Chapter Text
The throne room of the Archduke was never truly empty.
After the last sycophant slipped away, after the Steel Watch froze in their alcoves, chrome and corpse-still, the room still pulsed with what Gortash had done. Gilded pillars watched. The ceiling pressed down, heavy, making everyone small. The throne was iron, cold, made to bruise. It dug into his spine as dusk crept in, shadows pooling in the corners, waiting for judgment.
Power had a texture. A taste. When he was young, before Bane, before any of this, power was something he hunted in alleys and sanctuaries and tangled bedsheets. Always with those who thought they held the leash. It was sharp, metallic. The tang of blood on his tongue after a fight he might not survive.
Now, power was warmth. A slow insidiousness that seeped into his bones like the burn of good brandy. The city breathed with him. Every coin in Baldur's Gate found its way to his palm. Every decision waited for his nod, or his silence.
The Banite philosophy was simple: the strong rule, the weak serve, and any fool who claimed otherwise was either lying or about to become someone's footstool. Gortash had made that philosophy sing. He had turned it into steel and order, into a city that functioned because he willed it so.
Banite scripture had seeped into the laws of Baldur's Gate, loyalty was enforced, ambition was rewarded only when it bowed to greater strength, and the city’s poor learned swiftly that charity was for the naive. The Flaming Fist patrolled for those who questioned the natural order. Council members vied for his favor, knowing that every promotion and punishment reflected divine hierarchy. In every contract, every guarded gate, every merchant’s tithe, the creed of Bane echoed: tyranny above all.
His fingers drummed against the cold iron.
And yet.
The thought came, uninvited. It always did, in the hush after the machinery of state wound down and left him alone with himself. He'd learned not to fight it. Fighting only made it linger.
And yet.
There was one thing. Small, sharp-toothed, and violet-haired. It had slipped into the architecture of his heart without permission, planning, and any of the careful calculation he used for everything else.
Rohlia.
He remembered the exact moment he'd learned of her existence. Ryl'waea had told him with that particular expression she wore when delivering news she knew would unsettle him, half challenge, half amusement, entirely infuriating. She'd been sitting on the edge of their bed, one leg tucked beneath her, running a hand over the barely-there swell of her stomach.
"You're going to be a father, Enver. Try not to look so horrified."
He hadn't been horrified. He'd been something far worse: unprepared. He who planned for every contingency, who had schemes within schemes within schemes, who could predict the movements of armies and markets with equal precision, he had not planned for this.
An accident, then. Against all logic, the most important person in his life.
Unexpected miracle. The words surfaced, unbidden. He didn't know if he'd thought them then, or only later, watching Ryl hold their daughter for the first time. Watching tiny fingers curl around his wife's thumb.
Seven years ago, after Rohlia turned five, those fingers stopped curling around anything at all.
Gortash's hand stilled on the armrest. Shadows thickened, stretching toward him with greedy fingers. He didn't flinch. He never did. But something twisted in his chest. The old ache of grief, stubborn as scar tissue.
Orin.
The name was a wound he carried, healed over but never truly closed. The Bhaalist bitch had crawled into his home, into his life, and carved out its heart while he was too busy ruling a city to notice.
Orin was a creature of purpose, always circling Baldur's Gate with a hunger for chaos and a personal vendetta against Ryl that ran deeper than blood. Her ambitions had lingered long before that night, threading through the city's underbelly like a knife. He'd never quite understood what she wanted from his wife, only that the look in her eyes promised she would return to finish what she started.
He'd found Ryl'waea on the floor of their private chambers, her purple hair spread around her like a shroud, her eyes—
He slammed the thought shut. Locked it in the vault where all the jagged memories lived. The past was for merchants, tallying losses. Not for Archdukes, counting what remained.
He had Rohlia. He had power. He had a city that bent to his will.
It should have been enough. It never was.
A door opened somewhere in the palace. Footsteps, light and quick, approaching the throne room. Gortash recognized the rhythm immediately, that particular scuff-slide pattern that meant his daughter was reading while walking, a habit she'd inherited from her mother and that he'd long since given up trying to correct.
The doors to the throne room weren't quite closed. Through the gap, he watched her pass.
Rohlia.
Twelve years old and already carrying herself like she owned the place, which, he supposed, she technically did. Half-Drow, half-human, all trouble. Her skin was the same green-grey as her mother's, her hair the same deep purple that caught the light like crushed velvet. But her eyes—
Her eyes were his.
That dark green-brown. The color that had stared down rivals, enemies, and gods. Looking into them was like staring into a mirror that showed him what he could have been if he'd been softer. If someone had loved him right, from the beginning.
