Tauram's eyes widened when he reached the bottom of the page. He looked up at Esmera, confused, surprised. "I stand by what I said." He shook his head as he set the parchment down on the duvet between them gingerly as if it were a grenade in his hand. "I never read this letter, I swear. I meant what I said, that if I had known you were in Arkōsāra this whole time, I would've looked for you until I found you." Tauram's hand reached for Esmera's, but she pulled it away as much as it pained her to do so.

"How am I supposed to believe you when the words on the parchment say something different?" Esmera asked softly, fighting back tears as she looked into his pained eyes. She wanted to believe him, but the proof was there, and she had promised herself that she would never again ignore blatant signs of trouble just to lure herself into feeling safe.

"Do you think my word means so little, Esmera?" Tauram's voice cracked, but he cleared his throat and took a moment to gather himself. "Would you believe a letter from a stranger over me? After everything we have been through together?"

Esmera narrowed her eyes. She had thought he was above weaponising their limited shared past against her, but clearly she didn't know as much about him as she thought she did.

"Do you know what I think, Tauram? I think you do whatever suits you in the moment. When you believed me to be dead, you replaced me with Ghallia in your life. Now that you know the full extent of her betrayal, that she never really loved you, you replaced her with me because I'm here. Because I was available. Because I was easy." Esmera's voice tightened with resentment.

She was as angry with herself as she was with Tauram. She was equally to blame. It took two to tango, and she had offered him her hand without knowing whether he could dance.

"How can you say such a thing?" Tauram shook his head, his brow furrowing. "Do you think so little of me, that I would take advantage of you and lie through my teeth about how I felt about you?"

Esmera opened her mouth to reply, but Tauram cut her off. He grabbed her hand and turned her face to his so she couldn't look away. "Listen to me, Esmera. What you said isn't true. Yes, I did move on with my life and let myself fall in love with someone else when I thought I had no hope of marrying you, but you are not just a replacement for Ghallia. You mean so much more to me. I wish you could just see that."

"Maybe I would if you hadn't left me for dead in Arkōsāra until I found my way to you completely by chance." Esmera's mouth trembled, but she somehow managed to keep her gaze level.

It didn't hurt any less each time she referred to it. The man she had thought she could trust not to leave her, to keep her safe in this new dangerous world was no different from any other she had met.

Tauram's voice went low, tense with forced calmness. "I've said it before, and I'll say it again, Esmera. I never read this letter."

"But you must've opened it." Esmera's eyes hardened. "Yours is the only fingerprint that can access a letter addressed to you, or are you going to tell me I'm wrong about that too?"

He hesitated for a moment, and Esmera wondered if he was going to try to convince her that she hadn't seen Belaren in the kitchen just minutes ago, opening his own mail with his thumbprint, but then he sighed.

"No, you're right about that." Tauram looked down at his lap, at the empty plate resting on it. "I may have opened the letter and forgotten to get around to reading it." He gathered the guts to meet Esmera's gaze again. "All I can tell you is that I would've never let you suffer alone in Arkōsāra if I had known you were there." His eyes begged her to believe him even as he kept his shoulders straight and proud, kept his hands firmly to himself.

Something inside Esmera yielded. Maybe she wasn't as strong as she had tried and pretended to be because she found herself giving Tauram another chance and desperately hoping he would take it. "And can you prove that?"

Tauram considered for a moment. "No." His voice was pained. His eyes fluttered to Esmera before he directed them away from her, out of the window into the morning that would never confront him for his wrongs the way she did. "You'll just have to take my word for it. I can only say the same thing so many times."

Esmera's hackles rose again. She had been considerate to give him a second chance to change the trajectory of this conversation, and he had been a fool to bungle it.

She knew now how little Tauram's word meant, nothing more than gold-plated jewellery that gleamed like the real thing. Esmera would have to be an idiot to entertain this conversation, and she may be heartbroken, but she wasn't stupid.

