Sunlight spilled over them, setting the scene alight with a beauty so precise it felt cruel. Scarlett’s knees trembled. The revelation landed like a hammer: his affection for her had always been transactional. His marriage to Rowena was not resigned. It was chosen, intimate and real in a way Scarlett had never been.
She clutched the iron-gate until her knuckles whitened. Every doubt and struggle she had nursed shattered in that single perfect tableau. She had imagined bursting through, confronting him, collapsing into sobs. Instead, she was nailed to the spot—frozen, breathless, stripped of the ability even to scream.
Tristan’s words had been true. Ryan didn’t want her. Or maybe, he had never wanted her at all. The memory of the water prison clawed at her—the choking darkness, the cold, her faith in him the only thing that had kept her afloat.
Now, that faith seemed pathetic. The world drained of color, reduced to a washed-out gray. Her hearing faded into a high, shrill ringing.
She remembered the night before the mission when, curled against his knee, she’d asked in a voice so small she thought he wouldn’t hear, “Will you marry me someday?”