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Vesuvius felt his heart beat a little bit harder, though he couldn’t trust himself to say anything for a moment. Because he knew, even if she didn’t realize it yet, that she’d given him an in. Some room to maneuver, anyway.

He set that aside and continued the story he was telling her. “Once you and I were finished, and I knew that there was no possibility that you would return, I tried to make myself accept my fate. There were wedding preparations to attend to. Mostly they consisted of Sintia and I being seen in public, as if we were subtly transitioning into our new roles. But the trouble with spending time with Sintia was that it showed me how very little I wished to spend even a moment in her presence.”

“I have never known you to be unable to have a conversation with anyone, whether you like them or not.” Aeryn shook her head. “I believe you’re famous for that, in fact.”

“I was never charming. I am always interested, which is not the same thing. And once you left, there was very little about me that was personable at all.” Vesuvius shook his head. “Still, I knew my duty and I intended to do it. The day grew closer and closer. And throughout the whole of this past year, I told myself that I was already doing it. The life I was leading, spending as little time with my soon-to-be wife as I could get away with, was a tried-and-true approach to the challenges of arranged marriages. Besides, she had a great number of her own rules. She insisted that the only way that she would bear my heirs was via test tube, and I will admit that was something of a relief. I certainly did not wish to approach the matter in the old-fashioned way. She also insisted that neither one of us should ever touch another. That both of us could benefit from a lifetime of abstinence and that she was herself an example, actually, of the benefits of that state.”

“I can’t imagine you being celibate for two weeks,” Aeryn said with a laugh. “Much less a lifetime.”

“Until tonight,” Vesuvius replied, doing absolutely nothing to modify the intensity in his voice or his gaze, “I have been celibate for two years. So I am perhaps more familiar with the state than you imagine.”

He could see her choke on the news. He watched her flush a bright shade of pink, and if he wasn’t mistaken, shiver besides.

Good, he thought.

“I resigned myself to all of these things,” he told her, in the same too-intense way, but he could not manage to ratchet that back. “What did it matter to me? I had already lost you. I knew my daughter was in this world, but I had made it a certainty that I would never lay eyes upon her. It was not until about a week ago that something changed. Because before then, I already felt dead. So why not live that way forever?”

He heard her swallow, hard. “That’s terrible,” she said softly. “I would never want that for you.”

His heart set itself into a thumping sort of rhythm that he ignored, because these little ins weren’t what he wanted. He had come here for everything. That was what had motivated him to leave the palace and fly himself here, straight into a snowstorm.

But he had to finish explaining. He had to tell her everything, so that she would know. And once she knew, she could make an informed decision, not one based entirely on what had happened two years ago.

“I was at an event at the art gallery,” he told her, though his voice sounded raw. “As usual, I toured my mother’s collection first, but found that it did not give me the peace I was after. When the event was over, I stayed behind and found myself at what I will always consider our exhibit.” Vesuvius heard her swift intake of breath. “All of the works of Marcellus Dano. And as I stood there, it was as if your ghost was there with me. And I realized that I felt more while simply looking at canvases on a whitewashed gallery wall than I had in the entire two years since we had parted ways.”

He leaned his shoulder against the window and liked the shock of cold. Marcus and he had exchanged clothes once more and the other man had assured him that a wardrobe would be provided by morning—no matter what the weather situation happened to be. Vesuvius knew better than to ask questions. Marcus always had his ways.

But in the meantime, he liked the cold windowpane against his bare flesh. It reminded him that he was alive.

And he had only felt that way for a week.

Aeryn’s green eyes were wide and, if he wasn’t mistaken, she was holding her breath, and that made him feel even more bright and aware. So it was even more important that he kept going.

“I felt as if I’d come back to life. I felt everything. And at first I was grateful, and nothing more. I hadn’t felt that way in so long.” He found his other hand on his chest, the heel of his palm pressing against his heart. “But I found I could not seem to shoehorn myself back into the dead man walking I had been for two years. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t function. And I knew that it would only get worse once I was married.”

He looked out at the snow, but what he saw was himself in the palace, staring down a future that had already begun suffocating him and would—he could see it clearly—succeed.

“It became clear to me that there was no possibility that I could walk down an aisle to my own execution. And I have always done my duty to my kingdom and my people.” He turned his gaze back to her, and was sure that his own was on fire. “You know this better than most. But it became clear to me that marrying Sintia would be the opposite of the duty I owed the kingdom. That it would turn me into a monster, or kill me, and I felt the kingdom deserved better. I have to believe that they all deserve a monarch who does not feel as if he is being strangled every single day of his reign.”

“Vesuvius…”

Aeryn looked as anguished as he’d felt, and he didn’t like that at all. He went and knelt down before her in her rocking chair, wanting to touch her—but not feeling that was right, just now.

He kept his hands to himself.

“I hate hearing all of this,” she told him, her voice thicker than before. “I suppose I preferred to think of you as completely unbothered, a creature of duty and nothing more.”

“That is how I wished to think of myself.” He blew out a breath. “As our wedding day approached, and the fervor grew even louder and more intense, I took a last-ditch approach. I decided to talk it over with Sintia herself.”

“You didn’t,” Aeryn whispered.

He almost laughed, though it wasn’t funny. “I did. I can hardly remember what day it is now, but it was the morning of the twenty-third. We were meeting anyway, to go over some plans for the wedding reception that our offices could not answer between them without involving us, our preferred method of communication. I decided to be honest with her.”

“I can’t imagine what you mean by that. Or what you could possibly have said to her.” Her eyes were wide. “Much less what she must have said back.”

Vesuvius smiled, though it was a wry affair. “The truth is that Sintia and I never had any feelings for each other, nor expected to. Ours was a political match from the start, and I suppose I thought that there was a possibility that I could acquit myself properly if there was some kind of accord between us. If we could set the hostility and posturing aside, and find something real. I don’t mean happy. Just real.”

Aeryn said nothing. She leaned forward in her chair, putting her elbows on her knees so that they were very nearly face-to-face. Though neither one of them bridged that final bit of distance.