He looks like he's been torn apart.
And then—
He drops to his knees.
Right there in my hallway.
On the worn, stained carpet.
His wings fold tight against his back, and he looks up at me with an expression so vulnerable, so utterlybroken, that my breath stops.
"I was wrong," he says.
His voice cracks.
"I was wrong about everything."
I stare at him.
I can't speak.
I can't move.
I can barely breathe.
"I thought I was protecting myself," he continues, his words tumbling out in a desperate rush. "I thought if I kept my distance, if I maintained control, if I refused to trust anyone, I could avoid being hurt. I have spent eight centuries building walls. Eight centuries convincing myself that isolation was strength. That paranoia was survival."
He takes a shaky breath.
"And then you walked into my life. And you tore down every single wall I ever built. You made me feelwarmfor the first time in eight hundred years. You made me believe that I could be something other than a monument to my own fear."
His hands tremble.
"And I repaid you by accusing you of betrayal. By casting you out. By choosing my paranoia over the only person who has ever loved me unconditionally."
Tears burn at the corners of my eyes.
"Cyprian—"
"I know what I did," he says, his voice breaking. "I know I hurt you. I know I do not deserve your forgiveness. But I need you to understand—"
He stops.
His jaw works.
And then he says, very quietly:
"I am dying without you."
The words hit me like a physical blow.
"The fated-mate bond is not a metaphor," he says. "It is biological. It isreal. When I cast you out, my body began shutting down. The stone-lock returned with a severity I have never experienced. My chest calcified. My wings froze. My core temperature dropped so low that my heart nearly stopped beating."
He looks up at me, his amber eyes blazing.
"I was entombed in my own body for forty-eight hours. Completely immobilized. Unable to move. Unable to speak. Trapped inside a prison of stone because I severed the only bond that has ever kept me alive."
My breath hitches.
