"The cruelest lie I ever told."
For one suspended moment, I can't process the words. Can't make them fit together in any configuration that makes sense.
Then understanding hits. The realization splinters through my thoughts, each piece drawing blood.
She planned this.
All of it.
The softness. Forgiveness. Letting me touch her, taste her, bring her to climax. Leading me right to the edge of release, making me believe—making mehope—that maybe, just maybe, we could find our way back to each other.
All of it was a lie.
A carefully orchestrated cruelty designed to make me feel exactly what she's been feeling for four months: hope dangled like a carrot, then snatched back the moment I believed it real.
And gods help me, it's brilliant.
Viciously, devastatingly brilliant.
Part of me—the part that's still the monster everyone fears—wants to laugh. Wants to applaud the sheer audacity of it. Because this? This is the woman I married. Not the broken victim. Not the grieving mother.
She learned from the best, after all.
But the rest of me—the part that still bleeds, that still hopes, that still loves her despite everything—is dying.
My chest caves in like someone's reached inside and torn out every vital organ. The air leaves my lungs and doesn't return. Four months of desperate hope, of believing that eventually she'd soften, that time would heal this wound—all of it collapses into a complete ruin.
She pulls her torn nightgown around herself with shaking hands, and without another word, walks to the door.
She doesn't look back.
The door closes behind her with a soft click that sounds like the end of everything.
CHAPTER 2
THE EMPTY SPACE
NESILHAN
Iwake gasping, my hand flying to my abdomen before my mind has even caught up to the motion.
The nightmare never changes. The same flicker of torchlight over damp stone walls. The smell of mold, blood, and fear. The echo of my own footsteps as I hurry through the dungeons, guided by that single sound—the quiet sobs of someone I loved.
My heart pounds against my ribs like a caged animal. Sweat slicks my palms, making each step treacherous on the damp stone. The cold seeps through my slippers, numbing my toes as I run. Sometimes I hear the distant drip of water, sometimes the scurrying of rats in the shadows. Sometimes, worst of all, I hear the soft murmur of voices discussing what to do with "the child" once I'm gone.
Banu, chained against the wall, her once-bright eyes swollen and red. Her voice breaks as she calls for me.
I remember running to her. The way her wrists trembled when I unlocked the cuffs. The way she clung to me like a child seeking warmth. Her tears fell hot against my neck, and I thought—finally, something good can come from all this.
Then came the blade.
Cold—so impossibly cold—sliding through silk, through skin, through everything I was. My breath caught not from pain, but disbelief. The betrayal struck deeper than steel ever could. I remember the warmth spreading across my stomach, the way Elçin screamed my name, the echo of my own heartbeat slowing as the world blurred.
The last thing I remember from that night is Kaan's voice—harsh, desperate—ordering the healers to save me. Not us. Me.
My fingers find the scar through my silk nightgown. A thin, raised line cutting across my lower abdomen. The place where her blade entered. The place where my child—our son—died before he ever took his first breath.
The healers said I was lucky. That my body had "healed well." That the mark would fade in time.
