Chapter 22
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Ayanna
The moment my mother said he killed himself, something inside me fractures—a small, soundless break, the kind you don’t notice until it’s already done.
I don’t scream. I don’t collapse dramatically like they do in movies.
There’s only silence, like someone pulled the sound out of the world.
I don’t even remember ending the call. Don’t remember what she said afterward.
Whether she cried. Whether I did. All I know is that when the phone slips from my hand onto the carpet, my heart goes down with it.
Hours pass. Or minutes. Or maybe an entire lifetime.
Aric comes, but I barely register what he says, what I say. I only register him leaving while I stay on the bed, staring out at Norway’s cold, indifferent sky. At some point the tears stop—not because the pain lessens, but because my body refuses to make any more. What replaces them is worse.
Numbness.
The kind that makes you question whether you’re still inhabiting your own skin. Eventually, I fall asleep.
When I wake, I don’t remember why my chest feels hollow. Then it all rushes back at once, and I have to close my eyes again just to breathe through it.
Luca. Gone. Really gone this time. Not forced away. Not separated by circumstance. Not waiting somewhere in another country.
Gone.
I sit up slowly. My muscles protest like I’ve been holding tension all night—which, judging by the ache in my shoulders, I have.
That’s when I notice the blanket draped over me, but I didn’t cover myself, and I don’t remember Aric coming to bed.
He must’ve checked on me. Covered me. Left again without waking me.
Typical Aric. Care shown in actions, never in words.
No. There’s no version of Aric who simply cares. There’s a man with blood on his hands—so much of it that it’s soaked through his skin and fused to the marrow of him.
I glance at the clock. 6:50 a.m.
Vidar’s sacred breakfast hour approaches, and despite everything, giving him another reason to interfere sounds more exhausting than just getting up.
So I get up and head to the bathroom. Hot water hits my skin as I shower, and I stand under it longer than I need to, hoping—stupidly—that it might rinse the heaviness out of my chest. It doesn’t.
I step out, wrap a white towel tight around myself, and squeeze the water from my hair, already picking out something to wear in my head. I push the bathroom door open and stop.
Aric is there, standing by the window. My heart stutters, and annoyingly so.
“You can’t just appear like that.” I instinctively tighten the towel around myself. “Some warning would be appreciated.”
One brow lifts. “It’s our bedroom. And I’m your husband.” His eyes move between mine. “Hardly trespassing.”
I press my lips together. Inhale slowly. “I’ll be down for breakfast on time.”
“That’s not why I came,” he states without hesitation. “You don’t have to perform for my father. Grieve however you need. No one expects you to pretend.”
That… surprises me, especially after last night. After the things I said. Especially after what he did to Luca.
Aric Vold is a riddle I keep failing to solve. The deadliest man I’ve ever stood beside, and the only one who’s ever covered me in the dark and slipped away before I could thank him. Cruelty and care, sharing the same body—and I can never tell which one I’m about to meet.
“Do you need anything?” he asks.
I hesitate, fingers twisting into the towel. “Yes.”
He inclines his head slightly, waiting.
“I want to attend Luca’s funeral.”
His jaw tightens, and something dark slides behind his eyes. I see it the moment the words leave my mouth. It’s subtle and brief, but I’ve learned to read Aric Vold in the spaces between what he shows and what he buries.
“I’ll arrange it,” he says with his controlled, level voice, and my brow twitches.
He agreed? Just like that? No argument. No conditions. No interrogation about why I need closure, or whether watching Luca lowered into the ground will help anything at all.
For a moment, I don’t know what to say.
Because this man—the one everyone fears, the one my world painted as a ruthless criminal, the one I accused last night of destroying Luca—is calmly arranging my attendance at my first love’s funeral. Not just allowing it. Helping.
“You’ll go with Tassilo,” he adds. “And Maylin.”
That was expected. Tassilo is Aric’s shadow, his most trusted hand, intimidating enough to make most people rethink breathing too loudly. Maylin is Tassilo’s twin sister. That’s all I know about her.
I nod slowly. “I didn’t think you’d agree.”
“Despite what you think…” He pauses for a fraction as though considering whether he wants to say his words aloud. “I’m not a monster.”
Of everything he’s said today, that’s what gets to me.
Because I know that. I’ve known it longer than I’ve been willing to admit. Monsters don’t take bullets meant for you. Monsters don’t respect boundaries they never asked for. Monsters don’t quietly rearrange their world so yours doesn’t implode.
