It was a chaste kiss. A wife's kiss. But it burned him down to his soul.
"That's not what I asked." He turned his head to look at her. Firelight played across her delicate features. "Are you happy? Being my wife? Being the lady of this ruinous land?"
He walked to the fireplace and crouched down, pretending to stoke the flames. "Maxi," he began, his voice low. "Are you… are you happy here?"
The word "broken" hit him like a mace to the chest. He rose to his feet in a single, fluid motion, crossing the room before he could stop himself. He knelt before her chair, so close he could count the freckles on her nose. Under The Oak Tree Manga
The great oak stood sentinel on the hill, its gnarled roots gripping the earth like the fingers of a sleeping giant. For Riftan Calypse, that tree was more than a landmark; it was the anchor of his world. Beneath its sprawling canopy, he had first seen her—a flash of silver hair and wide, terrified eyes. Maximilian, the stuttering, fragile daughter of the Duke of Croix, had been a vision of impossible beauty and crippling vulnerability. He, a lowly knight-for-hire with more scars than coin, had been a beast drawn to a wounded dove.
He lifted her from the chair as if she weighed nothing. She gasped, wrapping her legs around his waist instinctively. He carried her to the bed— their bed—and laid her down on the fur blankets.
"Maxi," he said, tracing the line of her jaw. "Tell me to stop. One word, and I will sleep on the floor for the rest of my life." It was a chaste kiss
Their first night as man and wife remained a splinter under his skin. He remembered the tremor in her hands as she unlaced her dress, the way her breath hitched, not with passion, but with sheer, unadulterated terror. He had stopped. He had to. The look in her eyes—a trapped animal's—had doused the inferno in his blood. He had slept on the cold floor that night, and every night since, telling himself it was enough to simply have her near.
"I won't break you," he whispered against her neck, his voice a raw vow. "And you won't break me. We'll just… be broken together."
"Not what I wanted?" His voice cracked. "Maximilian, I have wanted you since the moment I saw you picking wildflowers beneath that oak tree. You were fifteen. I was a nameless squire covered in mud. You dropped your basket, and when you bent to pick it up, you looked at me. Just for a second. And I thought, 'If I ever become a knight, I will marry no one but her.'" "That's not what I asked
She stared at him, her large, doe-like eyes wide. Then, slowly, tremblingly, she raised a hand. Her fingers hovered over his scarred cheek. "Y-you are n-not a brute," she breathed. "You are… you are my h-husband."
He rubbed the bridge of his nose, exhaustion pulling at his limbs. The day had been brutal. A patrol had been ambushed by monstrous orcs from the Dragon’s Grave Pass. Three men dead. He had spent the afternoon burying them, his hands blistered from the shovel. All he wanted was to collapse. But more than that, he wanted to touch her. Just a brush of his fingers against her cheek. Just to feel her warmth.
"I… I am," she said, but the hesitation was a knife between his ribs. "The… the castle is w-warm. The servants are k-kind."