_Kaelen’s POV_

I found Grandma in the garden at seven in the morning.

She was sitting on the bench near the rose bushes she had maintained herself for thirty years, hands folded over her cane, looking at nothing specific.

The garden itself was the same as it had always been, her domain, untouched by the removal teams because none of it had been on the asset list. But from where she sat, she had a clear view of the east wing windows, and those windows were bare now.

No curtains. Just glass and the morning light coming through at an angle that made the emptiness visible from thirty feet away.

She didn’t look up when I came out.

I sat on the other end of the bench and said nothing.

We stayed like that for a while.

“I didn’t think she’d actually do it,” Grandma said finally. Her voice was different than usual, stripped of its usual authority, just an old woman talking to the garden. “I knew she was serious. I knew she had every right. But I didn’t think......” She stopped. Started again. “She took the mirror from the corridor. The one I used every morning for the past three years.”

“It was hers,” I said. “Her family brought it.”

“I know that.” Her voice cracked slightly at the edge. “I know. I just, I’d stopped thinking of things as hers and ours. They were just here. Part of the house.” She pressed her lips together. “And now they’re not.”

I looked at the east wing windows.

The house did not look ruined, exactly. The structure was sound, the grounds were maintained, the furniture that had belonged to the estate before the marriage was still in place. But it looked like what it was, a house that had been supplemented for years by something external, now returned to its original state, and the original state was considerably more modest than what everyone had grown accustomed to

.

I had spent the morning going through the operational accounts with Greaves.

The supply contract with the primary vendor had already come back declined, three attempts, all bounced, because the account Rowena had used to process those payments was no longer accessible to Moonreign. Three years of smooth supply runs, ended overnight.

Three more vendor accounts were flagged by afternoon. The quarterly payroll for the maintenance staff was due in ten days and the fund that had historically covered it was gone.

The medical endowment for Grandma’s treatments was intact through the year, Rowena had kept that promise, which somehow made everything else feel worse rather than better.

“She left the one thing that would have given you a reason to be angry with her,” Shade said. “She left nothing to be angry about.”

“She took the shelving from the study,” Grandma added. She was still talking to the garden. “I didn’t even know she’d paid for it. I thought, it came with the house, I thought.”

“Nothing came with the house,” I said. “When father died, there was almost nothing here. She brought most of it.”

Maelis was quiet.

“You knew,” I said. Not an accusation. Just the statement of something I had understood for weeks now.

“I knew more than I let on,” she said. “Yes.” She turned to look at me for the first time since I sat down. Her eyes were dry, she had cried already, earlier, before I came out, I could see the evidence of it in the slight redness around her eyes. “I told myself it was for the good of the pack. That she had the resources and we needed them and a Luna’s role included supporting her husband’s household.” She paused. “I don’t think I actually believed that. I think I just found it convenient.”

That was the most honest thing my grandmother had said in years.

I didn’t know what to do with it.

“I know,” I said. “I made the same calculation. Called it something else.”

Maelis looked back at the garden.

The door behind us opened. Virella came out with two cups of tea, dressed for the day, bright-eyed. She handed one cup to me, glanced at Maelis with the polite warmth she used for the older woman, and sat on the garden step nearby.

“I spoke to two contacts this morning,” she said. She wasn’t being callous, I understood that. She was doing what she always did, which was assess a problem and immediately begin moving toward the solution. “The eastern alliance connection I mentioned before the wedding. They’re still interested in a partnership arrangement with Moonreign. It would cover the supply chain gap and bring in additional operational capital.” She looked at me directly. “It won’t be as clean as what we had. It’ll require negotiation and there will be terms to meet. But it’s real and it’s available.”

I looked at her.

She was capable. She would do exactly what she said she would do. She would work the contacts, negotiate the terms, and she would probably succeed, because Virella’s particular talent was making things work through force of will and intelligence and a comprehensive refusal to consider failure a realistic outcome.

It was one of the things I had fallen for. It was also, sitting here in the garden looking at bare east wing windows, making something sit uncomfortably in my chest.

Because Rowena had never needed to announce what she was doing for this household. She had just done it, quietly, for three years, and I had called it her role and moved on.

Virella would do visible work and do it well and I would know exactly what it cost and what it achieved. And that was fine. That was honest.

But it was different.

Maelis stood up slowly, using her cane to push herself upright. She looked at the east wing windows one more time and then turned toward the house.

“Come inside when you’re ready,” she said to me. Not to Virella. Just me. “We have accounts to review.”

Then she went into the mansion.

The heaviness from earlier returned stronger and I almost groaned in frustration at the whole thing. Shade wasn’t helping. I felt genuinely tired, but there was nothing I could do either.

Just then, Virella moved to hug me with a small smile.