Valeria held Shiro long after the sobs had quieted.
His breathing was still uneven, little hitching gasps that trembled against her collarbone, but the wild panic had drained from his limbs. He clung to her tunic with the weak, instinctive grip of someone who had forgotten how to hold on and was relearning it in real time. Only when his breath steadied did she lift her head.
Her eyes snapped to Kuro. The glare she gave him could have cracked stone. Kuro's blood went cold. He knew. He knew exactly what she had seen in that room. He knew exactly what he had done, and what he had failed to do. He had been the first crack. The first cruelty. The first betrayal. He had become the Black Prince his father wanted. And now Valeria saw it all. He braced for the explosion.
But instead, she exhaled, a long, controlled breath that somehow felt more dangerous than any shout. She turned to Kael. "Take my storm baby to class," she said, voice low but steady. "Keep a close eye on him. Any snark, any defiance, any nonsense, you tell me."
Kael snorted, a wet, whistling sound that spoke of damaged airways, his chin lifting just slightly against the stiff, high collar. "Oh, gladly," he said, the words riding that familiar, breathy rasp. "And while we're sharing updates, Valeria, your son has been an insufferable brat in your absence."
His gaze drifted, almost involuntarily, to where Shiro lay in his mothers lap. For a heartbeat, something flickered in those pale winter eyes, a softening, an ache. The boy's posture, the stubborn set of his jaw against fear, stirred something buried deep: a memory of another face, another lifetime, another woman who had looked at him with that same fierce, desperate love before the world erased her. The ache passed as quickly as it came, his expression sealing shut like a door closing on a tomb
Kuro flinched.
Valeria didn't even look at him, just sighed. "After your classes," she said, still staring at Kael, "you come straight to my room. Understood?"
"Yes," Kuro muttered.
She raised an eyebrow.
He swallowed. "Yes... mother."
Only then did she turn back to Shiro, and her entire face softened into something infinitely tender.
Kael guided Kuro out, one hand on the prince's shoulder like he was escorting a misbehaving student to detention. The door shut, sealing them in the quiet ruin. Shiro trembled against her, a fine, constant vibration. Valeria didn't move to lift him yet. She held him tighter, her voice dropping from its commanding steel into something lower, more solemn, a vow spoken in the sanctity of their newfound isolation.
"Look at me, Shiro." He forced his eyes open, swimming with pain and shame. "What they did to you ends now. What he made you believe ends now. You are not a ghost. You are not a variable." Her words were clear, deliberate, each one a stone laid in a new foundation. "I am making you a promise, not as a soldier, but as your mother. No one will look through you again. No one will silence you. If anyone so much as breathes in your direction, they will find me standing in the space between. My protection is not pity. It is your birthright as my son. And defending it is the greatest privilege of my life. Do you understand?"
He stared at her, the enormity of the vow cutting through the numbness. It wasn't comfort. It was a declaration of war on his behalf. He gave a single, jerky nod, his fist tightening in her tunic.
"Good," she whispered, and finally gathered him into her arms. "Now Let's go home."
Valeria gathered Shiro into her arms and lifted him effortlessly, carrying him out of the ruined room and across the courtyard toward her own quarters in the officers' building. No one saw them. Everyone was in class. The Academy was quiet. She held him tighter. Never again, she vowed silently. Never again will he be alone.
Her quarters were warm, spacious, sunlit, a world away from Shiro's cold little dorm. She closed the door behind them, sat on her bed, and settled Shiro in her lap like he was something precious she had nearly lost. She stroked his hair. "Now," she murmured, voice soft as silk, "tell Mama everything."
Shiro nodded. And he did. For the first time in cycles, he opened the floodgates. The words didn't just spill out; they were excavated, each one a stone lifted from the cairn of silence he'd built inside himself. He started with Reo, but not with the violence. He began with the eyes. "He watched me. All the time. Not like someone looking at a person, but like... like someone reading a poorly forged document, looking for the smudges." He described the cold meals, the "misplaced" assignments, the way a path would clear before him not with hostility, but with a smooth, practiced aversion, as if he were a slight social inconvenience everyone had collectively agreed to ignore.
Then came Kuro. Here, his voice grew flat, detached, as if reporting on a distant event. "He came back. He looked at me. And then... he didn't. It was like a window shutting. Not angry. Just... closed. I was a chair that had been moved. That was worse than if he'd hit me." He didn't speak of betrayal; he spoke of erasure. Of becoming a nullity in the gaze of the only person who had ever made him feel real.
