NICOLAI'S POV
I didn't plan to say it...
It just slips out of me like something torn loose from the deepest, most guarded place in my chest—
"I love you, Aria…"
The words hang in the air... Soft… dangerous... irreversible. For a second, I freeze because I actually feel it. As truth...
It settles into my bones with a terrifying kind of certainty, like it has always been there… buried beneath blood, violence, and whatever broken past I can’t fully remember. There is no doubt left in me now...
Every flickering hesitation I had about our secret marriage, every suspicion that she might be spinning a web of lies to keep me tethered—it all dissolves in the truth of this moment. I don’t need a marriage certificate or a witness. I feel it in the way my heart beats only for the woman in my ar
