No flowers for the dead - Chapter 25: Chapter 25
You are reading No flowers for the dead, Chapter 25: Chapter 25. Read more chapters of No flowers for the dead.
The baby was a girl.
They didn’t find out through ultrasounds or gender reveals. They just knew. Alina swore she’d dreamed it before she even took the test. Elias said nothing, only smiled, and began building a cradle with his bare hands.
It was the same way he loved her—wordlessly, deeply, from the roots.
⸻
They named her Elara—after no one. After stars. After beginnings.
The birth was quiet. No press releases. No announcements.
Just them in a private clinic, Alina’s hand in Elias’s, their foreheads pressed together as she brought the child they’d never dared to plan into the world.
She came into their lives like a whisper.
And everything stopped.
⸻
Elias didn’t cry. Not until later, when Alina had fallen asleep and he held Elara in his arms for the first time.
“She’s so small,” he whispered.
The nurse smiled. “They’re always small until they ruin you.”
He looked down at the tiny, blinking eyes.
“No,” he murmured. “She’s going to save me.”
⸻
Alina healed slowly. The scars weren’t just physical. Her body had carried a legacy—blood, hope, fear—and let it all go in a scream that had shattered Elias from the inside out.
But she never complained.
She nursed Elara in the early hours of the morning with poetry in her lap and Elias asleep on the floor beside them.
Sometimes she’d catch herself watching them both—her daughter’s perfect mouth, Elias’s quiet breath—and feel something like reverence.
Not for motherhood.
But for survival.
⸻
The house changed.
No more knives left out.
No more phones in the nursery.
No more late-night meetings or silent, haunted pacing.
Now it was lullabies and baby socks and formula spills.
Now it was Elias swaying half-asleep in the hallway with Elara on his shoulder, humming old jazz records.
Now it was the sound of laughter that didn’t feel borrowed.
⸻
They didn’t talk about Matteo anymore.
Or Vale Holdings.
Or the war it took to get here.
Because Elara didn’t need that inheritance.
She would grow up not with thrones and battles, but with hands that built, voices that soothed, and a love that didn’t demand anything in return.
Just her being there was enough.
⸻
And when she took her first steps across the wooden floor, walking from Alina’s waiting arms into Elias’s chest, the man who had once ruled over steel and empire dropped to his knees with tears in his eyes.
Because no crown had ever felt like this.
Because this—this little life, this family, this ordinary miracle—was everything he never thought he’d be allowed to have.
They didn’t find out through ultrasounds or gender reveals. They just knew. Alina swore she’d dreamed it before she even took the test. Elias said nothing, only smiled, and began building a cradle with his bare hands.
It was the same way he loved her—wordlessly, deeply, from the roots.
⸻
They named her Elara—after no one. After stars. After beginnings.
The birth was quiet. No press releases. No announcements.
Just them in a private clinic, Alina’s hand in Elias’s, their foreheads pressed together as she brought the child they’d never dared to plan into the world.
She came into their lives like a whisper.
And everything stopped.
⸻
Elias didn’t cry. Not until later, when Alina had fallen asleep and he held Elara in his arms for the first time.
“She’s so small,” he whispered.
The nurse smiled. “They’re always small until they ruin you.”
He looked down at the tiny, blinking eyes.
“No,” he murmured. “She’s going to save me.”
⸻
Alina healed slowly. The scars weren’t just physical. Her body had carried a legacy—blood, hope, fear—and let it all go in a scream that had shattered Elias from the inside out.
But she never complained.
She nursed Elara in the early hours of the morning with poetry in her lap and Elias asleep on the floor beside them.
Sometimes she’d catch herself watching them both—her daughter’s perfect mouth, Elias’s quiet breath—and feel something like reverence.
Not for motherhood.
But for survival.
⸻
The house changed.
No more knives left out.
No more phones in the nursery.
No more late-night meetings or silent, haunted pacing.
Now it was lullabies and baby socks and formula spills.
Now it was Elias swaying half-asleep in the hallway with Elara on his shoulder, humming old jazz records.
Now it was the sound of laughter that didn’t feel borrowed.
⸻
They didn’t talk about Matteo anymore.
Or Vale Holdings.
Or the war it took to get here.
Because Elara didn’t need that inheritance.
She would grow up not with thrones and battles, but with hands that built, voices that soothed, and a love that didn’t demand anything in return.
Just her being there was enough.
⸻
And when she took her first steps across the wooden floor, walking from Alina’s waiting arms into Elias’s chest, the man who had once ruled over steel and empire dropped to his knees with tears in his eyes.
Because no crown had ever felt like this.
Because this—this little life, this family, this ordinary miracle—was everything he never thought he’d be allowed to have.
End of No flowers for the dead Chapter 25. Continue reading Chapter 26 or return to No flowers for the dead book page.