"This is over." Esmera shoved the plate off her lap. It landed on the blankets with a soft thud. Esmera crawled out of the pillow fort, not looking back. It wasn't the picturesque exit she would imagine for a scorned lady, but it served her right for getting into such close, awkward quarters with a man she couldn't trust with her heart.

Esmera was a noblewoman in nothing but name. Her title was a pair of shoes she couldn't fit into, a robe she couldn't fill because she was and would always be an orphan, a misfit, an unwanted alien species who didn't fit in wherever she went.

The sun struck her in the eyes as she crawled into its range. Flinching, she fought back a harsh laugh.

How was it that she kept forgetting how meaningless she was? Maybe she should have it tattooed on her arm so she would always see it, so she wouldn't be so quick to believe every man who sailed into her life and told her that she meant something to him.

Beyond the boundaries of the tent, Esmera got to her feet, smoothing her robe if only to maintain the noblewoman façade until she was out of Tauram's company and sight. She balled her fists at her sides, blinking quickly and repeatedly to keep her tears contained in her eyes.

She was a fool to let her heart command her so completely, but she had never known anything else. She had always loved too fiercely, even when it rejected her ferocity. When would she learn her lesson? Though, to be fair, her head wouldn't be a much better ruler.

Esmera heard Tauram's ridiculously fluffy robe swish and his bare feet hurry after her, but she managed to stay ahead of him until he caught up to her outside the conservatory.

"Esmera, wait."

She spun to face him. He skidded to a stop, and she had no idea what he saw that made his face fall.

Could this be hurting him too? Or was he an expert at acting as though it was just like so many of the men Esmera had known in her life?

"Look, I'll make it easy for you." Esmera flattened her mouth even as she glared up at him with tear-blurred eyes. "I'll help you defeat Ruagu because I promised to, and I keep my word" —Tauram flinched at the pointedness of her words— "but you never have to see me again once that is done. You will be free to return to Ghallia and create the life you always wanted with her without me getting in the way."

Tauram shook his head, somehow managing to keep his shoulders up even as his face twisted in agony. "That's not what I want, Esmera. Not anymore."

His luminous round eyes widening in alarm, Lundas rose from his pet bed, Jammas still perched on his head. His soft purrs creaked through him as he brushed himself against Tauram's legs, but the prince didn't seem to notice. Instead, his gaze was fixed on Esmera, wide and unreadable.

"Are you saying that the thought never crossed your mind since you returned here? Since you saw her that first day?" Esmera's eyes held Tauram's, steady even as the rest of her faltered.

Jammas took flight from his perch on Lundas's head, instead coming to rest on Esmera's. He pecked her, either to comfort her or show his concern, but she paid him no heed. He merely gathered her curls around him and made a makeshift nest for himself among them.

At least she knew she wasn't alone, no matter how she felt in that moment as she stood facing Tauram.

"Ten years ago, I had planned out my whole life with Ghallia. "The prince looked down at his bare feet, guilty. "Perhaps I did think back to that for a moment when I saw her after all this time, but I knew none of that was possible now that she was with Ruagu. I no longer wanted it to be."

"Can a man not get any rest in his own home?" Belaren slunk into the sitting room, doing the last button on his silk shirt and flattening it against his throat. "What could possibly warrant all this yelling at this time in the morning?" His dark eyes darted between Tauram and Esmera, but they both ignored him.

"I refuse to be your consolation prize." Esmera turned away from Tauram, her eyes pushing her tears out onto her eyelashes as she squeezed them closed.

That was what she was to Tauram, after all, just someone he could settle for after the woman he would've chosen had been claimed by another man. She wanted to deserve better than being the second option, even though she knew that she didn't.

"Are you seriously jealous of my former fiancée?" Tauram's voice rose in incredulity.

"I am if you're still in love with her." Esmera didn't dare to turn to him. She was afraid of what she would see when she looked at him, of how it might unhinge her because he was from the matter at hand.

Tauram had abandoned Esmera in Arkōsāra when he didn't need her in his life, and he only changed his tune to suit the song when fate tossed them into each other's paths.

