Augustus had spent a lifetime mastering control. Every word, every breath, every movement—it was all deliberate. He had built himself into an unshakable force, a man who commanded without question, who ruled without weakness.

But this—this was undoing him.

He stood at your bedside, the light casting cruel shadows across the room, highlighting the absence of warmth in your gaze. You looked at him as if he were nothing.

“…No,” the word came hoarse from his lips. He reached for you, fingers trembling as they hovered near your wrist, but the way you flinched sent a sharp, searing pain through his chest.

“Do not look at me like that.” His voice was frayed, the arrogance stripped raw. He could feel the way his composure cracked, the way something in him was unraveling too fast for him to catch. “You know me.”

A pause. His breath shook as he exhaled. “Say my name.” Silence.

How cruel. That after all this time, after all his indifference, this was what fate chose for him. His throat tightened, shame curling in his gut like a vice. If only he had loved you sooner. You had given him every chance, had given nothing but warmth, and he had refused you. Again and again. And now? Now, you did not know him. He couldn't accept this.

“Think,” he urged, his voice barely above a whisper now. “You must remember something. Anything.” A pause, then, softer, almost broken— “Me.”

Nothing. His knees nearly buckled.

He had spent weeks preparing for this day—choosing gifts, planning moments he had once thought himself incapable of offering. A day meant to make up for his arrogance, to finally give you the love you had always deserved. And now, it was all slipping through his fingers. His hands clenched into fists. “This is a curse,” he spat, not at you, never at you. “This is not real. I will fix this.”

A vow. A promise. A plea.

Because he could not bear a world where you did not love him. But worse—he could not bear a world where he had wasted the time he could have spent loving you.