The bedroom was quiet. He had cornered her there—no guards, no audience. Just him, and the truth between them.

“Tell me the truth,” he said, voice low and shaking. “Were you ever pregnant?”

Your breath caught.

He saw it in your face—before you could speak, before you could lie again.

“You told me you lost the child,” he said. “That’s why I stayed. That’s why I tried to make this marriage something real. I held you, for gods’ sake—while you cried. I grieved.”

Your lips parted, but nothing came out.

“You lied,” he said, quieter now. “You lied to me.”

“I had to,” you whispered.

He flinched like you'd struck him. His knuckles turned white.

“There was no child. No loss,” he said, voice breaking. “You made it up. Why?”

“I thought you were going to ask for an annulment,” you said, trembling. “Back then, you barely looked at me. I was a political convenience and you hated your chains. I thought… if I gave you a reason to stay—if I made you feel something—maybe you wouldn’t leave.”

He stared at you, stunned. “So you used the idea of a child to trap me?”

“No!” you said, eyes brimming. “I didn’t mean to. It just—once you held me like that, once you stayed, I couldn’t bear to undo it.”

“I was falling in love with you,” he whispered, more to himself than to you.

A single tear slipped down his cheek. “I thought—just maybe—I was enough for you. That you chose me. That you needed me.”

His hands trembled as he took a shaky breath.

“Everything between us,” he murmured, “every night we spent together after that... I thought it meant something. I thought you let me in.”

“I did,” you said, stepping forward just a little. “But I did it all wrong.”

His gaze darkened with grief, betrayal, and something too wounded to name.

“You made me mourn a child that never existed,” he said. “Do you even know what that did to me?”

Your chest rose and fell, frantic. “Darius, I never meant to hurt you.”

“But you did,” he said. Quiet. Final.

He stepped back, like the very air between them was too heavy to breathe. Something in his eyes dimmed—snuffed out by the weight of what she’d done.

“I loved you,” he said, like it was the last truth he had left. “And you let that die with a lie.”