Not with words.
She slips from my arms, and it feels like loss, like the cold rush of sea air where once there was warmth. But then her hand finds mine again, fingers twining gently.
“Can we walk?” She asks softly, like it’s not a question about movement at all, but something else. Something harder to name.
At that moment, Reon and Zyphoro collapse in a heap on the deck, howling with laughter, legs tangled. Solena cheers them on from Orios’s arms, his expression smug and smitten.
But all of it fades when Amara looks up at me.
I nod. “Of course.”
She leads me away from the lantern light and laughter, up the narrow stairs toward the prow of the ship. The sounds behind us dim, until there is only the rhythmic creak of wood, the hush of the ocean below, and the ever-present thrum of the thread between us, pulling taut with every step.
We reach the front of the ship, where the sea stretches out before us like eternity painted in ink and silver. Stars ripple in the water. A full moon crowns the waves. The wind brushes her hair across her cheek and I tuck it behind her ear, unable to stop myself.
She doesn’t pull away.
“I am human, Daed,” she says into the wind, her voice brittle and breaking against it. “We do not have mates. Not the way Fae do. So tell me, what does it mean? What must Ido?”
I lift my hand to her face, gently cupping her cheek, desperate to tether her to me. “Nothing,” I whisper. “You do nothing but let me love you, Amara.”
But still, she resists.
She always resists.
“What is it?” I ask, my voice raw. “What has changed in you? Why do you flinch from my touch? Why will you not let me share your bed?” I pause, then let the question that has gnawed at me for days fall from my lips like poison. “Is it him? The Golden Son? Hashechanged you?”
Her head jerks toward me, eyes fierce.
“Do you… feel something for him?” The words burn. My chest aches, hollow and tight.
Her response is quick, almost furious. “Do not mistake asking you to spare him for having any feelings for that man. He threatened the Grove. He murdered Arax.” Her voice catches like splinters in her throat. “I will never forgive him for that. Even if he’s trying to make amends. But if I can’t forgiveRonin, how in all the realms am I supposed to forgiveyou?”
I stare, the words crashing into me like a wave.
“Forgive me?” I echo, stunned. “For what?”
She gives a mocking gasp. “For what youknew. For what youplanned.” Her gaze cuts through me. “It wasn’t until we were apart that I saw it clearly. What you put me through was not worthy of love. You lied to me, Daed.”
I nod once, slowly, accepting the weight of what she lays before me. “I know I have wronged you, but you cannot imagine the grip they had on me. The power. The scars they carved deep, beneath the skin, into my very soul. I didn’t know another way to survive.” My voice wavers, pleading now. “Butyou… you freed me from that prison. You made mewantto be different. You made mebetter. I was myself, Amara. Truly myself, for the first time, because ofyou.”
I move toward her, step by careful step, drawn like the tide to the moon. My hands find her waist, gods, how I ache to touch her, and I draw her gently toward me, until the shape of her presses into mine.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, the words a vow etched into the dark. “I’ll be sorry every day I breathe. Sorry until my final breath, and I will show you every day that I am sorry. Just… please, wife…” My voice breaks, trembling with the weight of it. “Let me lie beside you. Letme hold you. Let me kiss you. Let me give you everything you need… and everything you deserve.”
I bend to her, lips hovering just above hers. I can feel her breath, sweet and uneven. Her chest rises with each inhale, desire clashing with defiance. My hands slide along the curve of her hips, the softness of her drawing a tremble from me, my thumb brushing across her skin like a man desperate for absolution.
“Amara,” I whisper, her name a sacred thing. “My queen. My wife. My life. I love you.”
I lean in, aching to claim her lips, her mouth, her surrender.
But her hand rises. Firm, cold, and unrelenting, and presses hard against my chest.
I freeze.
I look down at that hand. So delicate. So slender. Yet it holds me like iron.
“No,” she says, the word immovable.
