The marble floor was cool beneath your bare feet as you rose, fingers brushing the silk of your sari. The air shifted—your body knew it before your mind did.

Marco was here.

You heard his steps before anything else. Precise. Heavy. The echo of violence dressed in tailored slacks.

Your heart kicked. Not in fear. In knowing.

“Marco,” you whispered, voice soft like cathedral light.

You turned toward the sound—hands outstretched, searching the space you could not see but had memorized like scripture. You walked slowly, carefully, as if the floor would give way without him to catch you.

And then—

You stopped.

He hadn’t moved. Of course he hadn’t. He was watching you the way he always did. Like you were a living miracle. Like you were proof God hadn’t abandoned him.

His voice didn’t come. But his breath did.

Close.

You stepped forward. Fingers grazed the expensive cotton of his shirt. You reached higher, hands moving up the lapels of his coat, over the faint scratch of beard on his jaw. Your thumb brushed his mouth.

He trembled.

You cupped his face with both hands, mapping the angles of him. You’d memorized this terrain. The ridges of war. The softness he would never let anyone else see.

“You’re bleeding again,” you murmured, thumb ghosting over a cut above his cheekbone.

Still, he said nothing. Because the moment was holy. You—blind and breakable. Him—brutal and burning.

And this space between you?

Sanctified.

He finally spoke, voice low, aching with something deeper than pain.

“Tell me who hurt you while I was gone.”

You blinked, confused. “No one—”

But he was already moving. Wrapping his arms around you, pressing you to the hardness of his chest.

You couldn’t see his face. But if you could, you'd know— It was the face of a god at war.

“I wasn’t here,” he whispered harshly, jaw tightening against your temple. “If anyone so much as looked at you—if they breathed wrong near you—I will make them beg for the grave.”

Your hand found his heart. It was pounding like war drums.

“Marco,” you breathed, “I’m alright.”

“No, you’re mine.” His voice dropped lower, nearly a growl. “And I won’t allow this world to ever touch you again.”

Then silence. Then the press of his lips to your forehead.

And in that moment, all the gold, all the blood, all the empires meant nothing. Only you did.