He could’ve used Luca as leverage. Could’ve forbidden the funeral. Could’ve reminded me, cruelly and correctly, that I’m his wife now, that my past shouldn’t matter, that I already had my goodbye.
Instead, he bends. For me. Again. Even though he doesn’t have to.
Aric turns toward the door, already slipping back into whatever world he runs when he isn’t here, navigating mine.
“Thank you,” I whisper, not sure if he’ll catch it.
He stops. Doesn’t turn around and doesn’t answer. But the line of his shoulders loosens a breath before he disappears down the hall.
I dress in a black suit, tie my hair into a low bun, and apply the minimal makeup required, feeling nothing and everything at once.
Today I bury Luca. Today I go home to Monsera for the first time since they signed me away—and it’s to lower the man who loved me into ground he never should’ve ended up in. Some homecoming.
I climb the steps into the jet, Tassilo’s posted by the cockpit door like a scary statue he is.
There’s also a woman near the galley, cut from the same cold stone.
Dark braided hair, dark skin, and the same black eyes as Tassilo’s, and that stillness about her that says she’s every bit as lethal as her brother and simply hides it better. She must be Maylin.
I’m already bracing to nod at them, fold myself into a seat, and vanish into my grief for the next several hours when I see him.
Aric sits there as though he were carved into the chair, one ankle resting across his opposite knee, dressed in black so complete it could pass for mourning of his own. Those pale eyes lift to me, unhurried. A glass of Scotch rests untouched in his hand.
My stomach drops, then flares hot.
“What are you doing here?” I snap, sharper than I mean it.
“I’ve had a change of heart.” His neck cranes. “Thought I’d come along. Fulfill my husbandly duties. Escort my wife to a funeral. That sort of thing.”
A scoff scrapes up my throat. “Husbandly duties.” I fold my arms. “You wouldn’t recognize one if it bit you.”
“Yet, here I am.”
I take a step closer, fury tightening inside me. “Let me guess. You’re afraid I’ll bolt the second I touch Monserian soil. That I’ll run home and never come back to you.”
The corner of his mouth tips. “Run, Princess.” He rolls the words around like they entertain him, and it infuriates and surprises me in equal measure.
“You heard me. Run, if it pleases you.” The amusement bleeds out of his face, leaving something colder behind it.
“I’ll only enjoy the chase.” He leans back nonchalantly like a wolf with all the time in the world.
“Or are you too afraid to find out how uncivilized I become when I hunt my prey?”
Prey. Like I’m something to be run down. It slides down my spine and pools cold at the base of it, and for a second I forget to be angry at all.
He’s never spoken to me like this before. Something’s changed.
“God morgen, svigerinne.”
The tension snaps like a wire pulled past its breaking point.
I turn toward the voice. Eero fills the cabin doorway, grinning like he’s caught us mid-something far more scandalous than a standoff. He’s wearing his usual leather jacket, his hair sleep-mussed, and looking entirely too pleased with himself.
“Please tell me you’re only here to see us off.”
His eyebrows lift. “What, didn’t Aric tell you?” He props a shoulder against the bulkhead. “I’m coming with.”
My gaze cuts back to my husband. He’s smirking. Actually smirking. Those intoxicating dimples appear, along with a flash of perfect teeth.
“Must’ve slipped my mind.”
Eero’s eyes ping between the two of us, and his grin sharpens into something wicked. “Ah. I see.” He pushes off the wall. “Well, I’ll leave you lovebirds to your heartwarming exchange of marital bliss.”
He’s whistling before I can correct him—or throw something at him—already sauntering toward the back of the jet like he’s just won a bet with himself.
I round on Aric. “I can’t stand you.”
“Feeling’s mutual.”
My brows raise. “Excuse me?”
He lifts one shoulder, like none of this costs him a thing. “What? You get to be the asshole, but I don’t?”
My jaw locks.
Who is this man?
Because he’s certainly not my husband.
Aric Vold doesn’t bait. He doesn’t needle. He sits inside his silence and lets everyone else trip over theirs. The sharp tongue, the dry little jabs—those are mine. And he’s wearing my weapons like he lifted them off me this morning.
“Ugh. Just don’t talk to me.” I stalk past him and drop into my seat, arms crossing tight, as if that could do anything about how aware I am of him—still there, still too close.
“That won’t be a problem.” He turns his head to the window.
“Fine.”
“Fine.”