He raked his hands through his hair. “Fuck.” The pale moonlight dripped through the window to display the clenched muscles of his back. “I knew you were tangled up in something, but…” He groaned and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Fuck, Aster.”

“I’m sorry.” Words poured from me like water I couldn’t capture. “He betrayed me, and I didn’t know what to do, how to even so much as breathe near him, so I ran away, and then I—”

“Then you found me in a tavern and decided to get that vengeance you were talking about.”

“No.” I shook my head, but I couldn’t lie now. “I mean yes, it might have started out that way…” More words I shouldn’t have freed trembled loose. “We both know it’s no longer that simple.”

Scythe released a dry, scathing laugh, then rose and tore open one of the drawers. “You’re fucking right it’s not simple.” He slammed the drawer hard enough to crack the wood, his next words growled. “You’re fucking married, Aster.” Forcing his legs into a pair of pants, he then grabbed the tunic from the floor.

I wasn’t sure what he was doing, but although I couldn’t have hoped for a better escape, it now sickened me to think it would end like this. The precious collection of days, the life-changing nights…

All of it ruined.

Yet when I opened my mouth, I could find nothing to say. This was what I’d needed. What had to happen. It was working. There was no making it better.

I couldn’t. Not only was that likely impossible, but it had to be this way.

“I truly am sorry,” I rasped. “For withholding the truth.” I couldn’t bring myself to apologize for the rest—for the time with him I’d wrongly stolen. Even if I could, I wouldn’t.

As though he’d sensed as much, Scythe turned in the doorway.

The fury that’d hardened his violent features eased as he stared at me. I started to say his name, my clenched fingers unfurling over the bed, but he blinked slowly and shook his head.

Vengeance might have been my excuse, but it was something else entirely that had brought us together.

Something cruel and unjust in its timing and delivery.

Shadow began to separate from the corners of the room, forming around him like ribbons of sheer gauze. “Just…” With one last pained glance at me, he released a rough breath. “I don’t know, Aster. I need a fucking minute.”

Despite knowing I should’ve left as soon as he did, I didn’t. Like the selfish and reckless fool I’d become, I waited.

I stayed for what remained of the night and the early hours of the incoming day.