I wished I could go back to those moments.
And then, when Vann’s memory prods me gently, ready to take center stage once again, I do not resist. I let the memories come. The careful way he used to take up space near me. The quiet thrill of his fingers and his attention.
Hostia puta, he healed part of me that I didn’t think anyone could heal.
As I lie there in the dark, cold morning hours, tears form in the corners of my eyes and slip down my temples into my hair.
The goddess gave him to me, and yet it seems that some other divine, cosmic force has decided we should be apart. He was not strong enough to tell me the truth, even though I was ready to give him all.
Pair that with the Elf King…
We were doomed by the fabric of destiny.
“Arlet,” his memory whispers in my ear, making the tears come faster. I know this moment—not because I’ve revisited it often, but because it is burned into my very soul. We were in Dragonsreach, and I’d been given a wine that made my blood heat and my core pulse. I’d asked him to touch me. Begged him to help release me from the heat and make me come.
His hand hovered over my flesh, not touching, but reverent.“If you still want what you wanted last night, I will be the warmth of the sun on a winter morning, the kind you didn’t realize you were missing until it touches your skin.”
Odd, the tenderness that can live in a man who wields a cleaver like a promise. Odder still, the way my body learned his voice faster than it learned his hands.
When I think of Arion’s kiss, my body goes cold. I don’t want his force and control. I want Vann’s heat. Even if he hurt me then, I havebeen so lonely these weeks. Perhaps I can survive being married to Arion if I can live with the memory of my—of Vann.
I rub my thighs together, and the friction feels like heaven. Tonight, Arion will take that place, but right now, my body is still my own.
I hesitate. I can stop here and save myself some pain. But then I shift my thighs again and know I cannot.
When I picture Vann now, I don’t place us in caves or on terraces or under the shivering, watchful trees. I bring him into this gilded room. He does not knock. He never has to in the rooms that belong to me.
I imagine the door closes without sound, and one of my hands travels across my chest, making its way down my navel.
I close my eyes, and picture Vann walking the length of the room slowly. I do not sit up. I do not run to him.
He sits on the side of the bed next to me. Then he touches my cheekbone with three fingertips. The heat of his palm follows, rough and consuming. I like the scratch of it.
“Arlet,” he says. “I am sorry for what I did, but I am here now.”
In the fantasy, I don’t speak right away. I memorize. I take his smell first—like stone and spice. Then the sound of his apology, the particular way he breathes at the start of a sentence when he doubts he deserves to say it.
“I am getting married today,” I respond.
“You don’t have to,” he says. “We can escape. I need you to show me where the throne room is and then we can leave this place forever.”
I take a deep breath. He’s just as I remember from the ball. There’s no way I can leave with him—as angry as I was with him, I don’t want him to die.
“No.” The word leaves my lips and spreads through the air.
“I know I ruined everything, but Mrath will kill Arion. You can—” His voice breaks. “You can come home with me. Enduvida will be safe.”
So instead, I change the course of the conversation. “I have chosen to marry Arion. I don’t know if Mrath will kill him or not—he’s powerful. I don’t want anything to happen to Enduvida, and that is my choice. I just—I just wanted to have this one last time,” I tell him in the fantasy.
He huffs in the dark room. There is winter in that sound, and a kind of spring. He reminds me of new life. His power made me sink into him, trust him. It had once felt so good.
“I just want to feel good,” I say.
That seems to break him apart. His stiff posture changes and he comes closer to me on the bed.
“Then we will make a good ending.”
It is not urgent, the way I imagine placing my hand over his. It is not desperate, the way his mouth finds the place the collar hasn’t bruised. This is not about hunger. It is about remembering the brief times we shared and how free I felt with him. I recall the slope of his shoulders under my fingers, and the way his forearm moves under skin when he braces, how the muscles of his arms and pecs come together.