Tauram swirled his chopsticks in the sesame yellow sauce as he chewed and swallowed. "Well, you were a very cute baby."

So unexpected was his explanation that Esmera lost her concentration and dropped her dumpling in the pickle bowl. Flecks of oil scattered outwards, but extended only to her plate, thankfully, not Princess Namesha's priceless parsi or Tauram's priceless tablecloth. Her cheeks warmed as she took a moment to regain her grip on her dumpling.

Once it was securely between her chopsticks, she pulled a face at Tauram. "Don't make this weird."

"It's hurtful that you find it weird that I thought you were cute. I would just take the compliment."

Esmera might've thought she offended Tauram if she didn't see the glimmer of mirth in his dark eyes.

He was shameless, and Esmera shouldn't be at all amused by it.

"Tauram." Esmera flattened her mouth against the smile teasing at it. "I know you weren't the one who arranged our marriage."

Esmera didn't know much about being noble or royal, but she did know that for all their privilege, for all the choices their statuses provided them, their lives didn't entirely belong to them.

"Fine, fine. You're right. It wasn't my decision." Solemnity replaced the light-heartedness on Tauram's face. "On the day of your birth, all the psychics in the palace were buzzing with whispers that the queen had been born. Naturally, my parents were bewildered. My mother was the queen, and I was to be king after her. They had no idea who this mysterious new queen was or how she fit into the line of succession. She could be any baby across the kingdom."

He paused, dipping his dumpling in the pickle and raising it to his mouth, interrupting the story that had so enraptured Esmera.

But it was more than a story. It was the tale of them.

Tauram continued speaking once he had swallowed his momo. "My parents summoned their most senior psychic. She told them the prophecy spoke of Lord and Lady Finnaz's daughter." The prince popped another dumpling into his mouth.

Esmera took advantage of the break in the conversation to try the pickle for herself. The spice stung her tongue and sent her eyes watering, but this time, when she closed them, she heard voices more than she tasted flavours.

Apparently, Queen Shirisha fears Esmera might overthrow Prince Tauram after he takes the throne, said a man's voice that was painfully familiar to Esmera even though she couldn't name who it belonged to.

Nonsense. Our beautiful little Esmera? asked a woman. She can only steal hearts, never thrones. Look at her tiny hands, Hudion, and her little cheeks.

This voice Esmera knew on instinct.

She craved the sound so fiercely that she latched onto it with every fibre of her being, every particle of her power.

Maybe she could follow the sound into the past. Maybe she could hear what her parents' last words to her were. Maybe she could get answers about the Finnaz weapon without needing to consult a memory walker, another person to bring in on the plan, another mouth that could be bribed or tortured open to spill their secrets.

As hard as she tried, she couldn't push the boundaries of time. The present was the present, and the past remained the past.

Esmera slumped back in her chair, exhausted from the effort of listening in on a decades-old conversation, assuming she wasn't imagining things and her parents had really spoken these words.

"Is everything fine?" Tauram frowned at her over his plate of momos.

Esmera nodded. She fixed her eyes on him once her vision cleared, trying not to let any accusation show in them. "Did you know that Queen Shirisha regarded me as a threat to your throne? That might have been why she was so keen for me to be promised to you."

Esmera didn't blame the queen for seeking to protect her heir and her line, but she didn't know how she felt about being married off to someone just so that her power could be controlled and wielded to the will of her husband.

That had happened to her once before, and she had hated it.

But she and Tauram had been so young. She couldn't expect anything like love or compatibility to have played into their betrothal at all, no matter how precocious Tauram seemed to have been as a child.

"I didn't know that my mother thought that." The prince frowned.

Esmera searched his face for any sign that he was lying, any shifting eyes or tense mouth, but she saw nothing of the sort. She had no choice but to believe him. The queen had probably been playing a political game too complex for her young son to understand.

"How did you know that?" Tauram's brow furrowed.

His ready acceptance of what Esmera said confirmed what she had suspected and simultaneously hoped for and dreaded. This wasn't her imagination that Tauram's mother had wanted to clip her wings so she couldn't swoop down on him. It wasn't wishful thinking that she had some recollection of the parents she had barely known, of faces she couldn't remember. It was an actual memory.

"I heard my parents talking about it all those years ago. I somehow memorised a snippet of that conversation." Esmera tried to eliminate the wistfulness in her voice, but she couldn't lie, not to Tauram or herself, that this snippet was enough for her.