He told her about the letters to Aki that vanished, the perfect, bureaucratic silence that answered each one. He described the physical sensation of dissolving, the way the edges of his body seemed to blur, the way sound muted, the way time stretched into a meaningless, grey paste. He confessed not to feelings, but to phenomenology: the mechanics of how a soul is unmade. He spoke of the rope's rough texture, the cool weight of the toggle, the clinical calculation of the drop. He gave her the blueprint of his own planned obliteration.
Valeria listened, and her silence was not passive. It was a vessel, strong and deep, into which he poured his poison. She did not interrupt, did not gasp, did not offer platitudes. Her jaw hardened at Reo's systems, her eyes fluttered shut in pain at Kuro's rejection, and when he described the rope, a single, fierce tear traced a path through the dust on her cheek. She absorbed it all, every devastating detail, letting the horror of what he had endured, and what he had almost done, settle into her bones. This was her failure, quantified. And she accepted every ounce of it.
Shiro spoke until his throat hurt. Valeria listened to every word, her jaw tightening, her eyes darkening, her arms tightening around him whenever his voice cracked.
Then she read the letter. The parchment crackled in her hands. She read it slowly, her eyes tracing each vicious, ink slash line. 'I hope you enjoyed it. The silence you forced on me. I hope when you see me hanging it breaks you.' The hatred was a living thing on the page, a final, furious spark struck from the dark. It was meant to wound, to scar, to be the last thing she ever knew of him. She felt each curse like a physical pressure. Not on her heart, but on her soul, the part of her that had sworn a soldier's oath to protect and had instead delivered him to the abyss. The accusations were true. She had left. She had trusted the wrong boy. She had given him a weapon, a name, a uniform, and sent him into a war she wasn't there to fight. The letter was his verdict, and she was guilty.
She looked up from the page, her face pale but composed. The storm of a soldier's rage was there, but banked, controlled. It was not directed at him, or even at the words. It was directed inward, at the sequence of decisions that had led to this poisoned missive. She opened her mouth, the apology, the one she had practiced for days, ready on her tongue.
But he spoke first. The quiet, shattered question, "Did you mean it? Being my mother?" disarmed her completely. It wasn't forgiveness. It was something more profound: a request for a new truth, one that could overwrite the curse. The anger in her dissolved, replaced by a surge of such fierce, protective love it stole her breath. The letter was the past. His question was the future. She would let the curses stand as his rightful truth, and she would spend every day building a new one where they no longer applied.
She smiled, and the warmth of it was an act of defiance against every cold word on the page. "Mother is too formal," she said. "Mama is much cuter. And much more appropriate for my baby."
Shiro's breath caught. "Do you really mean it?" he whispered again.
"With my whole heart," she said. He teared up. She wiped his cheeks with her thumb and nuzzled his face. "But," she added lightly, "it does come with conditions."
Shiro blinked. "Conditions?"
She held up a finger. "First, as your new Mama, I have the right to give you an embarrassing nickname. Your brother is Storm Baby. You, my love, are Rain Baby."
Shiro flushed scarlet. But he didn't reject it. He accepted it. She kissed his forehead. "My two weather disasters."
"Second," she continued, "you will be tethered to me at all times. Not physically, but I will be present in everything. I will not let you be alone again, especially after today."
Shiro protested weakly. "That's too far, I won't do that again I promise!"
She wagged her finger. "Tsk tsk. A baby's word is ash. A Mama's word is iron."
He sighed. She smirked. "And don't worry, the same rules apply to your brother. That damn brat promised me he'd protect you."
Shiro seized his chance. "In your absence," he said innocently, "Kuro called you a whore. And a hag."
Valeria froze. Then she exploded. "I'M NOT EVEN OLD, THAT DAMN BRAT!"
Shiro burst into real laughter, a sound he had forgotten how to make. "Thank you," he whispered.
"No need," she said, kissing his hair, regaining her composure and a more tender voice. "Mama will always be here."
They talked for hours. Warm. Safe. Together.
Then a knock sounded at the door. "Class is done," Kuro called, voice small.
