Please be warned: this chapter contains references and descriptions of physical and emotional abuse. Read with caution if you're sensitive to this kind of content. Thanks for your support 💜

"I must say, I didn't know you could scream like that," Tauram murmured against Esmera's neck.

For that moment, all she could think about was his lips on her skin, his hand resting on the small of her back, his leg that was wedged between hers. Then he pulled back, his sparkling, mischievous eyes demanding a reply from her.

"I didn't know that about myself either." Esmera bit her lip, looking away in the hope that breaking eye contact with him could dilute her traitorous blushing.

She knew she could scream in fear, in pain, but to do so in pleasure, in ecstasy, was something completely new to her. It was something she could never forget. The heat of the memory seared into her cheeks, into every inch of her flesh, and she didn't need to see it to know it was there.

Tauram, on the other hand, must've seen the heat or at least felt it rising through Esmera, because he tilted her face to his. "Well, I was into it." His eyes fluttered down to her mouth. He smirked. "Was it your way of telling me I'm the best you've ever had?"

Esmera rolled her eyes. "I'm not going to answer that because the truth is that you're the most insufferable I've ever had." She fixed her eyes on his chest in an attempt to slow the hot blood pounding through her ears, but it didn't help.

She would have to look away from him, maybe even leave Milatanur entirely just to catch her breath. Really, she had no hope of doing so when she was this close to him, but there was nowhere else she'd rather be.

Tauram must've known that he was right and Esmera was lying because he simply chuckled, drawing her in for a kiss she accepted too eagerly for someone who claimed to be annoyed by him. Her mouth lingered on his, tasting him, memorising the rush of his breaths so that she would never forget this night.

Esmera loved how annoying Tauram was. It was part of his persistent charm that had disarmed her and slowly dismantled the walls she had built when she swore she'd never let anyone get this close to her ever again. It was what had gained him her trust because his playful nature had told her she had nothing to fear.

She saw how true that was now, when she lay beside him now, bare, vulnerable with her adoration for him, a perfect target should he decide to fire at her, but he didn't.

He merely trailed one of his perfect, gentle hands along the curve of her breast then her ribcage as she lay against him, breathing in synchrony with him. She sighed at the simple pleasure. Then his fingers snagged on some part of her skin, and Esmera froze.

She knew what he had found. She knew what marred her there on her right side, just beneath the edge of her lowest rib.

Tauram eased the blanket down to Esmera's hips so he could look at her with the pale fairy lights illuminating her scar. It hadn't throbbed in days, not since she had arrived in Milatanur, but it did now when Tauram's eyes landed on it.

"Esmera, what happened here?" He frowned, brushing his thumb over the scar that would've remained hidden had she not let him undress her. Even so, she couldn't bring herself to regret any of it.

Esmera traced over the jagged circle etched into her mutilated skin. It had been such a big part of her life once, a reminder of why she had run from Stephan even when she missed him, even as she struggled to make ends meet on her own, but she might've forgotten about it if Tauram hadn't reminded her of it with his curiosity.

It looked worse than it was. The fairy lights highlighted the furrows, turned her skin cold as though she was a corpse and her flesh was rotting. She had come close that day, but the warmth of Tauram against her, of his hand on her waist reminded her that she was alive. She was one of the lucky women to have survived such an ordeal.

Esmera took a deep breath, and Tauram's solemn eyes remained on her even as she kept her gaze on her scar.

"This is where my husband stabbed me."

"You're married?" Tauram's eyes went wide. As if Esmera was poison ivy, he pulled his hand away from her. The space between their chests filled with cool night air as he withdrew from her.

"In name but nothing else." Esmera reached for Tauram but stopped herself, putting her arms around herself instead. She understood why he would want to stay away from her, and it wasn't her place to force him to do anything other than that. "I fled from my husband after he stabbed me. I couldn't afford a divorce, so I abandoned the marriage and went somewhere I could be safe."

It sounded rash when Esmera put it like that, as though she hadn't put much thought into it, which was exactly the case. The morning of that incident, she had still seen herself growing older with Stephan. The next, she had decided never to return to him.

Tauram was still staring at her, eyes wide with shock, as though he didn't know Esmera. As though she was the stranger he had met in his art museum even after everything that had happened between them since.

It was that look that broke Esmera's heart just when she thought she had put it back together. Her eyes itched with furious tears. She had done this to herself, to Tauram. She was so eager to be loved that she would do anything for it, even lie.

