My heart beats impossibly fast and loud.
"Every single time. Without hesitation,” he grinds out. “That's what I am now. A man who would choose you over an innocent child." His voice drops to almost nothing. "So when you say you love me — make sure you know what you love."
I look at him for a long moment. Feel the edges of my heart go brittle, my stomach turned inside out.
I know what he's doing, speaking the language of someone who has learned that the fastest way to end something before it can be taken from you is to destroy it yourself. Push hard enough, and they'll leave on their own terms. Make yourself the villain of the story so the ending feels like justice rather than loss.
It's a defense mechanism so old and so practiced that most people who use it don't know they're using it.
He's trying to make me hate him.
Because hate would be cleaner than this. Hate would give him a reason to walk away that doesn't require him to admit he's terrified. Hate would mean he doesn't have to sit with the possibility that someone could know the full, unvarnished truth of what he is and choose him anyway — because that possibility is more dangerous to him than anything Valeria has ever done.
Being loved completely is the thing Nazareth Hale doesn't know how to survive.
I wipe my tears. Steel my shoulders. “I need some air.”
But his hand grabs my elbow, pulls me close, his forehead against my temple. “I don’t know how to love you without hurting you.”
My heart doesn’t just crack—itshatters.
“I know,” I whisper, voice destroyed. I meet his gaze. “And I’m asking you to let me love you anyway.”
I walk out.
21
SOPHIA
The sun comes up slowly over Lemnos, like it knows better than to rush something this fragile.
Not the cinematic explosion of gold and fire you see in movies. Just a quiet surrender of the dark.
The horizon bleeds from black into deep indigo, then bruised violet, then the thinnest, most delicate thread of pale gold bleeding across the edge of the sea.
It reminds me that the dark isn’t forever. If you can get through it, you’ll find something exquisite. Something worth enduring the hard parts.
I’m not crying anymore. I’m just standing here, arms wrapped around myself, watching the sky slowly remember how to be beautiful.
The door behind me opens with a soft scrape of wood.
Bare feet on stone. Unhurried. Heavy with purpose.
I don’t turn. I keep my eyes on the water, but every cell in my body leans toward him like a flower that’s forgotten how to face anything but the sun.
He stops beside me. Close. So close that his arm brushes mine, warm skin against warm skin in the cool morning air.
He doesn’t speak. Neither do I. Sometimes silence says more than any words could. Like…I’m sorry. I forgive you. Don’t give up on us. Don’t give up on… me.
We knew this wouldn’t be easy. We knew there’s a whole world out there we need to fight for us to find our place in it.
The wreckage of last night still clings to both of us—his confessions like blood under my fingernails, my grief like bruises on my throat where his teeth had been. But here, in the rising light, it feels different. Not gone. Never gone. Just… witnessed. Held. Like the island itself is old enough to carry some of it for us.
His hand finds mine.
No fanfare. No hesitation. Just his fingers sliding between mine, slow and certain, the way he does everything when he’s decided. His palm is rough, scarred, warm. His thumb moves across my knuckles once. Twice. A small stroke that says everything he couldn’t choke out last night.
I’m sorry.I’m terrified. I would burn the world down if you asked me to.