She hadn't seen him. She was absorbed in something, a piece of paper clutched in her hands, her brow furrowed in that way she had when she was trying to solve a puzzle. The same expression Ryl used to wear when deciding if an assassination request was worth her time.
He could have let her pass. Could have sat in his throne and watched her vanish down the corridor, another day without speaking, without touching, without any of the things he knew he should do but never quite managed.
Instead, he spoke.
"Rohlia."
She stopped so abruptly that she nearly stumbled. Her head snapped up, eyes wide, and for a moment she looked exactly like a startled kobold, all gangly limbs and too-big eyes. Then the surprise faded, replaced by wariness.
"Father." She pushed the door open fully but didn't enter. "I didn't see you there."
"Clearly." He gestured her forward. "Come in. You're hovering in the doorway like a servant waiting for orders."
She hesitated. That hesitation stung more than he wanted to admit. When had his daughter started looking at him like an obstacle, not a father? When had the space between them grown so wide, so cold?
But she came. Of course, she came. She was her mother's daughter, and Ryl had never backed down from anything in her life.
Rohlia stopped a few feet from the throne, paper clutched in her hands, now hidden behind her back. The pose was so transparent, so childish, Gortash almost smiled.
Almost. But not quite.
"What have you got there?"
"Nothing." Too fast. "Uh, nothing. I was just passing through to go to my room."
"You were passing through the throne room to get to your room."
He raised an eyebrow. "Your room is in the east wing. The throne room is in the west."
Rohlia's mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. "I got turned around."
"You've lived in this palace your entire life."
"Maybe I wanted to see the sunset."
Gortash looked pointedly at the windows. The last light of the sun was indeed painting the glass in shades of orange and gold, but the throne room faced east. The sunset was behind them.
Rohlia followed his gaze. Her cheeks, already flushed from whatever she'd been doing, grew darker.
"I like how it reflects off the buildings," she mumbled.
He should let her go. Nod, wave her off, sink back into the throne and his own shadows. She would vanish to her rooms, secrets in tow. Tomorrow they'd circle each other like moons, never quite touching.
But there was something in her eyes. The same thing he'd seen in his own reflection, in the hours before dawn. Hunger. Loneliness. That raw, silent ache for something more.
"So." He leaned back in his throne, affecting casual disinterest. "A letter. Let me guess, a secret admirer? Some young noble's son with more courage than sense, hoping to catch the Archduke's daughter before her father has him thrown in the dungeons?"
Rohlia's grip on the paper tightened. "It's not—it's nothing like that."
"Bhaalist contact, then? I've heard they've been recruiting younger lately. Though I'd hope my daughter would have better taste in murder cults."
"It's not—" She stopped. Swallowed. Something flickered across her face, fear? Wonder? Grief? Before she smoothed her expression into careful neutrality.
"It's just an old letter. I found it."
Gortash's brow furrowed. "Found it where?"
Rohlia was quiet for a long moment. Then, so softly he almost didn't hear, "In Mother's wardrobe."
The world didn't stop. It lurched. The floor dropped out from under him, his stomach suspended in a void of animal dread.
Gortash was on his feet before he'd consciously decided to move, crossing the distance between them in three quick strides. Rohlia stumbled backward, but he caught her arm, gently; he was always gentle with her, no matter what else he was, and looked down at the paper in her hands.
"What?" His voice came out rougher than intended. "What did you find?"
"In the back. Behind all her old dresses." Rohlia's voice trembled, but her chin lifted, Ryl's stubbornness, her fire, looking at him from behind his own eyes.
"There was a loose board. I just—I wanted to see if there was anything of hers. Anything at all. And I found—"
"Show me."
For a terrible moment, he thought she would refuse. But slowly, carefully, she held out the letter.
Gortash took it. As his fingers closed around the paper, a ghost of scent rose, night-blooming flowers, the perfume she wore that last morning. It hit him, sharp and sweet, a blow to the ribs. His eyes flicked over the words, searching for threats, for secrets, for angles. There were none. Only her words. Her handwriting, elegant and looping, was the script he'd watched a thousand times.
My dearest Rohlia,
By the time you find this, you'll be grown, and I might be gone. The plan your father and I initiated is in effect, but I can't help but feel like something terrible is going to happen. Just remember: if you ever need to find me, you only need to call out for Withers. He'll be able to help.
I love you so much,
Mom
P.S.: I know you're reading this, Enver. I love you too.
Gortash's hand clenched, crumpling the edge as her scent thickened, wrapping him in a ghost's embrace. Rohlia made a small sound, but he couldn't stop. Couldn't breathe. The letter reeked of her. Of the wardrobe where her dresses still hung, seven years untouched. Of everything he'd lost.
