"Tell me about her." Brynn stepped closer to the fountain's edge, into the light that made her eyes flash. "Tell me about the woman who was here before me."
The woman who was here before me.
The guilt nearly drove him to his knees. Because she did matter. She mattered in ways Elizabeth never had. Ways he hadn't let himself look at too closely because that would mean admitting how far gone he already was.
"Her name was Elizabeth." The words scraped out of him.
He watched her expression shift. Her anger flickered, surprise that he was actually answering. Then it blazed higher.
"What happened to her, Dante?"
The use of his name instead of his title undid him. She was demanding answers from him as a person. Not the Reaper. She wanted truth from Dante.
He turned away, moving to the fountain's edge because he couldn't face her while saying this.
His hands gripped the stone hard enough that cracks spider-webbed beneath his fingers.
"She was curious. About everything. The court, the realm, how things worked here. She asked endless questions." He forced himself to breathe through the tightness behind his ribs. "And I was lonely."
The admission tore open a wound that had never properly healed. Lifetimes of isolation, of keeping everyone at arm's length. Lifetimes of being the thing that made even other Death Lords uneasy.
"When someone finally treated this place like a fascinating new world instead of a nightmare, when someone asked questions out of curiosity rather than terror..."
His voice broke slightly.
"I made the mistake of thinking I could have that."
He could feel her moving closer behind him. Her scent reaching him now, warm citrus cutting through the jasmine and night-blooming flowers.
Too close. And he could never make himself tell her to stop.
"She didn't quite grasp how dangerous it all was," he continued, staring at the aurora overhead. "Like she didn't understand that the biggest danger was standing right beside her."
"What happened?" Brynn's voice came from directly behind his left shoulder now. Close enough that his shadows strained toward her with longing he couldn't suppress.
His hands clenched harder on the stone.
"I let my guard down. Started spending time with her, showing her parts of the court that were meant to stay hidden. I told myself it was harmless. She was just curious, and I was just..."
Lonely. So lonely, he'd let himself believe he could have something that was never meant for him.
"She tried to touch you," Brynn said quietly instead.
"We were talking in the library one evening. She was excited about something she'd discovered in one of the texts. Animated and happy."
He made himself say the rest.
"She reached out without thinking. Grabbed my hand to pull me over to show me what she'd found."
The garden seemed to hold its breath.
"I wasn't prepared. For lifetimes, I'd maintained constant vigilance around innocents. But in that moment of happiness, of connection..."
He turned back to face her.
"My power drained her life before I could stop it. She collapsed in my arms, and I watched the light leave her eyes. She was gone in seconds. Just gone."
Silence stretched between them.
