In the place the Void Lord had sent him, Pryce existed in a state between corporeal and spiritual.
It wasn't the gray void of isolation. It was... peaceful. A meadow of eternal twilight, where other souls seeking redemption walked quietly, reflecting on their pasts.
He couldn't leave. Couldn't contact the living. But he also wasn't alone or suffering.
"I don't deserve this," he said to another soul—a woman who'd done terrible things in life and was now trying to understand why.
"None of us deserve mercy," she replied. "That's what makes it mercy."
Pryce walked through the meadow, thinking about Rhys's final gift to him: compassion when he'd deserved condemnation.
"I spent three hundred years trying to possess someone who was never mine to own," he said aloud. "And in the end, the greatest love he showed me was letting me go to somewhere I could heal."
He understood now—truly understood—the difference between love and obsession.
Love was what Rhys and Liam had. Choosing each other daily. Supporting without smothering. Being together because they wanted to be, not because they were trapped.
What he'd felt for Elara—and later for Rhys—was possession disguised as devotion. Control masquerading as care.
"I'm sorry," he whispered to souls who'd never hear him. "I'm sorry I didn't understand sooner. Didn't change before it was too late."
The meadow offered no absolution. No forgiveness. Just quiet space to sit with regret and slowly, painfully, become someone better.
It would take centuries.
Maybe forever.
But Pryce had time now. Nothing but time to finally learn what he should have learned at twenty-two:
That love without freedom is just another word for prison.