Elara’s POV

"You already have a new love! Then why did you come find me?"

The rain swallowed my scream whole. It pounded against the cobblestones, against my skull, against the arms that refused to release me. I thrashed harder. My bare feet skidded on wet stone. My elbows drove backward into his ribs. Nothing worked. Kaelen’s grip only tightened.

"Listen to me—"

"I SAW you!" I twisted violently in his arms. Rain streamed down my face, into my mouth, choking me between sobs. "At the restaurant weeks ago! She was touching your arm and laughing and you looked at her like—like she belonged there—"

"That was Thalia’s birthday party."

The words cut through the roar of the storm. I went still.

"What?"

"Thalia." His chest heaved against my back. His voice was ragged, barely controlled. "Sir Cassian and Lailey’s daughter. It was a children’s birthday party, Ela. At a restaurant. Every child there had a parent present. Every single one."

My struggling faltered. The rain hammered relentlessly against my skin, so cold it burned.

"Lyra was the only child without a mother."

The sentence landed like a fist to my sternum.

"So yes," Kaelen continued, and his voice cracked on the word. "I asked Sylvia to attend. Because my daughter was sitting at a table surrounded by other children and their mothers, and she kept looking at the empty chair beside her. She asked me—" His breath hitched. "She asked me why everyone else had a mommy and she didn’t."

I stopped breathing.

"Sylvia Vance is a court attendant. She coordinates household functions. That is ALL she is. She came to a child’s birthday party because I couldn’t bear to watch my daughter’s face break one more time."

My knees weakened. The fight bled out of me like water through open fingers. But the pain didn’t leave. It just changed shape.

"They love her," I whispered. "Valerius smiled at her. Lyra ran to her. They didn’t—they don’t—"

"Because she was THERE." Kaelen spun me around to face him. His hands gripped my shoulders. Rain ran in rivers down his face, darkening his black hair to ink, but his dark gold eyes burned through the downpour with an intensity that made my breath stutter. "She was there, Ela. Day after day. Picking them up. Helping with meals. Being present. Of course they grew attached. They’re children. They attached to whoever showed up."

The implication hung between us, sharp as a blade.

And you didn’t.

He didn’t say it. He didn’t have to.

"That’s not fair," I choked.

"No. It’s not." His jaw was clenched so tight the muscles stood out beneath his rain-slicked skin. "None of this is fair. It wasn’t fair when I woke up to an empty bed and a letter that ripped my heart out. It wasn’t fair when Valerius asked me every night for three years where you went. It wasn’t fair when Lyra said her first word and it was ’mama’ and you weren’t there to hear it."

Each sentence was a knife. Precise. Merciless. Driven deep.

"But Sylvia Vance is not your replacement." His fingers dug into my shoulders. "No one is your replacement. No one COULD be."

"Then why—" My voice splintered. "Why did you lock me in that hotel room? Why did you trap me like a prisoner if I mean so much to you?"

Something fractured behind his eyes. The emperor’s composure crumbled. What I saw underneath was not authority. Not control. It was raw, unfiltered terror.

"Because I found you." His voice dropped to something barely above a whisper, and the rain nearly stole it. "After all this time. I finally found you. And every second—every single second since—I have been paralyzed with the fear that if I look away, if I let go for even a second, or a day, you will disappear again."

His hands slid from my shoulders to my face. His palms cupped my jaw, tilting my head up. Rain cascaded between us.

"I searched for you for three years." His thumbs traced my cheekbones. "Every day. Every city. Every lead that went nowhere. Every dead end that made me want to tear the world apart. I sent soldiers and scouts and spies and I STILL couldn’t find you."

His forehead dropped against mine. His breath was hot against my rain-cold lips.

"So yes. I locked the door. I locked it because I am terrified, Ela. Because the last time you walked away from me, I lost three years of my life to a darkness I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. And I cannot—I WILL not—survive that again."

The confession broke something inside me. A wall. A dam. Something I’d built brick by brick over the years to keep myself from feeling exactly this—the devastating, annihilating pull of this man.

"Kaelen—"

He kissed me.

Not gently. Not tenderly. This was a collision. His mouth crashed against mine with the force of years of anguish behind it. His hands tangled in my soaked hair, pulling me closer, closer, as though he could absorb me through his skin. I tasted rain and brandy and desperation and something darker—grief distilled into hunger. 𝕗𝕣𝐞𝐞𝘄𝐞𝚋𝚗𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹.𝚌𝕠𝚖

My fists pushed against his chest. Once. Twice.

Then my fingers curled into the drenched fabric of his shirt and pulled.

I kissed him back.

It was involuntary. Like breathing. Like bleeding. My body betrayed every rational thought my mind had built. His tongue swept against mine, hot in contrast to the freezing rain, and a sound escaped my throat—half sob, half surrender—that the storm mercifully drowned out.

His arm locked around my waist, lifting me onto my toes. My back arched against him. The rain pounded over us both, brutal and cold, but everywhere his body pressed against mine there was fire. His mouth moved from my lips to my jaw, trailing heat down my neck, and I gasped against the downpour.

"I don’t have a new love." The words were a growl against my throat. "There is no one else. There has never been anyone else. Not for a single moment."

My nails dug into his shoulders. I was shaking—from cold, from emotion, from the sheer overwhelm of being held by him again after so long.

"I can’t stay," I breathed. The words tasted like ash. "Valerius—he hates me. You heard what he said. And Lyra—she hid behind your leg. She was afraid of me. I’m their mother and they’re afraid of me, Kaelen."

He pulled back just enough to look at me. Rain streamed between us. His dark gold eyes were glassy. Red-rimmed.

"They don’t hate you."

"You heard him scream at me. He said I’m not his mother. He said I’m a stranger."

"He is angry. He is hurt. He is a child who has spent three years missing you so much he couldn’t say your name without crying. That is not hatred, Ela. That is love with nowhere to go."

A sob tore free. I pressed my forehead against his collarbone. His arms wrapped around me—not restraining now, but holding. Cradling. As though I were something precious and shattered that he was trying to keep from falling apart.

"I don’t deserve them," I whispered into his chest.

"That’s not for you to decide."

"Kaelen—"

"Mommy?"

The voice was small. Thin. Nearly swallowed by the rain.

My entire body went rigid.

I lifted my head from Kaelen’s chest. He turned at the same moment.

There, on the front lawn, standing in the full fury of the downpour—

Lyra. Her loose braids hung in dripping ropes against her small shoulders. Her nightgown was plastered to her tiny frame, translucent with rain. She was shivering. Her arms were wrapped around herself. And her eyes—those wide, luminous eyes—were locked on me.

Beside her stood Valerius. Silent. Soaked. His glasses were streaked with water, nearly opaque. His dark curls lay flat against his forehead. He didn’t speak. He didn’t move. He just stood there in the rain, watching us with an expression I couldn’t read through the storm.

But Lyra—

Lyra took one small, trembling step forward.

"Mommy?"