No courts watching for weakness.
No rivals calculating how to use vulnerability against me.
No expectations demanding performance of strength I don't currently possess.
Just Gwenievere and whatever remains of Nikolai after everything that's been carved away.
Those are the words that allow me to crumble.
CHAPTER 16
Little Solstice
~GWENIEVERE~
Listening to a Fae cry really pierces the heart.
The sound carries weight that transcends simple sorrow—harmonics that seem to resonate with frequencies designed to evoke sympathetic response in anyone within range. Each sob that escapes Nikolai's throat arrives wrapped in magic I didn't know grief could contain, notes of loss and longing that make my own chest ache in solidarity with pain I can't fully comprehend.
His tears track down cheeks that have probably never known such moisture in public view, each drop carrying centuries of suppressed emotion finally finding release. The wetness against my shoulder where his face is pressed spreads in patterns that feel almost deliberate—grief mapping itself onto my skin, marking me as witness to vulnerability that Fae princes aren't supposed to possess.
It makes me want to shed tears of my own.
The urge builds behind my eyes with pressure that threatens to overwhelm whatever composure I'm maintaining. Sympathy or empathy or some combination of both—something in me responds to his sorrow with matching resonance, my heartbreaking alongside his because watching someone you care about suffer carries its own particular anguish.
But I hold back.
This isn't about me.
The realization provides the anchor I need to maintain control. Whatever emotions his grief evokes in my own chest, whatever tears threaten to spill in solidarity with his pain—they can wait. This moment belongs to Nikolai, not to me. My role right now is to hold space, to provide shelter, to be the safe harbor where he can finally release everything he's been carrying without fear of judgment or consequence.
It's about embracing the past that led us here to the present.
And what has to be left behind for our future to be woven into play.
The thought carries philosophical weight that settles into my consciousness with the particular clarity of truths recognized rather than learned. We can't move forward while dragging the full weight of everything that came before. Some burdens must be set down—mourned, acknowledged, then released—before the path ahead can be navigated with any hope of success.
Nikolai has been carrying Nikki's absence like chains wrapped around his soul.
The weight of being her strength for so long, of existing as the male manifestation of her desperate need to escape their father's disappointment... that burden didn't disappear when she separated. If anything, it transformed into something heavier—the hollowness of purpose suddenly removed, the confusion of identity when half of who you thought you were simplyisn'tanymore.
I allow him to cry.
The permission isn't something I grant consciously—more an absence of interference, a deliberate choice not to hurry him toward composure or redirect his emotional expression towardsomething more comfortable to witness. His tears need to fall. His sobs need to escape. The grief that has been building since the soul split needs outlet, and I can provide the space where that outlet becomes possible.
This is his opportunity to shed the weight he's been carrying on his shoulders.
The weight of being Nikki's strength.
But also the hollowness ignited by her absence.
The cocoon around us seems to respond to his emotional state, flowers blooming brighter when his sobs intensify, leaves rustling with sounds that might be the plant equivalent of sympathy. The magic he created recognizes its creator's pain and tries to offer comfort in the only way it knows—beauty and growth and the persistent reminder that even in darkness, living things continue to reach toward light.
I don't know how long we stay like this.
Time operates differently within the cocoon's protective embrace, minutes stretching or compressing according to rules that have nothing to do with clock mechanisms or celestial movements. There's only the rhythm of his gradually slowing sobs, the steady pulse of bioluminescence around us, the warmth of two bodies pressed together in the particular intimacy that grief creates between people who stop pretending they're okay.
Eventually, the tears subside.