Kuro entered the room with the slow, heavy steps of a condemned man approaching the block. The door clicked shut behind him, sealing him in a space that hummed with a terrifying new energy: Valeria's full, undivided maternal focus. He saw Shiro curled against her, a sight that should have sparked jealousy but instead ignited a furnace of shame in his gut. He was the interloper, the failed protector, the cause of that needed shelter.
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"Sit," Valeria said, her voice not loud, but absolute. It was the tone that had commanded battalions. He sat rigidly on the edge of the bed she indicated, back straight, eyes fixed on a whorl in the wooden floor. He could feel her gaze like a physical weight, measuring, dissecting, seeing straight through the Black Prince to the petrified boy beneath.
Then came the pinch. Her fingers found his earlobe with unerring accuracy, a sharp, shocking pain that was more humiliation than injury. He yelped, a completely undignified sound, his head jerking sideways. "That hurts!"
"Hush," she commanded, her voice a low, relentless storm. "You deserve worse, and you know it." The scolding began, and it was worse than any physical punishment. She didn't shout. She surgically dismantled him. "You abandoned your brother. You humiliated him. You became the exact same kind of weapon your father wields, cruelty wrapped in cold logic. You looked at your brother, who I entrusted to you and you chose the mask. How many times have I told you the mask is a tool for the outside world, not a weapon against your own?"
"Too many," he muttered, the words ground out from between clenched teeth, his eyes burning.
The pinch intensified. "Then why didn't you listen?" The pressure behind his eyes became unbearable. A hot, traitorous tear escaped, tracing a path through the dust and dried salt on his cheek. He tried to will it back, to breathe it away, but another followed. "I'm sorry," he whispered, the apology sounding pathetic even to his own ears.
"Louder."
"I'm sorry."
"LOUDER. Let your brother hear it."
"I'M SORRY!" The shout ripped from him, raw and shattered, echoing in the sunlit room. It was the sound of the prince breaking, of the cage of his performance cracking open.
He didn't look at Shiro.
He couldn't.
Valeria didn't release his ear. "Now. To him. Look at him." It was the hardest command yet. Slowly, Kuro forced his head to turn. Shiro was watching him, amber eyes wide, no longer glazed with vacancy but filled with a complex, unreadable emotion. Kuro's throat closed. "I'm... sorry, Shiro." The name was a rasp.
Valeria's grip didn't relent. "Again. Mean it."
"I'm sorry, Shiro."
"AGAIN."
"I AM SORRY!" This time, it was a sob, ragged and real, directed at his brother. The last vestige of princely detachment crumbled into dust at his feet.
The raw sound of Kuro's apology seemed to hang in the air, a tangible, vibrating thing. Shiro didn't feel triumph. The rage was gone, leaving a numb hollow. Valeria's grip on Kuro's ear didn't relent. Her eyes, however, locked onto Shiro. "Look at him," she said, her voice low but clear in the quiet room. "Not at the Prince. At your brother."
Kuro choked, another wet sob escaping. "I thought... I thought if I was cruel, he'd leave. I thought he'd be safe if he was beneath my notice." The words were torn up, ugly with shame.
Shiro blinked, the confession slicing through the numbness. "You thought your contempt was a shield?" His own voice came out flat, disbelieving.
"It's the only currency my father understands!" Kuro burst out, finally looking up, his gaze desperate. "If I valued you, he'd destroy you. So I tried... I tried to make you worthless in his eyes. By making you worthless in mine." He swallowed hard, a visible fight for control. "It was a stupid, poisoned calculation."
Valeria's voice was a soft, firm press between them. "And what is your calculation now, Storm Baby?"
Kuro's shoulders slumped. "Broken," he whispered. "The math is broken." He looked directly at Shiro, tears streaking his face. "I am so... so sorry I chose the wrong numbers. I am sorry I chose the throne over the shack. I am sorry I traded you for an illusion of safety."
The air shifted. This wasn't a princely apology. It was the blueprint of a catastrophic mistake, laid bare. Shiro felt his own breath catch. The wound was too fresh for forgiveness, but a hot, sharp retort boiled up through the exhaustion.
"You're a cunt," Shiro spat, the vulgarity explosive in the tender, wounded space. The word landed like a slap. Kuro flinched, eyes widening.
"SHIRO!" Valeria's voice cracked through the room, sharp as a whip. She finally released Kuro's ear, turning her full disciplinary force on Shiro. "You may be the one receiving the apology. You may be hurt. That is not a valid excuse for that language under my roof. You will apologise to your brother. Now."
