***Cassius***
My hands were shaking.
I noticed it when I reached for the shop door after Silas left, my fingers trembling against the handle in a way I couldn't quite control. I pressed my palm flat against the wood, breathed slowly, and waited for the trembling to stop.
It didn't stop.
Aldrik was here.
In Sailcrest, in my town, standing in the market with hollow eyes and shaking hands, calling my name in a voice I'd never heard from him before. Raw and broken and desperate in a way that Aldrik Von Draven had never allowed himself to be during the entirety of our marriage.
I'd almost broken.
That was the part I couldn't stop thinking about. The moment he'd called my name, that first time, barely loud enough to carry, something in me had lurched toward him instinctively, some deep stupid part of me that apparently hadn't gotten the message, that still responded to him like he had some claim on me.
He didn't.
