𝐈'𝐦 𝐚𝐧 𝐄𝐱𝐭𝐫𝐚 𝐢𝐧 𝐚 𝐓𝐫𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐝𝐲 𝐍𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐥 (𝐂𝐎𝐌𝐏𝐋𝐄𝐓𝐄𝐃)

Chapter 67: Things We See in the Dark

The heavy shadows that had suffocated the empire for so long were finally beginning to recede. A few months had passed since Constantine and Phoebe were stripped of their titles and sent into exile.

The palace, once a breeding ground for treason, felt lighter, though our work was far from over.

Xavier had returned to our territory in the North to oversee the border defenses, but he never failed to keep me informed. His letters arrived regularly, containing detailed updates on the exiled pair.

The most recent letter brought a strange, hollow twist to my chest. Phoebe had just given birth to a baby girl. Healthy. Strong lungs. Phoebe named her Electra, just as she had in the first timeline. Xavier said the child had Constantine's eyes, but Phoebe's features.

Hearing about her sent a chill down my spine, a stark reminder of the ghost of a past life that still lingered in the corners of my mind.

But at least, this time, that child would grow up far away from the imperial throne, stripped of the power that had once corrupted her father.

Constantine himself was worse. The madness took more of him each day. He sat in the corner and spoke to things that were not there, and sometimes, in the moments of clarity that still came, he would look at Electra and cry.

I kept those letters locked in my desk. I didn't know what to feel about them.

Arsen and I had no time for peace either.

We spent those months uprooting the corrupt noble factions that had secretly aided Constantine and rewriting the laws to ensure the monarchy could never be compromised again.

The nobles who had survived the purge were restless, testing the new order. We restructured the council, stripped titles from those who had bought them with blood or money, and raised common-born officials to posts they had earned.

It was exhausting, tedious work, but it was necessary.

Even Leon found his place again.

I assigned him as an imperial knight, directly under me rather than any house. He accepted without hesitation,

Sometimes, I still caught the look in his eyes when Phoebe's name came up. Sadness, quiet and stubborn, for what had happened to her and her child, but he managed it well.

I visited him occasionally, just to talk. No titles, no reports. We spoke of small things. The weather. The old training ground. The famous cake from a bakery in the capital. Somewhere along the way, we became friends, the kind that didn't need many words.

As for the tragedies of the past timeline, Arsen and I were trying to heal, slowly but surely.

The scars on our souls hadn't vanished, and the weight of the guilt Arsen carried didn't disappear overnight.

We both still woke up gasping from nightmares from time to time, but we had each other to hold onto when the darkness got too loud. Step by step, things were starting to truly get better.

***

It was late one night when we finally finished our work for the day. The endless stacks of documents were put away, and the heavy silence of the palace felt peaceful rather than suffocating.

Arsen and I walked out onto the balcony of my chambers, standing side by side, overlooking the sprawling palace garden and the moonlit lake below. The water mirrored the starry sky, rippling gently in the cool night breeze.

When I turned my head to look at him, I caught him staring at me. Somehow, the way he looked at me now was entirely different from before.

Not the way he always had, with that familiar, teasing fondness. Something else. Something careful, like he was seeing me for the first time, and he wasn't sure what to do with what he found. It was intense, searching, and filled with a warmth that made my breath hitch.