Silent Crown: The Masked Prince's Bride-Chapter 287: When Death Come Close

The mountains were swallowing the world whole.

What began as a tender snowfall had turned relentless; white upon white, muffling everything. Even the trees seemed tired of standing, their branches heavy and bent under the frost.

Lorraine trudged through the powder, her boots vanishing with every step. The wind clawed at her hood, tugged her braid free. She had wrapped herself in every layer she could find, yet somehow the cold still bit her bones like a vindictive ghost.

As someone from the city, she was not used to this coldness, nor this rough terrain. But she persisted.

The cottage they lived in sat a few slopes down, half-buried under snow. From above, it might have looked like a forgotten grave. And perhaps, to the world, it was.

She stopped to catch her breath and looked around, exhaling through trembling lips. You’re Lazira, she told herself. You survived poisons and plots. Surely, you can handle a little snow.

Her husband, meanwhile, was "hunting." Again.

Every morning since they’d come here, Leroy left at dawn, bow slung across his back, eyes calm, lips unreadable. And every evening, he returned with the same story: no game, just tracks; no luck, but maybe tomorrow. He only brought back fish. From where, she had no clue. The river was frozen.

She’d believed him the first week. Then she’d realized the deer he claimed to be hunting must have been philosophers, because no ordinary animal required this much contemplation.

He was planning something, she could tell. The air around him buzzed with the quiet hum of secrets, and if there was one thing Lorraine hated more than the cold, it was being left out of anything.

Sitting still in the house did something to her she couldn’t explain. The silence pressed on her skull like a weight. Being alone, just cooking, cleaning, waiting for him to return... it was not a life she was built for. Not after everything.

She had learned something unsettling about herself these past few days: if her mind wasn’t plotting against someone else, it began plotting against herself. And that was far more dangerous.

Because the moment her thoughts turned inward, they found all the cracks she had spent years sealing shut.

So every morning, as soon as Leroy went off on one of his so-called hunts, she threw herself into movement by marking trails, searching for the rumored village, anything to keep her from drowning in stillness. Tunnels she understood; snow-covered cliffs, not so much. But she was learning.

That day, the air carried a strange scent... faint, but distinct. Smoke. Wood smoke.

Her pulse quickened.

She trudged toward it, following the faintest wisp curling against the sky. Her boots slipped, the snow swallowed her to her knees, and twice she had to stop to catch her breath. "I swear," she muttered between gasps, holding her belly that has now gotten a bit rounder marking the life growing inside her, "If I die of frostbite, he’s not allowed to remarry. Ever."

The slope ahead dipped sharply, and she slid the last few feet, landing rather ungracefully on her back. But when she lifted her head, her heart stopped.

There it was.

The sky had already begun to bruise purple when Lorraine caught sight of it... a cluster of rooftops crouched in the valley below, their chimneys bleeding thin trails of smoke into the dimming air.

A village.

Her breath fogged the chill around her lips. For days, she had thought these mountains empty, save for the wind and the bones of the forest. And yet there it was... life. Lanterns flickered faintly between the snowdrifts, the glow of a hearth caught in glass panes.

Her pulse quickened. If there were people, there might be... Information. A route down the mountain. She needed to know the happenings of Vaeloria and Kaltharion. By now Gaston’s death would have been announced.

But as she looked west, the wind turned violent, carrying with it the metallic promise of snow. The storm was building.

She wrapped her cloak tighter around herself, the fur lining stiff with frost. The thought of descending now was foolish. Even a few more steps down the ridge would risk being caught in the blizzard after dark.

"Tomorrow," she murmured to herself, almost convincing. "At first light."

The slope groaned beneath her boots as she began to climb back toward the narrow trail that led to the cabin. Each breath scraped her throat; her fingers had gone numb through her gloves. The first flakes began to fall, soft and white as feathers, but blinding in the dusk.

She was almost home. The faint curl of smoke rising from the chimney came into view—a small, stubborn promise against the white wilderness. She always left the fire simmering when she went out. It gave the illusion that she was inside, that she wasn’t out here sneaking around in the cold.

Was there really a need to be this suspicious of her husband? He’d probably tell her where the village was if she asked. But no—she wanted to find it herself. She needed to do something. 𝒇𝒓𝙚𝒆𝔀𝓮𝓫𝒏𝓸𝙫𝓮𝓵.𝓬𝙤𝙢

Still, the thought made her wince. She wasn’t proud of herself for doing things behind his back. Maybe she’d simply grown used to it, the quiet thrill of it. The waiting to see if he’d find out. The curiosity of how he’d deal with her this time.

Lost in her thoughts, she walked. It was then...

Crack.

Her boot slipped on a sheet of hidden ice.

The world tilted violently. She gasped, air ripped from her lungs as she tumbled, with her cloak twisting, hair whipping across her face, snow clawing at her skin. The shock of cold bit through her layers as she fought to cover her belly, protecting the child within. That was all she could think of. Not herself. Only the baby.

Snow and rock blurred into a dizzying streak of white and gray. For a heartbeat, she was back in her mansion, falling from that window... her body weightless, helpless... until Leroy had caught her, just in time.

But now, there was no one. Only the cliff edge rushing closer, the frozen wind screaming in her ears.

"Leroy!" she shouted, voice hoarse, breaking through the storm.

She didn’t even know where he was, but her heart cried his name as if he’d hear it. Because... when death came close, it was always him she thought of.

Leroy...