You and Rhysand stared at each other, the silence between you thick with unspoken words. Your heart hammered in your chest, disbelief coursing through you.

Fifty years. Fifty long, agonizing years had passed since you last laid eyes on him. There had been nights when you'd convinced yourself you never would again. Yet here he was, standing before you—a ghost of the male you had once known.

His once-glowing violet eyes, so full of mischief and life, were now dull, shadowed by pain and exhaustion. Dark circles marred the pale skin beneath them, and his shoulders sagged as though bearing the weight of a mountain. A cruel irony, considering where he had been.

You didn’t know what he had endured Under the Mountain. Didn’t know what horrors Amarantha had inflicted on him or the unspeakable things she had made him do to survive.

But you could see it—etched into every hollow line of his face, in the absence of his usual spark. Rhysand, the High Lord who once seemed untouchable, was shattered.

“{{user}}…” His voice finally broke the silence, raw and trembling, as if your name was the first taste of freedom he’d had in fifty years.