“I know you loathe me,” Rorn said. “But I cannot find it within me to apologize, for once I discovered those portraits you’d painted of him, I simply had to.”

“Did you know?” I felt compelled to ask. “Did you know that Scythe was my mate before you told those that wish he and every single soul in this family dead where he was?”

Rorn’s shoulders rose with his long intake of breath. “I had my suspicions, but Astrantia…” He exhaled slowly. “It wouldn’t have stopped me.”

My eyes closed as my heart shook within my chest. I opened them and did my best to keep from looking too closely at the contents of the bedchamber I’d shared with him. It seemed a different life, and now, new ones had torn us apart.

Fate had intervened.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked. “That Carelda is your mate.”

“Because I didn’t want her to be,” he said to the crown. “I’ve not wanted anyone but you since the night I first laid eyes on you.” He huffed. “But the moment I saw her in that destroyed village town, ready to fight one of our warriors with nothing but a fucking stick for daring to take fruit from her mother, I knew it didn’t matter what I wanted. I felt it. A connection happened. I intended to do nothing about it. To merely ignore her and reject it.”

I recalled the way he’d tossed Carelda from these towers like unwanted goods.

He hadn’t only been trying to remove her for my sake—for the sake of our dying marriage. He’d been attempting to rid himself of temptation to better keep the life he’d known, the life he’d chosen. Even at the detriment of his son.

Rorn’s lithe fingers smoothed over one of the emerald leaves of the crown. The jewels, and the silver and gold they clung to, glinted in the glow of afternoon.

I could hardly believe that he’d finally agreed to let me go, and the sudden weight of knowing I’d never see him again formed icicles that threatened to erase the warmth that had engulfed my heart just minutes ago.

For despite all he’d done, a part of me would always care for him. He might not deserve it, and he might have lost my love long ago, but he had been the largest part of my life for too many years. He was woven into the fabric of who I was. I could move on, but I knew forgetting such a thing, forgetting him, would only prove impossible.