That night, I sit in bed between my husband and my mother, both silent, both broken in different ways. And I realize I am no longer just a mother…
I am a graveyard of what could've been.
And yet, somehow, I'm still breathing.
The condolences begin three days after the silence settles like fog.
First, it's the Queen.
She arrives draped in layers of white lace and pearls, her face set in an expression too practiced to feel real. She touches my arm lightly, her eyes shimmering.
"My heart is shattered with yours, Celeste."
I nod. I don't speak. I can't. I don't want to.
Then Shea appears beside her; modest, unusually quiet. She folds her hands and bows her head. "I was… truly looking forward to the baby."
It feels like being pierced with rose thorns, pretty words, but sharp underneath.
The maids follow, one by one. They bring tokens: a blanket, a candle, a poem. Some kneel. Some cry. Some look me in the eye with a pity so sharp it cuts deeper than any blade.
The guards come too, in uniformed grief. Even the council members file in slowly, like mourners at a royal tomb, heads bowed, voices hushed.
They mean well. I know they do.
But their sympathy suffocates me.
Every I'm sorry is a dagger.
Every she's in a better place... a lie I refuse to swallow.
And then, it happens.
One woman places a carved wooden dove in my lap and whispers, "Perhaps this was fate."
And something inside me snaps.
My mouth opens, and pain pours out; not words. Not screams. Just raw, soul-tearing grief.
I weep. Loudly. Unapologetically. Like a mother in ancient ruins. I sob until I can't breathe, until my throat blisters, until I feel the palace itself tremble under the weight of it.
Mother and Esther try to hold me. Cassian rushes in.
But nothing consoles me. Not hands. Not silence. Not duty.
I weep for her. For me. For the cradle that will never rock. For the lullabies that will never be sung.
"You all speak of fate," I scream through tears, "but none of you carried her! None of you dreamed her name in the dark! None of you…"
"…watched her vanish from inside you."
When the last of them leave, Madam Jesse steps forward. Her eyes carry an old, maternal sorrow, the kind that doesn't need words to be understood.
She touches Cassian's shoulder.
"She needs air," she says. "Grief cannot bloom inside these palace walls. Take her to Wild Villa. Let her bleed where no one watches. Let her remember how to breathe."
Cassian looks at me. His eyes are red-rimmed, full of helplessness.
"Do you want that?" he asks.
I don't answer.
Instead, I rise from the bed, walk to the window, and stare out at the sky.
It's raining again. Of course it is.
"I don't want marble walls or silk sheets," I whisper. "I want to break in peace."
So the decision is made.
Not as Queen.
Not even as wife.
But as a mother learning how to grieve.
***
The journey to Wild Villa is silent.
Cassian holds my hand in the carriage, but I feel nothing. No warmth. No comfort. Just the weight of his presence beside me, too heavy, too constant.
The farther we ride, the more the palace fades behind us like a dream I don't want to remember.
When the gates creak open, I smell old roses and pine. The villa looks just as it did befor; lush, serene, untouched.
The cradle of one joy.
Now the graveyard of another.
I step out alone.
Cassian offers his hand. I don't take it.
Esther waits near the door, her eyes swollen, her voice trembling. "We've made everything ready, ma'am."
I nod. That's all I can manage.
Inside, the rooms are too clean. Too bright. They don't match the hollowness in me. I pass the flower vases, linen-covered tables, sunlit walls and go straight to the room we once shared.
The bed is too big now.
The silence inside echoes.
Cassian follows. He stands like a soldier unsure if the war is over.
"You don't have to say anything," he whispers. "Just… let me stay."
I turn my back and close the door gently in his face.
I don't come out for two days.
Food comes in. It goes out untouched.
Esther leaves flowers by the bed and notes in her soft, curved handwriting:
"You are not alone."
"Sleep if you can."
"I'm praying for you."
But I don't sleep.
I lie in bed tracing invisible names into the ceiling.
Her name.
Her face, the one I'll never see.
The sound of her cry, the one I'll never hear.
I bathe in silence.
I wear black.
I stop speaking. Even to Cassian.
He knocks. He calls. Once, I hear him cry through the door.
But I don't let him in.
He still has his strength.
I only have my sorrow.
I need to protect it, guard it like a wounded animal guards its broken limb.
The villa becomes my shell.
I walk barefoot through the gardens before sunrise. I speak to no one. Not even God.
At night, I sit by the fireplace holding the last piece of her — the tiny sock Esther knitted when we believed it would be a girl.
"Her feet would've been too small for shoes," I murmur. "But I would've carried her everywhere."
Then I weep. Quietly.
I don't want the walls to know I'm breaking again.
Cassian sends letters from the other wing.
He respects my silence.
I read them.
Then I burn them.
One night, Esther enters without knocking. She sits beside me without a word.
We sit like that for a long time. Then she says softly:
"You loved her fiercely. I know. But she loved you too… even before she came."
I want to scream at her to leave.
But instead, I lean my head on her shoulder and for the first time since the palace, cry like a child.
She holds me. No words. Just warmth.
The healing hasn't started. Not really.
But the numbness begins to crack.
Because grief doesn't live in the loud sobs or shattered plates.
It lives in the slow burn.
In the empty chair.
The unopened letters.
The silence after prayers.
And in the quiet realization that life, cruel as it is, never stops moving.