Thoren
The door clicked shut behind me, and I stood there in the hallway for a long moment—my hand still on the frame like her warmth might somehow bleed through the wood.
But it didn’t.
All I could feel was the echo of her voice. The story she told me. The weight of it.
And the hole it tore open in my chest.
I walked slowly, steps echoing through the quiet corridor. The bulbs in the sconces flickered as I passed, throwing my shadow against the stone walls. I looked like a stranger even to myself.
She’d married.
Of course she had.
I gave her no reason to wait for me. No promise to hold. Just silence. Absence. And a memory of rejection so brutal I could still see it in her eyes when she looked at me across a fire.
What the hell did I expect her to do?
Curl up and wait in some towe
