“What things?” I ask, though part of me already knows.
She hesitates, then meets my eyes. “He’s always entertained multiple women. Always. Even before you.” Her voice softens. “Even during his marriage to Hilde.”
The name lands like a blow.
I close my eyes.
“I thought…I truly thought it would be different with you,” she continues. “You were so happy together. I thought he loved you enough to change.”
“Does he love me, though?” I ask. My voice soundsstrange to my own ears, it’s devoid of any emotion, simply flat and empty.
“Yes,” she says quickly. “I believe that. His love for you is obvious.”
I turn my face toward her. “Then why isn’t it enough?”
She exhales shakily. “This is the way of kings,” she says, as if repeating something she’s been told all her life. “They take comfort where they wish. It doesn’t mean they love their wives any less. You should focus on what he gives you—and what you give him. You can still have a beautiful marriage.”
Something inside me goes very still.
“No,” I say quietly.
She looks at me, startled.
“If I’m not the one for him,” I continue, the words coming slowly now, each one deliberate, “then everything else is a lie. Every promise. Every touch. Every night that I thought we belonged only to each other.”
Aileen opens her mouth, then closes it again.
“My dream is gone,” I whisper. Saying it out loud hurts, but it also feels final. “I can’t share him. Not like this.”
She pulls me close again, her grip trembling. “I’m so sorry,” she repeats helplessly.
Her guilt hurts almost as much as the truth. She tells me again that kings are like this. That it means nothing. That his love for me is real and solid. I nod, I understand.
But inside, something precious has already broken beyond repair.
* * *
Days pass. I do what I am meant to do. I smile when watched.I speak when spoken to. When I am alone, I cry until my chest aches. I stop sleeping. I stop eating properly. I feel hollowed out.
I manage to spend as little as time with Charles as possible, but I know he notices. He becomes even more attentive than usual. He only leaves my side when absolutely necessary, as if my trying to push him away makes him even more desperate to be near me. As if he doesn’t want to give me any room to think.
I don’t plan on confronting him.
But when Charles comes home one night, smelling of another woman, something finally snaps.
I turn to him slowly.
“Could you,” I say, keeping my voice steady with effort, “at least wash before coming to bed?”
He pauses, one hand still on the door frame.
“Wash?”
“Yes.”
He frowns faintly, as though genuinely confused.
“I don’t understand.”