"Father." Rohlia's voice was small. "You're hurting the paper."
He forced his fingers to relax. Forced himself to look at her. His daughter. The one good thing that had come from the chaos.
"When did you find this?"
"Just now. I was—I was looking for her. For anything of hers."
She was watching him with those too-perceptive eyes, the ones that saw too much and understood too little.
"Father, who is Withers? What plan? What does she mean, she might be gone?"
The name dropped into his mind like a stone in black water. Withers. Unknown. Unaccounted for. A memory flickered, someone whispering the name in council, a joke about the city's oldest crypt-keeper, a Flaming Fist story about a hooded stranger who appeared after every disaster, leaving riddles and warnings
For a heartbeat, the old machinery whirred: Unknown. Ryl's secret. Asset or threat. Find, assess. But grief surged up, drowning calculation in raw, red static.
Gortash opened his mouth. Closed it. For the first time in longer than he could remember, he had no words. No clever deflection. No carefully constructed lie.
The letter trembled in his hands.
Rohlia stepped closer. "Father. Please."
He looked at her, really looked at her, and kept seeing her mother staring back. The same slope of the cheekbones. The same stubborn set of the jaw. The same fierce, desperate love shining in eyes that should have been cold.
He should lie. He should protect her. He should burn this letter and seal up Ryl’s room and never speak of it again.
Instead, he heard himself say: "Your mother knew something was coming."
Rohlia's breath caught.
"The plan she mentions—" Gortash stopped. Swallowed.
"We were working together. Your mother and I. We had... arrangements. Understandings. With powers that neither of us fully controlled."
He looked down at the letter again, at the postscript that felt like a blade between his ribs. "She knew it might go wrong. She tried to prepare for it."
"Did she know she was going to die?"
The question was so direct, so painfully childlike, that Gortash felt something crack inside him.
"No." The word came out rough. "No, she didn't know that. If she had—"
He stopped. If she had known, would she have done anything differently? Would she have run? Would she have taken Rohlia and fled into the night, leaving him alone with his schemes and his power and his empty throne?
He didn't know. He would never know. The ache of it settled in his bones.
"But she suspected." Rohlia's voice was quiet. "She said she felt like something terrible was going to happen."
"She was always too perceptive for her own good." Gortash almost smiled. Almost. "It's where you get it from."
Rohlia stared at him. Her eyes, his eyes, but somehow softer, somehow kinder, were wet.
"She wrote to me," she whispered. "She knew I might never meet her, and she wrote to me anyway."
"She loved you." The words came out raw. Unfiltered. Gortash heard himself saying them as they belonged to someone else, some softer version of himself that he'd killed long ago.
"She loved you more than anything in the world. More than power. More than me. You were—" He swallowed. "You were the best thing she ever did."
"Then why won't you talk about her?"
The question burst out of Rohlia like water through a dam.
"Why won't you let me have anything of hers? Why was her wardrobe sealed, her room locked, her—her everything hidden away like she never existed at all?"
Because it hurts. Because every time I see her things, I see her on that floor. Because if I let you near her memory, I have to admit I failed her. Failed you. That all the power in the world couldn't save the only person who ever mattered.
"Because I didn't know how," he said. Quiet. Small.
Rohlia was silent for a long moment. Then, slowly, she reached out and touched his arm.
"Can I have the letter back? Please?"
He looked down at the paper in his hands. At the words his wife had written, maybe in secret, maybe in the dark, while he was off being Archduke somewhere else. A love letter to a daughter she would never see grow up.
He should keep it. Protect it. Lock it away. He should—
He held it out.
Rohlia took it in both hands, cradling it like something sacred. She read it again, lips moving, and when she looked up, there were tears on her cheeks.
"She called me 'dearest.'"
"She called everyone that. It drove me mad." Gortash's voice was rough.
"She called the servants 'dearest.' She called the cats 'dearest.' She called Bane 'dearest' once, just to see me choke on my wine."
Rohlia laughed, a wet, hiccupping sound that was half sob. "She sounds like she was—"
"Impossible. Infuriating. The most brilliant person I ever met."
Gortash reached out, hesitated, then did something he hadn't done in years: he pulled his daughter into his arms. She went stiff with surprise, then melted against him, her small body shaking with tears she'd probably been holding back for seven years.
"She would have adored you. She would have taught you magic, politics, and how to argue with anyone about anything. She would have—" His voice broke. "She would have been so proud."
They stood in the gathering dark. Father and daughter. Clinging to each other and a letter from a dead woman.
After a long moment, Rohlia pulled back. She wiped her face with her sleeve, Ryl's gesture, Ryl's practicality, and looked up at him.
