Kaedan stood frozen for a single heartbeat after Ariaxa screamed his name.
Then something inside him cracked.
The glow bled from his eyes. The snarl on his mouth faltered. His raised hand trembled violently, fingers spasming as if refusing to obey him. The remaining assassin scrambled away, sobbing, forgotten in the aftermath of his rage.
Kaedan staggered back from her.
“Ariaxa…” he whispered again, the name a broken apology.
His knees buckled.
He crashed onto the floor beside the bed, palms hitting the stone with a dull, sickening sound. For a moment he stayed like that — hunched, panting, shoulders heaving with the force of breath he couldn’t seem to control. The air around him reeked of iron and fear. His hands… his hands shook.
He lifted them slowly, staring at the blood staining his palms, dried around his knuckles, smeared along the ridges of his fingers.
His voice came out so soft she barely heard it.
“I almost killed them all.”
The words weren’t pride.
They were horror.
Ariaxa strained against the chains binding her wrists. Pain flared across her skin where metal cut in, but she forced herself upright, dragging her torso off the bed inch by inch until she could lean forward.
“Kaedan,” she whispered.
He didn’t look at her. He could barely seem to look at himself.
“I didn’t see anything,” he said, voice cracking. “I didn’t think. I didn’t—”
His breath hitched, shoulders shaking.
“I would have killed them. Every one of them. I almost… I almost…”
“You didn’t,” Ariaxa said firmly.
He flinched, as if the denial hurt.
Ariaxa forced her body forward until her bound wrists strained painfully above her head. She leaned down toward him anyway, close enough to touch if she stretched far enough.
“Kaedan,” she whispered again, voice shaking with urgency, “look at me.”
Slowly — painfully — he lifted his gaze.
What she saw nearly broke her.
The terrifying Emperor of Vharon sat collapsed on the floor like a man watching his worst nightmare replay behind his eyes. His pupils were blown wide, red fading to black. His lips trembled. He looked older, wounded, lost.
Ariaxa reached out.
Her fingers brushed his cheek, smearing blood across his skin. Her thumb trembled as she guided his face toward hers.
“You stopped,” she said softly.
His breath shuddered.
“You listened,” she said.
His eyes closed, lashes shaking.
“You came back.”
Kaedan leaned into her palm with something between desperation and reverence. His forehead pressed into her wrist, his breath warm against her skin. His shoulders shook harder — not from rage this time, but something dangerously close to sorrow.
Her voice fell to a whisper.
“Untie me.”
Kaedan blinked, as if remembering the chains for the first time. He swallowed hard, stood shakily, and reached up. His fingers moved clumsily, almost afraid to touch her. The chains rattled as he unlatched them one by one.
The moment her wrists were free, Ariaxa fell forward — straight into him.
Her arms wrapped around his shoulders, pulling him close, not caring about the blood or the ruin around them. Kaedan stiffened in shock. No one in Vharon — not a slave, not a noble, not a commander — had ever held him.
Ever.
But Ariaxa did.
And Kaedan broke.
He melted into her embrace like someone starved for years, arms sliding around her waist, forehead dropping to her shoulder. His breath was hot and shaky against her bare skin. She could feel the tremor in his entire body, the leftover violence, the shame, the fear.
“Ariaxa…” he whispered, voice crushed.
She held him tighter.
“You came back,” she murmured. “That’s all that matters.”
Kaedan’s fingers dug into her, not possessively — but like a drowning man clinging to the first hand that reached for him.
His lips brushed her shoulder.
A ghost of contact.
A plea.
When he finally spoke again, the words were raw enough to make her breath catch.
“Don’t let me become what they made me.”