Chapter 65 Elena Heart- POV
Xavier—no, Dark—stood there, his mask reflecting the moonlight. He looked amazed, his composure finally fractured by the raw violence of my emotion. He studied my face, his head tilted, searching for the logic behind my breakdown.
"Were you thinking of your lover when you kissed me?" he asked softly. There was no mockery in his voice, only a profound, sharp curiosity.
I looked at him, my vision swimming. I was thinking of the man who had stood on a spire and watched his world burn. I was thinking of the king who had become a speck of dust in my hand. I was thinking of the way his blue eyes had lost their spark.
"Yes," I whispered, the word echoing the hollow ache in my chest. "I was thinking of someone. I wanted nothing but him. I want nothing but him. Just him and alive."
My voice didn't just carry sadness; it carried the resonance of a thousand deaths. I saw his brow furrow behind the mask, a deep, puzzled frown marring his features.
He wasn't used to this. He was expecting a spy, a seductress, or a killer—not a woman whose soul seemed to be hemorrhaging in front of him.
He looked at me as if I were a riddle written in a language he had forgotten. For a fleeting second, the "calculating" look vanished, replaced by a haunting uncertainty. He didn't know that the "love" I was mourning was standing right in front of me, wearing a dark mask and wondering why a stranger was crying for him.
"You speak of him as if he’s already gone," Dark murmured, his eyes searching mine with a terrifying intensity. "Who is he, to earn such a ghost-filled kiss?"
I couldn't answer. If I told him the truth, the universe might shatter again. I just stood there in my red dress, a girl from a future that no longer existed, watching the man I loved try to understand a pain he hadn't yet lived.
I looked at him through a blur of salt and silver light, my breath hitching in a throat that felt constricted by invisible wires. "Yes," I whispered, the word a ragged confession. "He is gone. But—"
"Did I remind you of him?"
He cut me off, his voice dropping an octave. There was a sharp, jagged edge to his tone—a flicker of irritation, perhaps even a dark, subconscious jealousy that he didn't yet understand.
He was a King who was used to being the center of every room, yet here I was, looking through him at a ghost he didn't know he was.
"Yes," I choked out, the honesty of it carving a path through my composure. "I’m sorry... for the kiss. I just couldn't stop myself. The pain was too much. I miss him so badly that even breathing feels like a task I’m failing at. I feel like my heart is about to explode."
I felt the heat of a fresh tear track down my cheek, hot and betraying. I expected him to pull away, to offer a polite, distant excuse and vanish back into the shadows with James. I expected the cold calculation of a man who suspected a trap.
Instead, the world shifted.
Dark stepped into my space, his movements fluid and sudden. Before I could catch my breath, his arms wrapped around me, pulling me firmly against the broad expanse of his chest.
He hugged me—not a polite, noble embrace, but a heavy, grounding anchor of a hug.
I froze for a heartbeat, and then the floodgates shattered.
It was him. The same scent of sandalwood and old parchment, the same solid wall of muscle, the same terrifyingly familiar warmth that I had watched fade into a speck of nothingness.
The contrast was too violent to bear. This man was solid; the man I loved was ash. This heart was beating beneath my ear; the heart I knew had stopped.
I buried my face in the crook of his neck and sobbed. It wasn't the quiet, dainty weeping of a lady; it was the raw, ugly, soul-deep mourning of a survivor.
My shoulders shook with the force of it, a physical manifestation of the thousands I had seen die, of the titans that had walked through the streets, and of the hollow, frozen North where I had nearly lost my mind.
"I have you," he murmured, his voice a low rumble against my temple.
I felt his large hand on the small of my back, his palm flat and genuine, rubbing small circles against the silk of my gown. It was the same touch he had used to comfort me in a dozen moments that hadn't happened yet in this time.
I clung to his coat, my fingers bunching the expensive fabric into knots, as if I could anchor him to this reality through sheer will.
I cried for the kingdom that was currently laughing inside the ballroom. I cried for the children I knew would soon be orphans. I cried for the King who was holding me, completely unaware that he was a dead man walking.
The ache in my chest was so profound I thought I might actually break apart in his arms. Every sob was a name I couldn't say; every gasp for air was a memory of the purple rift.
In that moment, under the indifferent gaze of the moon, I wasn't an assassin, and he wasn't a shadow.
I was just a woman who had traveled through the end of the world to find the only person who made the world worth saving, and he was the only man in existence who could hold the pieces of my shattered heart together, even if he didn't know why they were broken.