"I'm so sorry that you endured that all alone." Tauram's arms wrapped Esmera tighter.

If it was anyone else's embrace, it might've been suffocating, but it was his. His closeness brought a certain comfort, a familiar security even though Esmera couldn't recall where she knew it from.

Maybe it was from those days preceding her conscious memories, the first few months of her life she spent in Milatanur. Had she met Tauram then? Had she been in his presence long enough to learn how it felt?

The heaviness in Tauram's eyes brought Esmera back to the present, where she was finally facing those parts of the past she had fled from.

"Was that the first time he hurt you?" The overhead fairy lights shadowed Tauram's face. Maybe that was why the angles of his jaw seemed so harsh, why his mouth appeared so tense.

Yes, Esmera wanted to say, but Tauram's eyes studied her so intently, seemed to look into the core of her being, that they forced the truth from her at the last moment.

"No." The word stuck in Esmera's throat, the first time she hadn't lied when asked this question.

Facing Stephan with a family or anyone else behind her wouldn't have made any difference because Esmera had lied to everyone who asked if everything between the two of them was fine, if she was in trouble.

Esmera had lied to anyone who could help her to save face, to protect Stephan from the law and the judgment he deserved from everyone who knew him. She had worn long sleeves to hide her bruises and covered them with foundation if they could still be seen.

Stephan may be the culprit, but Esmera was his accomplice.

Tauram's eyes went wide even as his mouth hardened, like a stick that Esmera could snap. "How many times were there before that?"

Esmera looked over Tauram's shoulder at the bookshelf behind him because she couldn't bear to look into those eyes that had her spilling all her secrets from within herself, that would surely judge her.

"I lost count. It was a few times a month, probably." It didn't sound like a lot, definitely not enough to wound a woman stronger than Esmera, to scar her with fear, but it was an ongoing, exhausting cycle.

Tension, hurt, repair, decline. Rinse and repeat. Stephan may not have hit her every day, but she was always afraid that he would.

"Esmera...that's awful." Tauram's fingers stroked over her spine, and in that moment, he was the only thing holding her together.

She couldn't help but sigh at his touch. He made everything better, even the worst of her, of her life. Maybe this was the closest a broken woman could be to being fixed.

"That was wrong of him, you know." Tauram rested his lips on Esmera's hair.

She would say anything to make him keep touching her, to keep him telling her things that made her feel better, but she also wanted to be honest. She owed Tauram that after every secret she had kept from him.

"I want to agree with you, but I know too much about him." Esmera sighed against Tauram's chest.

She floated in the rhythm of his beating heart to distract herself from the tears that always came into her eyes when she thought about this story.

"When he was a child, he watched his father beat his mother to death. He ended up alone on the streets after his father went to prison. He learned to be ruthless and violent to survive. I can't blame him for turning out the way he did."

Esmera might've been the same if she hadn't known the minimal care of orphanages and the meagre security of foster homes. She might've become as ferocious if she had ever been as desperate to survive as Stephan had been.

Tauram tilted Esmera's chin up to his, holding her eyes in that way that could convince her of anything. "You also had it hard growing up. You never knew your parents, just strangers who would never care for you as if you were their own, but look at how you grew up. You're kind and compassionate, and you don't pass on the pain you've experienced." His gaze flitted down to her lips before returning to her eyes, as firm with kind sternness as before. "The pain you still carry inside you."

Esmera gave him a wry smile. "Is it that obvious?"

She thought she had been hiding it so well, that her smiles, and deflections had managed to convince Tauram that she was all right. Maybe he had been watching her too closely to be fooled.

"It takes one to know one, right?" Tauram could barely manage a smile. This was something even he couldn't make into a joke.

"I guess." Esmera rested her head against his chest. She looked out at the snow-capped mountains that listened to her as closely as Tauram did, their starlit peaks like sparkling eyes as enchanting as his was.

It was a beautiful night to leave her past behind.

"That's why you became a barista, isn't it?" Tauram frowned, even as his lovely fingers traced pleasurable patterns on Esmera's shoulder blades. "You left your home with nothing to your name because you were running from him."

Esmera nodded, her cheeks burning with shame even though they shouldn't, even though there were worse things she hadn't shared with Tauram about herself. "Work was rare at best, and the only jobs I could get were from his friends. Waitressing and bartending wasn't what I wanted to do with my life, but it paid the bills." Esmera sighed.

It wasn't the bills that were important. It was Stephan's insatiable thirst for alcohol. It was why he persuaded his friends to employ Esmera at their businesses while he refused their job offers. Two incomes would've made things a lot easier, but it would've given him less time to drink.

"When I left him, I cut all contact, and the only thing I could do was make my way alone." Esmera's voice shook.

