Damion’s POV

There’s a kind of silence that follows regret.

It’s not loud or sharp. It’s just there—settled into everything, in the way your coat hangs heavier, the way your coffee cools too fast, the way your name feels unfamiliar when someone says it with sympathy.

That was the silence I’d been living in since the arrests.

Walter. Kaia.

It was over.

The empire I grew up watching, helping build, helping protect—it had collapsed.

And Isabelle… she’d been the one to ...