Valtira.
It was hard.
Seeing him like that—on his knees, his pride shattered at my feet—felt like something inside my own bones had splintered.
I had not braced myself for this.
For him pressing his forehead to my stomach like I was the only ground he had left.
Even through the layers of pain and betrayal, my body remembered him. It always had. From the very beginning—before the curse tightened around him, before politics and manipulation and Danika—I had known him. Known the man trapped inside the beast.
“That’s so difficult,” I whispered, my voice unsteady despite my effort to remain composed. “It’s so difficult to forget everything, Zarek. What you did to me… the humiliation… the loneliness… the way you looked at her while I stood there breaking. I do not know how all of that simp
