029 - Desperate

029 - Desperate
|||YASMIN|||

"Cassien." My voice sliced through the charged air as I stepped fully into the sitting room, fingers clutching my robe closed at the throat. "You need to leave."

"Yas." He wheeled toward me, and goddess...he looked wrecked. Bloodshot eyes swimming in their sockets, golden hair matted and hanging in his face, clothes twisted and stained. The sharp reek of wine hit me even from across the room, sour and overwhelming. "I need to talk to you. Please. Just five minutes."

"You're drunk." The words came out flat, emotionless. I made myself look at him without flinching.

"I'm clear-headed enough to know I fucked up." He lurched forward a step, hand outstretched, but Zeirik shifted—a subtle repositioning that put his bare torso more firmly between us. Cassien's bleary gaze fixed on his brother's chest before lifting. "Don't. Don't keep her from me."

"I'm not keeping her from anyone." Zeirik's voice dropped to something lethally calm, the kind of quiet that preceded violence. Every muscle in his shoulders tensed, visible even in the dim lamplight. "I'm standing between a drunk man and a woman in her nightclothes. That seems reasonable." His jaw clenched. "My wife, no less."

"Reasonable?" Cassien's laugh was jagged, bitter as burnt coffee. "There's nothing reasonable about this. About you marrying her. About—" His eyes found mine again, and the raw agony bleeding through them made my chest constrict despite myself. "About me losing you."

"You didn't lose me." Ice crystallized in my veins, hardening my voice to something cold and cutting. "You threw me away, so don't make it seem like it's some unintended tragedy."

Goddess, where was all this chill coming from? This detachment that let me look at him and feel nothing but anger?

"I made a mistake! I was trying to protect my position, trying to—"

"Trying to secure your throne by fucking someone else and then shoving it in my face." The interruption burst out sharp and hot, anger igniting like tinder. My hands balled into fists at my sides. "So forgive me if I don't feel sympathetic."

Cassien recoiled as if I'd struck him, his face crumpling. "I never wanted to hurt you."

"And yet you did. Spectacularly." I moved closer, barely registering Zeirik's posture going rigid beside me. "You humiliated me in front of the entire court. Made me look like a fool. Made me feel like I was nothing."

"You're not nothing!" His voice cracked down the middle, splitting open. "You were everything. You still are. I can't sleep, can't think, can't fucking breathe without remembering what I had...what we can both fix!"

The naked desperation in his eyes should have moved me. Once—goddess, once it would have shattered me completely. But now it just settled heavy and tired in my bones.

"That's not my problem anymore, Cassien. I'm not 'fixing' anything." Each word came out measured, deliberate. My chest ached but I kept my spine straight. "You made your choice. Now live with it."

"I chose wrong." The whisper barely made it past his lips. "I chose wrong and I don't know how to fix it."

"You can't fix it. It's done." I kept my voice firm despite the dull throb behind my ribs. "Go home to your pregnant fiancée. Build your life with her. And leave me the fuck alone. You're interrupting my honeymoon."

The profanity seemed to shock him more than the rejection. His eyes widened, mouth falling open slightly. Yasmin never used to curse—that was something I'd absorbed from Zeirik these past few days, letting his casual vulgarity loosen the tight control on my own tongue.

"You've changed." The observation fell flat, toneless.

"Yes. I had to." I looked at him—really looked. Saw the man I'd loved and the man who'd destroyed me, all twisted together in one miserable package. "Goodbye, Cassien."

I turned and walked back into the bedroom, shutting the door with firmness and finality. 

Voices rose in the sitting room—Zeirik's low rumble threading through Cassien's desperate protests. Then footsteps. The outer door opening. Closing.

Silence crashed down like a physical weight.

I sank onto the edge of the bed, hands trembling with adrenaline and emotions I couldn't name. My chest heaved with breaths I couldn't quite catch.

A soft knock. "It's me," Zeirik's voice filtered through the wood. "Can I come in?"

"Yes."

He entered with careful movements, like approaching a wild animal that might bolt. His mismatched eyes swept over me, assessing. "Are you alright?"

"I don't know." The honesty scraped out of me. "That was harder than I expected."

"He still loves you."

"What he feels for me is more ownership than love." I lifted my gaze to his face. "Did you know he'd come here?"

