I almost missed them in the crowd. Elif and Milan, standing near the back of the hall. Elif's face was the color of ash, her amber eyes red-rimmed, her hands clasped so tightly before her that her knuckles had gone white. Milan stood at her shoulder with the careful proximity of someone who understood they were not the right person for this grief but had no intention of leaving. His pale gray eyes found mine across the hall and held them for a moment before I looked away.
Hakan had gone still when he saw his mother. A muscle worked in his jaw. He looked at her the way you look at someone across a distance you can't cross right now, a private message sent without words. Elif received it. She gave the smallest nod.
"Princess Ada." Serkan stepped forward first, his bow precise. Then his gaze moved past me. Recognition flared — not surprise, but the quick, careful recalculation of someone whose odds just changed. "The Shadow Lord. The Light Court wasn't expecting you."
"Serkan." Kaan's nod carried the weight of history between them — two rulers of opposing realms who'd maintained agrudging, functional respect across centuries of cold war. "My condolences. Gün Ata was many things, but insignificant was never one of them."
Serkan's mouth twitched — almost a smile. "He would have appreciated that assessment. Though he'd have demanded better adjectives."
"And Lady Nesilhan." Lord Cevdet had stepped forward, his ancient eyes brightening with something that looked almost like relief — as though one familiar face in an unfamiliar grief was enough to steady him. "Of House Lumina. It has been a very long time."
Nesilhan's expression didn't change, but I felt her still beside me. "It has, my lord. Too long." Not an apology. Not an accusation. She had not walked these halls since the war. Every person in this room knew why, even if none of them would say it.
"House Lumina asks after you still," Cevdet said quietly. "Your brother Zoran — has he been found? Last anyone heard he was deep in the fae realms."
Something crossed Nesilhan's face — not quite pain, not quite the ease of old affection, something suspended between them. "Last I heard the same," she said. "He's been wandering the outer fae territories for years now. Zoran was never good at staying anywhere that felt too much like home." A pause. "If word reaches him, he'll come."
"We'll try the fae channels," Cevdet said simply, and left it there. He knew when to stop pulling on a thread.
The tension in the hall shifted — not dissolved, but complicated. The Shadow Court delegation wasn't invaders. They were mourners. Family, however fractured.
I stepped forward before the politics could swallow the grief entirely. "I want to see my father."
Gün Ata's chambers smelled of incense and dying light. I stopped in the doorway. Hakan's hand was at the small of my back, steady and warm, and he said nothing — just held it there until I could breathe again.
They'd laid him on his bed in ceremonial white and gold, hands folded, hair combed. Someone had performed these small kindnesses while I was a realm away watching my beloved learn to embrace his darkness. I hadn't been here.
Hakan stood at the threshold but didn't follow when I crossed the room. He understood, somehow, that this was a conversation between a daughter and the absence where her father used to be.
I sat on the edge of the bed. Took his hand. The skin felt like parchment — dry, impossibly thin, the warmth bleeding out of it minute by minute.
"You lied to me," I whispered. "You said you were fighting. You said you were too stubborn to die."
Nothing.
"You named him a Light Lord. You were supposed to see us married. You were supposed to hold your grandchildren and tell them stories about when you were young and the world was whole and?—"
My voice shattered, I swallowed my tears.
I pressed my forehead against his chest. There was no heartbeat. No warmth. No divine light flickering beneath the surface, that familiar golden pulse I'd felt every time he'd held me since Iwas born. Just silence. Just absence. Just the terrible, yawning nothing where my father used to live.
I wept until my ribs ached, until the ceremonial white was soaked through, until the grief had wrung me out and left me hollow. When I finally lifted my head, the room was darker than when I'd entered. The enchanted sconces on the walls had dimmed further — the palace mourning alongside me, the Light Court's magic recognising its creator was gone.
The funeral began at sunset. It was the Light Farewell — the funeral rite of a divine god. No living being had performed it. The priests worked from texts so old the pages had to be handled with enchanted gloves, chanting in a dialect of Old Light that hadn't been spoken in a thousand years. They built the pyre in the Eternal Courtyard — a structure of white crystal and golden wood, sanctified by seven priests representing the seven Light Court factions. Each lord placed a token of their allegiance at the pyre's base: Serkan's was a blade of forged light. Cevdet's, an ancient scroll. Volkan laid a commander's standard. The others followed, each offering a piece of their power to honor the god who'd sustained them all.
The entire court filled the courtyard — thousands of beings in white and gold, their faces lit by the guttering remains of divine magic. Silence pressed down like a physical weight. For the first time in three millennia, the Palace of Light held no god. The air itself felt thinner, as if the world had forgotten how to breathe.
Hakan's hand held mine throughout. His grip was solid, present, his thumb drawing slow circles against my palm — the same rhythm that had grounded me since we were young, the same anchor in every storm. Sarp stood at my other side, close enough that his arm brushed mine.
Kaan and Nesilhan held their position at the front of the courtyard, directly across from Serkan — equals in station, shadow facing light across a dead god's pyre. The symbolism was not lost on anyone. Whispers hissed through the crowd:the Shadow Lord himself came to pay respects. His wife was once House Lumina. Two shadow lords stand where gods stood.Near the back, pale and contained, Elif stood with Milan beside her, and neither of them moved.
The divine fire consumed my father's body without heat. Golden flame, brighter than anything the dimming palace could produce, roaring upward in a pillar that pierced the twilight sky. The crowd gasped. Some wept. Some fell to their knees. I felt the warmth of it against my face and watched it eat the man who'd been my entire world and felt something fundamental rearrange itself inside me — something that had been soft becoming stone, something that had believed in simple things choosing, finally, to stop.
Hakan's hand held mine. His grip was solid, his thumb drawing slow circles against my palm.
The heat from the pyre pressed against my skin. The incense thickened. The grief was a physical weight on my chest and suddenly the courtyard was too bright, too loud, too full of people performing sorrow while my father burned.
"I need water," I said. My voice came out thin. "I'm dizzy."