he’s dead.”

Trevor exhaled through his nose, quiet approval. “Good riddance.”

Lucas lowered his phone to the table. The screen dimmed, as if the device itself understood it had delivered an ending.

For a few seconds, no one spoke. Not because they were stunned, but because they were finally allowing themselves to feel what Palatine would have forbidden them to admit out loud: the lightness of a shadow lifting.

Then Sebastian broke the silence, voice rough. “Sirius will have to act like he’s grieving.”

“Yes, he would grieve his years of freedom waisted on a man like Caelan.”

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