"You are literally married to another man, but you're mad because I used to be engaged to a woman who cares as little about me as I now do for her?" Esmera heard Tauram shake his head in disbelief as if she was the one who was lying even though her accusation could be proven.

"We both have baggage, Esmera. I thought we were on the same page about that. I've never denied that I made mistakes in my life, mistakes even I hate myself for." His voice faltered before regaining its steadiness to continue its onslaught. "There's no need to fly off the handle for every little part of my past that you don't like—"

Esmera erupted then, a kettle that could no longer contain its steam. "Is that what you truly think?" She spun to face Tauram, quivering with so many feelings she couldn't name, feelings she'd be afraid of if she could. "If I'm so unbearable, maybe I'm doing you a favour by ending whatever this is between us."

A muscle tensed in Tauram's jaw before he opened his mouth to speak, but Belaren pushed his way in between him and Esmera, grabbing them each by the shoulder.

"Hey, hey, stop fighting." He looked from Esmera to Tauram and back again. "I know I tease you both relentlessly, but I like you together. I do." His eyes settled on Tauram. "For one, I have never seen you happier in the last ten years than you have been in the last week." His eyes found Esmera next. "And you... you glow in a way you didn't when I first met you." He squeezed both their shoulders.

"Don't stay mad at each other and don't throw this away. Take it from someone who knows." He sighed. "My pointless anger at Jarah for something that wasn't even her fault lost me years I could've spent with her if I could've just given her a chance to explain herself. That's why I'm advising you to deep breaths, slow down and do whatever else you need to work this out."

But Esmera was not backing down. Not for a friend who would always side with his friend no matter what. Belaren couldn't compare his relationship to theirs. His may have crumbled under a misunderstanding, but it hadn't been built on a lie.

"There is nothing to work out," Esmera snapped, looking away from Tauram, from the infuriating beauty of every feature that gave him form. She pulled away from Belaren, putting distance between them.

"You're putting words in my mouth, Esmera." He raised his eyes to the ceiling, letting out an exasperated breath. "I never said you're unbearable."

"Then what are you saying?"

Tauram stepped around Belaren as if he wasn't there. Esmera wished she could ignore him in the same way, but he was a silk-clad statuette in the middle of the sitting room, his black eyebrows drawn inwards in concern.

"I'm saying that you should calm down and listen to me before you do something rash." Tauram grabbed Esmera by her shoulders and pulled her to him.

A scene flashed in her vision of being gripped in the same way not too long ago. Now, she was face to face with Tauram, but she found herself staggering back as she had that day Stephan slammed her against the wall until she fell, dizzy, crippled with pain.

The same pain took hold of her again, inviting along a fear that sunk its claws into her skin. She tried to rationalise it.

She was in Milatanur now, not Arkōsāra. Stephan didn't know where she was, and even if he somehow figured it out, he wouldn't be able to reach her here. But her brain wouldn't respond to its own logic.

The terror still coursed through her like ice chilling her blood, turning her voice high with panic.

"Let me go." Esmera felt fear, fury, and sadness, and she wondered which of those Tauram saw in her eyes that made him release her and take a step back, leaving her to float alone and untethered to anything in this world.

It was the last thing she wanted, but this was the way things had to be.

"I'm sorry," Tauram said softly. He smoothed out his palms and pressed them against his sides, trembling. "Please just listen to me."

Esmera's mouth hardened. She wasn't going to give him the chance to weave another lie that would lure her into a false sense of safety, of security, of love. She hadn't learned anything in life if not that.

"We are done, Tauram," was all she said. She pulled her robe tighter around her as she turned away from him, leaving him standing in the middle of the sitting room while she ran over the rectangles of sunlight falling through the windows. She reached the stairs and continued up them, somehow finding her way to her room despite her tear-blind eyes.

She collapsed onto her bed in a fit of sobs, and that was when she finally admitted to herself that the damage was done, that her cruel life had torn her away from the one person she thought she would never lose.

Esmera had never felt as much love as she felt last night. She should've expected that it wouldn't last, that it would wither into the pain that distorted her morning.