Winter was slipping through my fingers.
The snow on the rooftops had thinned to silver dust, and the air smelled faintly of thawing earth. Each morning, the icicles dripped like hourglasses, ticking down to the moment Kaelen would ride to war. Each evening, I watched the sun set a little later, as if the sky itself were stalling, giving me more time I didn't know how to use.
But time was never merciful.
While Kaelen rebuilt the shattered bones of Caerthrone—walls patched, roofs rethatched, water lines redrawn—I wandered among the ashes left behind. I met mothers who refused to clean the soot from their doorways. I sat with a boy who would never speak again. I held the hand of a woman who had lost both her sons and still insisted on baking for the soldiers who came to help her.
And I commissioned a monument.
I didn't want it grand, a simple stone marker in the middle of town square with all of the names of the victims etched into it. So we can learn to move on, but not forget.
The victims deserved it, at the very least.
The sculptor was nearly finished. The workers cleaned the site with reverent hands. But I felt no peace in it.
I felt… helpless. And as the last days of frost bled into spring, I began to feel frantic.
Because once Kaelen left, the choice would be gone. There would be no stopping what came next. No voice loud enough. No bridge strong enough.
---
The night before his march, I couldn't sleep.
The manor was too still, the fire too low. I paced my chambers, my thoughts as restless as the wind outside. I had already said everything I was supposed to say. I had begged once. I had pleaded with calm, diplomatic words, like the daughter of a king, like a sister pleading her brother's case but I had yet to ask like wife would her husband..
Tonight… it was all I had left, my one fleeting hope. Did I have left to stand on? After all I myself claimed this marriage was nothing but a sham.
But what was I to do... I am simply a woman who is about to lose everything.
And I couldn't let it happen.
So when I heard his footsteps outside my chambers, heavy and certain, I followed.
He didn't see me at first. He walked with his head low, murmuring something to Harlin. A final inventory, perhaps. A closing order. When they parted ways at the corridor's end, Kaelen turned toward the stairwell.
That was when I reached for him.
I didn't think. I just moved. My hand caught his sleeve, then slid around him, both arms winding tight around his waist. My forehead pressed between his shoulder blades. I held on like he was the only thing anchoring me to the world.
He stopped cold.
I could feel the tension ripple through him, the stillness that wasn't rejection—just surprise.
I didn't give him a chance to speak.
"Don't go," I whispered. "Not like this. Take me with me, let me speak with him. Just this one chance"
His silence stretched. My heart pounded against his back, my breath shallow. I waited for the words that would break me, for him to remove my hands and move on.
Instead, he turned.
His face was shadowed, unreadable. The firelight from a distant sconce flickered across his jaw, his eyes. He studied me the way he always did when weighing something heavy—like a blade in the hand, sharp and dangerous.
I looked up at him, unflinching.
"I know why you're going," I said softly. "I understand. You have your duty. Your fear. The weight of all of this. But if I don't try—if I don't stand between you and Saelow, even once—I'll never forgive myself."
My throat tightened, I fisted the fabric of his shirt by his chest not out of frustrations but desperation.
"I have to try. Please, Kaelen. Just one chance. Let me say what needs to be said before the swords are drawn." I rested my forehead on his chest not being able to take it anymore. These past month had taken a toll on my mind.
My vision blurred. Damn the tears. I didn't want him to see them.
But he did.
He placed a finger under my chin, making me look up at him.
And then, to my shock, his other hand rose—tentative, almost unsure. He brushed a tear from my cheek. Then another. Then his palm rested against the side of my face like I was something fragile and burning. I buried my face into his palm, the only comfort I had felt in over a month.
For a long moment, he just looked at me.
His voice, when it came, was low. Barely a breath.
"Just one chance."
I looked up in shock, even though I begged for one I never expected him to give me a chance.
He stepped closer, his forehead touching mine, and the silence between us felt heavier than anything spoken. He didn't promise more than that. He didn't need to.
In that quiet moment, something melted between us. Not forgiveness. Not even trust.
But a thread of understanding.
Thin. Trembling. Real.
We stood there until the fire down the hall guttered low and the night closed in around us.
Tomorrow, we would ride into the storm.
But tonight, I had his word.
And that, for now, was enough.