"No. If I had, I would have posted guards." Zeirik moved to sit beside me on the bed—not touching, but close enough that I could feel the cold radiating from his skin. "Though I'm glad you handled it yourself. You're terrifying when you're angry. Did you know that?"

Despite everything, my lips twitched. Almost smiled. "I've been told."

"Good terrifying. The kind that makes men think twice about fucking with you."

We sat in companionable quiet for a moment, the only sound our breathing and the distant crackle of dying embers in the fireplace. Then words spilled out before I could stop them: "I was in love with him. Really, truly in love. And he made me feel like that love was worthless. Like I was worthless."

"You're not." Simple. Certain.

"I know. But knowing and believing are different things." I stared at my hands, watching them shake in my lap. "I need to take it all from him...he hasn't even felt a drop of the pain he put me through yet he's acting this way." My breath came out shaking, unsteady. "I want to see the look in his eyes when he loses everything like he made me lose. Nothing he does will make me waver."

Zeirik huffed out a low breath, something almost like approval. "I always knew there was more to you than being the epitome of propriety." 

He laughed—actually laughed instead of calling me evil or dramatic or vindictive. The sound wrapped around me like unexpected warmth, and it meant more than he'd ever know. That lack of judgment. That acceptance of the darkness festering inside me.

He stood, making his way back to the sofa against the far wall where he'd made his bed. 

"Zeirik?" I stopped him with his name. He turned, eyebrows raised in question. "Thank you." 

I wasn't sure what for—for standing between Cassien and me, for not judging my thirst for revenge, for just being here—but I knew I was grateful. The man was a bigger help than I'd anticipated.

"You don't have to thank me, Yasmin." He gave me a small smile, barely a curve of his lips but genuine in his mismatched eyes. "I will always have your back."

He settled onto the sofa and pulled the blankets over his head, disappearing beneath them like a child hiding from monsters.

I lay back down, but sleep remained impossible. My mind replayed Cassien's face on an endless loop—his pain, the desperate edge in his voice, the way his hands had reached for me like he was drowning.

I didn't regret my choices. I couldn't let myself regret them. But I mourned what could have been if he'd been different. If we'd both been different. If love had been enough.

Around 4 AM, after falling asleep and jerking awake three times, I gave up. I slipped from the bed as quietly as possible and padded down the hall to the main sitting room, thinking I'd find some water, maybe stare out the window until my mind settled.

Instead, I found Zeirik.

He sat in front of the fireplace, staring into the dying embers with an intensity that made my steps falter. I'd thought he was asleep on the sofa. I'd been extra quiet leaving specifically because I didn't want to wake him.

But here he was, bathed in the red-orange glow of coals, and his entire posture was different. Shoulders hunched inward. Spine curved. His mismatched eyes reflected the fire, but there was something in them—something cold and almost destructive. A hint of a man who'd seen darkness so deep it had left marks on his soul.

"Couldn't sleep either?" I asked softly.

"Apparently not." He shifted sideways on the sofa, making room without looking away from the fire. "Want to talk about it?"

"Not really." I moved to sit beside him, tucking my robe around my legs. "Want to talk about why you're staring into flames like they hold the secrets of the universe?"

His jaw worked. A muscle jumped beneath the skin. "Fuck no."

"Then let's just sit here and be quietly miserable together."

"Best honeymoon ever." The words came out dry as dust, but warmth threaded through his voice underneath.

We sat in silence until dawn. Not talking, not touching, just existing in the same space while the fire slowly died and the sky outside gradually lightened from black to deep blue to pale gray.

When morning finally came properly, when exhaustion finally dragged at both of us with enough weight to demand sleep, I didn't think. I just collapsed sideways on the sofa, my head finding Zeirik's shoulder like it belonged there.

He stiffened for half a heartbeat. Then his arm came around me, settling across my shoulders with careful pressure.

His skin was cold against my cheek. Always so cold. But somehow it didn't matter.

I should move. Should go back to the bedroom. Should maintain some distance, some propriety.

But I was so tired. And he was solid and steady and here.

Sleep pulled me down into darkness.

The terrifying part wasn't the possibility of waking up in his arms.

The terrifying part was how safe I felt. 

How much I didn't want to move.