“No! Don't touch me.” I backed away, making myself smaller.

“My love, you’re scaring me.” He moved closer, stopping when I shrunk away again. “Please. What happened?”

“I . . . I. . .” I sobbed.

“Aw, Ara?” he said, half laughing, cupping my chin. “Sweetheart, just tell me what it is and we’ll fix it. Please?”

I shook my head. “You can’t fix it, David.”

“Okay.” He laughed again. “Maybe we can’t. But I can at least make you feel better. Come here—” He reached for me but I jerked away and looked up—looked him right in the eye, holding back all the tears, the self-pity, the quivering lip. He didn’t need to, nor would he want to see it.

“David. . .” The world stopped. “I slept with Jason.”

His smile widened, a breathy laugh escaping through it before his eyes darkened and he slowly looked down at the ground. “You did what?”

I wanted so badly to say I was sorry. I was sorry. But that was the last thing he’d want me to say, and I was sure it would result in his hand across my face. “I slept with Jason.”

He stood up. “When?”

My gaze travelled past him to the five figures standing stunned and still in the room behind him. I closed my eyes, hiding from the ache in theirs. I hadn’t heard any of them—not one of them walk in the room.

“David?” Jason stepped forward, but Falcon grabbed him by the arms, holding him in place at command of a single pointed finger from David. “Just let me explain.”

“Do. Not,” David said, angling his face away. “Speak.”

“But she—”

“I said, shut up.” The cool in David’s voice sent shivers through my body. He turned and looked at me. “Get her up. Get her on her feet.”

Blade gently hoisted me to stand by my arm; my legs tingled where the blood rushed back into them after so many hours sitting in the same position, and my feet went so numb Blade pulled me closer to hold me upright. “You okay?” he asked, but I didn’t answer. My eyes were locked onto David, gauging his every move against my expectations. I shouldn’t have been afraid, because anything he chose to do to me would be fair. But I was scared as hell anyway.

“Mike?” David said.

Mike looked up from his hands where he’d fallen to sit on the coffee table. “I—”

“Did you know?”

He couldn’t even speak. He was completely lost for words, and I couldn't decipher what I saw in his eyes—the hurt, the anger, the worry—whether it was for what I’d done, or for what David had the legal right to do next.

“How long ago?” David looked at me.

“The lighthouse.”

He folded forward ever so slightly. “That’s why you were out there? That’s how you fell?”

I nodded.

“And . . . what? You . . . you were just gonna. . .”

“She didn’t know.” Jason took a step forward, stopped instantly by Falcon. “I erased it.”

David just nodded, his jaw so tight his cheeks hollowed. “That’s real fucking convenient, isn't it?”

“It had to be that way,” Jason said softly. “She couldn’t carry the burden.”

“The burden?” David said, pointing at me. “The burden is hers to carry. She . . . oh god!” He dropped both hands to his knees, catching his breath. “I can have you both stoned for this. Do you know that?”

“Among other things,” Falcon added, looking at me with that stern disapproval he’d seemed to have traded for friendship over the last few months. It was all destroyed now. Everything. All the faith they had in me, just gone, like sudden death.

“Just. . .” David stood tall again. “Just get out. Everyone.”

No one moved.

“I said out!” he screamed, grabbing my arm as I went to pass. “Not you.”

“David.” Mike’s hand came down on David’s wrist, making a tight grip as he forced it off me. “I’m not leaving her—”

“You will do as you are told, or I will have you whipped.”

“Go ahead. I’m not afraid of a lashing.” He stood halfway between David and I. “You might be the king, but she is still my best friend, and I will not leave her at your mercy.”

“Then I officially relieve you of your duties.” He walked over and opened my door, leaning out to look down the corridor. “Guards!”

Mike took a step back, his eyes holding the deepest, most feared apology.

“Arrest him for violation of matrimonial rights.”

“David, please? Don’t take this out on—”

“Silence.” He pointed right in my face. “Or this gets worse for all of you.”

I backed down, shaking my head at Mike.

“It’s okay, Ara,” he said, laying both hands behind his back as the guard cuffed him. “It’ll be okay.”

“Not for her, it won’t,” David said coldly, and before Mike could react, his eyes going wide, his foot lifting only an inch to move toward me, the guard cupped his chin and the back of his head, twisting until his neck snapped and he went down hard.

“No!”

David’s arm shot out and blocked me off. “Stay away.”

“He’ll be okay, Ara,” Blade said, dragging me backward. “He’ll recover from that.”

