Chapter 138 138
Amarien’s POV
I stare at him.
At the man I once prayed my hatred would completely consume.
I wanted it to stain him. To twist him. To hollow him out the way grief hollowed me.
But as he stands there, shoulders rigid, voice roughened by regret, I can hear, but he refuses to fully surrender to, I see it.
Pain.
It sits in his eyes like something that never leaves. Like something that wakes him at night and does not let him sleep.
And my heart, traitor that it is, aches.
Because I recognize it.
It is the same emptiness that swallowed me whole when I realized my child was no longer moving inside me.
The same cold, endless drop in the pit of my stomach when the midwife would not meet my eyes.
The same silence that followed the final breath that never came.
He feels it.
He feels that loss.
Not as I did. Not in my body. Not in my blood.
But he feels it.
And that realization unsettles me more than his anger ever did.
He said he wished he had seen our child.
He said he would have taken my curse.
He said he would rather bear the blood himself.
My gaze softens against my will.
And then another thought rises, sharp and disorienting.
Orgah.
My breath falters.
It had been him.
Hadn’t it?
All this time, I had told myself that Orgah had arrived at the nunnery by coincidence. A wandering ally. A quiet protector placed there by fate.
But Daevir had allies everywhere. After he was emperor.
How could I have believed he sent me away with no protection at all?
How could I have convinced myself he abandoned me so completely?
My chest tightens.
It has been him who sent Orgah.
Had he tried, clumsily, silently, to shield me the only way he knew how?
I search his face for the answer, but pride keeps his expression guarded.
And mine.
Because even if he did…
It does not erase what happened.
It does not erase the tower.
It does not erase the loneliness.
It does not erase the beating.
My body remembers.
The cold stone beneath my knees.
The sharp crack of leather against my back when the nuns decided obedience required bruises.
The prayers whispered over me like I was already dead.
The labor that came too soon.
The blood that would not stop.
The way I screamed his name until my voice fractured.
The way no one answered.
That memory does not fade just because I now see pain in Daevir’s eyes.
If I soften now, what does that make all those nights worth?
What does that make the rage I carried like armor?
My throat tightens.
I wanted him to suffer.
I wanted him to feel powerless.
I wanted him to stand in the ruins of something he loved and realize he could not save it.
Just as I could not.
And now he stands here.
Powerful and Broken.
And I do not know whether that satisfies me.
Or destroys me further.
I cannot carry it anymore.
The silence between us feels like it will suffocate me if I do not break it first.
“I loved you.”
My voice trembles, but I do not stop.
The words are raw. Exposed.
“I gave everything up for you.”
His expression shifts, barely.
“My chance to be queen,” I continue, stepping closer to the bars. “My name. My standing. The alliances Corvin fought to secure.”
I swallow hard.
“I chose you.”
I had not been foolish. I had known what it meant to walk away from a throne.
“I would have stood beside you,” I say.
My hands tighten against the iron.
“And yet you destroyed me.”
His jaw tightens.
“No,” I shake my head fiercely. “You alone cannot just pay for my pain, Daevir.”
Because it wasn’t only him.
It was all of it.
“All these walls,” I gesture around the cell, though I mean more than stone. “This system. This kingdom.”
My voice rises despite myself.
“They turned their backs on me.”
He says nothing.
“When they called me the cursed concubine,” I press on, bitterness flooding my tongue. “The one who killed her own mother.”
His eyes flicker.
“Yes,” I whisper harshly. “Do you remember that?”
The whispers in corridors.
The looks.
The way servants avoided touching my shadow.
“I was sold to your father at fourteen,” I say, the memory cold and sharp. “Fourteen.”
The word echoes.
“I did not choose that. I did not ask for it.”
Daevir’s fist tightens at his side.
“And yet they blamed me for everything that ever happened to him,” I continue. “Every illness. Every failed harvest. Every political misstep.”
My voice cracks.
“They said I poisoned him with my presence.”
I laugh, but it sounds broken.
“They called me cursed long before our child ever died.”
I look at him, and this time, there are no defenses left in me.
“I was a child when they put a price on my body.”
His fist trembles.
“And you,” I whisper, “were the first person who ever looked at me like I was more than a transaction.”
That is the cruelest part.
“I loved you,” I repeat, softer now.
“And when I loved you, they said I bewitched you.”
The anger resurfaces, but it is laced with exhaustion.
“They blamed me for your defiance. For your distance from your father. For his rage.”
I inhale shakily.
“They blamed me for his death.”
The dungeon feels colder.
“I carried every accusation,” I say. “Every curse. Every slur.”
My fingers slip slightly on the bars.
“And when our child died, it was just another sin to lay at my feet.”
Silence presses in.
“I was not the monster they made me,” I say quietly. “But they needed one.”
My gaze locks onto his.
“And I wore it.”
Because if they were going to call me cursed…
I would show them what a curse looked like.
Before he can answer, a sharp knock echoes from beyond the dungeon corridor.
Daevir stiffens.
A guard’s voice filters faintly through the stone.
“My lord… Ares is crying.”
The sound hits him instantly.
I see it.
His focus fractures.
Another small voice, distant, muffled, carries down the corridor.
A child’s cry.
My breath catches involuntarily.
Daevir turns slightly toward the sound, instinct overriding everything else.
“He needs me,” he says, almost to himself.
He looks back at me once.
“I’ll be back.”
He steps away from the bars.
The torchlight shifts with him.
And then he is walking down the corridor, his boots fading into the distance as the child’s cry grows louder.
The door shuts somewhere beyond.
The dungeon falls quiet again.
But not the same quiet.
My knees weaken.
I lower myself slowly onto the cold stone.
The moment he leaves, something inside me cracks open.
Because no matter how furious I am…
No matter how betrayed…
He went when his son cried.
He did not hesitate.
He did not ignore it.
He had a son who was still alive to love. I had none.
And that realization hurts more than anything he said.
The anger I clung to feels thinner now. Fragile.
I press my hands against my face, and I weep.