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“No,” she said. Quietly. But distinctly. “You and I are over, forever. This is the way it has to be. I hope you understand.”

Aeryn leaned forward and pressed a kiss to the hand of his that she held. Then she stood up, walked out of the bedroom, and left him behind.

She didn’t look back.

Because she had lived three years trying to hold onto him with all of her strength and all of her grip and had lost him. And she’d spent two years trying to forget him, and had thought of him day and night.

She was done.

And now she was going to have to figure out who the hell she was when her life had nothing to do with her always beloved but never truly hers ghost of Christmas past at all.

Chapter Eleven

Vesuvius did not move for a long time.

He waited for the pain to hit. For it to cut him in half the way it had when he had received word that she had left Liandero two years ago. When he’d known full well she was never coming back.

But the pain didn’t come.

Vesuvius rose eventually and availed himself of her shower. When he was finished he wrapped a towel around his waist, went downstairs, and was not at all surprised to find that when he opened the front door, Marcus had indeed left him a duffel bag that he knew without having to look would be filled with perfectly fitting clothes and his preferred toiletries.

He thought he could hear Aeryn in the kitchen, but he didn’t go in to find her. Instead, he went back upstairs again, to the guest room this time. He stood there a moment, looking at pictures of his baby girl, and realized that he did not feel broken by what Aeryn had said to him.

Because he didn’t believe it.

Oh, he believed that she meant what she’d said. She wanted to be done with him. She wanted to send him on his way, but with some paternal rights this time, and have that be the end of it.

He dressed in a pair of trousers that fit him perfectly, a T-shirt that was as soft as a whisper, a sweater in precisely the kind of wool that he preferred, and he still didn’t feel that terrible loss that had brought him to his knees last time.

Because if he had to guess, Vesuvius would have said that what Aeryn really didn’t want was to risk it again.

To risk him again.

And he could not blame her at all.

As he dressed, he tried to think strategically. Tactically. Like a king, not her lover. And it quickly became clear to him that if this was a matter of simple diplomacy—nations in a skirmish that no one wanted to bloom into anything more—the path he would take would be clear.

So he took it.

Vesuvius went down to the kitchen and found her out in her solarium, her hands deep in the dirt of her plants. When he came close, she looked at him warily.

He could accept that he’d earned that.

“Merry Christmas,” he said. “Can I assume that it was not your intention to spend your Christmas alone?”

“Of course not,” she said, with a frown she directed to a plant she was repotting. “I’m hoping that it will stop snowing in a little while and that they might start working on the roads before the day is out.”

He nodded. “I’m going to go speak to my security detail for a while. Then I’ll be back.”

She slid him a look, and it was assessing. But he could read her, better now than before. Because he knew what she’d hidden from him, back then. When he couldn’t remember anything but her face, she had told him a story that he imagined he’d hold close for the rest of his life.

Because he didn’t much care for the dick king.

Right now, she was waiting for him to argue. Or…what had she called it? Put his spin on it.

Vesuvius did neither. He simply inclined his head and left her to her rich earth and green plants, warm beneath the snowy skies.

He shrugged on what looked like a tactical parka that Marcus had included in the duffel bag. He was not remotely surprised to find that the boots inside also fit him perfectly. There was even a wool hat and gloves.