Chapter 17 - I love him
His lips rest against my forehead for only a moment, warm, steady, restrained.
Everything about him becomes restrained the moment duty steps between us, as if there is a line he refuses to cross when the world is watching, even when every part of him wants to.
And yet even in that restraint, there is something unmistakably his.
Something deliberate. Something that says more than softness ever could.
His hand steadies my waist as he helps me into the carriage.
I settle inside, smoothing my dress beneath me, trying not to think too hard about the strange hollowness already opening inside my chest. The carriage is lined in quiet luxury, all soft cushions and polished wood and muted light, the kind of comfort that still feels borrowed no matter how often I sit among it.
My fingers brush absently against the fabric beside me as if touch alone can tether me to the moment.
When I look back at him, he hasn't moved.
He stands just outside the open carriage door, one hand still resting against it, his gaze fixed on me in a way that makes the world feel suddenly smaller. Quieter. As if, for one suspended heartbeat, nothing exists beyond the space between us.
"I won't be far," he says.
It is not reassurance.
It is a promise.
And Achilles does not make promises he does not intend to keep.
I nod, because I trust him. Because somewhere along the way, trust became the easiest thing in the world when it came to him, even when everything else was complicated.
The carriage door closes softly.
And just like that, the space between us is gone.
I sit there longer than I should, staring at the closed door as if it might open again if I want it badly enough. It doesn't. The carriage shifts beneath me, the faint sound of movement outside traveling through the walls, and instinct pulls my gaze to the window before I can stop myself.
I see him mounting his horse in one smooth, effortless motion, his body moving with the same precision that defines everything he does. There is no hesitation in him now. No softness. No trace of the man who kissed my forehead moments ago.
The horse turns, and then he rides in the opposite direction.
My chest tightens.
Not sharply.
Not enough to hurt.
Just enough that I feel the absence beginning.
"...he's not coming with us?" I ask quietly, my eyes still fixed on the place he left empty.
Beside me, Veronica shifts.
"Yes and no," she says lightly.
I turn toward her, confused. "What does that mean?"
She leans back against the seat, one leg folding over the other with effortless control. Even sitting inside a carriage, she somehow looks as if she is occupying a throne no one else can see.
"It means," she says, "if everything goes according to plan, he will meet us in the palace."
"And if it doesn't?"
Her gaze flicks toward me.
Sharp.
Measured.
"Then at least one of you survives."
The words settle heavily between us.
My hand moves instinctively to my stomach, resting there without thought, without permission, as if some part of me already understands what the rest of me is still trying to accept.
"...we're not supposed to travel together," I murmur.
"No," Veronica says simply. "You're not."
"And Elias?"
"Different route."
Of course.
Three paths.
Three chances.
Three lives too important to risk in the same moment.
"...because of the heir," I whisper.
Her mouth curves faintly.
"Yes," she says. "Because of the heir."
Silence stretches between us for a moment, but it is not peaceful. It is too full for that. Too aware.
"It's frustrating," she admits at last.
I look at her, surprised by the word. It feels too human for her, too soft-edged, too honest.
"But necessary," she adds, smoothing her tone back into something controlled. "This is what power looks like. It doesn't care what you want. It does not ask whether you are tired of sacrificing. It simply takes the things you love and arranges them according to risk."
Her fingers lift, then precise, deliberate, and I watch as she removes the ring from her hand.
For a moment, I don't understand. The band catches the light in a brief, quiet gleam as she studies it. Not long. Just enough to acknowledge it before threading it onto a thin chain hidden beneath her uniform. Then she tucks it away, pressing it under dark fabric until it disappears completely.
Gone.
"...why?" I ask softly.
"Because it doesn't exist," she replies.
I frown. "Excuse me."
She meets my gaze, and something in her expression sharpens.
"To the world, it doesn't."
"I am not engaged," she continues. "I am not promised. I am not anything."
"But you and Elias..."
"Are nothing," she says cleanly. Too cleanly. "We were not supposed to be anything. To the court. To anyone watching. We are allies. Colleagues. Two people who happen to work well together."
Her lips twitch faintly, but there is no humor in it.
"That is all we are allowed to be."
"That's not fair."
She laughs quietly, and the sound is dry as old paper.
"Fair?" she repeats. "Power has never been fair."
Her gaze shifts over me, measuring, seeing more than I would like.
"You of all people should understand that."
I hesitate, because she is right.
"You still restrain yourself in court," she says. "You still make yourself smaller."
I blink. "What?"
She lifts one brow. "You think I haven't noticed?" I shift slightly in my seat, suddenly aware of the way she has been watching me all this time, not lazily, not idly, but the way she watches everything that might matter later.
