Sensing Esmera rising, Jammas stirred. He fluttered down from his cosy nest tucked between the curtain rail and the wall, returning to his favourite place on Esmera's head as she tugged a light robe over her nightdress. She couldn't see its colour or pattern in the night, and she didn't care as she knotted it around her waist.

Esmera opened her door and peered outside. Seeing only a still, dark passage furrowing towards the stairs leading to the second floor and hearing only soft, peaceful breaths behind Belaren's door down the corridor, she strode out of her room.

Her feet nestled in her soft slippers, they padded up the stairs and along the passage to Tauram's room as she gripped the railing to stop herself from tumbling into the night should she lose her footing. She had only been to Tauram's room twice before, but its route had burned itself into her memory.

Her feet moved with certainty past all the other doors, past the side passages that would only lead her to some other pretty corner of the cottage away from her destination.

Esmera hesitated for only a moment before knocking on the door. She had come this far, and she wasn't going back to bed without first seeing for herself that Tauram was okay. She couldn't.

At the sound of her knuckles tapping against the varnished wood, there was no answer, not even an interruption in the muffled sobs somewhere behind it.

Esmera pushed the door open, steeling her nerves for any possibility, but only an anticlimactic empty room greeted her. Tauram's bedspread was rumpled from where he had lain beneath it before his insistent desire to know his siblings' fates had summoned him from there, but now, there was no sign of him. Esmera followed the soft sobs to his studio. They grew louder, confirming she was on the right track.

Esmera slipped through the doorway to see Tauram leaning his forehead against a blank canvas with his eyes squeezed closed in infinite pain. The shades of blue smeared on the palette on his lap had smudged on his fingers, but he didn't seem to have noticed. The paintbrush in his other hand quivered as he sobbed into his sleeve, while Lundas rubbed his head against his leg, purring softly, sadly.

Esmera's heart broke. She clasped her hands in front of her, containing the pieces within herself long enough to reach Tauram's side. "Hey." She rested a cautious hand on his white cotton-clad shoulder. "Hey, Tauram."

"Esmera?" He looked up, his cheeks glittering with a devastating, tear-stained beauty.

Esmera had never seen a person so broken, in such pain, except for when she looked at herself in the mirror for the first week after she left Stephan.

She had made her vows to him. She was his wife, and that wasn't something she could change simply by will. She had loved him despite everything he had done to her. That was why those first few weeks without him were so terrifying despite being so freeing.

That was why she knew how Tauram was feeling. She too had loved someone who hurt her, someone she would never forget even as she loved them no longer.

"Oh, Tauram," Esmera murmured, drawing him to her.

He rested his face against her stomach. She held him there even as her heart sped up, running her fingers through his gleaming black hair and trying not to think about how he sent her thoughts and her pulse racing. "It's okay, Tauram."

"No, it's not okay. It's never going to be okay." He pressed his cheek against Esmera as if he wanted to fight the layers of fabric between them to be as close to her as he could.

She wanted that as much, but for both of their sakes, it was best they remained as they were.

Tauram's voice quivered. "I did this, Esmera. I killed my brother and my sister. I imprisoned my little sister in that palace. I may as well have been the man who ruined her because I let him get close enough to touch her. I sacrificed everyone who loved me, everyone I loved, for a false love I believed ultimate." He fell into a fit of tears, clutching Esmera to him.

She did not doubt that his paint-smeared fingers had ruined her robe, but that didn't matter, not when there were lives and futures ruined beyond repair.

"Tauram..." Esmera kissed his head, but he only cried harder. Her lips lingered as she inhaled the vague coconut scent of his hair. "Loving is never wrong, but a betrayal of love is."

"So is believing a sham of affection." Tauram spoke through his choked sobs, trembling with rage, with anguish, his eyes still closed. "I made the promises to Ghallia that gave her power over me. I told her the secrets of my vulnerabilities. All the while, she was sharing them with Ruagu while they plotted to overthrow me."

Tauram's jaw tightened as his eyes opened. They were sharp, glittering, just like the blade he would drive into Queen Ghallia's heart if he could. "I still remember her the night of the coup. I remember her wide, terrified eyes. I remember being so frightened that I was going to lose her. I should've let Ruagu kill her. I should've called their bluff and shown them for the liars they were." He shook his head. "Ghallia was right. I was a fool. I sacrificed my family and my kingdom for one woman who couldn't be trusted."

