Chapter 427: The Crown Without a Kingdom
The train to Tyrol glided through the Alpine valleys beneath a brittle winter sky, the snow-draped peaks standing tall like ancient judges bearing witness to the choices of men far beneath them.
Bruno sat alone in the private compartment. The rhythmic thrum of the rails beneath him offered no comfort at all. There was no warmth in the landscape, no familiarity in its vistas. It was beautiful in the way that glass was beautiful—polished, cold, and easy to bleed against.
The seat felt foreign. The silence earned. He stared out the window, watching his reflection blur against the mountains, and thought of her.
Since the moment they departed, saying one last farewell, Bruno hadn’t thought of her. Marie-Adélaïde. The Grand Duchess of Luxembourg.
The woman was a rarity, something he couldn’t understand, comprehend, or even predict. For years she had chased him, and he had always thought it was for the same reasons that all other women had tried as well.
Bruno was still haunted by the memories of a past life. A different time, a different place, where virtue was dead, buried beneath the sands of time. And people? Well, they weren’t much of people anymore.
The societal bonds that once kept us from falling to our baser instincts had been burned in the name of liberty, and with them, so too the soul of humanity. Trust couldn’t be forged, and if you were foolish enough to believe such a thing could exist, you deserved what happened to you. In the end, nobody would bat an eye or care.
It was a selfish world, a cruel world, a cold world. One he had desperately tried to prevent from becoming a reality in this life. There was just one problem that Bruno was starting to realize as he sat in his booth, waiting to return home.
While he had prevented the initial blow that would damn the soul of the West, he had never truly given the people within it the benefit of the doubt—the belief that they could still be good, noble, virtuous.
He had always assumed—no; he had learned—that without order, without the fabrics and institutions of society to keep us in check, we were all damned, wicked, evil beings at heart. He had seen too much madness in the eyes of too many people claiming virtue and "love" to believe anyone could really be such a thing anymore.