Seraya’s POV
“You always vanish here when you don’t want to be seen.”
His voice broke the hush of the garden before I heard his footsteps. Even without turning, I felt him—his presence distinct, his attention tracing the shape of my profile with the same quiet focus he used to read enemy lines across a map.
I stood beneath the hanging vines, fingers curled lightly against a cold marble pillar. The twilight clung to Virelia like a last desperate breath, casting the stone archways in shades of rose and bruised gold. The breeze stirred, but it didn’t cool the tightness in my chest.”
“You’re still here,” he said.
“I thought you’d gone.”
He stepped to my side. Not touching. Not yet. The scent of frost clung to him like memory, sharp and foreign in this place where everything bloomed. Even now, standing in the garden I once called sanctuary, I felt like a guest.
“You hate this garden,” I said quietly, keeping my eyes on the horizon.
He tilted his head. “I don’t hate it. I hate what it represents for you. A cage lined with petals.”
I exhaled, a short breath through my nose. “You always see it too clearly.”
The air shifted between us. The dying light softened everything except the ache in my chest. I looked at the far end of the garden where the temple domes glowed in the final blush of day. Tomorrow, beneath those arches, Elowen would take vows beside my husband. And I would be expected to smile—dignified, graceful, erased.
“Say it,” he said again. His voice softer now. “You came out here to say something.”
I didn’t speak right away. My throat felt tight, my voice caught behind years of silence. I had carried my pain so carefully, wrapped in layers of obedience and poise. Now, with him, the truth fought to surface.
“I’m tired,” I said at last. “Of all of it. The lies. The scrutiny. The way they look at me like I’ve already withered. Like I’ve been buried standing up.”
He said nothing. He just looked at me, and it hurt—the way he looked at me. Like I was something valuable that had been left out in the rain.
“Then leave it,” he said, quiet and steady. “Come with me.”
I turned toward him. His face was shadowed now, the last of the sunlight slipping behind the garden wall. But his eyes—those silver, storm-lit eyes—still caught the dim light. Still fixed on me like I was the only thing he saw.
“Run with me,” he said. “We’ll disappear. Drosmere will call it betrayal. Virelia will name you mad. But we’ll be free.”
My breath caught. My hands trembled at my sides.
“Free.”
He nodded once. “No more crowns. No courts. I’ll give you peace—not power.”
The promise curled around something tender inside me. I had not been offered peace in so long that I barely recognized the shape of it. I stepped away from the pillar, one pace closer to him. The garden held its breath.
“You’d give all that up for me?”
“I would burn my kingdom to ash for you.”
His answer came without hesitation, and it shattered something in me.
“Why?”
He moved a little closer, his voice a whisper now. “Because when I look at you, I see the life I want. Not a throne. Not a victory. Just you.”
The ache in my chest swelled. I took a breath, sharp and shallow.
“But I can’t.”
The silence that followed was a wound.
“I didn’t survive all this just to vanish,” I said. “I didn’t endure being erased piece by piece—my voice, my name, my place—just to fade quietly into another life. I need to win. I need them to see me win.”
I turned back to him, blinking hard, my chin high. “I didn’t bleed just to walk away before the crown rots on his head.”
His jaw tightened, but he didn’t speak. He took one step forward, then another. We stood so close that our breath mingled.
“You want vengeance.”
“No,” I whispered. “I want justice. And I want it to have my face.”
And then—he moved. Fast.
He grabbed my waist, his mouth capturing mine in a kiss that was more war than love. It stole the air from my lungs. My hands rose to his chest, not to push him away, but to hold on. Because I was falling.
His body pressed into mine, firm and certain. My back hit the marble pillar with a low thud, and I gasped into him. My fingers twisted into his collar, pulling him closer. The kiss deepened, turned rougher—laced with grief and fury, with everything we had no words for.
His hands, always so controlled, were trembling now. One slid along my hip, the other braced above my head. The cold of his magic prickled against my skin, but I welcomed it. It cooled the fire raging inside me. We moved together like an unraveling.
He kissed like a man losing something he wasn’t ready to give up.
I kissed like a woman finally being seen.
When we pulled apart, breathless and stunned, I pressed my forehead to his.
“If you fall,” he said, voice low, “I fall with you.”
I closed my eyes. “Then pray we land in one piece.”
We stood there for a long moment, breathing hard, clinging to the quiet before everything shattered. I could feel the press of his body still, the echo of his mouth on mine, the sharp bloom of something I dared not name.
The temple bells began to toll. Distant, echoing. The hour of nightfall.
He stepped back at last, but not far. His gaze still held mine.
“It begins tomorrow,” I said.
“And ends with you.”
30
