The Empress's Office looked like a stationery shop had exploded.
Letters sprawled across the marble table in elegant chaos: cream vellum, blush-pressed silk, and rice-paper scrolls laced in real gold. The air was thick with perfume and powdered wax, and somewhere near the fireplace sat a carved wooden box that had once been a cradle and now functioned solely as a pedestal for more letters.
Gabriel stood near the far window, expression unreadable, a cup of tea in one hand and a list of titles he never asked to inherit in the other. He wasn't reading. He was counting.
Ten seconds. Twenty. A full minute since someone said his name again.
It didn't last.
"This one has a lock of hair in it," Alexandra announced triumphantly, holding the letter up between two fingers like it had personally offended her. "A real lock. Of hair. From a baroness claiming her family line has fertility blessings."
Irina gasped, delighted. "Do you think it's blessed hair or just… commemorative?"
