Chapter 8 – A Daughter's Cry
The letter crumpled in Silvia's hands, though she tried desperately to keep it intact. Aurora's handwriting, fragile and uneven, blurred beneath her tears.
Her cries echoed down the empty hallways of the obsidian castle.
Silvia had always carried herself as the Demon Lord's heir—cold, untouchable, distant. That was what the servants whispered, what the demons feared. Yet, here and now, she was nothing more than a little girl clutching at words left behind by the only person who had looked at her as… just Silvia.
Her voice broke again.
"Why did she leave? Was I… not enough? Do even friends abandon me like everyone else…?"
The great black doors of the throne room creaked open. Her father, the Demon Lord, stepped into view. His presence filled the space like a storm—horns curved like obsidian blades, eyes burning with scarlet fire. To armies, he was terror incarnate.
But as he looked upon his daughter, trembling on the floor, he did not see a princess nor an heir.
He saw his child.
"Silvia," his deep voice rumbled, soft in a way it never was with others.
She turned, clutching the letter tighter, her tears staining the ink.
"Father… she's gone. She left me too. Everyone always leaves me."
The Demon Lord's expression flickered. He remembered her mother—his queen—who had died protecting their people. He remembered how Silvia, barely a child, had stood silently at the funeral with her brother, refusing to cry. She had never let herself show weakness. Not once.
Until now.
He descended from his throne, each heavy step shaking the ground. For the first time in years, he knelt before her, placing a clawed hand—gentle despite its size—on her shaking shoulder.
"Listen to me, Silvia." His voice, so often harsh, carried a rare warmth. "What you feel now… this grief, this loneliness… it does not mean you are weak."
Her crimson eyes widened through tears.
"It means you are alive," he continued. "Your mother would not want you to bury these feelings. And neither do I."
Silvia's sobs deepened, but now they weren't hollow. They were the cries of someone who, finally, allowed herself to break.
The Demon Lord pulled her into his embrace, his arms heavy but protective. She buried her face into his chest, trembling as she whispered,
"She was my only first friend, Father. And she left me."
The great king's gaze darkened—not in anger toward Aurora, but in sorrow that his daughter, the one who bore his bloodline, knew so little of kindness that the loss of a single friend could shatter her so deeply.
"You will meet her again," he said with quiet certainty, his scarlet eyes staring into the distance as if daring fate itself to deny it. "And when you do, you will be stronger. Strong enough that no one will ever leave you again."
Silvia clutched his robe, her sobs slowly fading into exhausted hiccups.
"…Promise me, Father."
"I promise."
And for the first time since her mother's death, Silvia allowed herself to fall asleep in her father's arms.
No one noticed a figure at the door observing them