Chapter 189 - 188: Love had Found Him Too!

Dearest Grand Duchess,

Eleanore, it was a blessing to have had you in my life. You have been an amazing Chapter of my life, one I thought would be very difficult for me to put behind me, and yet here I am, ready to move on. Therefore, I want to clear my past feelings before I move forward in my own life. Lady Eleanore, I have always loved you. From the moment I saw you on my fifth birthday, following your brother around, I have liked you.

It was a strange feeling, one I always felt whenever I saw you. As though you were the only one who could make me feel that way. Every time Grand Duke Lancaster insulted you, I felt insulted in turn. I loved you so much that even after you married, I couldn’t let go of you.

Today, I am very happy to learn that things between you and the Grand Duke have finally been sorted. Your life must have become so much more beautiful after finding your long-awaited love. Truly, you are blessed to have attained what you craved for so long, and even more blessed that the person you love has fallen just as deeply for you.

This is very rare. Most never fulfill a love left unspoken.

When I learned that the feelings between you two had become mutual, I was happy, but also nearly broken. Every hope I had of making you mine had shattered in that moment. My mother says one of the signs of true love is letting go. So I listened to her, and I let go of the love and the pain I had bottled up inside me.

I thought that what I felt on my fifth birthday banquet, watching you enter through that door alongside the young duke, was something I would never feel again. How wrong I was and how happy I am that I was wrong.

Not long ago, at a recent banquet I attended at Viscount Thornberry’s estate, I saw her. The love of my life. When she entered the ballroom in that shimmering blue gown, my heart skipped a beat. My eyes were unable to leave her. I had fallen in love yet again, and this time I decided I would not let it become a long-standing crush, a love left unspoken.

I asked Lady Thornberry for the first dance of the ball. It was certainly not the first time I had seen her or spoken with her, but this time it felt different. Perhaps because I had finally let go of you because I had decided to accept your happiness over my own and move forward. And so, when I danced with Lady Thornberry for the first time, I was finally able to truly notice a woman standing in front of me.

Lady Eleanore, I must tell you what a wonderful woman she is. She loves adventure, she rides horses, she knows swordplay, and most of all, she is remarkably intelligent. These were all the qualities that drew me to her and made me fall for her so completely.

Not long ago, I proposed marriage to Lauriel, and she said yes. My mother approves of the match. My father, the King, is somewhat opposed to it, given that she is only a Viscount’s daughter, but I have no doubt my mother will win him over soon enough. Besides, there are no other ladies remaining in high society who hold a stature to rival hers, save perhaps Lady Flora, but she is only a friend.

I wanted you to be the first to know, which is why I’ve written you such a long letter. I hope I haven’t bored you with my love story, and that it felt as magical to read as it did for me to live.

On my birthday banquet this year, which falls in two days’ time, I will be announcing our engagement. I have decided not to wait any longer for my father’s full approval. I want you there, as an old friend, to support me in what will be one of the happiest moments of my life.

Yours truthfully,

Alastor Seraphine

____

Eleanore reads it twice before she folds it, her thumb smoothing over the wax seal one last time as though checking it hadn’t cracked. There was something almost tender in the way Alastor wrote, an earnestness that had followed him since childhood, unchanged by crowns or titles or the weight of a kingdom waiting on his shoulders. A smile lingers on her face as she tucks the letter deep into the drawer of her study desk, sliding it beneath a stack of correspondence she hadn’t yet answered.

She sits for a moment longer than she means to, staring at nothing in particular, thinking of a boy who used to trail after her and Reign at every banquet, sulking whenever she didn’t notice him. It was strange, she thought, how much a person could change and yet somehow still be entirely themselves.

Caelestis soon appears in her study, the door easing shut behind him with none of his usual composure. He looks tense as he settles onto the sofa, one boot crossed over the other knee, his fingers drumming once against the armrest before stilling. He waits for the tea to be poured, watching the steam curl upward, only lifting the cup once Marina has bowed out and the door has clicked closed behind her.

He takes a sip, then exhales, sinking further into the cushions, the muscles along his shoulders loosening by degrees, though not fully not the way they usually did when it was just the two of them. Something was wrong, Eleanore could sense it immediately, the way she always could now, as though some part of her had learned the specific shape of his silences. She rises from her desk and crosses the room, the letter forgotten for the moment, and settles beside him, close enough that her knee brushes his.

"What’s wrong, dear?" she asks, reaching to smooth a line of tension from between his brows before she’s even fully aware she’s doing it.