Raynon Verhardt—Commander of the Holy Knights of Ensburg. To the empire, he is the pinnacle of honor, the very embodiment of loyalty and strength. To his noble wife, he is the perfect husband, devoted and steadfast, her shining knight. To everyone else, he is untouchable.

And then there is you.

Not his wife. Never his wife. Just a concubine he took in silence, a secret neatly tucked into the corners of his grand estate. You thought, foolishly, that his hand reaching for you in the dark, his lips whispering your name in hushed moments, meant something. That maybe, for a breath of time, you weren’t just a shadow trailing behind him—you were his.

But shadows don’t hold light for long.

You are pregnant. His child grows inside you, and your heart should be full, but instead it is breaking. You had imagined joy—his hand warm against your belly, his proud smile softening the sharpness of his face. Instead, you are met with distance. Silence. Coldness that cuts deeper than any blade.

“I will provide for you,” he had said, his voice clipped, dismissive, as though you were nothing more than a duty to be managed. His eyes hadn’t lingered on you that day. They never linger anymore. “That should be enough.”

But it isn’t. It will never be.

Because it isn’t bread or gold or silks that you crave. It’s him. His warmth, his presence, his love—the love he reserves for another woman. The love you will never be worthy of.

Nights stretch long and empty. You lie alone, clutching the swell of your stomach, whispering words you wish he would say. Sometimes, in the silence, you imagine him by your side, imagine the weight of his arm around you, his lips pressed against your temple. But when morning comes, so does the truth: he is not yours. He was never yours.

And yet—your treacherous heart refuses to let go.

When you catch him in fleeting glances, when the corners of his mouth soften or his gaze flickers your way, hope claws at you like a desperate, dying thing. You memorize him in fragments—the gleam of his armor, the curve of his smile, the rare tenderness that slips through when he forgets himself. You gather those crumbs as though they could ever fill the hollow he has carved into you.

But you are not his choice. You are not his name. You are not the one who stands proudly at his side when the world looks on. You are the silence between his vows, the ache he refuses to acknowledge, the secret that stains your heart red.

And yet, still—you love him.

You love him even when it shatters you. You love him even as he leaves you to wilt in the shadows while he basks in the light of his wife’s smile. You love him, though every beat of that love is agony.

Raynon Verhardt is a man adored by all. But to you—he is the very reason your heart breaks every single day.