And he'd vanished rather than let her touch him.
A week of seeing that moment every time he closed his eyes. Her hand suspended in the space where he'd been. The look on her face when she'd realized he was gone.
A week of telling himself it was mercy when it felt like cruelty.
At least she's alive. At least she's safe from him.
Even if the look in her eyes when she'd walked away had gutted him.
He moved back to the window. In his garden below, the black roses were dying. Actually dying, when nothing in his realm had truly died in lifetimes. Petals fell like dark snow, littering the ground.
His hands curled into fists at his sides.
She didn't understand. Couldn't understand what it meant to watch someone die from your touch. To learn through grief that your nature didn't allow for connection.
But even as he told himself that, he knew it wasn't the whole truth.
He wasn't just afraid of killing her.
He was afraid of what it would mean to try. To hope. To let himself want something he'd spent lifetimes convincing himself was impossible.
And she'd seen that. Had looked right through his excuses to the cowardice underneath.
He returned to the maps, forcing himself to focus on routes and protocols. But underneath it all, one thought kept circling:
She was the first person in centuries who'd made him feel like something other than a monster.
And he'd treated her like she was nothing.
He blew out a breath. Let the mask fall back into place.
Even if it killed something in him to maintain it.
The instability pulsed through his realm one final time. In the Weeping Marshes, the souls began their mourning again. But the wails had taken on a new quality.
They were mourning for him now.
XLVI.
BRYNN
Brynn had barely slept.
She lay in the massive bed, staring up at the carved bone. Every time she'd closed her eyes, she'd seen her parents' faces. Not as she remembered them, warm and loving, but twisted with betrayal in their final moments.
They had been calling her name. Asking why she'd done it.
The memory surfaced on its own, the one she'd buried so deep she'd almost convinced herself it wasn't real.
The alley behind their house. Deep shadows stretching between buildings. She'd just returned from the market district, hours of negotiations leaving her mind racing with numbers and trade agreements. Late getting home. Her parents would be worried.
Voices from the back entrance. Harsh. Unfamiliar. Mixed with her parents' tones.
Her father's voice was trembling with fear she'd never heard before.
She'd pressed against the wall, straining to listen.
"Where is she?" A cold voice.
