“Of course.”
She walked past him. Down the hallway. Her footsteps, quick, light, slightly uneven because she always walked faster on the left, receded into the silence of the fortress.
He listened until he couldn’t hear them anymore.
Then he stood in the empty living room and waited.
Five minutes. He stood by the window. The mountains were white against a winter sky and the light was flat and the room smelled like her, like warmth and coffee and the particular note that meant home, and the scent was everywhere and it was killing him.
Ten minutes. He moved to the center of the room. His hands at his sides. His composure intact, his face a mask, his body the picture of a man in control, and underneath the mask there was nothing but a boy standing in the ruins of a kingdom that no longer existed, watching everyone leave.
Fifteen minutes. The tightness in his chest became an edge. A blade pressing inward. She was not coming back. She was somewhere in the fortress, somewhere he couldn’t hear her, and the absence of her sounds was louder than anything he had ever heard.
Twenty minutes. He began to pace. Alexei Lykaios did not pace. He had not paced in his adult life. Pacing was the behavior of a man who could not contain himself, and he had built his entire existence on containment.
He was pacing.
Twenty-five minutes. The fortress was silent in a way it hadn’t been since before her. Not the old silence, the familiar companion. A new silence. A silence that had teeth.
Thirty minutes.
Against every instinct that told him not to, against the voice in his head that whisperedlet her go, you promised yourself you would let her go,he sat down at the console in his study and accessed the surveillance footage from earlier.
Not the live feed. The recording. The conversation in the library that he had terminated after six words.
I don’t know how to break the truth to him.
He pressed play.
The footage resumed where he had cut it. Zia in the library, phone to her ear, pacing. Maryah’s voice through the speaker, calm and warm.
“Start from the beginning,” Maryah told her.
Zia took a breath. “Billy showed up. Here. At the fortress. He waited for Alexei to leave, Maryah. He’s been watching us.”
“What did you say to him?”
“I told him to leave. I told him I’m married. But he wouldn’t listen. He kept saying he’d changed, that he fought for me.” Her voice cracked. “And then he told me something I wasn’t expecting. He said...he cheated the compatibility score. Back when we first matched. He wanted me so badly he manipulated the numbers to make sure we’d be paired.”
“He what?”
“His mother found out. That’s why she broke us up, Maryah. It wasn’t because I’m human. It was because he cheated, and she couldn’t trust him after that. But now he’s confessed to her, and she’s forgiven him, and she told him if I can make an honest man out of him, she’s all for it.” A shaky breath. “And the worst part is I feel sorry for him. Because I know what it’s like to love someone who’s already gone, and I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.”
“But you don’t love him,” Maryah said.
“No.” Immediate. Certain. Not a trace of hesitation. “No. But I don’t know how to break the truth to him without destroying him.”
Him.
Billy.
She had been talking about Billy.
Maryah’s voice, gentle: “Just tell him the truth, Ry-style. Be kind. Be clear. He deserves that.”
The call ended. Zia stood in the library for a moment, steadying herself. Then she squared her shoulders and walked out.
Alexei switched cameras. The hallway. The living room.
