I paused. “The colour of the sunset over the fields. It would turn the whole horizon this deep, golden orange, and for a moment, it was as though the world was on fire in the best way.”
Varyth didn’t move. But his expression shifted, almost kind.
A chuckle escaped me, tinged with nostalgia. “And my instructor for combat, he had this laugh. It’d sound the exact same every time I made a mistake. This ridiculous, booming laugh. It used to drive me mad, but now…” I shook my head, my smile faltering. “I think I’d give anything to hear it again.”
I glanced down, my hands brushing absently at my sides. “My court,” I added after a pause. “For all its faults… it couldbe filled with laughter and celebration and fun. We had festivals that would light up the whole city. People dancing, music in every corner, food spilling from the tables.” I released a sigh. “For a moment, it made you forget everything else.”
The memories surged up and over me, threatening to consume everything. I rolled my shoulders, letting out a slow breath, trying to shake them off. But they stayed.
Gods, they always stayed.
“My children,” I said, and a soft smile crept onto my face. “Running through the halls of our house, their laughter echoing everywhere. They carried the light with them—” I stopped. Forced myself to breathe. “No matter how dark things got.”
Varyth stayed silent, his presence steady and warm, letting me speak.
“And Navaire.” My voice caught on his name, a small break I couldn’t smooth away. “Gods, I miss him every day.”
The air seemed to still around us as the admission slipped out. I hadn’t meant to say it aloud, hadn’t meant to give that part of myself away. But now that I had, I couldn’t take it back.
“He would play with them for hours,” I said, the memory washing over me with bittersweet clarity. “Chasing them through the garden, building ridiculous forts from every blanket and cushion in the house. Sometimes I’d come home and find all of them asleep in a pile of pillows, surrounded by wooden swords and toy dragons.”
I smiled despite the ache in my chest. “He was such a child himself sometimes. He’d get this look on his face, pure mischief. And I knew they were plotting. Usually something that would end with mud tracked through the entire house or honey somehow in someone’s hair.”
Varyth was quiet, watching me with those eyes that seemed to see too much.
“For what it’s worth,” he said, gentler now, “I think he would be proud of what you’ve accomplished.”
“You didn’t know him.”
“I didn’t need to.” Varyth stood steady, unflinching. “I know you. And I can imagine the type of man who’d love you.”
I stared at him, my breath catching somewhere between my ribs and my throat.
I can imagine the type of man who’d love you.
The words hung in the air between us like smoke, heavy and impossible to ignore. My pulse hammered against my wrists, my neck, every point where blood met skin.
He’d said it so easily. So fucking casually. Like he hadn’t just carved those words directly into the parts of me I tried to keep buried.
“You—” I started, then stopped, because what the fuck was I supposed to say to that?
I saw the exact moment Varyth realised what he’d done. His composure cracked, and something almost panicked flickered across his features.
“Varyth.”
“I meant—” He started, and for the first time since I’d met him, the High Lord of Luceren looked genuinely panicked. “That is, what I meant to say was?—”
He stopped. Dragged a hand through his ashen hair hard enough that I heard the catch of his rings against the strands.
“I simply meant,” he tried again, his usual eloquence fracturing like ice. “That based on what you’ve told me about him, about your life together, I can extrapolate the sort of man he must have been. Patient. Understanding.”
Another pause. His jaw worked like he was chewing on words he couldn’t quite spit out.
“Patient,” he repeated, and there was desperation in his tone now. “It would take a very steady, patient man to be around someone who can be so?—”
He gestured at me, a frustrated movement that encompassed everything from my windswept hair to my mud-spattered boots.
“Patient and steady,” I said, letting the words roll around my mouth like wine. “Is that what it takes to handle me?”
