ARIA’S POV

Kael went still the second he heard the voice.

I felt it before I saw it, the way his hand tightened around mine, the way his shoulders pulled back slightly, like something in him had just locked into place.

I looked up at him and his face had changed.

I turned back to Ewan.

The man in the wheelchair looked smaller than I expected.

That was the first thing I noticed. I’d built Ewan Roman into something large in my head over the months, this cold, immovable force who had spent years making his own son feel like he wasn’t worth the effort of being loved.

The way Kael talked about him, or more accurately the way Kael never talked about him, had filled in a picture of someone almost untouchable.

But the man being pushed slowly along the garden path didn’t look untouchable. He looked old. Tired. The kind of tired that had settled into his bones and decided to stay.

There was a blanket across his lap and a hospital bracelet around his wrist and his eyes, when they found us, were sharp in a way that seemed almost out of place on the rest of him.

He told his assistant to stop.

Kael didn’t say anything for a moment. The silence was tight.

Then, very quietly: "What are you doing here."

Not a question. A wall going up.

I pressed my hand against his arm. He didn’t look at me but I felt him register it.

Ewan’s gaze moved between us. Whatever he saw in Kael’s face, he didn’t look away from it.

"I know," he said. His voice was rougher than I expected. Lower. "I know this is a terrible time. I know I have no right to be standing here in front of either of you." A pause. "I only came to do one thing." 𝕗𝐫𝐞𝕖𝕨𝐞𝗯𝚗𝕠𝘃𝐞𝚕.𝐜𝗼𝚖

The garden was quiet around us.

Somewhere in the hospital behind us, a door opened and closed. A light wind moved through the small trees along the path.

"I came to apologize," Ewan said. "To both of you."

I stared at him.

I genuinely could not help it. This man. This man who had made Kael feel worthless for most of his life, who had picked favorites and withheld love like it was something that needed to be earned and then moved the target every time Kael got close to it.

This man who had tried his level best to quietly pull Kael and me apart because I wasn’t what he had decided was appropriate. He was sitting here in a hospital garden in a wheelchair and he was apologizing.

I looked at Kael again.

His face was doing something I hadn’t seen it do before. It still wasn’t the anger I was expecting. It was harder to name than anger. There was something old in it.

Something that looked like a question he had stopped letting himself ask a very long time ago, surfacing now whether he wanted it to or not.

He was looking at his father and his jaw was tight and his eyes were very still and I could not tell, in that moment, if he was about to say something or simply never speak again.

I turned back to Ewan.

"With respect," I said, and I kept my voice even because losing my temper in a hospital garden was not something I was going to do tonight, "an apology isn’t a magic word. It doesn’t undo anything. It doesn’t take back a single year of what you put him through."

I held Ewan’s gaze. "And if you’re sitting here thinking that saying sorry is the thing that makes all of it go away, I need you to understand right now that it isn’t. Earning anything from Kael after everything you’ve done is not going to be quick and it’s not going to be simple, and one conversation in a garden at night is not the beginning and end of it."

Ewan didn’t flinch.

He didn’t get defensive either, which I hadn’t expected. He just sat with what I said and let it settle.

"I know that," he said. "I came here knowing that." He looked down at his hands for a moment, then back up. "But it felt like the only place to start."

I looked at him.

And I hated, a little bit, that he meant it.

The cold, removed person I’d expected wasn’t sitting in front of me. Whatever mask Ewan Roman had worn for most of his life, it wasn’t on right now.

He just looked like a man who had woken up in a hospital bed and understood, maybe for the first time, or maybe just too late, what he had thrown away.

It was almost strange to look at. Almost uncomfortable. A person you’ve decided is a villain has no business looking that human.

I glanced at Kael to say something, and Kael spoke first.

"Your apology isn’t accepted."

Four words. Flat and quiet and completely without heat. That was almost the worst part of it, there was no anger in his voice. Just a door, shut.

Ewan’s face moved. Just slightly. Just enough.

Kael looked at his father and he didn’t raise his voice and he didn’t look away.

"I spent years," he said, "thinking about what it would feel like. If you ever said it." He paused. Something shifted at the back of his eyes. "I don’t feel the way I thought I would."

The garden felt very still.

I held his hand and I didn’t say anything because there was nothing to say. I just sat there and I heard what was underneath those words and it broke my heart a little.

Not for Ewan. For the boy who had waited and waited for a father who kept finding reasons not to show up, and who had finally stopped waiting by learning how to want nothing at all.

Ewan opened his mouth.

Kael looked at me. "We’re going in."

He started pushing the wheelchair before his father could find whatever words he was reaching for. I looked back once, over my shoulder. Ewan was still sitting there on the path, watching us go, and the expression on his face was something I didn’t particularly want to keep looking at.

I faced forward.