CHAPTER 383: CHAPTER 383: THE CURSE OF KNOWLEDGE

The rain hadn’t stopped since evening. It moved in quiet sheets across the tall windows of the Fitzgeralt estate, the droplets tracing pale rivers down the glass, reflecting the soft light of the fire still burning low in the hearth. It wasn’t cold enough for snow yet, but winter had begun to settle into the air of the north.

Inside, the fire burned low. The scent of rain mixed with the faint sweetness of chamomile; Windstone had insisted on tea earlier, though it sat forgotten on the table, its surface cooled and still.

Lucas had fallen asleep early... again.

He’d lasted maybe halfway through their evening conversation, the soft weight of fatigue pulling at his eyelids until his words began to trail off mid-sentence. Trevor had tried to coax him upstairs, but Lucas refused to move, muttering something about "just five minutes."

That had been nearly an hour ago.

Now he slept soundly, curled against Trevor on the couch, his head resting on Trevor’s thigh. One arm was loosely draped across Trevor’s leg, his breathing slow and even. His hair, impossibly soft and longer than the day they met, brushed Trevor’s wrist every time he shifted.

Trevor’s hand rested absently at the back of Lucas’s neck, thumb tracing small circles along the mark that bound them as mates for the rest of their lives. The warmth of him, the quiet, the faint rise and fall of his chest, these things anchored Trevor more effectively than any promise or prayer could.

And yet, his eyes kept drifting to the tablet on the table.

He had told himself he would wait. That he’d start tomorrow, but "tomorrow" had always been a convenient lie.

Trevor reached forward carefully, mindful not to wake the man asleep on his lap. The tablet’s smooth edge was cool under his fingertips. Its black screen reflected the faint firelight, casting a muted shimmer over the sleek glass surface that was almost innocent and ordinary.

It wasn’t.

Windstone had transferred the journal earlier that day, copying each faded page from the imperial archives, labeling the file only as Private Record—Palatine Line. Trevor had hesitated then, as if even naming it properly might breathe life into something that was better left buried.

He unlocked the screen. The room filled with the soft blue glow of the display, cutting against the amber warmth of the fire. The first file opened on its own, an image of old paper, the ink browned with age and the imperial crest pressed faintly into the upper corner.

The Journal of Emperor Yerofey of Palatine.

A dominant omega. A monarch both feared and revered and Lucas’s grandfather.

Trevor’s jaw tightened. He had seen portraits of Yerofey before displayed in the royal gallery. The resemblance had always unsettled him. The same pale hair, the same sharp, elegant features softened only by green eyes that seemed to hold too much awareness for their time.

Lucas could have stood beside that painted figure, and no one would have doubted they were the same blood.

He brushed a hand lightly through Lucas’s hair now, grounding himself in the present, then turned his attention to the first page.

The first page appeared.

The handwriting was steady, looping, elegant, and royal; he almost laughed because it looked so similar to Lucas’s.

"I don’t know if I’m mad.

If all of this is a bad dream, most of the time I wish it was.

I’ve lived five different lives, but... they weren’t real ones. Believe me, I know. What I felt, saw, and touched were perspectives, threads of fate that never matured into reality.

The madness comes from the fact that you never know if this is the last one... if this is the right one and the one where you can be happy.

But there is a way to know."

Trevor exhaled slowly, his eyes scanning the words again. The tone wasn’t regal, it was weary, intimate, and too human for an emperor.

Outside, the rain deepened, drumming against the tall windows like a restless heartbeat.

He shifted slightly, keeping one arm around Lucas. The omega stirred, his hand twitching against Trevor’s thigh before settling again. Trevor waited until his breathing steadied before he kept reading.

"They call it recursion, the cycle that binds souls meant to return. Some say it’s a gift, that love powerful enough to defy death will rebuild itself through generations until the thread completes. But no one warns you that when it rebuilds, it brings all the grief back with it."

A flicker of movement reflected in the window glass, like lightning, distant and muted. Trevor’s pulse quickened anyway.

He’d heard of Yerofey’s descent into seclusion, of the whispered rumors surrounding his abdication. But none of the official accounts had ever suggested this... a man aware of multiple lives, haunted by what he called recursion.

Trevor rubbed his thumb against the tablet’s edge, a habit born from tension.

The next section was shorter, the handwriting uneven in places—as though Yerofey had written it late at night, when the candlelight wavered and the weight of his thoughts became heavier than the crown.

"The soul remembers what the mind cannot. The heart recognizes someone before the eyes do. And you will wake from a dream already mourning something you haven’t lost yet. I used to think these were echoes of imagination, the residue of power. But I was wrong. Power fades. Memory doesn’t."

Trevor’s thumb paused mid-motion on the glass.

He thought of the way he had felt the first time he met Lucas; against his usual instincts, he started watching every one of his moves and days. There was an inexplicable sense of familiarity. He had dismissed it back then, blaming pheromones and attraction. But now, as he read Yerofey’s words, it felt disturbingly close to recognition.

Outside, the wind changed direction, driving rain against the windows in uneven bursts. The fireplace hissed softly.

Lucas shifted again, murmuring something unintelligible in his sleep. Trevor steadied him instinctively, palm at his back, the warmth grounding him while his mind drifted elsewhere.

"I remember the moment it began for me," Yerofey’s writing continued. "Not in this life, but the first one that I knew wasn’t my own. I saw the same hall, the same throne, and the same faces, but the sky was red, and the empire burned. Every decision I made after that was driven by fear of repeating it.That is the curse of awareness: once you have seen the ending, you cannot live without anticipating it."