Page 50 of Reign

I noticed every flicker of her pulse. Every breath. Every moment her body softened under my hands.

And I missed the one thing that mattered.

I rise slowly. The pocket square is still in my hand, her blood on it like an accusation I can’t set down.

“You’re a—”

“Not anymore,” she cuts in.

Her voice is too steady. She’s already smoothing her dress, fixing straps, tucking curls like this was nothing.

Like she didn’t just hand me something I should have known enough to handle differently.

She doesn’t look at me again. She turns, unlocks the door, and walks out.

The click echoes.

I stand there in the marble silence, her scent still on my collar, and stare at the ruined linen in my palm.

This was one lapse.

No.

I close my fist around the linen.

Calling it a lapse would be a lie. I chose every second of her until the blood showed me what I had failed to ask.

She’s gone.

I look down at the ruined linen.

I should throw it away.

Instead, I fold it carefully along the clean edges and slip it into my jacket.

I tell myself I don’t know why.

That’s another lie.

***

The reception noise returns like a tide I never asked for.

I slip back into the crowd the way I left it—measured, unhurried, one hand already adjusting my cuff as if the last few minutes never happened. My face is the same mask it always is.

But inside, the reel keeps playing on loop.

Her pulse under my tongue.

The choked sound she tried to swallow when I first pushed inside.

The way her legs locked tighter the second I told her to.

The way she looked at me like she’d won something when I was the one buried to the hilt.

I don’t look for her.

I feel her anyway.