_Kaelen’s POV_

The wedding night was supposed to mean something.

That was what I had told myself, in the weeks leading up to it, that once everything was formalized, once the ceremony was done and the dissolution was behind us and the new Chapter had officially begun, things would settle. The restlessness would stop. The specific discomfort that had been living in my chest since Rowena walked out of the banquet hall would find somewhere else to be.

It hadn’t.

I was sitting in the chair by the window with a glass of whiskey I had been working on for two hours, which meant I was drinking slowly and deliberately, which meant I was trying to stay functional enough to think clearly and failing at the goal anyway.

The room was so quiet, thankfully.

Virella had gone to prepare for bed an hour ago. She hadn’t said anything about the glass or the chair or the fact that I had barely spoken since we came upstairs. She was good at that, at identifying the shape of a problem and deciding the right moment to address it wasn’t now.

I appreciated it. I also found it, tonight, somehow insufficient.

“You’re thinking about Rowena?” Shade asked in a pathetic voice.

I didn’t answer.

•You’ve been thinking about her since she walked out of the hall. You thought about her through the rest of the ceremony. You thought about her through dinner and the speeches and the moment Virella laughed at something Pierre’s second said and you realized you hadn’t been listening. A pause. You’re thinking about her now.” Shade continued yapping.

I took a drink.

“This is your wedding night. Focus on it.”

“I know that.” I gritted out in irritation.

“And yet you’re sitting alone in a chair drinking whiskey and thinking about a woman who signed her name on a dissolution document without her hand shaking and walked away from you without looking back.”

I set the glass down harder than I meant to.

The door then opened. Virella stood in the frame in the soft light, hair down, expression composed.

“Come to bed,” she said, gently. It was an invitation, not a demand.

I looked at her.

She was beautiful. She was capable and sharp and she had never once in our entire acquaintance been boring. She had saved my life twice and I had meant every promise I’d made her.

I got up and crossed the room.

But when I reached the door I stopped, and I didn’t go in, and I stood in the frame and looked at her and felt the emptiness of a man who is standing exactly where he chose to be and understanding, fully and too late, the cost of the choice

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“Give me a few more minutes,” I said instead.

Something moved across Virella’s face briefly.

She nodded and stepped back and the door closed between us.

I went back to the chair.

I leaned my head back and looked at the ceiling and thought about Rowena’s face when she said I don’t want you, her voice was steady and final and without a single crack in it.

I sat with the whiskey, hoping that Virella would just go to bed without me. My body wasn’t active tonight.

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_Rowena’s POV_

The ancestral hall was at the back of the Ashthorne estate.

I had forgotten how far it was from the main house, far enough to feel separate, like a space that existed outside the ordinary spaces of the household. My grandfather had built it when my father was young, and my mother had added to it after my father died, and now it held the names of everyone the Ashthorne family had lost in the order they had been lost.

My father. My brothers. My mother. And before them, others I knew only from photographs and stories.

I went at midnight, when the house was quiet and I could be certain of being alone.

I had changed into something simple, dark trousers, a plain shirt, nothing ceremonial. I carried a small candle because the hall had no electricity, by design, and the candlelight was enough to read the names by.

I knelt on the mat in front of my father’s tablet first.

The grief that came when I saw his name was different from what I expected. Not sharp though, the sharpness had worn down over years of daily absence. More like a pressure, constant and deep, the heaviness of everything he had not been there to see.

“I’m home,” I said quietly. The candle flame moved slightly in the still air.

I didn’t know exactly when I started crying. It happened the way it always happened with grief, not all at once, but gradually, the way water finds its level.

“I tried to do what you would have done,” I said. “I stayed. I kept my word. I held things together for people who didn’t deserve it and I did it because you always said the Ashthorne name meant something and I didn’t want to be the one who let it down.” I pressed the back of my hand to my mouth for a moment. “I think I confused holding on with being strong for a long time.”

My brothers’ tablets were beside my father’s. I looked at their names and thought about them the way I always did, as they had been, not as they were in the absence. Loud and competitive and endlessly certain they were right about everything, which they usually weren’t.

“I’m going to do it properly now,” I said. “The Ashthorne Group. The family. Everything you left.” I straightened slightly. “I’m going to make it worth something again. I promise.”

My mother’s tablet was last.

I sat with her longer than the others. The candle had burned down a third of the way by the time I lifted my head.

“I’m not angry with you,” I said. “About the marriage. I know why you did it.” I paused. “I just wish you’d told me about Alice.”

The hall was still.

I blew out a breath, wiped my face, and sat quietly for another few minutes until the grief had done what it needed to do and the steadiness came back.

Then I stood, picked up my candle, and walked back toward the house.

The path from the ancestral hall ran along the east side of the estate, past the garden wall and the old gate, including the section of the house where the guest rooms were.

Alice had stayed the night.

Her room was on the ground floor, the blue guest room, the one closest to the east entrance, which was also the entrance closest to the main road. I had thought nothing of the room assignment when Celeste arranged it. I thought about it now.

I was passing the window when I saw the shadow.

Not inside the room. Outside, on the narrow path between the guest room window and the garden wall. A figure, moving low and quietly.

I stopped.

The candle was in my hand. I brought it down, cupping the flame, reducing the light.

“Who’s that, Kyra?”