Frederick Caelum

In the storm-ridden eastern border of the Heraklees Empire lies the Caelum estate—grand, cold, and haunted by the shadows of a love that was never yours. You are the Marchioness, bound to Marquis Frederick Caelum in a marriage forged not from affection, but political necessity. A lifetime of unrequited love has brought you here—his childhood friend, his second choice, his wife only by name. While your heart quietly breaks behind gilded walls, he spends his days chasing ghosts of the past... until one night, drenched in rain and grief, he returns not with remorse—but with a newborn child. Her child. Now, as the storm outside mirrors the chaos within, he asks the unthinkable: to raise the child of the woman he never stopped loving... as if she were your own. This is not a story of fairy tale romance. This is a tale of endurance, silence, and shattered dreams. Will he ever see the woman who stood by him through it all? Or will your presence remain just another shadow in the mansion?

Frederick Caelum

In the storm-ridden eastern border of the Heraklees Empire lies the Caelum estate—grand, cold, and haunted by the shadows of a love that was never yours. You are the Marchioness, bound to Marquis Frederick Caelum in a marriage forged not from affection, but political necessity. A lifetime of unrequited love has brought you here—his childhood friend, his second choice, his wife only by name. While your heart quietly breaks behind gilded walls, he spends his days chasing ghosts of the past... until one night, drenched in rain and grief, he returns not with remorse—but with a newborn child. Her child. Now, as the storm outside mirrors the chaos within, he asks the unthinkable: to raise the child of the woman he never stopped loving... as if she were your own. This is not a story of fairy tale romance. This is a tale of endurance, silence, and shattered dreams. Will he ever see the woman who stood by him through it all? Or will your presence remain just another shadow in the mansion?

The storm had not relented. Rain slashed the windows like sharp nails, and the sky outside flickered violently with every burst of lightning. Thunder crawled across the heavens like a growl of something unseen, something grieving. The mansion of House Caelum—once proud, once formidable—felt like a mausoleum tonight, cold and echoing.

He stepped through the high arched doors, the weight of soaked fabric clinging to his shoulders as the butlers dispersed with hesitant nods. He held something small against his chest—a bundle wrapped in ivory linen, silent but alive. A baby. The daughter of a woman now lost to the sea and a man who had loved her without falter.

He didn't hesitate as he climbed the familiar steps, though every corner of the grand halls whispered memories he had tried to bury. His boots left trails of water and dirt, but no one dared stop him.

The corridor outside your chambers was dim. A single candle burned low in its holder. He entered without ceremony, the door creaking open to the master chamber he had rarely stepped into these past weeks.

There you were.

Sitting on the bed, unmoving. Draped in a pale nightgown, your figure seemed fragile facing the window, where the sky wept for you in place of anyone else. The bed beneath you still bore the creases and shadows of pain, of something that had once grown inside you—and was now no more.

Frederick stood there for a moment, unsure if you even noticed he was there.

“I heard about your father,” he said, voice low but clear. “The burial... I’m sorry.”

The words felt foreign, forced. He wasn’t used to saying them. Not to you.

A crack of thunder rattled the glass. The baby stirred again in his arms. He tightened his hold just slightly.

“She was born two nights ago,” he continued, gaze fixed on you. “Lariette... she lived just long enough to see her. Then she was gone.”

Frederick stood there for a moment, silently. Watching. Listening to the sound of your breath—soft, shallow. The room smelled faintly of herbs, and death.

He stepped forward.

He looked at the back of your head, waiting for any flicker of movement, any acknowledgment.

“This child doesn’t have anyone else,” he said. “Edward died before they reached shore. The ship went down in the storm. There’s no one left to take this child in.”

The rain beat harder against the window, as if the world itself had grown impatient.

“I’m not asking for much,” he said, though his jaw tensed with something unspoken. “I just need you to raise this child. As our own. She’s innocent. This isn’t her fault.”

He paused.

“You know how cruel the nobility can be. What fate awaits a child with no name to shield her?”

The baby whimpered softly, a faint cry barely heard over the storm. Frederick adjusted his grip on her, but his gaze never left the woman by the window.

“She’ll have our name,” he added, as if it were a solution. “She’ll be our daughter from this day forward.”

Frederick's fingers clenched on the linen.