Shiro stared, stunned by the swift pivot.
The righteousness of his anger deflated. "But he..."
"No 'but he'," Valeria interrupted, her tone leaving no room for debate. "An apology is a gift. You do not spit on the giver, even if the gift comes wrapped in pain. You will apologise for your language. And Kuro," she said, turning her head, her gaze no less firm, "you will apologise again, properly, for reducing your brother to a variable in your 'calculation.' You will mean it. You will both do this. Now."
A heavy, charged silence fell. Kuro, wiping his face, drew a shaky breath and spoke first, his voice rough but clear. "I apologise, Shiro. For treating you like a problem to be solved. You are my brother, Shiro never a variable."
Shiro held his gaze for a long moment, the fight leaving him. He looked at Valeria's unwavering expression and understood the new rule: in this family, accountability was mutual. He let out a slow breath. "I'm sorry... for calling you a cunt, Kuro."
Valeria's stern expression softened, just a fraction. She reached out, placing a hand on each of their heads. "Good. The first rule of this family is that we do not weaponize words against each other. We mend with them. Are we understood?"
"Yes, Mama," they said, almost in unison, the titles slipping out with a new, surrendered gravity.
It wasn't forgiveness.
It was the first, fragile protocol of a ceasefire. And the foundational law was now established: in this house, even broken boys were taught to speak with respect, and every apology required the dignity of a civil tongue.
She sat back, folding her arms, her gaze shifting from the broken prince to the watchful boy in her arms, and then back. The atmosphere in the room shifted from tribunal to sentencing. A grim, resolved calm settled over her features. "Now," she said, her voice cool and clear as a blade being drawn. "We discuss the consequences to your action, storm baby."
Kuro paled. Shiro perked up.
Valeria continued: "First, you are not leaving my sight. Not for a moment. If I breathe, you breathe. If I move, you move. If I blink, you better be in my peripheral vision."
Kuro groaned. "You..."
She raised a finger. "Second, you have lost your room. You sleep here. With me. And your brother."
Kuro's jaw dropped. "WHAT?! My dignity!"
She laughed. Actually laughed. "Dignity? What about mine when you cursed me behind my back?" Kuro froze. Shiro burst into laughter again. Valeria, however, wasn't done. Kuro looked like he might faint.
"And lastly," she said, voice dropping into a wicked purr, "you will be fed in front of everyone in the Refractory. Let them see the mighty Black Prince reduced to the Storm Baby he is."
Kuro exploded. "My image!"
She pinched his ear again. "Your image will survive. Your brother almost didn't." Kuro fell silent. Completely silent.
Kuro sat in the heavy silence that followed his shattered apology, his gaze fixed on the floorboards as if they held the secrets of a less humiliating reality. The prince was gone, but in his place was not a boy, just a hollowed out shell, rigid with a shame so profound it threatened to fossilize him.
Valeria watched him shut down, saw the walls of icy detachment begin to reform. Stern lectures and physical punishment had pierced the armour, but this? This stillness was a different kind of retreat. It was a calculation she recognized: if he could not be the flawless prince, he would strive to be nothing at all. That was unacceptable.
She let the disciplinary silence stretch for a heartbeat longer, then deliberately smoothed her expression. The fierce mother judge receded; a new, more terrifying persona stepped forward. "Ah," she said, her voice shedding its sharp edge for something lighter, more musing. It was a tone shift so deliberate it snapped Kuro's eyes back to her. "I see. The Storm Baby has gone quiet. Thinking deep, stormy thoughts about his poor, bruised princely dignity?"
Kuro stiffened. "Do not call me that."
"Call you what?" she asked, innocence perfected. "Storm Baby? But that's who you are in this room. My stormy boy who made a very big, very stupid mess." She leaned forward, her eyes glinting. "And since you decided to act like a reckless child, I suppose I shall have to treat you like one. It's only fitting."
A flicker of genuine alarm broke through his shame. "Mother. Do not."
"It's 'Mama,'" she corrected, sweetly. "And I do believe it's time for your favourite lesson." She watched the dawning horror in his eyes, the precise reaction she'd aimed for. He could weather anger. He could parse logic. But this? This unarmed, affectionate humiliation was the one thing his princely training had never had any defence against.