It had been the most terrifying thing she did in Arkōsāra, leaving behind the closest thing she had ever known to stability. What Milatanur and Tauram offered felt steadier despite the villain they were due to confront the next day, and that put everything Esmera and Stephan once had into perspective.

It had been comfortable but never safe, never stable.

"You're not alone, Esmera. Not anymore." Tauram studied her, his eyes soft as he brushed back a curl that had fallen over her cheek.

Esmera looked at him through her tears. She didn't deserve this. She didn't deserve him. She didn't deserve anyone.

"I let him do this to me." Esmera choked out.

It would've been easy to walk out the first time Stephan hit her. It was soon into their marriage, barely five months after they had met. She could've ended it right there, saved herself years of pain, heartbreak, tears, terror.

But she hadn't. The flashes of her courage always ended badly, always aggravated him more. She would've had to leave him to end his torture, but she couldn't because she was weak, needy, desperate.

"Don't be too hard on yourself." Tauram rested his cheek on Esmera's head while her throat tightened.

It had been easy to see herself as a helpless victim, a blameless sufferer of Stephan's cruelty. At least until she escaped him and saw that freedom had been in her hands the whole time. If only she had been bold enough to pursue it sooner.

"Esmera." Tauram lowered his face to hers, brushing his thumb over her lips. She knew that his power was to render himself invisible to others' eyes, but the look he gave her made her wonder whether he could read her mind. Or maybe he knew what she was thinking because he also knew what it was like to blame himself for everything that had gone wrong in his life.

He leaned in and kissed her gently, distracting her from her anguish with the perfection of him. "My favourite woman in the world told me that we shouldn't blame ourselves for being hurt by others when we chose to love them and believe the best of them. They chose their actions. They're responsible for their cruelty."

Esmera closed her eyes, feeling Tauram's words on her lips as much as she heard them. She couldn't help but smile. She was the one who had told him that.

"Not so easy to do when you're the one who needs to do it, right?"

"No. It's easier to be objective about someone else's pain than your own." Esmera opened her eyes and lowered them from Tauram's face to his collarbone, which was somehow no less beautiful.

Esmera Finnaaz, she scolded herself. Get a grip.

"I know what you mean." Tauram picked up the curl that rested against her breast, thoughtful even as every twirl of his finger in Esmera's hair made it impossible for her to think. "It'll take some time, but perhaps we can get there together eventually. To a place of healing."

"I like the sound of that." Being with Tauram had already helped Esmera process what had happened to her and continue forward even as she hadn't exactly moved on.

It was enough for now, enough for her to wrap her hands in his hair and draw his mouth to hers. He took hold of her curls and tilted her head back to kiss her from her mouth down her throat and to the notch between her collarbones. She sighed, surrendering to the sensation of him.

"You know you're safe here, right?" Tauram whispered against Esmera's skin. "He will never find you in Milatanur. Besides, marriages originating in Arkōsāra aren't valid in Milatanur, so he has no claim to you. If he thinks he does, my palace has dungeons that I'm looking forward to using for the first time."

"He would be an idiot to mess with you." Esmera held Tauram there, feeling her pulse speed up while hoping he didn't.

"He would be. Messing with you is now messing with me." Tauram's firmness showed in his voice. Only he could speak like a monarch with his hair so ruffled, his bare chest pressed against Esmera's, with his legs tangled in hers. He didn't need a crown or a throne or a title to make him a king.

Esmera kissed him again before drawing the soft covers tighter around herself and straightening the pillow where it had dislodged beneath her head. She was safe here, safe enough to lie back and stare at the ceiling without fear of Stephan. "You know, I'm glad that my marriage is invalid because that means I technically haven't made an adulterer of the law-abiding Prince Tauram."

He looked down at Esmera, smiling wryly. "You have made me a rule-breaker many times over, Esmera Finnaaz."

"Oh?" She raised an eyebrow as she propped herself up on her elbow beside him.

He studied her for a moment, his lips parting in a way that made her feel as though she was as exquisite to him as he was to her. "Remember when we asked Anjarah to embellish the paperwork at SUAF so you could claim Jammas without anyone knowing you're alive and back in Milatanur?"

Esmera couldn't resist a little grin as she pecked Tauram's mouth. "That's...what?" —she pretended to count in her mind— "one rule you've broken in your entire life, Your Highness?"

"One is more than none, which was my total pre-Esmera rule-break count." Tauram grinned, and it lit up her night like nothing else could. "I didn't know who you were when we met, but I somehow knew that you would change my world." He let out a breath, releasing his joviality with it and turning solemn again.

"By being a bad influence, you mean?" Esmera tilted her head.

"On the contrary." Tauram's arm curled over her waist. "Esmera Finnaaz, you are the only good thing in my life, the only thing I haven't ruined yet. I would break laws, bargain with gods just to maintain that. I would become whatever you needed or wanted even though I know how dangerous that would be to my temptations."

