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 bring it down.
Not with rage. Not with fire.
But with patience. With truth.
And the unbearable part? I respected her more now than I ever had.
Even when I loved her and failed her… I don’t think I ever truly saw her. Not like this.
Not like the woman she became after I let her go.
And now, every second that passed w
