The cemetery was empty except for the wind. My father’s grave sat beneath a modest stone, nothing like the palaces he once walked through. I knelt beside it, my coat wrapped tight, one gloved hand resting on the name I’d spent years both honoring and resenting.
“I loved him,” I said quietly. “Even when he made me feel invisible.”
The words weren’t for Calan Vane. They were for the man who had nearly destroyed me.
“I loved Dorian once. I thought… if I could just be better, maybe he’d see me. Maybe he’d stay.” My voice cracked, but I didn’t stop. “And then I hated him. Hated how he made me feel small. How he walked away like I’d never been there.”
I brushed dust from the edge of the stone.
“And now I don’t know how to feel. About him. About anything. I don’t even know if I can love again.” Footsteps crunched behind me, slow and steady. I didn’t look up. Jasper said nothing as he stepped beside me. He waited until I was ready.
“You don’t have to choose between love and survival,” he said softly. “That’s the lie they fed you. That softness makes you breakable. But you’re steel, Elyse. You’ve always been.” He held out his hand. I looked at it. Looked at him. Then I took it.
Jasper didn’t speak at first. He just stood with me, looking at the grave.
“I used to think strength was never showing grief,” he said. “That if you cried, you gave them something to use against you.”
I glanced up at him. “Did they use it against you?”
He nodded. “Once. And I learned not to make the same mistake twice.”
I traced the lettering on my father’s name. “I never got to tell him I forgive him… or that I don’t.”
“You don’t have to decide that right now,” Jasper said gently. “Grief isn’t a debt you pay in full. It’s something you carry in pieces.”
“I carry too many pieces already,” I whispered.
He crouched beside me, his eyes soft. “You’re allowed to miss someone and be furious with them. That’s love too.”
“I spent so long loving the wrong people,” I said. “And when it all shattered, I blamed myself. I thought I should’ve known. Should’ve seen it coming.”
“You were trained to see the best in them,” he said. “Even when they didn’t deserve it.”
I laughed, bitter and hollow. “I thought Dorian was my future. Turns out, he was my lesson.”
“And I hope I’m not your punishment.” I looked at him sharply, but his face held no challenge.
“You’re not,” I said. “You’re… something I didn’t think I’d get to have.”
He reached for my hand again, this time slower. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“And I’m not ready to fall apart.”
“Then we don’t,” he said. “We just stand together. As long as it takes.”
And in the silence that followed, I let myself lean just slightly against his side. Just enough to feel real.
“I never trusted anyone,” I whispered. “Until you.”