“It broke me,” she whispered. “It broke me to think you would send me away instead of listening to me, talking with me.”

He held her and he cried—the tears, more than anything, convincing her that he finally saw how hurt she was, how much it mattered what the doctor and priest had done.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered into her hair. “With all the tension in that room over other things—war and language and Maxi and Mother—I thought letting you rest would be better for everyone. I was so afraid of making enemies with a public scene that I didn’t stop to think … didn’t realize how it would feel to you. I didn’t know what they’d done to you. I’m so sorry.”

Elisabeth breathed into his chest, pressed her face hard against the strong warmth of him. “I need you to promise you won’t do that to me again. That you won’t just send me away without asking why I’m upset. I can’t live like that—cut off from even you, fighting my battles alone.”

He pulled back, looked her in the eyes. “I promise.”

He took a deep breath. “I love you.”

It was the first time he’d said it aloud, and Elisabeth’s heart settled with the truth of it. “And I love you.”

She’d practiced the words so many times, but nothing compared to the look on his face when she said them aloud. She leaned her head into his chest again, felt his hand move to run fingers through her hair. He kissed the top of her head. Twice. Three times.

She almost laughed with the relief of it. She’d seen her parents argue, hurt each other, and it had always drenched the whole house in despair: her father off to get drunk and seduce someone, her mother looking for someone else to lash out at. Their disagreements and missteps had made them the worst versions of themselves. Somewhere, deep down, that’s what she’d feared this was. A breaking point. A battle. The moment their relationship would become an echo of the pain she’d seen in her parents’ marriage.

But this wasn’t that. Not even close. There was love between them, not disdain. She and Franz were tearing at the things keeping them apart, not building those things up. Franz wouldn’t run from her pain when he really saw it; he’d feel it with her, hold her through it.

“Before I met you, I felt like everyone here just wanted something from me,” he whispered. “Everything was duty. People wanted war or peace. They wanted power, a place in my court. They wanted an heir, pressured me to marry. Even marriage was duty. The one thing that should have been my own—love—I dreaded.”

Elisabeth held her breath, listened, felt his heartbeat against his rib cage.