I carefully sat up in the bed, adjusting my position and arranging the pillows behind me until I found something reasonably comfortable. Then I looked down at my hands, watching my fingers fidget nervously with the edge of the bedsheet, twisting and untwisting the fabric in repetitive motions. How was I supposed to talk about this? Where should I even begin such a difficult, painful conversation? The words felt stuck somewhere in my throat, refusing to arrange themselves into coherent sentences.
I genuinely didn't know. So after several moments of internal debate and mounting anxiety, I decided to simply abandon any attempt at careful phrasing or diplomatic buildup. I would just let it all out in the open—the facts, all of them, laid bare without embellishment or careful framing.
"Katherine confessed her feelings to me," I said aloud, forcing the words out before I could lose my nerve again.
I was so frightened of Arvid's potential reaction, so worried about what I might see on his face, that I initially kept my gaze fixed firmly downward on my hands. But then I caught myself engaging in that cowardice and deliberately raised my eyes to meet his, refusing to hide from this conversation or its consequences.
"She told me that she loves me," I continued, my voice steadier now that I had started. "Romantically. Not as a friend or a loyal servant, but as someone who wanted... more. But I don't see her that way at all. I never have. She's a dear friend, someone I care about deeply, but there's no romantic attraction on my part. None whatsoever."
I paused, trying to organize my thoughts before continuing.
"After her confession, I became intensely self-conscious around her," I explained. "Every interaction suddenly felt weighted with meaning I hadn't intended, every kind word or gesture of affection seemed like it might be misinterpreted as encouragement. It was uncomfortable and exhausting. But more than that, I realized she was suffering too. Loving someone who doesn't see you the same way, who can't reciprocate those feelings no matter how much they might want to—that can't possibly be easy. It must be a special kind of torture, actually."
I took a deep breath, steeling myself to explain the decision I had made.
"That's why I decided to send her away," I admitted. "Not because I was angry with her or wanted to punish her for confessing. But because I thought that maintaining distance, putting physical space and time between us, might help her move past those feelings. That maybe if she went back to Draga, back to familiar places and people, she could start to heal and eventually find someone who could love her the way she deserved to be loved."
I looked at Arvid carefully, watching for his reaction. He remained silent for perhaps a full minute, clearly processing this new information and considering its implications. His face was thoughtful but not upset, contemplative rather than judgmental.
"I see," he finally said, his voice low and measured. "Well, that doesn't come as much of a surprise to me, honestly."
I blinked at him, startled by that response. I had been expecting... I wasn't sure what exactly. Anger, perhaps, or at least some degree of upset at not being told immediately. But certainly not this calm acceptance.
"You are an extraordinarily lovable woman, Rhia," Arvid continued, a gentle smile touching his eyes even though his mouth remained relatively neutral. "Kind, strong, beautiful, compassionate—you possess countless qualities that would naturally attract people to you. So it's not surprising that even a fellow woman would fall in love with you. These things happen. The heart doesn't always follow convenient or socially acceptable paths."
He paused, his expression becoming slightly more serious.
"But I'm confident she wasn't planning to act on those feelings inappropriately or try to undermine our relationship, correct?" he asked, though his tone suggested he already knew the answer. "She simply felt what she felt and couldn't help confessing it, but she would have respected your boundaries?"
"No, she absolutely wasn't planning anything like that," I confirmed quickly. "She just... needed to tell me the truth. And then she was willing to simply continue as we had been, even knowing her feelings wouldn't be returned. Which somehow felt worse."
I struggled to articulate why that had been so difficult.
"If I had kept her by my side while knowing the full truth of her feelings," I explained slowly, "I felt like I would be taking advantage of her emotions. Using her affection for my own convenience without giving anything back. She would have continued serving me faithfully, continued caring for me, continued putting my needs above her own—all while suffering silently because she loved someone who could never love her back. That realization made me profoundly uncomfortable. And the constant feeling of being on edge, of monitoring every word and action to make sure I wasn't inadvertently encouraging false hope... it really caught up to me emotionally."
I looked down again, the guilt rising fresh and sharp.
"That's why I ultimately decided to send her back to Draga," I said quietly. "I genuinely thought that putting physical distance and time between us would help her move on, would give her the space she needed to let those feelings fade and eventually find someone else. Someone who could actually reciprocate."
My voice cracked slightly on the next words.
"I wasn't expecting something like this to happen. How could I have anticipated that sending her away would result in her death? And I obviously feel crushingly guilty about it. I feel like I am the reason she's dead—that my decision directly led to her murder."
Tears were gathering in my eyes now, the grief and guilt that I had been trying to suppress rising to the surface.
