The Duke's Slave Daughter

The Duke’s Burden

The shadows of night crept across the walls of Duke Azrael's chambers, a heavy silence hanging in the air. His bed, though large and regal, seemed too empty for the weight pressing down on him. He lay wide awake, staring up at the ceiling, his eyes hollow from restless hours spent in torment. His body was still, but his mind raced, unable to escape the strange visions that haunted him.

For the past few weeks, ever since the trial of that girl, Urania, he had been plagued by dreams—nightmares, really—of a girl with eyes too familiar yet foreign, a girl he could not place. Her face seemed so close, but when he reached for it, it slipped away. She had looked at him with a quiet sadness, her expression twisted between hope and pain. Her name lingered on the tip of his tongue, but when he tried to say it, the words choked in his throat.

The girl, Urania, had dared to claim herself as his daughter, a declaration that had sent the court into a frenzy and left his heart in disarray. But she had been exiled, cast out with the scorn of her supposed treason weighing down on her. And yet, her face—the sadness in her eyes—would not leave his thoughts.

"Why can’t I remember you?" he murmured to the darkness, his voice barely above a whisper. A tear slipped down his cheek, tracing the hardened line of his jaw. His fingers, clenched at his sides, reached out as if trying to grasp something in the air—something that should have been there, something he should have known. But the memories remained elusive, swirling in the fog of his mind, slipping further away each time he tried to hold on.

The weight of responsibility was never easy. As Duke, his burdens were many, and his duties endless. But this was something different. Something deeper. A longing he couldn’t explain, a pain he couldn’t soothe.

I should know her. I should remember her. The thought repeated itself in his mind, louder with each passing moment, yet the more he searched his memories, the further away the answers seemed. He closed his eyes, squeezing them tight, but the images wouldn’t solidify.

The castle halls echoed with the sounds of daily life—footsteps of servants, the murmur of conversation, the clinking of armor from his soldiers as they moved about their duties. Yet, for all the noise, Duke Azrael found himself drifting in a fog, his mind clouded with the memories he couldn’t quite place.

He walked through the grand hallway, his heavy boots reverberating against the stone floor as he passed by his advisors. Their words blurred into the background, a murmur that he barely registered. “My lord, are you feeling well?” one of them asked, concern etched in their voice. “You seem distracted these days. Your work is—” The words trailed off, and Azrael could feel the weight of their scrutiny.

He nodded absently, the question cutting through his reverie. They had all noticed. His sons, too, had begun to grow concerned, calling him out on his distracted behavior. He had been irritable, forgetting appointments, and sometimes even losing his temper over small matters.

"Are you certain you are all right, Father?" his elder son had asked earlier that morning, his brow furrowed with a rare concern.

Azrael waved it off, unable to explain the gnawing emptiness that ate away at him. It wasn’t just fatigue. It wasn’t just the stresses of ruling. It was something more—something that twisted at his soul.

In the quiet moments between conversations, his thoughts drifted back to the girl—the one he couldn’t remember but felt so strongly tied to. Her face flickered in his mind—vivid, clear for an instant, only to dissolve into mist when he tried to grasp it. He couldn’t recall her name. He couldn’t recall the moments when she had been part of his life, but he knew she had been. Somewhere, in a distant past, she had been his.

“Your Grace?” A voice cut through his thoughts. One of his servants stood before him, holding a scroll with reports of the day’s matters. Azrael took it without a word, his eyes momentarily lost in the parchment, but his mind far from the business of ruling. He was still searching for that face—the girl who had claimed to be his daughter. The one who, in some forgotten part of him, had been family.

Later that day, Azrael stood before the full-length mirror in his private chambers, his reflection staring back at him. He was a man used to power, his face hardened by years of leadership, his posture upright and proud. But now, as he examined himself, there was something unfamiliar in his eyes. Something haunted.

The man in the mirror was still him, yet he couldn’t recognize the burden that seemed to hang heavy on his shoulders. He felt like an imposter in his own skin, the weight of some unspoken guilt pressing down on him. His hands clenched into fists, his knuckles white with the tension of emotions he could not fully understand. The guilt tore at him, a wound that would not heal, even as he stood in the comfort of his own domain.

"What am I doing?" His whisper bounced off the walls, the sound harsh in the quiet room. He didn’t have the answers. He didn’t know what to do with the ache inside of him, the memories that weren’t his yet felt so painfully familiar. How had he failed? What had he forgotten? Was there something—someone—he had lost without realizing?

He closed his eyes, pressing a hand to his forehead. His head throbbed, the pressure behind his eyes almost unbearable. There was something in his past—something important—that he had let slip through his fingers. A face, a name, a child he should have known but couldn’t recall. The pain of it was raw, like a wound that had festered and now threatened to consume him.

His reflection stared back at him, impassive, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that the man before him was incomplete. The weight of his failure hung like a shroud over him.

The night was quiet, the candlelight flickering in the stillness of his study. Azrael sat at his desk, his hands steepled in front of him, his mind restless. He could hear the faint rustle of papers, the scratch of his quill against the parchment, but all of it felt distant. His thoughts were far from the work at hand. The name—Urania—kept echoing in his mind.

Urania. The name struck him like a hammer, sharp and sudden. It was the name of the girl, the one who had stood before him during the trial, claiming to be his daughter. He despised that name, hated it, but there was something inside him that couldn’t let it go. It nagged at him, like a splinter lodged deep in his heart, pulling at him even though he didn’t want it to.

His hands shook as he placed the quill down, the parchment forgotten. The girl who had been exiled. The one who had betrayed him. The one who had introduced herself as his daughter. But it didn’t make sense—if she was his daughter, why couldn’t he remember her? Why did the very thought of her make his heart ache, but also fill him with disgust?

"Urania…" he whispered, his voice barely audible, but the name tasted bitter on his tongue, like something foul he couldn’t expunge. His mind reeled, trying to make sense of it all, but the pieces wouldn’t fit. She was gone—exiled—never to return. And yet, her name lingered in his thoughts, a reminder of something he could never understand.

He grasped at it, desperate to hold onto the memories, to the girl he should have known, but the more he tried, the more distant she became. The name, the face, the memories—everything slipped through his fingers like sand, leaving him with nothing but the echo of her name, and the hollow ache of a burden he could never escape.