"I have wanted to see you for an entire month," Vangelis said, his voice quieter than it ever was on the throne. "To talk to you. Properly." He looked at her with something unguarded in his expression, rare for a man who wore authority as naturally as breathing. "I know you carry pain because of me. Anger. Perhaps hatred. And I cannot leave that unaddressed between us."
Roxanne said nothing. She simply watched him.
"Tomorrow is our wedding," he continued, a slow smile breaking through despite everything. "And I find myself genuinely glad. Not for the politics of it. Not for the treaty." He paused, searching for the right words. "Because it means I will see you every day again. Talk to you every day." He shook his head slightly, almost to himself. "Since you left, something in me has been missing. I could not feel whole. I could not feel complete."
He looked at her directly now, the smile still present but softer.
"Your comments. The way you address problems that no one else can even see clearly, let alone solve. The way you say things that should not be funny but somehow are." A quiet laugh escaped him. "I did not realise how much of my day was built around those things until they were gone."
The room held the weight of his words.
Roxanne looked at him for a long moment, her expression giving nothing away.
"There is nothing to clear," Roxanne said simply.
The warmth in Vangelis's expression did not disappear but something in it stilled.
"I want you to understand something clearly, my lord." Her voice carried no bitterness, no trembling, nothing that could be mistaken for weakness. It was calm in the way that deep water is calm, still on the surface and immeasurable beneath. "There is nothing you can do or say that will ever earn my forgiveness. Not an apology. Not a title. Not even your life would be enough to erase what you caused me." She held his gaze without blinking. "I loathe you. Genuinely and completely. I want you to carry that knowledge into tomorrow and every day that follows it."
The room was absolutely silent.
Vangelis looked at her for a long moment before he spoke.
"Then why did you agree to marry me?"
"Because I am not a fool." The answer came without hesitation. "No one in their right mind walks away from an opportunity like this. I intend to value my position and perform every duty it demands with excellence." She tilted her head slightly.
"But do not mistake gratitude for affection.It is simply a transaction, my lord. Nothing more."
,she met his eyes one final time.
"I am to be a Duchess, my lord. Not a wife. You already have a wife. You already have a Queen who will carry your heir. Do not confuse the two."
Vangelis looked at her for a long moment, something between admiration and something harder moving behind his eyes.
"You have become remarkably diplomatic," he said quietly. "The way you see things, the way you carry yourself. You walk like the most powerful person in any room you enter." A pause. "That is exactly what I want you to be."
He stepped closer.
"As for your hatred and your pain, we will address those in time. On my terms."
Before she could respond he leaned in and pressed a single kiss to her cheek.
Then he turned and walked out.
Roxanne stood completely still.
Her fingers rose slowly to her cheek.
Then everything inside her ignited.
Her blood surged hot and furious, her jaw tightening until she felt it in her bones. Something cracked through her limbs, through her chest, fire pushing outward from beneath her skin with nowhere to go. She turned and drove her arm across the nearest surface, sending everything on it crashing to the floor. Then the next. Her chambers absorbed the violence of it, glass and ceramic shattering against stone as she moved through the room like something that had been held too long and finally broken loose.
Across the city, close enough to the palace that every word carried risk, Corrine slipped into the shadows where Cassius was waiting.
"Why did you summon me here?" she asked, keeping her voice low. "I could have come to you. We are dangerously close to the palace."
"It could not wait." Cassius's expression was its usual still surface but beneath it something moved with urgency. He held out a vial and then a separate container, dark and sealed. "Take this concoction. And my blood." His eyes met hers directly. "During the blood ritual, I need you to exchange Vangelis's blood with mine."
Corrine stared at him.
"Why would I do that?" she asked.
"Because if you do not," Cassius said quietly, "Roxanne will die."
"My blood now flows through Roxanne," Cassius said, his voice low and urgent. "And it recognises any other male who comes too close to her as a threat. For this season, it will try to force her body into her wolf form to protect itself." He held Corrine's gaze. "The concoction she drank was meant to suppress that reaction. But with the blood ritual approaching and Vangelis's blood entering her, the two will collide. The effect on her body will be catastrophic." His jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. "Even the presence of another man's blood inside her could kill her. And if she dies inside that palace, everything we have worked for dies with her."
Corrine did not wait for him to finish the last word.
She moved.
She pushed through the doors of Roxanne's chambers and stopped.
Roxanne was on the floor, a crumpled and still figure against the cold stone, blood spreading slowly beneath her. Corrine crossed the room in an instant, dropping to her knees beside her, checking her breathing before gathering her up and lifting her onto the bed.
She uncorked the concoction with her teeth and pressed it to Roxanne's lips, tilting it carefully, forcing the liquid through even as Roxanne's body offered no cooperation.
Then she waited, her hand pressed firm against Roxanne's chest, feeling for the rhythm beneath it.
"Stay," she said quietly. Not a plea. A command.