Only when the sun had climbed to its full height did I finally force myself back into my gown that had yet again been so carefully draped over a dining chair.

Only then did I wholly surrender to a fate I could never escape.

I warped home.

SIX

Scythe

Married.

Fucking married.

I’d known something awful had happened to her. Many a miserable soul hid in taverns over the city and the countryside, but it had been a long time since I’d encountered heartache as smothering as Aster’s.

At first, I’d wanted to grab one of those females in the tavern and leave to escape it, but then I’d looked across the low-lit room. Upon seeing the source of such suffocating doom, I’d forgotten there were even females seated beside me at all.

She might have been miserable, but fuck if she wasn’t the best damned thing I’d ever laid an eye on.

I’d wanted her. I’d taken her. I’d claimed her. I’d thought that despite whatever secrets and problems ailed her, she was mine.

That it was irrefutable.

Perhaps it still was. Maybe I just needed to ask the hard questions—figure out how we could somehow move forward.

He’d betrayed her, she’d said, this husband I would need to get rid of. I couldn’t assume his betrayal meant she would simply leave the asshole for me, but I didn’t know if I didn’t ask. Problem was, I’d been too furious to ask. Too shocked to think of a way out of this worst-case scenario.

And so I’d sat in that same tavern, staring at that same corner table between the two windows, and I’d imagined her there. I’d imagined what I might have said if things had been different—if I’d have known from the start that she was spoken for.

But I didn’t need to imagine the change in her since that night, nor the irrevocable pull that had only tightened between us during our time together.

Resolved, I’d downed a carafe of water and a plate of chicken before heading to the Keep to get my legion sorted so I could head home to Aster. We would talk. She would tell me everything, and somehow, we would figure this shit out.

Never had I been in such a hurry to leave the Keep or my brethren as I had been this past week. Home was nothing but a place to sleep. A place to rest before returning to the same routines that’d both saved and doomed me.

But with Aster waiting, I made myself scarce as soon as I could get away with doing so.

It was a mistake to think that day would be anything like the previous ones. For when I reached the cottage, she wasn’t there.