"We can fix it, Io. We’ll find a way. I know that you love your family, your people, just as I do. We will find a way to protect them all."
I felt the words as the rotten lie they were. There was no way forward together that did not put him squarely in the line of danger. There was only one path that would leave him whole—leave our kingdoms whole.
And I could not do it. I could not walk away from him. It would kill me.
"I can't," he said again, his voice harsh, as though the burning words were wrenched from his soul and cracked open as they reached the icy air around us.
And then something hit my chest—a tear, bitingly hot.
Pain lanced through me—desperate, aching pain filled me, stealing my air, making me dizzy.
He was still inside me but moving slowly—as though his body in mine was a soft caress.
I wanted to curl around myself with the pain. I wanted to sink into the ground beneath us and let the darkness swallow me whole.
But somewhere in that blinding maelstrom of anguish and heartbreak, I felt another tear hit my shoulder. It was icy cold as it raced across my chest and gathered in the hollow of my throat.
He laid his cool lips against the skin of my neck, in the curve where it met my shoulder, and I felt such hollowness from him that it scared me.
A wave of protectiveness rose up in me that startled me with its ferocity.
I would not cower in the darkness, falling prey to the whims of the fucking fates while his fire was smothered under the weight of his vow to me. I knew what needed to be done, and if he was not strong enough to do it himself, well,Iwas stronger. He had told me so himself.
I put my hands on his shoulders and pushed him up. He let me, drawing up to give me a curious look.
But I only kissed him, finding his lips as I pushed him onto his back and climbed over him. I found him with my body, sliding onto him, rising over him, my hands on his beautiful chest, his face. I rode him until his hands warmed on my hips—until that gold fire burned hot from his palms.
We both reached release again, the pleasure not even slightly diminished from it being the second time that night. It never was. Each time with him was always everything and still, somehow, more.
After he fell asleep, I watched him. He was so fucking beautiful, peaceful, and wholly, utterly mine. I counted his breaths, felt the thud of his heart under my palm, smelled that distinctly Io scent.
I tried desperately to commit it to memory.
And then I eased from the bed and wrapped one of the warm dressing robes he'd given me around my shoulders.
I lingered by the bed for a while, watching him as he slept the deep sleep of the wounded, and then I went to his study.
I wrote him a letter to explain.
I addressed it toAmon. Thinking better of it, I crumpled the paper and started again.Io, I wrote his name in my messy handwriting.
If I used his other name, he might discount the rest of the words entirely. And I needed him to believe every cruel, horrible, fucking lie I wrote.
Each brush of the pen across the parchment tore more and more of my heart free, until by the time I was finished, I was empty.
The place where my heart should have been was just a raw wound where Sera had been carved away, leaving Aelia of Windemere in her place.Shewas nothing more than a game piece on a chessboard, not the queen or even a knight. She was just a pawn.
I saw the torn pieces of the letter from the king with all the hateful words scrawled across it. I wanted to incinerate the entire library to burn it away. But in the end, it was only a part of the puzzle that needed to be set for the rest of the pieces to fit in this tragic farce I was creating.
With my face swollen from the tears that poured out as I wrote the letter, I went to my own chamber where the pile of clothes had been left until we could make room for them in Io's wardrobe.
I dressed with shaking fingers, slinging the baldric that held the blade he gifted me over my shoulder.I had named herSeema, an old Withian word that meantfreedom.
I left Sangui, the sword I namedhunger,my armor, and that unbelievable hoard of gold behind.
I didn't want to ask myself why—beyond the fact that I could not carry so much. Because some part of my poor, broken soul was trying to hold on to the idea that I would ever come here again?
I left the ring with the letter, pulling it off with shaking fingers, nearly dropping it onto the floor. I cherished it, of course, but I knew it had been an afterthought, born of custom and tradition to signify a betrothal with a ring. His true gift to me had been the sword and the flower he admitted flying halfway down the valley to find.