Tauram nodded, clarity dawning in his eyes. "I can see how that might be an interpretation of the prophecy, that you would become queen by conquering rather than marrying me, but I would argue that it would've been easier for you to usurp my throne as my wife." He rubbed the back of his hand against his chin. "Giving you the power of my queen would've presented you with the platform to gain my people's loyalty and adoration and turn them against me, which you would've been less likely to do as a noblewoman."

Esmera nodded. She could see how that might be the case. The people of Milatanur may not obey a lady, and they may not even bow to her ahead of their king, but they might do that for their queen if she had proof to persuade them to her side.

Esmera shook herself. This wasn't a queen in a legend or fairy tale she was talking about. This was herself. She couldn't quite believe that the queen who should've been her mother-in-law would suspect this of her, and she definitely didn't believe it of herself.

"Do you think that's something I would've done?"

Tauram froze like a deer trapped in headlights under her gaze.

Esmera turned her attention to a momo to take the pressure off him, but she sensed the tension in his silence. "Tauram?"

"I don't think I'm the best judge of what people are and aren't capable of." The prince spoke down to his plate instead of Esmera.

He looked lost with the strand of his hair that had fallen over his uncertain eyes, like the young soon-to-be ruler he had been when Ruagu betrayed him and took everything from him. Esmera knew he was thinking of that, but it didn't take away the sting of his words.

"So, yes?" she asked softly.

"I don't think so." Tauram met her eyes, his gaze level, his jaw firm. "But I might be wrong about that."

Esmera's temper spiked. How could Tauram think her a villain even close to King Ruagu in scale? How could he think she could bear inflicting the same pain the usurper had on Tauram and so many other people when she was devoting everything she could to ending the tyrant's rule?

"Fair enough." Esmera's voice came out sharp, like a dagger aimed at a heart as she leaned back in her chair. "Rather marry a woman to stifle her and force her into subservience than risk her becoming a monster, right?"

Tauram's gaze remained steady on her, unruffled by Esmera's words. He may have feared Esmera had she never gone to Arkōsāra, had she been a lady trained in the auditory arts and maybe even combat, but he certainly didn't fear her now. Why should he? She was a barista who had been too weak to stand up to her husband, who believed him every time he told her he loved her after he hurt her.

"There were other reasons why we were betrothed, Esmera."

Esmera folded her arms, awaiting an explanation that could sweeten the bitter truth of this engagement even as she didn't expect that it would.

Tauram squared his shoulders under Esmera's gaze. "Our stars were studied and declared us to be highly compatible. The Finnazes were allies of the Morghis rulers, helping us maintain order in western Milatanur. We were a good match, and our marriage would've strengthened an ancient alliance. Everything fit together as if we were destined. That's why the betrothal was finalised." Tauram's voice softened as he met Esmera's eyes.

A warm, crackling energy passed between them in that gaze. Esmera looked away before it overwhelmed her.

She closed her eyes and let out a breath, allowing her anger to leave her body with it. So there had been other reasons she and Tauram were betrothed. Not solely to control her. Not solely to anchor her in a marriage that would trap her.

It has been a win-win situation for the queen, no doubt, but what about the people the engagement affected most directly?

"Do you still think that?" Esmera hoped Tauram would know she was talking to him even though her eyes were fixed on her plate.

"What?" He picked up a momo with his chopsticks.

"That we were destined."

It felt stupid to say it like that. This was real life, not a fantasy romance or a myth, but those were Tauram's words, not Esmera's.

He took a little longer to answer than Esmera expected, dipping one half of his dumpling in the sesame yellow sauce and the other in the pickle. "Maybe."

His non-committal attitude made Esmera not want to take sides either. Even if she was sure she was meant to be here and with him, whether in a friendship capacity or something more.

The stars couldn't lie, but people could out of deceit or fear. The stars weren't afraid to express their truth, but people could be afraid to believe it.

"Now, I have a question for you." Tauram's eyes held Esmera in place, probably the only thing keeping her from fleeing from the table.

She had lost her desire to talk. The curiosity that pestered her only seemed to uncover nasty corners of the past, those better left to languish in darkness forever, but she had asked Tauram so many questions. She supposed she could allow him one of his own.

"Yeah?" She sipped her litchi juice, holding his gaze.

He cocked his head. "Do you remember what you said to Jammas when we were testing his ability to tell lies from truths?"

Esmera's familiar stirred where he had made a home in her hair. She remembered her words as well as he did.

