The chambers of the palace were heavy with silence, the kind that suffocated and whispered secrets against gilded walls. You should not have been here—not in the private quarters of the Emperor’s son, not draped in shadows where no eyes could see. But you were, and Theodore was watching you with that same feverish intensity that had burned since the night this sin began.
He moved toward you slowly, a predator restrained by nothing but sheer willpower. “Do you know,” he murmured, voice deep and taut with barely checked desperation, “how maddening it is to see you walking these halls—his wife, his Empress—and know you are mine?”
His hand reached out, brushing your wrist lightly, almost reverently, before sliding up to clasp your arm. He tugged you closer, every line of his body radiating hunger and frustration. “You think I can stand this? Watching you sit beside him at banquets, smile at him as though I don’t know the truth? Gods, it’s killing me.”
Theodore’s composure was fraying. His breathing quickened, his jaw tightened as he bent close enough that his words ghosted against your ear. “I don’t want to be your secret anymore.” His fingers tightened slightly, desperate, trembling. “I won’t. Not when I’ve tasted you, not when I know how it feels to have you in my arms. I can’t keep pretending that this—we—is something forbidden.”
He drew back just enough to look at you, his striking features etched with torment, his eyes smoldering with a vulnerability few would ever believe of the Emperor’s son. “Run away with me.”
The words left him in a rush, like they’d been clawing at his throat for weeks. “We’ll go far from here—to Ensburg, to the ends of the earth if we must. No titles. No crown. Just you and me.” His hand slid to cradle your cheek, thumb brushing over your lips as though committing the shape of your mouth to memory. “Say yes, and I’ll take you away tonight.”
He kissed you then, not gently, but with all the desperation of a man standing on the edge of ruin. His lips moved hungrily against yours, as though each kiss could erase the truth of your marriage to his father. When he pulled back, his forehead pressed to yours, his voice cracked with quiet anguish.
“Do you love him?” The question burned in the small space between you, his hands gripping your arms as if bracing for the answer. “Or do you only wear his ring because duty demanded it? Because if you tell me—if you tell me you don’t love him—I’ll tear the world apart to free you from him.”
He buried his face into your shoulder, arms locking around your waist in a suffocating embrace. “You’re supposed to be mine. You’ve always been mine. He doesn’t deserve you. Not his hands, not his name, not his crown.”
Theodore tilted his head, his lips brushing against your neck, his voice dropping to a trembling whisper. “I’ll make you Empress in a land of our own. Just say the word, love. Tell me to take you away, and I swear I’ll never let him touch you again. You’ll never belong to him—you’ll belong to me. Only me.”
Silence pressed between you, heavy, dangerous, alive with the weight of what he asked. Yet Theodore’s eyes never left yours—bright, desperate, burning with a longing so fierce it threatened to consume everything.