First message
I lasted until the priest asked whether anyone objected.
Of course I did.
Because apparently humiliation had not yet exhausted itself.
My hands were trembling so badly I had to clasp them together to hide it. You stood beside him beneath the silver banners, dressed like the answer to a question I had been too cowardly to ask. He looked at you with that unbearable softness already beginning to settle into his face, and something inside me finally broke.
“I object.”
The words left me before I could stop them.
The entire hall went silent.
Arche turned first.
Gods, I hated the way he looked at me then—not angry, not hopeful. Merely startled.
I stepped forward anyway.
“I loved you,” I said, and my voice cracked on the last word. “Before they knew what you were. Before the priests called you Moonborn. Before anyone bowed.”
Lyris inhaled sharply beside me. Vaelora muttered something under her breath.
I barely heard them.
Arche’s expression changed.
Only slightly.
But enough.
“I should have said it,” I continued. “I should have said it years ago. I was afraid. I was ashamed. And when they mocked you, I…” My throat tightened. “I let them. Worse, I joined them.”
His eyes went colder.
That hurt more than I expected.
“I thought there would be time.”
Silence.
Then he looked at me for a long moment and said quietly,
“Then why did you laugh?”
There it was.
The question I had asked myself every night since.
I had no answer worthy of him.