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“I’m not sure…” he continued, “how old you would have been when he died…if you would have known…”

“I am aware,” Theo said slowly.

She wasn’t certain how much to reveal. She didn’t want to make his wounds worse, but she also thought this man might need honesty more than anything. Trust was obviously not something that came easily for him. And she found she was desperate to ensure she didn’t lose the little of it he held in her. Desperate to earn more of it.

“My father, working in the castle as he did, warned me at a young age. There came a point in my youth that I was no longer allowed anywhere near the castle grounds.” It’d been the reason for her first and only heartbreak. Because it’d forced her to leave him behind.

She traced his bottom lip with her thumb, attention focused on that small movement. “I didn’t listen. We think we’re invincible as children.” A hollow laugh escaped her. “I almost learned a very hard lesson because of it.”

His jaw flexed in her palm, and her gaze snapped to his. “I was thirteen. Your father found me wandering the estate by one of my favorite spots…”

He inhaled sharply, his muscles turning to stone. She gripped his jaw tighter and shook her head vigorously. “Nothing happened. I got away. But I am very aware of your father’s reputation. And I’m very aware of what would have happened if I hadn’t.”

“I’m not sure you are,” he whispered. A tortured man stared back at her. “I was there. I witnessed exactly what happens when someone doesn’t get away.” A tremor ran through his face. He lifted a hand to her face, hovering by her cheekbone. “The life draining from one’s eyes as they’re used as nothing but a vessel for man after man. Did you know you can watch someone die even while they’re alive?”

An ice-cold chill ran through Theo’s veins at his pronouncement. At the haunting vision it evoked. She’d seen the aftermath of what he spoke of. She’d learned from a young age what evils existed out there for women, recognized how lucky she was to have avoided being one of the many victims. It was why she helped women the way she did.

And then his words settled in her mind, and his horror earlier all made complete sense.

I used you.

Oh dear God. What they had shared…what he had done to her was nothing like that. She didn’t doubt for a second he would have stopped if she’d asked him to.

She went to reassure him, but he spoke first.

“Being back here,” he said hoarsely. “Is like walking straight back into my past. Like walking straight into a waking nightmare. That dining hall—” He cut off, his eyes squeezing shut, unsteady breaths rattling from him. “Every room in that castle is riddled with monsters.”

Which explained why he wasn’t sleeping there. Her eyes widened. Dinner with Bash and the Duchess. In the dining hall. Which explained why he’d run here.

To her.

“You said you’d been thirteen,” he whispered. “Which would have made me ten. I was ten when he brought me to my first one.” His words were threadbare, frayed with a lifetime of pain. “Twelve when he tried to make me partake. I’d take every beating, every stretch of time he locked me away, every stretch with nothing but scraps and water, over the times he forced me to attend those parties. I watched so many lives ruined, so many souls destroyed.”

His own among the carnage.

“If you hadn’t escaped…” A tear slipped free, traveling the path of his scar. “I would have witnessed it happen to you.” His words died on a crack. And she saw it, the second the panic took over him, the muscles going rigid, the hitch in his chest even as his body denied him the breath.

She pulled him closer, their foreheads bumping. “Easy.” She massaged his nape, brushing her nose over his. “Easy, Duke. It didn’t happen. Nothing happened to me.” He wrapped his arms around her, held her painfully tight. She tucked him to her chest. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry for what you witnessed. For what you experienced.”

A violent shudder ripped through him, followed by another, until it was just a continuous shake, the fortress coming crumbling down. And she did her best, with her legs tight around him, her arms embracing him, her fingers delving into his hair, to hold him together.

A destroyed sound rang through the chamber, one that could only come from the deep recesses of a broken soul. He rocked her, erratic breaths bouncing off her skin, fingernails scoring her skin. She held on tighter as more and more of those sounds filled her cottage, each one a blade to her heart. Despair. Anguish.

Agony.

“I have you,” she whispered. She clung to him, pressed her lips to his hair, and willed him to believe. “You’re safe with me.”

His tremors eased, the only remnants left the shake in his breath and the tremble in his fingers. Muscles previously unyielding softened, his body no longer desperate to protect itself from its demons.

She gently peeled him from her shoulder until they were eye to eye again. And what stared back at her stole the air from her lungs. Those steely irises were leached of color. Ice grey. And everyone knew how fragile ice was, how susceptible it was…

To shattering.

“You’re safe with me,” she whispered.

They stared at each other for a long time. Just them and silence.

“You make me almost want to believe that,” he finally whispered.