Chapter Text
The rain didn't ask for permission. It never did.
It came down in heavy, relentless sheets, soaking through the fine wool of his black overcoat. The one his mother had insisted on having tailored just for him, three winters ago, because she said he deserved things that fit properly. He stood there and let it ruin the fabric. He couldn't bring himself to care.
Thunder rolled somewhere distant, low and familiar, and yet why did his chest tighten at the sound? He had grown up with Scottish storms. He had learned to sleep through them, ride through them, stand beside his mother at palace windows and watch them tear across the highlands without so much as a flinch. He was supposed to be unaffected by now. So why did the thunder feel like a warning tonight, and why did each flash of lightning only seem to carve deeper shadows across the graveyard rather than illuminate anything worth seeing?
He stayed.
Long after the last car had pulled away. Long after the family had exchanged their careful, performative embraces and murmured their carefully rehearsed condolences and retreated back into the dry warmth of their composed, ungrieving lives. He stayed because leaving felt like agreeing that it was over, and he was not ready to agree to anything.
The grave was simple. Queen Joy had requested that herself, no elaborate monument, no inscription that leaned too heavy into her title.
Just her name, her years, and a single line she had chosen, “She loved freely.”
The royal family had debated the phrasing at length. Phuwin had said nothing during those meetings. He had simply stared at them and understood, perhaps for the first time with complete clarity, that none of them had truly known her at all.
Phuwin Keins. Prince of Scotland. The one they praised in newspapers for his composure, his discipline, his unwavering dignity under pressure.
“The prince whose face never breaks”, one journalist had written once, as though that were something to celebrate rather than something to quietly grieve. He had built that reputation carefully, brick by careful brick, because he had learned early that emotion was a luxury the royal identity did not budget for. He had survived scandals and scrutiny and the quiet, suffocating weight of expectation. He had endured it all without publicly crumbling.
But his mother is dead now.
And she had been the only person who ever saw him without the bricks.
He had chosen fashion design at university. Not politics, not law, not international relations. Fashion, because his mother ran ‘Sylv’, her design house, with the same warmth and precision she brought to everything she loved.
He had grown up watching her sketch at the breakfast table, watching her fight for clean lines and honest fabrics and beauty that didn't apologize for itself. He had inherited that love the way some people inherit eye color without choosing it, without being able to imagine existing without it.
King Nicholas had nearly disowned him over the decision. The word ‘disgrace’ had been used. Other words too, heavier ones, that Phuwin still heard sometimes in quieter moments.
But Queen Joy had spoken to the king with a calm, immovable certainty, and she had not backed down, and eventually the storm had passed and Phuwin had been allowed to remain both a prince and a person with a dream. He had never stopped understanding what that cost her.
Now she is gone. And the next time he broke a rule, the next time he embarrassed the crown or stepped outside the margins of what was acceptable, there would be no one standing beside him.
The family was large, yes. Extensive, interconnected, draped in centuries of history and obligation. But Phuwin had never been particularly ‘theirs’. They had tolerated him the same way they had tolerated his mother, as an outsider who had married into their bloodline, or in his case, been born into it from one. The resentment had been quiet but consistent. He was used to it. It didn't hurt any less.
He had loved two people in his life with the uncomplicated, total love that children are capable of before the world teaches them to measure it. His mother. And his maternal grandmother, a woman who had let him burn the kitchen twice attempting recipes they invented together, who had laughed each time until the tears ran, who had left the world on a rainy afternoon just like this one and given him his very first understanding of what it meant to lose something irreplaceable. He had hated rain since then. And he didn't think if the weather would ever feel neutral to him again.
He checked his watch. Three hours.
Three hours since the ceremony had ended, since the cameras had finally switched off after broadcasting Queen Joy's farewell to the entire nation. All of Scotland watching, commenting, grieving in the comfortable way people grieve for someone else's mother.
He would be criticized for standing outside so long. He already knew it.
