Rhen—the Charon, the weapon, the male built for war and made to survive everything sent to kill him—brought to his knees by a human body bleeding, breaking, ending.
A woman he had never had the right to ask anything from.
A love he had buried beneath loyalty and intended to carry silently forever.
He could still feel her weight against him, as though she had left an imprint inside his ribs.
The memory repeated with brutal precision.
The color draining from her face.
Her breath thinning.
Her eyes finding the only familiar face beside her and trusting him to hold the terror away until Sule returned.
And he had failed to keep her there.
All the strength and violence he had wielded in the name of protection had meant nothing against the quiet inevitability of death.
“Rhen.”
The voice reached him through layers of noise that no longer held meaning.
Dax’s hand closed more firmly over his shoulder—not command, not pity, but the steady pressure of a brother refusing to let him disappear inside himself.
Rhen’s throat worked.
No sound emerged.
He could not form words around a truth that still had teeth.
She was gone.
The sentence sank into him again.
Movement continued somewhere beyond his sight.
Boots on stone.
The rustle of fabric.
Mary’s broken breathing near the door.
The room had filled around him, but Rhen remained trapped in the moment Leena’s hand had slipped from his face.
He blinked once.
Slowly.
His gaze lifted enough to find her on the bed.
Sule knelt beside her, both hands wrapped around one of hers as though prayer might travel through touch.
His face was undone.
Rhen watched without truly seeing.
No jealousy.