"This is not a lesson," he gritted out, his voice low. "This is... mortification."
"It's re education," she chirped, and the first, singsong note entered her voice, the precursor to the full, corrosive baby talk. "We're going to soften up that hard little head of yours. Starting now." She clapped her hands together once, a mock delighted sound. "Now then! My grumpy little storm cloud," she chirped, her voice adopting a honeyed, theatrical coo. She reached out and tugged lightly on a lock of Kuro's perfectly arranged hair. "Did the big, scary world make Mama's widdle prince have a fussy wussy?"
Kuro recoiled as if from acid, his face flushing a deep, mortified scarlet. "Mother! PLEASE NOT THIS, I AM THE CROWN..."
"You are Mama's grumpy baby," she overrode him, her eyes gleaming with merciless, affectionate light. "A stompy, stormy little grumpy baby who forgot how to be a brother. Yes, you did!" She pinched his cheek, not gently. "Who's a grumpy baby? You are!"
Shiro, tucked securely under her other arm, watched the surreal dismantling. The Black Prince, a figure of terror and cold calculation, was being reduced to a scolded toddler in a nursery rhyme. The absurdity was so profound it bypassed shock and landed somewhere near awe. A strange, giddy warmth bubbled in his chest. This wasn't the cruel, isolating mockery of the Academy. This was... exposure of a different kind. A safe, embarrassing, terribly fond exposure.
"And don't you smirk, my drizzle drop," she swivelled her head, her tone softening into a teasing lilt for Shiro. "Mama's rain baby thinks he's invisible? Did the mean, quiet shadows make the baby want to disappear? We don't disappear. We cuddle." She nuzzled the top of his head with her chin, an overwhelmingly maternal gesture. Shiro's own ears burned, but the warmth spread, a thick, comforting counterpoint to the humiliation. The baby talk was ridiculous, but its subtext was a lifeline. You are mine to coddle. Your pain is valid enough to be met with silliness. For a boy forged in the grim adulthood of survival, the permission to be absurd, to be a "baby" in this safe, teasing context, felt like being granted a sanctuary he never knew he was allowed to enter.
Valeria smirked.
Kuro cackled. "Welcome to hell."
Valeria flicked both their foreheads teasingly. Valeria's expression settled into one of serene, implacable certainty. The teasing glint remained, but beneath it was the unyielding steel of a tactical decision. "Package deal," she affirmed. "My two chaotic weather events. And since I am, officially, the only guardian permitted full campus access, my new posting is simple: you." She leaned forward, outlining the new reality. "Where you go, I go. Kael's astronomy lecture? I'll be in the back row, knitting. Stratoria's training yard? I'll be at the sidelines, polishing my sword, and watching your footwork. The Refractory?" She smiled, a flash of teeth. "We will sit together. At the front. Both of you fed by my hands. The entire Academy will watch the Black Prince and the new Malkor heir be mothered, relentlessly, in public."
Kuro looked physically ill. "You cannot... my authority... the perception..."
"Is secondary to your breathing," she cut him off, her voice losing its playfulness for a sharp second. "Perception almost killed your brother. We are rewriting perceptions. Starting with this one: you are not untouchable. You are my boys. And I am a Malkor with a battlefield commission. I outrank everyone here except the King, and he's not in this room." She turned to Shiro, her gaze softening but losing none of its resolve. "For you, rain baby, it means the silence ends. Physically. You will never be alone in a corridor, at a meal, in a library nook again. My shadow is yours. If Reo Veyne so much as looks at you with his calculator eyes, he will find me looking back. I am your permanent, visible shield."
She pulled them both into a firm, sideways hug. "This is not a negotiation. It is the new terrain. I am your guardian, your keeper, your mama, and your very embarrassing, constant companion. The world of masks and silent cruelty is over for you both. Now you live in the world of me. And in my world," she added, her teasing tone returning as she flicked Kuro's ear, "we have story time at eight. I hope you both like tales of adventurous star puppies. I do all the voices."
Shiro leaned into her warmth.
Kuro wiped his eyes and leaned too, grudgingly but genuinely. Valeria kissed the tops of their heads. And for the first time in a long time, the room felt like a home. They talked. They teased. They laughed. And the horrors of the past felt distant, not erased, but softened.
By the warmth of a family.
Finally.
Finally returning.
Would You Survive Valerias Punishments and Baby Talk?
