Page 32 of Severe Husband Warning

I manage a small nod before stepping through the doorway.

My room greets me with familiar stillness. The silver-leafed plant rests beneath the window where I left it, its delicate branches catching the glow of the storm beyond the glass. Beside the wardrobe, my lute waits exactly where I left it. My shoulders loosen before I even touch it.

I kneel beside the instrument, brushing my fingertips across the worn wood before lifting it into my hands. The neck bears the faint scratches of years spent traveling from taverns to noble halls, and beneath my palm the smooth polish feels wonderfully, achingly familiar.

Everything about it belongs to the life I carried with me before crossing the threshold of House Stromgarde, and since leaving Father's cottage, nothing has felt so completely my own.

I sink onto the rug beside the hearth without bothering to rescue the ruined skirts gathered beneath me. The stain across the front of the gown fades from my thoughts as my fingers find the strings of their own accord.

The melody slips into the room before I’ve consciously decided to play it.

Mother used to hum it whenever Father fell ill during the long winters. After she was gone, I learned to carry it for her, sitting beside his bed through sleepless nights until his breathing finally steadied.

As the song unfolds, I remember the girl who measured her days by songs instead of court etiquette, who believed music could not mend broken lives but could make even the hardest evenings a little easier to endure. Father always smiled when I played this one. The memory steadies me enough to lose myself in the melody once more.

Before long, the music carries me so completely that the ballroom, the laughter, and the stain across my gown drift quietly beyond my reach.

When the final note finally dissolves into the quiet, I lift my eyes to find Rothgar standing exactly where I left him.

My breath catches.

He hasn’t interrupted once.

The hard edge I’ve come to expect from him has softened. His attention rests on me with complete stillness, and for reasons I can’t explain, it feels less like being observed than understood.

The tension that had lingered between us quietly slips away.

His gaze never leaves mine.

“They have never heard music like that here,” he says, so softly that the roughness in his voice almost escapes me.

I glance down at the lute resting across my lap.

“It isn’t anything remarkable.”

“It is.”

I can’t argue with the certainty in his voice, so I simply smile to myself.

“It was written for ordinary people,” I say. “For sick children, exhausted mothers. Music has never cured anyone, but it makes fear easier to carry.”

My fingers brush absently across the instrument without sounding another note.

When I look up again, Rothgar has crossed the room.

He lowers himself onto one knee before me so naturally that I forget to speak.

Every lesson I’ve ever learned about demon nobility insists this should be impossible. A Spire Lord does not kneel before anyone lightly, least of all a human sitting on the floor with a stained gown pooled around her and a lute still resting across her lap.

Yet he does.

The distance between us disappears until I can see the silver threads woven through his coat and catch the familiar scent of rain beneath the sharper trace of ozone that always follows him.

He searches my face with a quiet intensity that strips away every careful mask he wears before the rest of the world. Weariness lingers there alongside an openness I’ve never seen from him before, and the steady rhythm of my heartbeat betrays me.

His hand rises slowly.

One finger slips beneath my chin, lifting my face until I have no choice but to meet his eyes.