"If I hadn't sent her away, she would still be alive," I continued, the words tumbling out faster now as the dam broke. "If I had just accepted her confession and let things continue as they were, she would have been here, safe, protected. If I hadn't picked that fight with Fiona in the garden, if I hadn't threatened her and humiliated her, then the Saintess would never have targeted Katherine for revenge. All of those thoughts keep hunting me relentlessly, circling in my mind over and over. That's why I've been acting the way I have—angry, unstable, out of control. I'm sorry I caused you so much worry. I didn't mean to make things harder for you. I was just so completely overwhelmed by grief that it felt all-consuming, like I was drowning in it and couldn't find the surface."
A tear escaped and rolled down my cheek, followed quickly by another.
Arvid immediately got up from his chair and moved to sit on the edge of the bed beside me. He reached out and stroked my head gently, his touch warm and comforting. I leaned into him, seeking the embrace I desperately needed, and he wrapped his arms around me without hesitation.
"None of that," he said firmly, putting deliberate emphasis on each word to make sure I was really hearing him. "None of that is your fault. You did what you genuinely thought was best for Katherine's wellbeing and happiness. You made a difficult decision with good intentions. No reasonable person could blame you for that. So please, please don't blame yourself."
His voice was soft but absolutely certain, brooking no argument.
We stayed like that for what felt like a small eternity, him holding me while I cried quietly against his chest, his hand moving in slow, soothing circles on my back. Gradually, the tears slowed and stopped, and I felt marginally more stable, less like I might shatter into pieces at any moment.
"There's something else I need to tell you," I said eventually, my voice muffled against his shirt. "About Fiona."
I pulled back slightly so I could look at his face when I made this confession.
"I caused her death," I said bluntly, watching his eyes carefully for his reaction. "I cursed her using curse magic. That's why she died that night."
I saw his eyes widen with shock, his mouth opening slightly as he processed what I had just admitted.
"I'm sorry, but I couldn't stand the thought of her receiving such an absurdly inadequate punishment for ordering Katherine's torture and murder," I continued quickly, the words rushing out before I could lose my nerve. "Four hours of prayer? For rape and murder? It was obscene. I wanted her to suffer the way Katherine suffered. I wanted her to experience at least some fraction of the pain and terror she had inflicted. That's why I did it."
I swallowed hard, my throat tight.
"I didn't know she would die so quickly though—that same night, before she'd experienced the curse more than once. If you hate me because of what I've done, because I used dark magic and essentially committed murder through supernatural means—"
I was rambling now, the words tumbling over each other in my anxiety. But before I could continue spiraling, Arvid gently placed his hand over my mouth, stopping the flow of self-recrimination.
"That's not what concerns me," he said softly, his voice carrying that same gentle quality as before. "Not at all."
He removed his hand from my mouth but kept it close, cupping my face tenderly.
"Taking a human life—directly, with your own hands or through your own deliberate action—takes an enormous toll on a person's mind and soul," he explained quietly. "As someone who has personally taken countless lives over the years, I understand that emotional and psychological damage intimately. I know how it changes you, how it marks you in ways that never fully heal."
His expression became pained, haunted.
"I never wanted you to have to go through that," he continued. "I thought I could protect you from that particular kind of trauma. I believed that if I handled all the violent, ugly necessities myself, if I kept my hands bloody so yours could remain clean, then you would never have to carry that specific burden. That taking a life with your own hands would never become necessary for you."
He looked away, his jaw tightening.
"But I clearly failed at that responsibility," he said, his voice carrying a note of deep regret. "I failed to protect you from the Saintess's machinations. I failed to provide adequate justice through legitimate channels. I drove my wife to the point where she felt taking revenge herself, by dirtying her own hands, was the only available option. That makes me a failure as a husband. I should have done better."
"That's absolutely not true," I protested immediately, reaching up to turn his face back toward me. "You are a wonderful husband. The best I could possibly ask for. Don't say such horrible things about yourself, please. Besides, I'm not some fragile creature who needs constant protection from every harsh reality. I'm strong. I can handle difficult things. You don't need to shield me from everything."
Arvid's expression softened, and a small smile touched his lips. "I know you're strong. You proved that quite dramatically in the courtyard this morning when you literally cut off a duchess's head in single combat."
He shifted his position, settling more comfortably on the bed and turning slightly so he could look out at the open balcony windows rather than directly at me.
"But regarding taking lives..." he began, his voice taking on a distant quality, as though he were speaking from some place deep in his past. "I was only fourteen years old when I first killed someone with my own hands. It was an assassin—someone who had finally managed to track me down despite all my father's efforts to hide me, despite my teacher's considerable skill at keeping us moving and concealed."
