{"Scorned hearts make the sharpest daggers and mine now points at the throne."}
PRINCE ZYNARION'S POV
The sea did not welcome me tonight, and its waves slapped against my boots like a rebuke, salt biting into old wounds I hadn't allowed to scar. I stood at the jagged edge of the Emerald Gulf cliffs, cloak flaring behind me, the moon a pale witness overhead. She had rejected me again, Lady Nerisca, cold and poised, as if my desire was an inconvenience to be brushed away. But I remembered her when she wasn't made of sharp ice and ambition. I remembered her when her hands still trembled with grief, when her voice cracked in the night for things she had lost. I had offered her my heart then. And tonight, when I did it again, less tender, more desperate, she cast it back like driftwood, unwanted and splintered.
So I came to the sea and to talk to the one who listens when no one else dares.
"Vaelaryn," I whispered into the dark.
