He almost laughed. “I’ve never wanted to be anywhere less than in that ballroom.”
“Those people are your people, whose approval you crave.”
“I’ve been known to want the wrong things.”
Her eyes flicked toward him, wary. “What are you saying?”
Cautiously, he took another step forward. “I need you to understand why I wrote that letter.”
“I understandwhyyou wrote the letter. That isn’t the problem.” Her voice didn’t rise, but it didn’t soften either. “If you’re going to apologize, don’t. I don’t want to hear it.”
She stepped past him, slow, her effort to hide her uneven gait evident in every move. He didn’t stop her, until something inside him snapped taut.
“I was a fool,” he said, pivoting to face her back. “I lifted your veil and saw a woman I didn’t expect. And I panicked. I thought it would reflect on me—on my name, my House. I thought the court would laugh.”
She stopped. Stillness gripped her. For a moment, he couldn’t even tell if she was breathing.
Then, she said, “You were right.”
He closed his eyes. Three little words, yet they hurt more than any other condemnation she could’ve uttered.
“The courtwouldlaugh.” Her voice was gentler now, but wearied. “There will always be laughter. Always stares. I’ve lived long enough to know: no matter how I walk or dress, hold a fan or wear a mask, someone will find a reason to be cruel.”
She turned toward the gardens and tipped her chin to the sky as if daring the stars not to look away. “But I had hoped . . .” He caught the quiver of her chin. “I had hoped you wouldn’t be one of them.”
Heat climbed his neck. His jaw locked until his teeth ached and he tasted iron, hands curling uselessly at his sides. He wanted to step in, to put himself between her and every stare, to drown the world in his defiance and dare it to flinch.
Rage would’ve been easier—a shout, a blow he could take and be done with. This quiet hurt left nowhere to put his hands, and nowhere to hide from what he’d done. Her soft, steady calm was worse than any scream. She didn’t want his apologies, and he understood why.
What didsorrymean when he’d carved the wound with cowardice?
Standing here, he saw it: The true betrayal hadn’t been the annulment. It had been hisreason. His small, craven reason. Fearing the snickering of some damn courtiers. Another layer of stain on his name. He’d cared more about how the world would see him standing beside her than to standbyher.
“I don’t blame you, Lord Wulfbane,” she said softly. “You have Blackwood-Veyrde and the people of Lornhelm to consider. Yrenna, who still needs a match. Generations of legacy to secure. And me?” She shook her head. “I’m just a woman whose sole focus is survival. I don’t have what you want.”
Her words, so measured and absolute, broke him. They were the epitaph she was writing for them, and he could not let it stand.
“You’re wrong,” he said, the words leaving him in a rush. “What if I told you that someone powerful believed you were worth more than survival? That you were worth a kingdom’s alliance?”
He took a sharp step forward, closing the space between them. “When I spoke to King Ferdinand after you left, he told me this marriage wasn’t his idea. It was your brother’s.”
For a second, nothing. Then her breath caught—a sharp, fractured sound in the quiet. Her head lifted bit by bit, as if against a great weight. In the moonlight, her face had gone as pale as the marble behind her.
“Crown Prince ShunLi,” Alexander pressed, holding her wide, disbelieving gaze, “brokered this marriage for you himself, in exchange for a betrothal to the king’s sister, Princess Adelise.”
“No.” The word was a rasp, but it held force. A lifelong conviction. Her hand rose, trembling, to her birthmark. “That can’t be. You don’t understand. To him, I amnothing. A blemish. A disgrace. He would never?—”
Her voice broke, the denial crumbling into a choked breath, as though she’d remembered something that made the words die on her tongue.
“But hedid,” Alexander said, his own voice softening at the devastation unfolding before him. He was watching the walls of her reality crack and splinter. “Ferdinand had no reason to lie. He was furious with me for jeopardizing the political match he’d secured for Princess Adelise.”
She swayed. Her fingers gripped the balustrade, knuckles turning white. Her eyes had gone distant, seeing not the terrace or him, but some ghost from her past. A lifetime of being unseen, of passing in silent halls, was being violently rearranged.
“Why?” she gasped, the sound raw and full of anguish. “For what purpose?”
“I don’t know,” Alexander admitted, aching at the raw confusion in her voice. “But I know someone with power fought to put you in Tremore, and someone else stole a letter from my desk to drive you out of it.”
She was silent for a long moment, the sea wind the only sound.
