Aston's POV

"There is no bigger pressure than the expectation of a father."

––Aston von Rosenmahl

I sit on the grass, lungs filled to the brim until the pressure becomes unbearable, until it burns, and then I exhale, letting it all go. My shoulders drop. My neck gives in, and my head lolls forward as if it's finally too heavy to carry the burden any longer. Above me, the leaves shift, a soft rustle under the turquoise sky, shimmering like polished emeralds in the light. This place—my place—is the only one where I allow myself to forget. Forget the sharp tone of reprimands. Forget the constant, silent demand to be better, to perform, to deserve the name I carry.

Rosenmahl. A name sharp as thorns, as cold as steel.

I don't know what I did to deserve being treated as though I didn't belong to it. Or maybe I do. Maybe I was simply born last. Maybe that was enough. They see me as one of them, sure—but only in public, only when the illusion must be maintained. Behind closed doors, I am merely tolerated. Like a servant who dares to wear his master's clothes.

Some days, as I let the damp blades of grass soak into my fingers, I think of the girl who died because of me. A servant. A red. Just one among many, my family has sentenced to death without blinking. One life. Countless others. Banquets where screams were muffled by music, where blood was served like wine. Like pigs, they were slaughtered.

I stretch my legs out. The damp earth clings to my clothes. My gaze drifts to a patch of mushrooms clustered near my boot—truthspeakers, they're called. Their toxins don't kill. No. They only ensure that every word spoken after their consumption is honest. A cruel joke of nature. I watch insects flitting from bush to flower—some of these plants rare enough to buy a district, all of them mine.

Still, even here, in the only place I feel like a human being, I cannot stay. So I rise. I walk. I head toward the estate, toward those who share my blood but not my heart. A lineage of cruelty held together by power and fear.

The grass squelches beneath my steps, dark and still wet from the rains yesterday. My mind wanders to Doran—my nephew. No, on some days, my son. As leaves fall from the tree, whose hair protects me from the sun in the color of my blood, I think of Emma von Jäger. She still insists on calling from time to time, asking for favors, for attention. Always something shallow. Our relationship was never meant to bear fruit, and yet, all we do when we meet is do adult things. The latest chapters are uploaded first on *.

For that reason, I hate Lieben the most. Couldn't he've done something more beneficial in his free time? But then again, I think of Doran, the boy who was created by the man I've killed, my brother. He's innocent still. There's hope for him. And there are red children in his care now, serving in the Villa of Lieben. I'll make sure he treats them as people. That he learns what the older generation refuses to accept. No what everyone refuses to accept: the blood in our veins doesn't make us better—only more dangerous. We shouldn't watch from above but help on the same level.

I walk through the estate's corridors. Daylight floods through high windows, reflecting off marble and oil painting scenes of conquest, still life, nobility frozen in time. Every fourth or fifth is a landscape from some of the other continents, reminders of a world beyond power, even though most painters have never been there themselves. Dunes in vibrant colors of purple, waves of sand flooding the violet desert; from there the name, continent of violet seas. There are machines as big as our estate, and temples beneath the sand, worms being the way beneath the surface. Some are even abstract, mostly surrealism.

Then I reach the door. The root of the thorns, I call it. The one who bleeds me without a knife sits beyond, my father.