Fifteen years of sleeping through revolutions, coups, riots, and assassination attempts had trained Aurora’s body to rise early. Even now, in a foreign palace with paper walls and incense-stained air, she opened her eyes at the same hour she always had.

  At the moment, she lay still for a moment, listening to the wind whisper along the eaves. She rose, dressed without mirrors, and moved through the corridors quickly. And below, in the training court, she found Julius waiting for her. He stood beneath a lantern with his hands folded behind his back, not quite at ease, yet not quite at attention either. He seemed simply present, not training nor pacing the halls.

  Aurora paused in the shadow of a pillar, reading his body language, studying his face. She recognized that he looked like a person who had recently learned a lesson the hard way.

  Nearby, Bennet paced too, through the same short sequence again and again, which constituted of stepping, bracing, and turning. She saw that his injured arm still lagged, stiff with old damage, and each repetition accounted for it. There was no wasted effort or frustration in his movements. They were just efficient and silent.

  With impeccable posture, she decided to step forward and let the air shift subtly. Both of them noticed her at once.

  Julius inclined his head downward in a bow, slowly and respectfully while Bennet straightened, alert.

  “The ships won’t arrive for a few hours. The soldiers by the coast are doing their jobs. You don’t need to be awake,” Aurora said.

  Julius hesitated, then answered honestly. “I just didn’t know where else to be.”

  Aurora studied him closely. She remembered how insignificant he had once seemed in the shadow of Karl. Memories of his confrontation with his ex lover crossed her mind. But unlike then, he now stood with a strength that didn’t need to prove itself to anyone anymore.

  It reminded her uncomfortably of herself, before crowns, before Milo, before the world guided what she had become.

  “You helped Karl take my daughter,” she said, letting the words land clean. “Though we’re fighting on the same side, don’t think I’ll forget that.”

  Julius didn’t flinch, nodding.

  Bennet’s jaw tightened as he stayed silent.

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  Aurora turned away, gaze sliding toward the dark city beyond the palace walls.

  “But I suppose it doesn’t matter right now. Everyone in this space has made mistakes.”

  She watched the orderly ranks as neither man spoke.

  “For fifteen years,” Aurora continued, voice dropping low. “I rebuilt the world by making it afraid of me. Because of that, streets were clean, crime vanished, and people whispered instead of screaming.” Her fingers curled once at her side. “And I called it peace.”

  Julius listened like an adult who understood when silence mattered.

  Bennet shifted his weight, and the movement caught the corner of her eye. Aurora turned her attention to him.

  He was still… young. Too young to have learned restraint this quickly. Too young to have hurt someone and lived with the consequence.

  “You changed fast,” she said, looking down at him.

  Bennet nodded once. “I had to.”

  “Yes,” Aurora replied. “I suppose that’s how it often works.” Her gaze lingered on him longer than was polite.

  She could tell in the way he avoided saying Amy’s name. In the way his attention flickered, unconsciously, toward her shadowed quarters before correcting itself.

  She could tell: he must have liked Amy.

  But he had run from her the moment she had fallen out of grace.

  Milo would have laughed at him, she thought numbly.

  Bennet swallowed. “I won’t touch her again.”

  “I know,” Aurora said. And she did.

  She turned back toward the city, standing next to Julius.

  “You know,” she murmured. “There was a night when I gave my daughter to someone else and told myself it was strategy. Told myself that… she’d be safer away from me.”

  Julius looked at her calmly.

  “But now I know what I felt was fear,” Aurora continued, laughing softly. “And that it was the first honest thing I’d felt in years.”

  At the time, she didn’t say Milo’s name. She didn’t need to.

  For a moment, she thought of Kristo. Not quite in the way she had once, which was often sharp with regret, or threaded with what-ifs, but in the way that made her think of something solid that had done exactly what it was meant to do.

  He had been good. If she was honest, quietly, stubbornly good. He had been the kind of man who made space instead of taking it. Who believed children should grow up without learning the weight of fear too early.

  He had been a good father.

  The thought came without pain now, finally.

  Amy probably had laughed more around him and slept more easily. She had probably asked questions without bracing for the answer. In his presence, the world must have felt… survivable.

  She exhaled slowly and let the thought go while heavy silence fell onto the courtyard.

  A horn sounded faintly from the harbor and —

  War stopped being theoretical.

  “You’ll stay close,” Aurora said.

  Julius inclined his head. “Understood.”

  Bennet followed silently.

  “You’re not my soldiers,” Aurora said. “And you’re not my prisoners. So if you leave before dawn, I won’t stop you.”

  But neither moved, their jaws set. And behind her, the lanterns guttered as the first light of morning crept over Sunji’s walls.

  She let herself wonder if, somewhere beyond the palace, her daughter was truly learning how to build something she never had.

  But she faced forward again. Because right now, survival was the only thing that mattered. And defeating Samantha to protect this world was all that remained.