This time, there is no pretending.
I sob into my sister’s shoulder like the boy I never got to remain, like the man I became has finally run out of blood to stand in and call it purpose.
Tatiana holds me tighter, one hand at the back of my head, her own breathing unsteady against my hair.
“I’m going to kill them,” I whisper. “All of them. Reyes. Byrne. Every bastard who touched the service access. Every man who knew. Every man who breathed near this and didn’t stop it.”
Tatiana turns her face slightly toward my hair and says, “I’ll help.”
Of course she will. My little sister. My head assassin. My blood.
I close my eyes against her shoulder, exhausted and shaking and empty in places I didn’t know a man could be hollowed out and still breathe.
For a while, there’s only the two of us on the floor, the dying fire, the old walls, and the ring in my fist. The whole empire could be burning outside the door, and I wouldn’t hear it. Maybe it is. Maybe by morning I’ll care.
Tonight, I have nothing left except this.
My sister’s arms.
My husband’s ring.
A grief so big it makes Saint Helena feel small.
After a long time, I pull back enough to look at the ring again. My palm is marked by it, a dark circular imprint pressed into skin.
Good. Let it mark me. Let it leave something. Let there be proof somewhere on me that he existed, that he said yes, that he slept beside me, that he laughed.
That he lived.
Tatiana looks at the ring too. “It’s beautiful,” she says softly.
“He called me husband,” I say. “Like it was true without the legal papers.”
Tatiana opens her eyes and looks at me with a grief older than her face should know. “Because it was.”
The words enter me quietly.
Not healing. Nothing heals this. But they settle somewhere near the ring, near the torn remains of my breath, near the part of me still refusing the worddeadbecause refusal is all that keeps me upright.
I close my hand around the ring again, but less violently now.
“I don’t know how to live after this,” I admit.
Tatiana rests her head against the side of mine like she used to when she was small. “Then don’t decide tonight.”
I stare at the dying fire. That sounds like something Vincenzo would say. Practical. Gentle without insulting the wound.
“Tonight, you breathe,” Tatiana says. “Tomorrow, you burn the world down if you still want to.”
I nod once. It is not agreement, not really, but it is all I can manage.
My eyes are raw. My throat feels shredded. My body is shaking less now, but not because the grief has passed. It has only lowered its teeth for the moment. It will bite again soon. It will bite when I see his name in a report. When I reach for my phone. When I wake and there is no message. When Isle Lucia appearsin my head and I remember him standing in the villa, frightened of calm and trying to learn it with me.
I press the ring to my lips one more time.
This time, I don’t apologize for crying when I do it.
“Goodnight, My King,” I whisper against the metal.