"Tauram, I..." Esmera blinked, washed away by the intensity of his confession. She wasn't as good at epic speeches as he was, but surely she could express herself. "I...I love you."

"My darling Esmera." Tauram pulled her close to him, his embrace painstakingly gentle. "That's not something you should say to the man who broke the first promise he ever made to you."

Esmera frowned at him. "What promise?"

"It wasn't technically to you," said Tauram, his eyes distant as if he hadn't even heard Esmera, as if he was staring off into some faraway corner of their shared past that she couldn't remember. "It was to Givan."

Esmera looped her arm over his chest. "You're talking about our betrothal again, aren't you?"

"I am." Tauram dropped a quick kiss on her forehead. "I'll be back now." He pushed off the covers and stood.

Esmera's eyes followed him out of the conservatory, admiring his flawless form as much as she wondered where he was going.

Esmera heard him return before she saw him, sensed his soft feet kicking off the floors as he descended the stairs and crossed the sitting room to the conservatory.

She sat up when Tauram slid back under the blanket they had scavenged from the guest room. For the first time, she noticed the pink primroses embroidered on the white duvet cover. She traced along them with her fingernails while Tauram held out a photo frame before her.

Contained by the gleaming gold edges was a photograph of two boys sitting on their haunches on a lush green lawn. Both wore white tunics of slightly different styles that told Esmera they hailed from different parts of Milatanur.

Esmera recognised Givan instantly, with his familiar brown curls and dark, gleaming eyes. It took her a second longer to piece together the narrow eyes, black hair, and cheeky smile of the little boy beside him.

"You haven't changed a bit." Esmera leaned into Tauram's side. She looked between his face and the photo. The resemblance was unmistakable.

"I shall graciously accept that as a compliment." Tauram smiled down at her faintly.

She kissed his shoulder. She had meant it as a compliment. After the betrayals he had lived through, after the loss of almost everyone he loved, he had still somehow retained his youthful spark when Esmera, seven years younger than him, had long forsaken hers.

"So, you two were friends, then?" She tilted her head towards the photograph.

"As thick as thieves. That's what our mothers used to say when they thought we couldn't hear them." Tauram gazed down at the image, eyes wistful yet soft with affection.

Esmera couldn't help but smile. She could just imagine the mischief they had gotten up to, a young future king and his would-be general. Their beaming faces in the photograph spoke of their unburdened consciences, their unawareness of the ruthlessness of their fates.

It sent a pang through Esmera to think of the devastation they had faced in the months after that photograph was taken, of how she had been unable to protect them the way they had tried to do for her.

She glanced up at Tauram, who had been silent for longer than she was used to. He met her gaze for just a second before turning back to the photo.

"This was taken on the day my parents and I came to the Finnaaz Estate to finalise our betrothal. As young as we were, Givan and I understood what that meant for our families, each other, and you." Tauram took a breath. "He made me swear to take good care of his sister. I promised I would, no matter what happened." Tauram squeezed his eyes closed.

Esmera's eyes prickled again at the thought of this little boy who had looked out for her more than anyone else she had ever known, only to be rewarded with a quick, cruel death.

"And I let him down, Esmera." Tauram shook his head, his eyes still closed. "What kind of a man goes back on an oath made to his dead friend?"

Esmera weaved her fingers through Tauram's. "I think Givan would've forgiven you if he knew of everything that had happened with Ruagu and how you were forced to flee Milatanur. If he could know how you've gone out of your way to take care of me since I arrived here. He certainly would if he could see us now."

"Well, I'm not sure he'd be too thrilled if he saw us now." Tauram cleared his throat. "As in, right now."

Esmera blinked, not catching his meaning. He trailed a finger along the inside of her bare thigh, reminding her that there was nothing between them, nothing to separate her skin from his.

Her cheeks reddened. If Givan had been protective of her all those years ago, he'd definitely be the same way now, even when it came to his childhood friend.

"You know what I mean." Esmera elbowed Tauram, who she felt sure was smirking at her blushing. "I think Givan would be happy to know that we found our way to each other. That we're okay despite everything."

"I hope so. I am certainly doing my utmost to mend my broken promises and redeem myself." Tauram smiled at Esmera, squeezing her hand.

"I thought it was because you liked me." She cocked her head.

"Touché." Tauram laughed, pressing a kiss to Esmera's mouth before holding her close to his side.

They remained like that, staring at the photo.

Esmera rested her head on Tauram's shoulder. She remained quiet as a memorial to the brother who had died for her, who she would never know, who would never get to see his family unite with that of the friend he had so adored. She kept silent in tribute to a past she wouldn't return to and a marriage she was grateful to have survived.