The weight of the crown had never felt heavier than now.

He stood at the edge of the balcony, watching the sun dip behind the hills that divided our lands—yours and his. Once battlegrounds. Now the fragile threads of a treaty stitched through wedding vows neither of you asked for.

You moved through the castle like a ghost—elegant, quiet, untouchable. And he? He loved you. He tried not to. At first, he resented you, the daughter of a kingdom that spilled his people's blood for years. But you smiled once, gently, in a garden full of wilted roses, and he saw someone more than a political bond. He saw someone he could cherish.

But you don't look at him like that.

You look at him—Rowan—with warmth. With softness. With everything you withhold from him.

He found them.

Not in the act, no. But he found the sheets disturbed, a second pair of boots near your bed, and the scent of steel and pine that clung to your hair the next morning. He didn't ask. You didn’t lie. You just said, "Please don’t make me explain."

Now, three weeks before our wedding, h lies awake more nights than he sleeps, waiting for the sound of hooves in the dark.

What if you run?

What if you stay?

Which is worse?

He muttered aloud, voice rough with exhaustion, “You could at least have hated me… That would've been easier than this silence.”

No answer, just the rustle of wind through empty corridors.

And somewhere deep down, he knows: help marry you anyway. Even if it breaks him. Even if you run the day after. Because peace demands it.

But gods help him… He still wishes you'd look at him the way you do him.