They burned my body on the hill behind the estate, as I had wished. Warm places.

Alexander lit the pyre himself. He stood until the last ember died.

Victoria was sentenced to exile. My father, execution. The seer who made the prophecy disappeared before the soldiers could find him.

My mother lived another year. She spent it tending the pear tree, talking to me as though I could hear.

I could.

Alexander never remarried. He kept the portrait in his study—the one I'd never known existed. Each spring, when the pear blossoms bloomed, he made the cakes himself. Badly. Nanny Beatrice's recipe was meant for patient hands, and Alexander's hands were made for swords.

But he tried. Every year. And every year, the cakes were a little less terrible.

Nanny Beatrice visited the estate once, carrying a bundle of my childhood drawings. Alexander invited her to stay. She did—not as a servant, but as family. The only person alive who had loved me without condition or calculation.

On the anniversary of my death, Alexander rode to the hill where I was burned. He brought a single pear blossom cake—the best one he'd ever made—and left it on the stone marker.

"I never told you," he said to the wind. "On our wedding night, I said don't expect pity. What I meant was: don't expect pity, because what I intend to give you is far more than that."

"I was a fool. And you deserved every word I never said."

The wind carried the scent of pear blossoms.

I was already gone—truly gone, this time. But if the dead can smile, I did.

Some love stories end with a kiss. Some end with a funeral pyre and a man who learned tenderness too late.

But even the late ones count. Even the ones whispered to empty hills.

They all count.