[color=lightgray][center][h3][color=Burlywood]Duke Gideon Edwards[/color][/h3]
[img]https://i.imgur.com/6yZrd18.png[/img][/center]

[color=Burlywood]Time:[/color] 6pm
[color=Burlywood]Location:[/color] Castle Dining Hall
[color=Burlywood]Interaction/Mention:[/color] [@TpartywithZombi] Ariella [@Lava Alckon] Drake [@Tae] Thea  [@Helo] Leo 
[hr]

Gideon’s eyes tracked Thea’s departure in silence, the edges of his expression pulled taut with concern.  There was something raw in the way she moved, in the way her hand curled around that bottle like it was the only thing still steady in her world. He recognized that kind of quiet unraveling. 

Not theatrical. Not attention-seeking. Just... wounded. 

And proud enough to bleed behind a curtain of grace. Slowly, Gideon shifted his gaze to Drake. It was the kind of look that didn’t require words. A look that said: [i]She’s your heart. Go.[/i]

He then watched Ariella rise and follow after. His daughter’s strength had always impressed him, but he also knew its cost. He’d seen how it hardened her, how it isolated her. He smiled kindly and proudly as she murmured her intention to check on Thea, Gideon gave a single nod, slow and approving. 

He followed her gaze briefly—caught the glimmer of her longing when her eyes lingered on Callum, and then the stiffness in her spine when she noticed him instead. Milo. Even across the room, Gideon caught how his presence cooled the air around her like frost on glass. 

Then she was gone too, disappearing toward the doors with Thea, two young women wrapped in shared silence and secondhand grief. Gideon leaned back slightly in his chair, his eyes narrowing as he exhaled through his nose. The table was quieter now. The tension less theatrical, more sullen.

He cast one another glance toward Drake, his son now sitting at the epicenter of yet another storm he hadn’t caused but had no choice but to weather. Gideon offered him the faintest smile. [color=Burlywood]“If they return happy,”[/color] he murmured under his breath, [color=Burlywood]“I’ll consider this evening a win.”[/color]


Gideon didn’t interrupt as Leo and Drake then engaged in discussion.

He simply leaned back in his chair, swirling the remnants of his wine as the two young men spoke.

A subtle lift of his brow followed Drake’s confession, and there was a quiet flicker of something proud in his eyes—not because of the love speech, but because of the way he spoke from his heart.

But beneath that quiet pride, something far heavier settled deep in Gideon’s chest, drawing him painfully inward. It was the ache that only comes when love becomes regret, and regret becomes infinite mourning. In that moment, the air turned cold around him, pulling him back into memories he’d tried to bury beneath layers of duty and decorum—memories of laughter caught between secretive glances, of quiet whispers exchanged in the shadowed corners of the palace gardens, hidden carefully behind ivy and moonlight.

He remembered the stolen nights, the hours slipping by in each other’s quiet company, believing—naively, [i]desperately[/i]—that they had all the time in the world. He remembered the softness of his smile, the way those eyes—gentle yet strong—had made Gideon feel impossibly seen, and how, in every quiet pause, the words had hovered, always just out of reach.

But he had never spoke them. He’d been too afraid. Afraid of scandal. Afraid of what it might mean to put words to something that felt impossibly fragile. He’d been convinced there would always be tomorrow. Another night beneath the stars. Another chance.

And then there wasn’t.

He’d never forget the silence of that morning.[/color]