“That wasn’t fair.” I hid my face in my hands. “He was just trying to protect me.”

“And the same fate awaits anyone else with any stupid ideas,” David said, turning to me. “You are entitled to the protection the law allows, Ara. Nothing more. And it does not protect you from me.”

“And what about Jason?” I asked.

David’s eyes darkened, his lips parting to say something, when Falcon cut in, his knuckles going white where they fought to restrain Jason. “Orders, Majesty.”

“Throw him in a cell.” David waved his hand at them. “I’ll deal with him later.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.” Falcon bowed.

“David, please,” Jason begged. “Please. Do what you want to me, but don’t touch her. She’s ca—”

“Blade,” David ordered. “See that Falcon gets him to the cell without incident.”

“As you will it.” Blade bowed his head, obeying, but his soul and heart would never be at David’s command. He looked Jason in the eye, muttering an apology, and twisted his arm up behind his back.

“Let me go!” Jason yelled. “Blade, you know what he’ll do.”

“You can’t protect her, mate,” Blade said, his voice strained with the fight. “None of us can.”

But Jason wouldn’t give this up, not even for his friend. Limbs tangled and blurred between them, like cars moving fast down a freeway, the rest of us watching on, just waiting for the uneven odds to work in someone’s favour.

“Ara, just run,” Jason screamed. “Just—”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Morgaine groaned, tossing the dagger from her belt to Blade. “Just shut him up.”

“Got it.” He caught it with one hand, forcing his arm down over Falcon’s as they slammed Jason face first into the doorframe, pining him there. “I’m sorry, mate. This is gonna hurt me a lot more than it’ll hurt you.”

Jason cried out, the dagger slipping between the bones in his neck, paralysing him to submission in one strike.

“No!” I screamed, but the door slammed shut on the empty room.

“Don’t cry for him,” David ordered, shoving my hand down from my mouth. “Don’t you dare shed one tear for him, Ara. He will get more than a dagger to the spine when I’m done with him.”

I let my hands fall to my sides, my fists tight. “If you touch one hair on his head, I—”

“You’ll what?” He moved in, startling me with the speed of which he came up. “You’ll what, Ara? Leave? Good. Fuck him to hurt me? Already done that, so what else can you do? What else can you possibly do that’s going to make me give two ounces of shit?”

“I—” My mouth hung open, nothing coming out.

“I don’t know how to deal with this, Ara,” he said, his voice softer than before. “I don’t know what to do with you—what to say, what to feel. I—” He touched his chest, swallowing like his throat had narrowed, and sat down on his side of the bed—his head in hands.

“David? I don’t know, either. I—”

“Don’t talk. If you know what’s good for you, do not let one word come out of that fucking slut mouth of yours.”

I was so taken back by those words that I forgot everything I planned to say.

The silence lingered in the room for so long then. I tried not to breathe, not to do anything that would alter the pattern of his thoughts. My life, and Jason’s life, rested on his decisions right now, and he was so clearly hurt I was sure he was capable of anything, even carrying out my punishment himself.

“It’s over,” he said suddenly in the quietest breath, as if the very notion had just struck him, bringing down all the realisation of the lonely centuries to come on top of it.

“I know,” I whispered, but it was so low he wouldn’t really have heard it.

“You made a promise, Ara. That’s it. I trusted you, believed you. I. . .” He stood up and faced me, touching his chest. “I gave you the one part of myself I never ever gave to anyone else because I believed you would hold it sacred, protect it, cherish it like I did yours. I would never have hurt you that way, Ara. Never in a million years.”

“I know.” I sobbed, sucking the streaming tears from lip. “And I loved you too, I—”

“But my eternal love just wasn’t enough for you, was it? And who’s the fool?” His voice broke. “It’s not you, is it? No.” He shook his head. “It’s me. I’m the fool. I’m the one stupid enough to believe this was real—that anything outside death, murder, hatred, loneliness was real.”

“It was real.” I stepped a little closer.

“No, it was stupid. All of it.” He laughed, closing his eyes. “And I knew it from the start. What did I say to you that day, Ara—what did I say the day I left you in the hospital?”

“All dreams eventually die,” I muttered, seeing his face—the way he loved me back then—so different to how he looked at me now. Because, now, he really believed those words.

“I should have listened to my own wisdom then. I should never have given everything up for you. I left my Set, I—”

“You didn’t give up the Set for me. You gave it up because justice failed you, and—”