The contradiction was everything.
“I don’t believe in princesses,” she said. Her voice dull and bitter.
She left the word unsaid.
Anymore.
“After a few painkillers you’ll believe in unicorns,” I murmured, holding the last spoon before her mouth.
The sadness left her eyes.
She took the final bite, her hand finding mine again.
In a few weeks that sadness would lessen. Parts of her were conflicted—missed him, hated him, grieved for what could have been. That was natural. Expected. The heart didn’t simply update itself because the mind had caught up.
I’d be here.
Watching.
Waiting.
Always.
Chapter 8
Sayla
One morning I woke up and realised that I didn’t ache.
Not from my eye, my bruises or my rib.
Then again, I hadn’t moved yet.
I spread my arms and legs out and stretched my back experimentally.
Pain bloomed from my right side as I inhaled sharply.
Okay. The rib was still tender.
I relaxed and began to breathe the way the physiotherapist had taught me. Slow and deliberate, coaxing my lungs into cooperation.
Nine days of peace.
No looking over my shoulder. No demands. No performing my wifely duties on cue. No more pain dressed up as love. No more lies dressed up as passion.
Just healing. Just existing.
Flashes of anger came and went. The emotion was too overwhelming to hold onto for long and I didn’t particularly want to. My sleeping routine helped more than I expected it to.
I smiled at the ceiling.
Fighting the nine o’clock bedtime had become something of a nightly ritual. Not because I wasn’t tired—I was always tired—but because I needed to know what he would do. Whether there was a threshold. Whether eventually he would snap.
He never did.
Instead, the third night I’d pushed too hard, he’d simply left without a word. The silence had devastated me more than anger would have.
He returned with a stuffed penguin.