He paused, his hands beginning to tremble slightly in his lap.
"I remember that man's face with perfect clarity even now, more than a decade later," Arvid continued quietly. "I remember how he begged for his life when he realized I had gained the upper hand, how his eyes filled with absolute terror when he understood he was going to die. His voice, his expression, the exact shade of fear in his eyes—it's all permanently burned into my memory. That image haunted me for years afterward. Nightmares, intrusive thoughts during the day, seeing his face in crowds of strangers."
He drew a shaky breath.
"But that was only the first," he said. "Afterward, I had to kill more and more people. Enemies of my father who wanted to eliminate potential heirs. Bandits who attacked us on the road. Political rivals who sent assassins. Somewhere along the line, I completely lost count of how many lives I've taken. And now when I try to remember their faces, to recall the individual people I killed... it's all distorted, all blurred together like some kind of morbid hunting game where the prey stopped being human and became just targets."
He looked down at his hands, which were still trembling noticeably.
"I feel like I lost my humanity somewhere over those years," he admitted, his voice barely above a whisper. "Like I became something less than human, something monstrous. Just a killing machine that happens to wear a man's face."
I reached out and took both of his trembling hands in mine, holding them firmly.
"My people call me a monster too," I said, meeting his eyes steadily. "Because of what I'm becoming, because of the dragon blood and the transformation and the power that comes with it. So I suppose we monsters belong together, don't we? We wandered into each other's lives at exactly the right moment. Rather than denying the reality of what we are, rather than pretending to be something we're not, maybe we should just accept it. Let's be monsters together."
I raised his hands to my lips and pressed a gentle kiss to the back of each one.
He smiled at that—a genuine, warm smile that reached his eyes and transformed his whole face. He nodded slowly, squeezing my hands in return.
"But I'm intensely curious about one thing," I said, leaning closer to him with my eyes sparkling with renewed interest. The emotional heaviness of the previous conversation had lifted somewhat, making room for curiosity about a mystery I had been wondering about.
"How did you know?" I paused to take a breath, formulating my question carefully. "How did you know that I was lying to you? About why I sent Katherine away, and probably about other things as well? What gave me away?"
Arvid's face immediately colored slightly, a faint blush spreading across his cheeks. He looked away, suddenly seeming embarrassed in a way I rarely saw from him.
"That's... it's a silly thing, really," he said, still avoiding my eyes. "You don't actually need to know. It's not important."
But I wasn't going to let him deflect that easily. I reached out and gently grasped his jaw, turning his face back toward me with firm but tender pressure.
"I absolutely need to know," I told him with utmost seriousness. "This is important to me. How have you been able to tell when I'm lying?"
He sighed, recognizing that I wasn't going to drop this.
"Well," he began reluctantly, "it's genuinely embarrassing to admit. I have this... voice in my head. It started appearing at some point—I'm not entirely sure when, but I know it was before I returned to Arpa after traveling for seven years with my teacher."
He paused, clearly uncomfortable with this revelation.
"Every time someone speaks to me, this voice immediately tells me whether the statement they just made is a lie or the truth," he explained. "It's automatic, instantaneous. I don't have any control over it—it just happens. At first, I didn't listen to it at all. I thought I was going mad, that I was imagining things or experiencing some kind of mental breakdown. But gradually, I started noticing that whenever I bothered to check, the voice proved correct. Every single time."
He looked down at our joined hands.
"So I began listening to it, relying on it, using the information it provided—though mostly unconsciously at first," he continued. "And I have to tell you, for someone in my position as a ruler, knowing your subjects' true selves with absolute certainty is nothing short of a miraculous gift. I always know who to trust and who to be wary of, who is genuinely loyal and who is merely pretending. That ability has saved my life countless times and has been invaluable in navigating political situations."
His expression darkened slightly.
"But it doesn't solve everything," he added with a sigh. "It doesn't account for the fact that sometimes people change after you trust them and give them power and responsibility. Experiencing authority and influence does something to people—it transforms them, often not for the better. Just like my cousin, the one I left in charge of my authority and territories when I went north to find you."
He looked genuinely pained now.
"He used to be my only trusted relative," Arvid said quietly. "The only member of my extended family I actually believed had my best interests at heart. And now... well, now I'm going back to deal with whatever mess he's created and whatever ambitions he's developed in my absence."
The weight of that impending confrontation hung heavy in the air between us, a reminder that our time in Kima was temporary, that difficult challenges awaited us in Arpa.
But for now, in this moment, we had each other. We had truth between us. And perhaps that would be enough.