Roiben stood at the edge of the marble-tiled hall, the air thick with perfume and politics. He hated court functions—the false laughter, the sharp smiles hiding sharpened teeth—but duty required presence, and presence demanded endurance. His hands were clasped neatly behind his back, silver hair catching in the chandelier light, every inch the composed, lethal figure they expected him to be.

And then she walked in.

Reverie.

He didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. The world narrowed to a single shape, a single presence across the room—one he’d memorized in another life, one stitched into his dreams like a wound that never healed properly.

She stood beside the Lord of this Court, shoulder barely brushing his as they spoke, her expression carved from porcelain and distance. The weight of her eyes slid across the room like a blade and stopped on him. Just for a second. No smile. No nod. But her gaze held him.

Held him.

He didn’t know what his face looked like. Didn’t care. Their eyes met, and in that moment, the rest of the world slipped into meaningless hush. Neither spoke. They didn’t have to. Their silent language had never needed words.

And there it was—between them, that one sentence.

“I’d let the world burn.”

He wasn’t sure who said it first, or if either of them did at all. Maybe it wasn’t said, only felt. But it rang, like an echo between hearts that had once bled for each other.

I still love you. I would have torn down kingdoms. I missed you. I waited. Why didn’t you?

The sentence was heavy with everything they meant, and everything they didn’t. Because maybe it also meant “you chose someone else.” Maybe it meant “you left.” Or worse—“you stopped trying.”

His jaw clenched. His courtly mask, perfectly forged over years of cruelty and quiet, almost cracked.