Esmera's lower lip trembled. She sensed Tauram's eyes burning into her, but she couldn't meet them, couldn't face the betrayal and disappointment she knew she would see in them. "I'm sorry. I should've told you before. I'm so sorry."

And then Esmera's pain and shame flooded from her eyes. She was alone in her distress, and it shouldn't be any other way. She deserved to flounder in this agony. She had deceived Tauram after he opened his home and his heart to her, and he had every right to walk away from her now that he knew the truth, that she couldn't be trusted with it.

She squeezed her eyes closed.

Esmera would've been devastated if he was the one telling her he was married after all the kisses they had shared, after all the soft, lingering glances, after tonight. She should've thought of that, of his feelings. She should've thought beyond herself, beyond a delicious, devious moment.

She wasn't a noblewoman worthy of being a queen. She wasn't the saviour of the kingdom. She was just a selfish marriage deserter who wanted more for herself than she deserved.

Maybe that was why Esmera had never told Tauram that she was married during one of their starlight dinners or mountain strolls. She had been afraid to lose him when that had always been inevitable.

Tauram's arms closing around Esmera startled her, wrung more tears from the eyes she thought had long run dry. "Hey, I'm not angry. Not at you, at least." He rested his chin on her head. "I'm just surprised. You aren't wearing a ring. You never speak of your husband. I had no idea that you're married."

"I know. I pawned my ring off to get some cash for rent just until I could find a job. I- I don't like talking about my husband. I'm sorry." Esmera huddled against Tauram. It was pathetic of her after she had lied to him, but he was the most solid person she had ever met, the only thing that had kept her from crumbling many times since she came to Milatanur.

He should be pushing her away, but he only held her closer, touching his lips to the top of her hair and releasing a fresh flood of tears from within her.

"I'm sorry," Esmera whispered against his chest, sniffling. "My marriage and everything that came out of it was a lot, and I was running from it. I shouldn't have, but I didn't know what else I could do. I didn't know how to fix it—"

"Shh." Tauram's arms tightened around her, and she sank into his embrace, selfish as she was, unable to do anything about it even as she berated herself inside her head.

He took a few deep, shaky breaths before speaking again. "Take me through it from the beginning, Esmera."

She frowned up at Tauram as he wiped her tears away with those thumbs that could create sunsets and mould deformed hearts back into shape. "The beginning?"

"The beginning of this story. If you want to talk about it, that is." Tauram smiled at her with soft eyes, even as she recognised that there was pain in his face, in the set of his mouth, in the lines on his forehead. "Talking about things helps sometimes."

Esmera rested her cheek against his heart, letting its rhythm calm her while she cast her eyes up to the fairy lights and draped sheets that formed the ceiling of the pillow fort.

The beginning was a long story away. Besides, Esmera didn't think Tauram would want to hear about the day she first met Stephan, about how they couldn't stop staring at each other, about how they had moved in together within a month of meeting. She knew she wouldn't like to hear anything of the sort if it involved Tauram and Ghallia. Instead, she started at the beginning of the very end.

She sighed. "He and I had been having problems for a while. I was sick of working myself to the bone every single day only for him to drink up my money. I gave him a chance, too many, in fact." She shook her head. If she had been the woman Milatanur had carved her into within one week back then, she may never have allowed it. Then again, the tears growing cool on her cheeks reminded her that she wasn't as different from the person she was then as she thought she was.

"When we got married, I was the one who had nothing to contribute. That was why I didn't mind taking care of him when I had a job and he didn't. but then he started to take advantage of it, of me." Esmera swallowed. "I sat him down one day, and we spoke about it. I told him I couldn't do this anymore. The easy solution was for him to stop drinking. He agreed."

Not without a fit, though. The kitchen cupboards, the window, Esmera where she had sat opposite Stephan...they had all been fair game, but it was only Esmera he had said should be more like his mother, more submissive. Only Esmera he had left on the floor when he said they'd both be better off if she was dead like his mother was too.

The morning after that, he said he would do as Esmera asked while he pressed ice to the bruise he had left on her cheek. She still wasn't sure whether he had done it because he loved her or because he didn't want her going to work with an obvious injury that may raise questions and compromise her ability to earn enough to finance his alcoholism.

"And then?" Tauram gazed at Esmera, his gaze intense with focus.

She wondered if he could tell that something was on her mind, that she was still hiding something from him. Maybe she'd share all of this someday, but not now. Not when she didn't even know how to understand it herself.

