Chapter 131: Sweet moment

The Emperor finished reading the letter and did not move.

His eyes remained fixed on the last line of the paper, blank and unreadable, with not even a flicker of emotion passing through them, as if he was looking at nothing more than a blank page. The silence in the throne room grew heavier and heavier, until the sound of the wind through the windows felt like a whisper in a tomb.

He read the letter once more from the start, his gaze moving slowly down every line, and when he reached the part about the humans of the Empire in the Desolate Land, the fingers holding the paper tightened very slightly, so slightly that the paper only wrinkled at the edge.

"Safe and unharmed... after ten months..." he murmured in a low voice, as if tasting each word. "And he even found the soldiers of the Empire in the Desolate Land, of all places."

A faint smile curled the corner of his lips, but it did not reach his eyes, and it carried no warmth at all.

He slowly closed his hand, and the paper crumpled in his fist with a rustling sound. He stood up from the throne and walked down the steps one by one, his long robe trailing behind him, and he stopped in front of a tall bronze brazier that stood beside the pillar, where a small flame was still flickering from the morning’s incense.

The Emperor opened his hand and let the crumpled letter drop into the fire.

The flame flared up for a moment as it caught the paper, curling the edges into black and turning the neat handwriting of the Duke into ash, one line at a time. The Emperor stood there with his hands behind his back, watching the fire swallow the letter, the orange light reflecting in his empty eyes, until nothing was left of it except a few drifting flakes of black ash which rose in the air and scattered across the floor.

"Draven... You always were far too good at finding things which should have remained buried."

He turned around and walked back towards the throne, and the silence swallowed the hall once more.

...

Meanwhile, in the Draven mansion, far away from the cold silence of the capital, the afternoon sun was spilling warmly through the windows of the Duke’s private study, and a very different atmosphere was floating around the room.

Cassian Draven, the Demon of the Battlefield, the man whom countless enemies had feared for decades, was sitting on a soft couch with his eyes closed and his head tilted back, wearing an expression of complete and utter bliss, as if he had just come back from a long war and found paradise waiting for him.

"Ahh... a little to the left, Sylvia... Yes, right there... Ohh, that is wonderful..."

Behind him, Sylvia was standing with her sleeves rolled up, her slender fingers pressing deeply into the tight muscles of his shoulders, kneading them with a skill that could only have come from years of practice. A faint, amused smile rested on her lips as she listened to the sounds escaping her husband’s mouth.

"You are making such a noise, as if I were torturing you."

"This is not torture. This is the best thing which has happened to me all week, and I have to say that it is all thanks to my wonderful wife." Cassian let out a long, satisfied sigh and rolled his neck slightly. "After spending a whole morning buried under reports from the southern barons, I felt as if my shoulders were made of stone."

"Perhaps if you hadn’t worked up so around yesterday during training, you wouldn’t have strained them so badly," Sylvia said sweetly, and she pressed her thumb against a particularly tight knot, making Cassian let out a stifled yelp. "I am still not finished scolding you about the duel, you know."

"I thought that I had already been forgiven that night..."

"You were forgiven for the part where you almost injured our son. You were not forgiven for the part where you made me worry for a whole afternoon."

"...I will make it up to you. I swear it."

Sylvia giggled softly and continued her work, her fingers moving in slow circles along his shoulder blades, and Cassian slowly relaxed again, his head dropping forward as the tension melted from his back inch by inch. For a while neither of them said anything, and the only sounds in the study were the rustling of papers on the desk, which a faint breeze was stirring, and the distant sound of Evelyn laughing somewhere in the garden.

"Did the letter reach the capital?" Sylvia asked after a while, in a quieter voice.

"By now, it should have," Cassian replied without opening his eyes, though a faint seriousness had returned to his tone. "I made sure that it was sent through the fastest messengers we have. I wrote everything exactly as Neo told us, including the part about the soldiers. I only lefted the part that, I also had gone there."

"Do you think that he will do something about it?"

Cassian was silent for a few moments, and then a thin smile appeared on his lips, not the carefree one from earlier, but a sharp, calm one which Sylvia had seen countless times on the battlefield.

"Whatever he does, we will know by how he does not answer. Silence tells more than words in the empire, my dear."

Sylvia did not reply, and her fingers paused for a brief moment on his shoulder before they began to move again, slower and gentler than before. Then she leaned down and pressed a light kiss against the top of his head.

"Then let us wait and see. For now, you should rest, since you have been working too hard."

"Mmm... Yes, my dear..." Cassian closed his eyes again, the smile returning to his face, as the warm afternoon light fell across the two of them. "Just a little longer... Right there... Yes..."

Outside the study door, a passing maid heard the sounds from the inside, blushed up to her ears, and hurried away down the corridor with her tray of tea, deciding that the Duke would have to drink it cold.