"Who is Withers?"
Gortash's jaw tightened. "I don't know."
"But she said—"
"I know what she said." He looked at the letter still clutched in Rohlia's hands.
"I've never heard that name before. If your mother had a secret ally, she kept it from me."
"Maybe she had to." Rohlia's voice was thoughtful.
"If she thought something terrible was going to happen, maybe she wanted someone watching. Someone you didn't know about."
Someone even Orin couldn't find. Someone who might—
He stopped the thought before it could form. Hope was for fools. For people who hadn't learned the universe took everything, in the end.
But Rohlia's eyes were bright now. Too bright. That fierce hope burning behind them, a fire he hadn't meant to light.
"Father," she said slowly, "if this Withers exists—if he could help—do you think there's a chance? A way to—"
"Stop."
The word came out sharper than he meant. Rohlia blinked. The hope flickered, but did not die.
"But she said—"
"I know what she said." Gortash straightened, stepping back from her, putting distance between them.
The letter. The hope. The unbearable weight of watching his daughter believe in something that couldn't possibly be true.
"Rohlia. Your mother is dead."
Rohlia flinched. He felt it too.
"I know that." Her voice was smaller now. "But she wrote—"
"She wrote a letter." He could hear how cold he sounded.
Could feel the ice creeping into his voice, the same ice that had protected him for seven years.
"Before she died. Before Orin—" He stopped. Swallowed. "She wrote a letter full of hopes and fears and the name of someone who probably doesn't exist. That's all it is."
"You don't know that." Rohlia's chin lifted, that stubbornness again, that fire. "You said yourself she was never wrong about important things. What if—"
"What if nothing." He turned away, unable to look at her face. At the hope he was about to destroy.
"There is no bringing her back. No secret ally waiting in the shadows. Only a letter written by a woman who was scared and wanted to comfort a daughter she knew she would eventually abandon."
"That's not—"
"It's the truth." His voice was hard now. Harder than he'd ever used with her.
"Your mother is gone. She's been gone for seven years. No amount of hoping, no amount of chasing ghost stories or reading letters from someone who was clearly—"
He stopped himself, but it was too late.
Rohlia went very still. "Clearly what?"
Gortash said nothing.
"Clearly what, Father?"
He turned back to face her. The words were poison in his mouth. He couldn't stop them now. Couldn't let her chase something that would only break her heart further.
"Clearly not in her right mind." The words fell like stones.
"Frightened. Desperate. Writing to a daughter she'd never hold again. People say things when they're scared, Rohlia. They invent comfort where none exists. They leave letters full of impossible promises because they can't bear to leave nothing at all."
Rohlia stared at him. Her face had gone pale beneath its green-grey cast, her eyes wide and wounded.
But then something shifted. The tears kept coming, but her face went still. Cooling into something sharp and calm.
"No," she said quietly.
"You're wrong," she continued, her voice steady in a way that was somehow worse than screaming.
"You're not protecting me from hope. You're protecting yourself. Because if there's even a chance she left me something real, something you couldn't control or plan for, then you'd have to admit that you failed her. That all your power couldn't save her. And you can't do that, can you? You can't be wrong."
Gortash stared at her, struck silent.
"She wasn't mad," Rohlia said, each word precise as a blade.
"She was scared, and she was careful, and she loved me enough to leave me a way to find her if something went wrong. But you—" She shook her head slowly.
"You're the one who's not in your right mind. You've been mad with grief for seven years, and you've just been too much of a coward to admit it."
Rohlia's hands trembled around the letter. Her breath came in short, sharp gasps. But she held his gaze. Unflinching.
"I hate you," she said. Soft now. Almost wondering. Like she was discovering the words as she spoke them. "I hate you, and I wish she were here instead of you. I wish she'd never—I wish—"
Her footsteps echoed through the throne room. Quick. Desperate. The same scuff-slide rhythm he'd heard a thousand times. But wrong now. Fading into silence.
The doors didn't slam. They simply swung closed behind her with a soft, final click.
Gortash stood alone.
The shadows crept in. The last light of dusk bled through the windows, painting the floor in purple and gold. Their colors. Always their colors. Silence pressed in. The throne room. The palace. The world. And in that silence, Gortash heard only the echo of his daughter's voice.
I wish she were here instead of you.
He couldn’t move.
Somewhere in the east wing, Rohlia was crying. Somewhere, a letter lay crumpled in small hands. A letter from a dead woman, full of impossible promises and a name that might be nothing. Somewhere, hope was dying.
And here, in the throne room, the Archduke stood alone with his memories. For the first time in seven years, he wondered if power was worth the cost.