Esmera nearly choked. It was probably safer for her to put her glass down. "Yes. I said that I'm okay, and I've left my past behind me."

Jammas had ruled that a lie, Esmera remembered, and even though Tauram didn't mention that, she knew he was thinking about it too.

"What did you mean by that?"

Esmera popped a momo into her mouth, as much because she craved the taste as to buy herself time to formulate an answer that would satisfy Tauram without revealing too much of her pathetic, shameful past.

Why had she asked Jammas that? And why in front of Tauram? She let her guard down in front of the man more than she should for being someone who should know better than to think his charm meant he actually cared about her.

She wished she hadn't, that she had saved the question for when she and Jammas were alone, but what was done was done.

She swallowed, and her mouth felt empty, somehow lonely without a momo to fill it. "Life is hard as an orphan. I've been shunted between different homes, none of which wanted me, only the money they could get by claiming that they cared for me. I've had to feel my way through life, which wasn't easy without a guiding hand." She squeezed her eyes closed, taking a shaky breath. "I've made so many stupid mistakes that I fear I'll never be able to outrun."

"I think we've all done that, Esmera." Tauram took a breath, considering for a moment before he spoke again. "I don't know what it's like to be an orphan, but I do know what it's like to live in Arkōsāra, away from your people. I'm sorry that you had to endure so much alone." His voice was a cautious invitation for more information or none at all if that was what Esmera chose instead.

Then he reached out for her hand. She snatched it out of his path, shifting her plate as if that has been her intention all along when the truth was that she didn't want his empty apology or his disingenuous touch, and she didn't want to say too much, give him the chance to learn what hurt her and know how to use it against her.

"You have nothing to apologise for, Tauram." She offered him a soft smile that she wasn't quite sure she meant.

This was all on her. She had made the mistake to trust the people who had hurt her, and she wouldn't do that again.

Tauram's mouth opened as if he would speak, then it closed as he looked down at his plate, but not before Esmera saw something flicker in his eyes. Something so vulnerable and heartbreakingly familiar that Esmera felt like the worst person in Milatanur.

Maybe she was. Maybe that was why her life had gone out of its way to be so cruel to her.

She looked down at her plate, not trusting herself to say something that would make this situation any better. Silence settled between her and Tauram as she put her last dumpling in her mouth.

She pushed her plate away. "Good night, Tauram." Her voice came out clipped like her 3rd-grade teacher's when she greeted the class in the morning.

Her heart leapt in a way not entirely unpleasant when she thought he was reaching for her hand again, but he was only taking hold of the jug of litchi juice to refill his glass.

"Sleep well," he said with a tiny smile that didn't hide the hurt in his eyes, only enhanced it.

Esmera couldn't bring herself to wish him the same. She just smiled and turned away from him before it peeled off her face.

She strode to her room, feeling Tauram's gaze trailing after her along the way until the bright lights outside the house embraced her. When she was inside, she locked the door and closed the curtains so his eyes couldn't follow her any further.

Her hands moved mindlessly as she undressed, using her fingertips to test that the water in the bathtub was hot enough for her to forget herself and stirring the bubbles until they were thick enough to hide her from herself.

She sank into the water, but it didn't take her out of her head or take her head elsewhere. She couldn't think about anyone but Tauram while she could still hear him outside, hear his breaths, hear him mutter so softly that she could hear he was doing it but not what he was saying.

She stared at her ceiling long after the water had gone cold and the sound of dishes clattering as Tauram gathered them had faded to silence, telling her he had gone to bed. Anjarah's voice no longer floated through the air. She must've gone home to Kuan.

Esmera had overstepped. She shouldn't have made this a date. When had a romantic evening ever led her anywhere worthwhile?

She wished she had realised sooner how dangerous Tauram Morghis was to her heart. Many then she wouldn't have found herself at a dinner table while he expected her to lay the pain of her past out on a platter for him to pick at.

Stephan had done that too. He had coaxed Esmera's most agonising secrets out of her, kissed them out of her when his words didn't work. He had studied her, learning how to hit her where it hurt, and she had stupidly thought he was trying to figure out how to love her instead.

Never again would she be that woman, lured in by wiles and smiles and unassuming jokes that were made somehow funnier by the man who was telling them.

Besides, Esmera was still technically married. She shouldn't be going on dates, and she certainly shouldn't be entertaining the idea of that date leading anywhere but a dead end.

If she wanted other people to stop hurting her, she would have to figure out how to stop hurting herself first.