‘Irresponsible’ ‘Undignified’ ‘Causing unnecessary concern’
And if he fell ill from standing in the cold rain for three hours, the commentary would be worse.
He turned and walked back toward the palace.
It rose against the dark sky exactly as it always had, immense, deliberate, ancient in a way that was meant to inspire awe but had always inspired in him a faint, specific dread. He stepped through the entrance and the warmth of the interior wrapped around him immediately, but it felt wrong, like warmth from a source he didn't trust.
No one was waiting.
That was the thing about the palace. It had never really been a home, but his mother's presence had softened its edges enough that he could tolerate it. Now the hallways were just long. The ceilings were just high. The silence had a texture to it, thick and close, and it pressed against him from every direction as he walked to his room, closed the door, turned the lock.
He sat in the quiet.
Outside, the rain continued its work. Inside, the only sound was the one no one else could hear, the accumulated weight of everything he was not allowed to say, echoing off the walls of the room he had lived in for years without ever belonging to.
The same storm that swallowed the Scottish sky crossed borders that night. On the other side of the world, Thailand had the same melancholic weather. But that didn’t stop the luxurious business party going on inside the ballroom located at the center of Bangkok. Fashion elites, camera flashes, friction of words and measured laughter compressed the rage of the sky.
The venue shimmered beneath crystal chandeliers, every conversation stitched with ambition and silk.
Tonight wasn’t just another fashion gathering. It was a battlefield dressed in couture.
“That’s Pond Naravit.”
“Founder of Selcouth.”
“He built it in five years from scratch.”
“No investors. No inheritance. Only dedication.”
Whispers about Selcouth rising fast were heard clearly. They were meant to be heard.
The whispers followed him before he appeared.
Not because he demanded attention but because attention had learned to follow.
Pond Naravit stood near the edge of the ballroom, jacket unbuttoned, posture relaxed as if the room did not revolve around his presence.
He listened more than he spoke, eyes observant, unreadable. When he smiled, it was brief, measured, never indulgent.
A glass of champagne was pressed into his hand. He accepted it, nodded once in thanks, but did not drink.
Someone congratulated him on Selcouth’s latest collection.
“Mr. Naravit, your collection ‘Present’ skyrocketed. Very well you did there. I must appreciate your business tactics.” Practiced sincerity with a bitter praise was obvious.
“As it should. Meticulous planning doesn't go into vain.” Pond replied with a polite smile, making himself clear about owning the throne.
Another praised the clean silhouettes, the restraint, the confidence.
“Your brand feels… intentional,” a woman said, tilting her head. “Like it knows exactly what it wants to be.”
Pond inclined his head slightly.
“Intent comes from knowing what you refuse to be.”
Voice smooth as silk but filled with a silent authority. No elaboration followed.
Across the hall, applause broke out, polite, practiced. A name was announced. One that carried weight in the industry. A man in his late 40’s steps into the hall.
Virote Lertrakosum, chairman of Trinita, one of the legacy brands with a long history. Powerful, respected, untouchable.
Cameras turned instinctively in that direction.
Pond did not.
The presence was very well known to both of them. Their eyes never met. They weren’t meant to be met. Controlled, deliberate, intentionally ignored. A silent agreement of never recognizing each other, not in public, neither in private.
He kept his gaze steady, fingers tightening briefly around the stem of his glass before relaxing again. The tension was felt. If there was recognition in his eyes, it passed too quickly to be named.
A junior designer from his team approached, visibly nervous.
“Sir, the buyers from Milan are asking for you.”
“I’ll join them,” Pond replied gently. “After you.”
She blinked, startled. Then smiled.
As she walked ahead, Pond followed unhurried, composed, moving through the ballroom as though he had always belonged there. As though no one had ever questioned his right to stand among them.
Above them, thunder rolled again, distant but persistent.
The storm had not quieted.
Neither had Pond Naravit.