The bathing chamber remained steeped in steam long after Neris left.
Rhea did not move at first.
She stayed where she had collapsed, knees drawn to her chest beneath the water, arms wrapped around herself as though she might shatter if she loosened her grip.
The bathwater had begun to cool, but she barely felt it. Her skin burned anyway—burned with humiliation, with grief, with a truth she had fought for too long to deny.
He never loved her. Not once.
Not even a fraction.
The realization sank deeper than the cold stone beneath her palms. It was not new, not entirely—but hearing it spoken aloud, stripped of softness, stripped of illusion, had broken something final inside her.
A woman's intuition is never wrong it seems. A part of her knew that his heart never belonged to her. But she was too taken in with him to bother about it. She told herself...she would make him fall for her. But she never knew that his feelings for Aurelia was so deep.