"You sit on that throne," she says, "and you soften your voice.
You lower your gaze just enough. You choose your words carefully so no one realizes how much you understand.
How much you see. You let them think you are gentler than you are, simpler than you are, less dangerous than you could become. "
I open my mouth.
Close it again.
Because I cannot deny it.
"You make them comfortable," she says.
"For my safety," I reply quietly.
"Yes," she agrees. "Exactly."
There is no judgment in her voice.
Only recognition.
"That," she says, gesturing faintly toward herself, "is what I do. Just on a different level."
I see not just the strength, not just the menace, not just the brutal competence she wears like skin, but the restraint beneath it. The control. The endless awareness of how much she must hide just to survive in a world that would destroy her if she revealed too much of what she is.
"I never wanted this," she says suddenly.
Her voice is quieter.
"I never wanted to become this thing." The words settle into me with a strange kind of sorrow.
"But life is cruel," she continues. "And unfair.
It does not care what you wanted before it sharpened you.
It does not care what you would have become if it had been kinder.
" Her eyes drift to the window."To survive, you play the hand you are given," she says.
"And you play it well enough, you survive until the next game. "
I sit in silence, letting the words sink deeper than I expected them to.
"But with him..." she says softly.
Her voice changes into something strange.
"Alone with Elias..." She exhales, and for one rare, impossible moment, she looks lighter." I get to breathe."
The words are so simple.
And yet they land heavier than anything else she has said.
"I get to sleep," she continues, "without hearing screams. Without seeing the things I've done. Without feeling like I have to be ready to break someone before they break me first."
Her fingers curl slightly in her lap.
"I get to forget what I am."
My throat tightens.
"That's why i must play the game even if it means losing him."
The words hit so hard I feel them like a physical blow.
My breath catches. "What?"
"He is my happiness," she says simply.
No hesitation.
No shame.
No attempt to hide it.
"He is the only place in this world where I am not... this."
Her hand gestures vaguely toward herself, toward the sharpness, the violence, the mask she wears so naturally no one else would even question it.
"And because of that," she continues, her voice softening in a way that feels almost unbearable, ".
..I would give him up because he deserves more than a life hidden in shadows," she says.
"He deserves someone who can stand beside him without question, without whispers, without the world having to pretend not to see what is there.
He deserves a future no one has to explain away. "
A tear slips down her cheek as an unsettling smile crosses her face.
"I already had my moment," she says softly. "I already know what it feels like to be loved properly. And that should be enough."
"he would never allow you to leave" I whisper.
She looks at me.
And in her eyes, there is something so old, so tired, so certain that it almost feels like grief wearing a human face.
" i know," she laughs.
Elias may laugh at the world and walk through it as though rules are suggestions invented for lesser men, but when it comes to her, there is nothing light in him at all.
He would never willingly release her.
"I have tried before," she says.
I stare at her.
"What?"
Her gaze moves back to the window, but I can tell she is no longer seeing the road outside. She is seeing something behind her eyes, something older.
"I ran," she says simply. "Once. Thought I was being noble. Practical. Thought if I removed myself before things became complicated, I could spare him the choice."
Her mouth twists faintly, humorless.
"He found me before nightfall."
"He was furious," she says. "Not wounded. Not confused. Furious."
I can almost imagine it. Elias, who smiles too much and jokes too easily, is finally stripped of all the things he uses to soften himself for the world.
"He dragged me home," she says. "He didn't ask what I wanted. Didn't ask why I left. Didn't care. He only cared that I had gone."
There is no bitterness in her voice.
That somehow makes it worse.
"He never questions what he wants," she says softly. "That is one of the reasons I love him. And one of the reasons I know if the time ever truly comes... I will have to be the one to do what he won't."
A chill runs through me.
"What do you mean?"
She turns to me fully then. "If it came to it," she says quietly, "if the crown demanded him and I was the reason he could not take it... if my existence became the chain around his throat..."
She pauses.
And when she speaks again, her voice is almost gentle.
"I would put the blade to my own."
The breath leaves me in a rush I cannot control.
"No."
Her expression doesn't change.
"You wouldn't."
"Yes," she says.
And I know, in the worst part of myself, that she is telling the truth.
Because some people love so fiercely that sacrifice stops feeling like loss and starts feeling like duty.
Because she would rather cut herself out of his life than stand there and watch it be taken from him piece by piece.
Because that is the kind of woman she is.
And suddenly, sitting across from her in the dim, moving quiet of the carriage, I understand something terrible and beautiful all at once.
Love does not always look like staying.
Sometimes it looks like being willing to disappear so the person you love can become everything the world was always going to demand of them.
And God—
God, what a cruel thing that is.