He must tell her.
Not suggest. Not allude. Not cloak the truth in cautious phrasing.
He must speak plainly.
Tomorrow.
Tomorrow, he would tell her. He would find the courage that had failed him this night. He would speak the word without qualification or retreat.
Because she deserved more than implication. More than careful half-measures.
She deserved to know—without doubt or ambiguity—that she was loved.
And he would not allow another day to pass without telling her so.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The following morning, Benjamin woke before dawn.
He lay in the grey half-light, listening to the faint stirrings of the house, and allowed himself to remember.
Eleanor’s face when he had finally spoken plainly. The way her hand had remained in his, not out of obligation but intention. The quiet promise in her eyes when she said she would come if the nightmares returned.
The thought alone felt miraculous.
He pressed the heel of his hand against his chest, where something fragile and unfamiliar had taken root.
It felt like hope.
Not certainty. Not absolution. But the first tentative lifting of a weight he had carried so long that he no longer remembered how it had settled there.
Yet beneath that fragile warmth stirred something older and darker. The voice that had accompanied him for years—through smoke and fire, through sleepless nights and unquiet memory.
You will destroy her,it whispered.The way you destroyed everything else.
Benjamin closed his eyes and forced himself to breathe evenly.
It was not true.
Or at least—it was not inevitable.
Eleanor had seen him at his worst. Had heard the nightmares. Had stood in the wreckage of his fears and chosen not to flee.
Surely that meant something.
But the voice was persistent.
The men in Spain trusted you too, it murmured.And look what became of them.
Benjamin rose from bed, knowing he would not sleep again. The house was too quiet, the thoughts too loud. He needed to move. Needed to walk. Needed to find some way to silence the voice that threatened to poison the fragile hope he had finally allowed himself to feel.
***
The gardens were luminous in the early light.
The roses his mother had cherished stood in full bloom, their petals heavy with dew, their fragrance faint yet persistent upon the still air. Paths once choked with neglect were now clear, gravel freshly turned, borders neatly edged—the result of weeks of attentive care granted at last the freedom to flourish.
Benjamin walked slowly, the stiffness in his gait more pronounced in the chill, and allowed the beauty to settle around him.
