Eric stared at her as if she were a mirage that would dissolve if he breathed too loudly.
“...Cornelia.”
The name felt like a prayer and a confession. He had spent five years searching for her body, jumping into freezing rivers and scouring the southern coasts, only to sink further into a abyss of despair each time he came up empty. He had wanted to die a thousand times, but he couldn't—not until he had a shroud to lay over her.
And now, here she was.
Her pale skin was flushed with rage, her brow was furrowed in a familiar, defiant scowl, and her vibrant violet eyes were glowing with a terrifying, beautiful life. Everything about her was vivid. Everything about her screamed that she had survived despite him.
He took a step toward her, his heart surging with a heat he hadn't felt in half a decade.
*BANG!*
A bullet struck the dirt an inch from his boot.
“Don't come near me!” Cornelia screamed, her voice cracking with a fear that cut deeper than any blade.
Eric stopped. He looked at the gun in her hand and the absolute, raw terror in her eyes. She wasn't looking at a husband; she was looking at an enemy.
*Yes,* he thought, a bitter taste filling his mouth. *The reason you look at me like that is because I was a monster.*
He remembered their wedding night—the way she had sat before the flickering candles, looking so fragile and beautiful that he’d had to draw a "hard line" just to keep his own composure. He’d told her he would never love her. He’d told her they were strangers sharing a name. He’d watched her burn her hands preparing tea for his mother, and instead of comfort, he’d given her a lecture on propriety.
He’d been so obsessed with being a "fake" that he’d destroyed the only real thing he’d ever had.
“Cornelia,” he said, his voice low and trembling. “I know... I know I hurt you. I was wrong. I was a fool.”
Cornelia let out a hollow, jagged laugh. “You were wrong? Is that all five years of my life are worth to you, Eric? A late apology in a garden?”
She gestured wildly with the gun. “Do you have any idea what it was like? The Dowager’s hatred? The servants’ sneers? Watching my own cousin Madeleine parade around you while I was treated like a leper in my own home? And you... you just stood there and let it happen.”
“It was a misunderstanding,” Eric whispered, though even to his own ears, it sounded pathetic.
“A misunderstanding!” Cornelia shrieked. “What did I misunderstand? That you told me never to touch you? That you told me I wasn't your wife? That you treated me like a political obstacle instead of a human being?”
Eric bowed his head, the weight of her words a physical pressure on his lungs. He had expected her resentment, but the sheer volume of her accumulated grief was staggering.
“If you knew you were wrong, why did you come here?” Cornelia asked, her eyes stinging with tears. “Why couldn't you just let me stay dead? Were you disappointed to find out I was alive?”
“Disappointed?” Eric’s voice rose, a flash of his own agony breaking through. “I’ve spent every waking second of the last five years looking for you! I’ve searched every riverbank in the Empire!”
“I don't care about your excuses,” Cornelia said, her face hardening into a mask of cold, Imperial steel. “Put my son down. Immediately. And then get out of my sight before I finish what the river started.”
Damian, who had been watching the exchange with an expression of weary adult resignation, finally spoke up.
“Mom, please listen to Dad!”
Cornelia’s face contorted with a fresh wave of rage. “Dad? Did you tell him to call you that, Eric? You dare to lay claim to my son after everything you did?”
She stepped forward, her hand trembling as she aimed the pistol at Eric’s chest. “Eric Lennon Brant, give me back my baby!”
*My baby.*
Eric looked at Damian. The boy from his dreams. The child who had called him "Daddy" in the river. The child with the violet eyes of a prince. He felt the warmth of the boy’s small body against his chest, a connection so profound it felt like a tether to his own humanity.
But then he looked at Cornelia. He saw the way she was shaking, the way her eyes were full of a pain that an apology could never heal. If he held onto the child now, he would only be continuing the cycle of cruelty.
He knelt and placed Damian gently on the grass. “Go to your mother,” he whispered.
“No!” Damian shouted, clinging to Eric’s cloak. “I want to stay with my father!”
Cornelia’s face paled, a look of indescribable sadness crossing her features. To see her son—the boy she had raised in hiding—reaching for the man who had destroyed her was the final insult.
Eric felt a surge of self-loathing. He reached out and gently uncoupled the boy’s small fingers from his cloak.
“I’m not your father, Damian,” Eric said, his voice harsh with the effort of the lie. “I’m just a stranger from a life your mother had the sense to leave behind.”
Damian’s eyes filled with tears. “Daddy is stupid!” he shrieked, but he didn't move.
Cornelia gestured to Sardin. “Sardin, what are you doing? Bring him to me!”
Sardin, still bleeding from his shoulder, limped forward and scooped Damian up, carrying the protesting child back to Cornelia’s side. Cornelia hugged the boy fiercely, her eyes never leaving Eric.
“Now,” she said, her voice a cold, final rasp. “Get out.”
Eric didn't move. He looked at the bodies of the assassins in the woods and then at the horizon, where more shadows were surely gathering.
“I can't do that,” Eric said.