We drink—or rather, Leander drinks. I raise my glass to my lips but don't actually swallow, the wine touching my tongue before I lower it again. Something about drinking with him feels wrong, too intimate for what we are now, too much like the couple we used to be.
Leander’s already refilling his own glass, his movements loose and almost eager.
"Do you remember when I asked you to marry me?" he says suddenly, staring into his glass with an expression I can't read. "You were seventeen. We were in the rose garden."
The memory catches me off guard. "You're feeling nostalgic."
"Indulge me." He takes another drink, deeper this time. "I just... I need to remember what we were before I destroyed it. What you looked like when you still loved me."
The vulnerability in his voice makes my chest tighten. I set my glass down on the desk beside me, still nearly full, and lean back in my chair. "You'd been practicing the speech for weeks. I could tell—you kept starting sentences and stopping."
"I was terrified you'd say no." A ghost of a smile crosses his face. "We'd known each other since we were children, grown up in the same palace, but asking you to be my wife... that was different."
The memory makes my chest ache. I watch him drink again, the wine loosening something in him, making him more like the boy I fell in love with than the king who betrayed me.
"Where did it break?" His voice drops lower, rougher. "I know when—the first miscarriage. But where exactly? What moment did we stop being us and become strangers?"
I consider the question carefully. "The third stillbirth. When you stopped coming to my chambers afterward. When you stopped touching me, stopped looking at me like I was anything other than a disappointment."
"Is that what you thought?" He drains his glass and reaches for the bottle again. "That you disappointed me?"
"What else was I supposed to think?"
"That I was terrified." The wine sloshes as he pours, his hand not quite steady. "That every time I looked at you, I saw another moment where I'd failed to protect you from pain."
He drinks deeply.
"The third stillbirth—when I held that tiny, perfect baby boy who would never draw breath—I looked at you lying in that bed, broken and bleeding, and I thought that my love, my desire for children, my need to secure the succession was slowly murdering the woman I loved more than anything."
"So you pulled away."
"I convinced myself it was mercy." He laughs bitterly, staring into his glass. "That if I stopped touching you, stopped wanting you, you wouldn't have to suffer anymore. The most cowardly thing I've ever done."
"It was cowardly." I don't soften the words. "You left me alone with my grief. Made me feel like I'd failed so completely you couldn't bear to look at me anymore."
"I know." He takes another long drink. "I know that now. But I was terrified, Sybil. Terrified that the next pregnancy would be the one that killed you. That I'd hold another dead baby and look up to find you dead too."
All the years of hurt, all the misunderstanding, all the ways fear poisoned what should have been shared grief. I watch him drink, the bottle now half-empty, his movements growing looser, more unguarded.
"The night the twins were conceived," I say carefully. "You told me afterward you'd been drunk. That it was a mistake."
His hand tightens on his glass. "I lied."
"What?"
"I wasn't that drunk." He sets his glass down with deliberate care, as if afraid he might drop it. "I mean, I'd had wine, enough to loosen the restraint I'd been holding so tight for months. But I wasn't so drunk I didn't know what I was doing."
He looks at me directly now, and I see the truth in his eyes.
"I went to your chambers because I missed you desperately."
The confession sits between us, heavy with might-have-beens. He reaches for the bottle again with unsteady hands, refilling his glass. The wine is making him honest, stripping away the careful control he's maintained since I arrived.
"Maybe it's too late for us to be what we were. Maybe I've broken too much, hurt you too deeply. But I needed you to know that I loved you. That I love you. That I will love you for whatever time I have left in this world."
The words pierce through every defense I've built. Something inside my chest cracks—not breaking, but opening. Letting in light I've been blocking out for months.
I've tried so hard to kill every feeling I had for him. To bury the love that once consumed me beneath layers of hurt and betrayal and righteous anger. But his words, spoken with such devastating honesty, find the pieces I couldn't quite destroy.
And I feel it there, despite everything. Despite the pain he caused, despite the children stolen, despite months of thinking he'd abandoned me completely. The ghost of what we were. Not dead. Just wounded, waiting.
Leander stands suddenly, swaying slightly—whether from emotion or wine, I can't tell. Before I can process what he's doing, he moves to kneel before me.
The King of Reaton on his knees, crown discarded on the desk behind him, looking up at me with devastating vulnerability.
"Your king kneels only before God and you."
His voice is steady despite the emotion, despite the wine. It's an acknowledgment of my royalty, my worth, everything he failed to see when it mattered. But more than that—it's proof. Proof that his words aren't empty, that he means what he's said about loving me.
"Leander…" I reach toward him, my hands trembling. "You don't need to—"
"I do." He takes my hands in his. "I need you to see it, to know that I'm finally ready to fight for you, for us, for what we should have always been."
I pull him up gently, unable to bear seeing him kneel. "I don't need grand gestures and royal prostration."
"What do you need?" He stands but doesn't step away, our hands still clasped between us.
What do I need?
The question hangs in the air, and suddenly I realize with startling clarity what the answer is—not closure, not an ending, but the possibility he's offering. A chance to have what we once had. What we could have again, now that he's ready to fight for it.
To fix everything he broke.
"I need time," I whisper. "Time to trust this. Time to believe you won't pull away again the moment things get difficult."
"I'll give you all the time you need." He leans in slowly, giving me every chance to pull away. "But first, let me show you I mean it."
His hands cradle my face—those familiar hands that once traced every inch of me with love—and when his lips meet mine, it tastes like coming home. Like a promise. Like maybe, impossibly, we could find our way back to what we were when everything was good between us.
I kiss him back, letting myself feel it. The ghost of our love, still there despite everything trying to kill it. Still possible, still within reach, if we're both brave enough to try.
His arms wrap around me, pulling me close, and for a moment I let myself believe it. That he's truly ready to be the man I need. That we can have our family back—together, whole, the way it was supposed to be from the beginning.
When we part, both of us have fragile, tentative hope on our faces that maybe we can rebuild what was broken.
Then Leander's hand goes to his head, his expression confused.
"What's wrong?"
"I feel... strange. Dizzy. My head…" He sways, and I reach out to steady him. His nose starts bleeding—dark drops spattering onto his formal tunic, onto my hands where they grip his arms.
"Leander?" Terror floods through me. "What's happening?"
He tries to speak, but his words come out slurred, incomprehensible. His eyes lose focus, pupils dilating until they're almost black.
Then he collapses.
I drop to my knees beside him as convulsions rack his body. His back arches, muscles spasming, foam flecking at the corners of his mouth mixed with blood from his nose.
"Help!" I scream toward the door. "Someone help! The King… please, someone—"
The door bursts open. Guards flood in first, then servants drawn by my screams. They surround us, some trying to hold Leander steady, others calling for the physicians.
Then Cecily appears in the doorway. Her timing is perfect, her positioning flawless.
The horror on her face is utterly convincing as she takes in the scene before her: Leander convulsing on the floor, my hands covered in his blood, the wine bottle and glasses on the desk, the intimate setting of a private audience gone catastrophically wrong.
"What have you done?" Cecily's voice rings out, clear and damning. "What have you done to him?"
"I didn't—he just collapsed, I don't know—"
"Lady Rosetta has poisoned the King!" Cecily's scream cuts through the chaos. "Seize her! She's murdered him! Guards, take her now!"