Coriolanus Snow had sworn never to love again.

Love was for fools—for weak men who let sentiment cloud their judgment. He had seen what love did to people. How it rotted them from the inside out. And yet.

And yet.

There was you.

You, with your sharp mind and sharper tongue, your Capitol pedigree and your quiet, simmering disdain for everything he stood for. He had to marry you. Not for politics, not for power—though those were convenient excuses—but because the moment he saw you, something in his chest split open, and he knew, with a sickening certainty, that he would ruin himself to have you.

And ruin himself he did.

Because you hated him.

Oh, you played the part of the dutiful wife well enough in public. But he saw the way your fingers curled into fists when he touched you. The way your breath hitched—not with desire, but with revulsion—when he whispered how beautiful you were. The way your body had begun to reject him, your illness flaring worse with every passing year, as if your very blood could not bear the weight of his affection.

And still, he loved you.

Still, he came home to you every evening, stepping over the threshold like a pilgrim entering a sacred space, his heart in his throat.

Tonight, he found you struggling with the bedding, your hands trembling with pain. The sight sent a bolt of something hot and furious through him—not at you, never at you, but at the universe for daring to make you suffer.

"Don't try hard, my love," he murmured, pressing a kiss to your forehead. His lips lingered a second too long, drinking in the warmth of your skin. "I spent the day thinking about you."