No.
He’d come down here with me.
That thought is worse. He wouldn’t mock, not for this. Not really. He’d kneel in front of me, probably in some ridiculous suit worth more than most houses and put both hands on my face. He’d tell me to breathe in that low, impossible voice.
He’d be furious on my behalf, even if the grief was for him. He’d find a way to make it less shameful without making it small.
But he isn’t here.
There is no hand on my face.
No voice.
No‘my husband’ whispered like the world cannot have it.
The room is so empty I can hear my own grief coming back at me.
I push myself up enough to sit back against the side of the bed, one knee drawn up, the other stretched uselessly across the floor. I clutch the ring in both hands now, folded around it like a prayer, though God has never been invited into anything between us except as witness to what He failed to protect.
“Are you happy now?” I ask the dark ceiling, voice shredded. “Was that the fucking price? Was that enough?”
No answer.
Of course.
I drag a breath in, and it breaks halfway.
“You gave him back,” I say, and the words spill out because there is no one here to stop them now. “You gave him back to me. You gave me his voice, his mouth, his fucking hand in mine. Youlet me remember. You let me put a ring on him. You let him call me husband.”
My voice cracks so badly I have to stop. “Then you took him,” I whisper.
I don’t know who I’m accusing. God. Fate. The Families. Reyes. Byrne. Lucien. My father. His father. Myself. All of them. None of them. The room doesn’t care, and the dead don’t answer.
Dead.
My whole body rejects the word so violently that I almost vomit.
I twist sideways, one hand braced on the floor, and breathe through my teeth until the nausea passes. The ring stays in my other hand. I will not drop it.I will not.If this is what’s left of him in my room tonight, then I will not let it hit the floor like evidence.
It was on his hand. He wore it. He said yes. He looked at me and said forever while still angry, because that was us; that was the miracle of us. Not soft perfection, not clean romance. Anger and love in the same bed, honesty before control, his hand in mine while the world sharpened knives outside the door.
For those few suspended moments, I had my heart back.
I look at the ring again, and something inside me twists. They found it with the body. They found his ring with what was left where he said he was.
The words repeat: brutal and stupid. The body where he said he was. Burnt beyond recognition. Tests confirmed. The ring confirmed. The world confirmed.
But my body won’t, and the denial is humiliating. It is also all I have.
“I love you,” I whisper. “I love you, My King. My husband. My beautiful, impossible fucking heart.”
My bedroom door opens without a knock. I know who it is before I look up because only one person in this house would dare.
Tatiana steps in, then stops so abruptly her boots make no sound after the threshold. She’s wearing black again, hair loose around her shoulders, face pale in the lamplight. For once, there’s nothing sharp in her expression. No pout. No bright violence. No little sister act wrapped around an assassin’s smile.
She sees me on the floor and her face changes.
“Kolya,” Tatiana says softly.