"That last day..." Esmera drew a trembling breath. "I came home from work to find him drunk out of his mind. The house was a mess. I kept a jewellery box that I used to gather my spare change. I thought I could save enough to go to music school someday." It had seemed a reasonable dream at the time, but now Esmera smiled bitterly at her naïveté. "I might have gotten there eventually if he didn't ransack our room and find the money. I was devastated. He had spent my dream on my nightmare. I lost my temper. I shouldn't have."

It was the first and only time Esmera raised her voice first. She should've known better. She should've known Stephan would never let her win a fight against him.

Tauram shook his head. "You had every right to be angry. He was the one who was in the wrong."

Esmera curled against Tauram. Her shoulders tensed as they had in that moment because, for the first time, she had steeled herself to tell Stephan exactly what she thought. Then Tauram was kissing it all away, reminding her that she no longer needed to fight like that anymore.

Esmera opened her eyes because it was easier than facing the chaos behind her closed lids, inside her mind. "I told him it wasn't fair for me to keep working to feed his alcohol habit when that left little to go around for our other needs and for the few things I wanted. We were supposed to be a couple, a unit, but I felt like I was the only one holding the household together. He got mad at me." She squeezed her eyes closed. "I was always making him mad."

"Setting boundaries shouldn't make someone mad, Esmera. It's an appropriate thing to do if you feel like you're being taken advantage of. He was the one who chose to misinterpret your intentions and blow up because of it."

It didn't feel that way at the time. Esmera had felt like a difficult wife who made Stephan's life miserable. At least, that was what he had said, and she had believed him. Shouldn't she be more grateful for everything he had done for her? For him giving her a home? For him loving her when she made it so hard for him?

Only now that Esmera was out of Stephan's web could she untangle herself from the pretty, delicate lies he had woven around her. If he loved her, he would've done what he did for her out of kindness or adoration, not to shackle her to a debt she never agreed to.

"I guess you're right." She smiled faintly at Tauram.

He couldn't be more different than Stephan. He had done what he could to take care of her without demanding any payments or promises, without taking whatever he wanted from her because he felt he was entitled to it.

What had Esmera done to deserve this man, a prince, a future king, who defended her so fiercely against a man she couldn't even protect herself from, who gave of his wealth and his heart without expecting anything in return?

Tauram said nothing, merely looped his arm over her back and gazed at her, his eyes cueing her to continue.

"I was leaving the room when he smashed one of his beer bottles against the wall." Esmera cleared her throat. It always closed up when she thought of this part of the story, as if Stephan was choking her but it was just the fear of him and for her life that had done so. "The shattering of the glass was so loud. To me, it sounded like the world was ending. Before I could turn around, he was there, pinning me against the wall and driving the jagged glass edges into me."

Esmera went lightheaded with panic as she relived that moment, the roughness of the hands that claimed to treasure her, the harshness of the mouth that hissed insults she couldn't hear through her agony, the unparalleled pain of the bottle as it sheared at her flesh.

She had screamed. Then she cried. Then apologised. Then begged. Stephan must not have heard her or maybe he didn't care because he didn't stop until she slipped from his grip, down the wall and to the floor, too weak to protest any longer.

"And then?" murmured Tauram against Esmera's hair, still cradling her even as she pulled him into the tornado that was her existence.

"He stumbled out of the room. He must've gone to bed. I don't know. I managed to drag myself to the neighbour's door before I passed out. I don't know for sure, but I think she called the ambulance because I woke up in the hospital after the emergency surgery that had sewn me up again."

Esmera often thought it was that near-death experience that had made her leave Stephan for good, but she might've gone back to him.

If it wasn't for the flowers her neighbour Sofie had left with a note that said "Esmera, you've been lovely, but this has to be goodbye. I never want to see you again because I know how stories like yours end. You deserve better, so go out and get it."

If it wasn't for the doctor who sat on the edge of her bed and told her that her husband was going to kill her if she didn't leave him.

So Esmera had done what she needed to do to survive, as she always had. She had fled and found herself alone in the world for the first time since she met Stephan.

Except for Jammas. Esmera was never completely alone because he visited her every morning without fail. She had never seen much of him except for flashes of his dark beak or flutters of his glittering green wings, but the gifts he left on her windowsill had always made her smile. As if he knew Esmera's predicament, he always left the sparkling stones and whispering flowers where Stephan would never find them and sell them for alcohol money.

If only Esmera had been as wise as her familiar. If only she had seen the same truth.