The door creaked open with a soft groan, and Judith stepped inside as though breaching the silence might shatter something fragile beyond repair.
The room was dim, lit only by the soft amber flicker of a single wall sconce. Shadows stretched long across the floors, pooling gently beneath the carved legs of ornate furniture. It was a beautiful room—too beautiful for the hollow that sat in the center of it.
Her eyes found him almost instantly.
He lay on his side, turned away from the door, curled toward the center of the great bed like a forgotten child. The blankets draped over his thin frame in rumpled folds, but they could not hide the sharp angles of his shoulders or the way his spine pressed faint ridges through the linen shirt he wore. He took up so little space, his body drawn inward, almost trying to disappear into the down-filled mattress. He looked more ghost than boy, more memory than prince.
The air in the room smelled faintly of bitter herbs and old salves, that sterile sharpness of ointments rubbed into bruises and burns. It was the scent of the hospital, of healing, and yet nothing about him looked healed. His hair—once so carefully brushed and tied back—was tangled now, overgrown and uneven. His face was turned just far enough that she could see the bruised hollows beneath his eyes, the faint twitch of his cheek as he dreamed. Or remembered.
Judith stood frozen in the doorway. She had come here quickly, moved through the palace like a whisper of wind, driven by the need to see him, to touch him, to know with her own eyes that he was real, alive, here.
But now that she stood in front of him, her feet would not move.
She felt it rise in her—the rage, sharp and sudden and hot. The image of her mother flashed behind her eyes, not as a regal figure of state but as a woman, monstrous and unflinching, capable of locking her own son away like a mistake to be hidden. Judith wanted to turn and march through the palace, to find Solovet and strike her. Not just slap her, but drag her by her braid before the council, before the kingdom, and scream:
This is what you did. Look at him. Look what you made of him.
Her throat burned with the things she had not said, had not dared to say.
She clenched her fists until her knuckles paled. She wanted to run to him. Wrap him in her arms and beg forgiveness, sob against his chest like they were still children playing at sword fights in the garden. But she stood frozen, feet unmoving on the cold stone. Because she had let it happen. She had gone on. She had attended court, spoken her lines, done what was asked. And all the while, he had been here, beneath them. In the dark.
She did not deserve to rush to him. She did not deserve to touch him.
She slipped off her sandals quietly and set them by the door. Then, with slow, careful steps, she padded across the room, her heart pounding in her throat. The bed loomed in front of her like a monument, wide enough to fit three grown men and still leave room. He looked swallowed by it, a lone figure adrift in a sea of linens.
Judith climbed in gently, not daring to shift the mattress too much. She moved like someone approaching a frightened animal—tender, cautious, reverent. Her knees sank into the edge of the bed as she crossed over, inch by inch, toward him.
And then, she was beside him.
She did not speak at first. She just watched the soft rise and fall of his breathing, the occasional twitch of his fingers. He did not know she was there. He did not stir. Her heart broke further at the stillness of him, the way his body remained so tightly curled, like it had forgotten how to rest.
Judith lay down behind him, stretching out slowly until her body curved along the shape of his. She pressed her forehead to the space between his shoulder blades and closed her eyes.
“Nettie…” she breathed. It came out half-formed, barely a whisper. A name she had not spoken aloud in years, not since they were children whispering under blankets and laughing at jokes only siblings could understand.
He did not respond. His breathing stayed even. Deep. Distant.
She told herself he was asleep. That it was good. That he needed rest. But the silence felt cruel.
So Judith did the only thing she could.
“I am sorry,” she whispered.
Her arm reached across his waist, trembling, and she carefully pulled him against her, as gently as she could. Her fingers splayed against his chest, desperate for him to feel her, to know—somehow, even in dreams—that she was here. That he was not alone.
“I am sorry, I am sorry, I am sorry…”
The words came again and again, each one softer than the last, as she breathed them into the fabric of his shirt, into the room, into the empty months that had passed without her.
“I did not know what to do. I did not know how to help. I thought if I stayed good, if I stayed obedient, if I did everything she wanted—maybe it would be better. Maybe she would let you out. That her anger would dim. But I was wrong. And I am so…so sorry.”
Her voice cracked, and a tear slipped down her cheek, trailing across his back. She tightened her arm around him, not hard enough to wake him, but firm enough to anchor herself to him. Her hand trembled as she gripped his shirt.
“I should have come sooner.”
She buried her face against him and cried silently, her tears swallowed by the warmth of his body, by the quiet that pressed in from all sides.
For the first time in months, Hamnet did not sleep alone.
And Judith would not leave. Not tonight. Not ever again.
Al, that comic panel truly opens up such a deep and rich story thats begging to be told.
dailybridgerton
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