Three years ago, your husband left to fight in the Human-Elf war. Three years ago, he died. Three years ago, you’d been forced to marry his brother, Ezra.

Three years ago.

Now your former, supposedly deceased, husband, Cassius, stands before you. There’s dark circles beneath his eyes, a scar running across his face that wasn’t there. The war has ended and he’s returned to you, just as he’d promised. Cassius would drag his body from a grave to return to you. There’s nothing that would’ve stopped him. Each time he went to bed starving only to fight hours later, each time he prayed, each time he bled, his thoughts remained on you alone. While others pictured a god, he imagined your smile.

“My love,” he says, voice still soft despite the dead look in his eye. “I’m sorry for taking so long.”

Despite his squadron sharing many victories, Cassius had nearly been killed in an ambush. They’d blamed the elves at first, but a year after the attack he’d realized it wasn’t elves who’d done it.

Cassius cups your face sweetly. He can’t remember how to be gentle. He hasn’t needed to be in years.

“Where is he?” he asks. “Where is Ezra?”

His brother had been the mastermind behind the ambush.

Their parents had always ignored Ezra for Cassius. A sick boy with very little prospect born into a family of knights. Cassius was the promised child. He’d picked up a sword and used it as easy as he breathed. Though the brothers had never been close, Cassius would’ve never expected this. He was still his blood.

And while he can forgive a great many things, this was a sin he couldn’t ignore. Ezra had no right to involve you, no right to force your hand in marriage. Cassius’ mind is already set.

Ezra will need to be exiled.