CHAPTER 78: COMFORT

The night lay soft over Solmire, dressed in the hush that follows chaos.

Within Caelen’s chambers, the silence was deceptively tender, the kind that pretends to heal what has merely been silenced.

Ophelia rested against him, her cheek over his heart, her hand curved over the flat plane of her stomach. She smiled as though nothing in the world could fracture that fragile peace. Her ginger hair spilled like silk across his bare chest, and the warmth of her skin seeped into him, gentle, anchoring, cruel in its innocence.

She thought she had everything now.

A husband who stayed.

A future unthreatened.

A child, the promise of one, blooming quietly beneath her hand.

"Your heart is racing. You must be excited like too. I can feel our baby already." she whispered, voice dreamy, tender. "Do you hear it?"

She said it with the certainty of the blessed, the kind who believe that joy, once found, will not turn on them.

Caelen’s arm tightened around her automatically, the gesture too practiced to mean nothing, too hollow to mean enough.

He laughed softly, the sound almost convincing. "Let the physician confirm first, Ophelia," he murmured. "You’ve always imagined miracles before they arrive."

But she shook her head, smiling in that way that made him feel both guilty and grateful. "I know, Caelen. I can feel it growing inside me."

Her joy filled the room, a golden, shimmering thing that brushed against his nerves until he thought he might break. She looked up at him, her eyes wide and shining, and for a heartbeat he wished he could believe her version of the world, one where nothing ugly existed beneath tenderness, where hearts did not lie.

But his pulse betrayed him. It thundered beneath her ear, wild and uneven, not from happiness but from panic.

Because beneath the veneer of calm, something was unraveling.

The burn on his palm throbbed faintly, that small angry welt she had left... Eris... her fire still clinging to his skin like a brand. He had washed it. Wrapped it. Ignored it. But it would not fade. It hurt less than it should have. He almost wanted it to hurt more.

The pain was proof. Proof that what had happened between them had been real, that he hadn’t imagined the taste of her mouth, the violence of that kiss, the shock of her heat searing through the ruin of his restraint.

He could still see it, her eyes, bright with fury and heartbreak, the flash of betrayal after he kissed her and she burned him. And beneath all that, the silent question she hadn’t asked: Why did you come to me at all?

He didn’t have an answer.

Now the question stalked him through every heartbeat, every breath that Ophelia mistook for love.

He stared up at the ceiling, where moonlight spilled like silver cloth through the drapes, and tried not to hear the words that wouldn’t stop echoing, the guard’s trembling voice, the message she’d sent to Soren:

If you truly intend to take me to Nevareth, do it tonight.

Tonight.

He hadn’t believed it at first. Denial came easy. It was a gentle drug he’d always favored. She wouldn’t go. She couldn’t. Not after everything that had just happened. She would wait, she always waited. That was who Eris was, patient in pain, relentless in hope.

But no.

He’d seen it in her eyes before he left her. The finality. The severing.

She was leaving.

Without him.

Without looking back.

And he, fool that he was, had run from her.

He’d gone straight to Ophelia, desperate for something simple, something pure, something that didn’t burn.

And now here she was, asleep against his chest, her lips parted slightly, her hand curled possessively over the life she believed was already hers.

Peace.

But even peace can suffocate.

He shifted slightly, staring at the faint shimmer of firelight across the wall. The scent of smoke still clung to him. Her scent. Jasmine and ash.

He flexed his injured hand. The skin there had cracked, faintly blistered, the mark a small, cruel memory. He pressed it against his thigh and welcomed the pain. It was the only thing that kept him anchored to truth.

Ophelia murmured in her sleep, something soft, almost sweet. He didn’t catch the words. Maybe it was his name. Maybe it wasn’t.

His throat felt dry.

Because the truth, the one he refused to look at directly, sat between them like a third heartbeat. He had hurt Eris. Again. Not by intent, but by instinct.

He hadn’t meant to leave her like that. Hadn’t meant to walk away while her eyes still burned with a plea she hadn’t voiced.

But he had.

Because it was easier to choose the woman who looked at him with faith than the one who saw straight through him.

Still, the image of Eris would not leave him.

The tremor in her voice when she’d said Isn’t it obvious?

The way her body had gone rigid when he’d kissed her.

The taste of her lips, skin, anger, her sorrow, her love, all of it alive on his tongue.

The way their bodies pressed flush. The way she melted into him quickly despite herself, despite asking if he was insane.

He closed his eyes, jaw tightening.

The palace was quiet. Too quiet.

He should sleep. He should hold Ophelia, whisper her name, dream of futures that did not hurt.

Instead, he lay awake and listened to the silence, every heartbeat a confession he dared not speak.

The bitterness settled like ice in his veins. He could feel it in every muscle, every pulse, a weight that would not lift. He had chosen comfort over fire, safety over the one thing that had ever truly mattered.

And now it was gone, irretrievable, leaving only the hollow ache of what he had allowed himself to lose.

Because deep down, where truth still breathed, Caelen knew:

He hadn’t lost his mind when he kissed Eris.

He had lost it when he let her go.