"What they did was terrible and cruel, but their actions are their responsibilities, Tauram, not yours. You can't blame yourself for the evil within them and the chaos they wreaked." Esmera's hand ran down to Tauram's shoulder and settled there.

The prince cast his eyes downwards. "My ancestors fought several bloody wars to retain possession of the throne, only for me to be tricked out of it. My siblings looked to me to lead and protect them after my parents died, and I've let them down in the worst way." He leaned into Esmera, his body trembling with the sobs he suppressed into silence.

"And if they had killed you that night and hunted your siblings down afterwards?" asked Esmera. Her words came out harsher than she had intended in her desperation for them to reach Tauram amid his devastating agony because, in her mind, that was the alternative.

She softened her voice as she rested her hand on Tauram's head. "Would there be anyone to fight Ruagu and Ghallia now, to correct their crime? Would there be anyone Jilhari could entrust with the task of redeeming Milatanur in the eyes of the gods?"

Esmera had Tauram's attention now. He pulled back, staring up at her, eyes as wide and frightened as they must've been on that dreadful night over a decade ago.

"There would still be you, Esmera."

It was the last thing Esmera had expected him to say. She blinked, speechless, but only for a moment because Tauram wasn't right. Not entirely, anyway.

She traced her thumb over his cheekbone. "But I can't do this without you, Tauram."

"Esmera...." Tauram gave her a weary smile.

"Listen to me." Esmera found his hand and slipped her fingers between his. "Ghallia may not have cared for you as much as she pretended to, but Ruagu did. He confessed as much this evening. I think that was why he gave you that chance. He could've killed you on the spot and done the same to your brother and sisters so they'd never be a threat to him. We know he had the power, but he chose not to destroy you, and he will pay for that choice when you reclaim your throne and avenge all your losses."

He looked down, but Esmera tilted his chin up. She wasn't going to let him surrender, not now, not ever. He was the last of a line of strong rulers. Their power ran in his blood, and Esmera would ensure it kept flowing for centuries to come.

"The only thing we can do when we're kicked down is take the slightest opportunity in our unfortunate circumstances and pull ourselves to our feet. We are fighters, Tauram."

That was the only reason Esmera had survived her rough childhood and her violent marriage. For all she knew, it could have even played a part in her surviving the Finnaaz massacre. She was a warrior.

She had combated heartbreak, the poison in her own thoughts. She had been in a similar place to Tauram not too long ago. She hadn't let herself down, and she wouldn't let him down either.

"I know it may not feel like mercy when you're feeling so much guilt and pain, but it's an opportunity. If you had fought Ruagu ten years ago, and he had destroyed you to take your throne, there would be no hope for Milatanur now, nobody to avenge your family."

Tauram was staring up at Esmera. "And we would've never been reacquainted."

She gave him a small smile. It was hard to believe that one choice Ruagu had made a decade ago had changed her life so drastically, had transformed her from a barista and a marriage deserter into a sorcerer and one-half of a kingdom's last hope, but Tauram was right.

"And we would've never had this conversation."

"Or any of the others." Tauram's arms tightened around her waist, pulling her to him.

She relaxed into his embrace, resting her chin on his head. She closed her eyes for a moment and lost herself in his soft, swishing breaths, in the drumming of his breaking, beating heart. "I would've never found my way back to Milatanur to avenge my family if I hadn't met you when I did. All those years ago, Ruagu gave us both a chance without realising it."

Mercy had never served Esmera. It had only kept her from leaving her husband when he begged her not to. It had only made her grant him chances he didn't deserve in the false hope he would indeed change.

It was the first time mercy had worked with Esmera instead of against her, and it felt somehow like the first wave of a tide of change.

Tauram let out a breath as he followed Esmera's logic. "I guess the sneaky bastard wasn't so smart after all."

Esmera nodded. "They thought they had you figured out, that banishment was enough to defeat you, but they made the mistake of sending you somewhere they couldn't keep an eye on you. Perhaps you were the person they thought you were then, but I know you aren't now. You've changed in ways they couldn't have imagined or expected. Now, you see them for what they are, and you're prepared to fight."

Tauram's jaw tensed where his cheek rested against Esmera. "Until the death."