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ETAN

He could feel the Queen\'s eyes on his back, her smug smile like a fire burning heat into the back of his neck. His fingers twitched, wanting her throat. But he couldn\'t do it. He had to keep Ayleth safe. He opened his mouth to respond, but she rushed in.

"Do not let your romantic mind deceive you, Etan, I will kill her if you try to use her—then I will leave you alone and alive, tormented for the rest of your years with the knowledge that you could have saved her and you didn\'t." He heard her shift, sensed her presence leaning towards him. "Do. Not. Test. Me."

Something within him snapped and the pain of what he was about to do washed over him..

"I will do it! Dammit, woman, you know I will do it!" he snarled, whirling to face the Queen. "But do not ever use the word love in relation to your daughter in my presence again. No one who loves would do this, would destroy someone who held their heart."

She arched an eyebrow. "That\'s where I can prove you\'re wrong, Etan. Because you are about to do it." 

The words were a sword to his chest. "Get out of my sight," he muttered. "Leave me and never speak to me again."

"You do not give me orders in my own castle, Lord Summit, marriage contract or not. I have given you great freedom today because I do not wish to kill you, or my daughter. But I will. Do not push me again," she snapped. She strode towards the door, holding the handle but not opening it. "Now, go run off to your oblivious parents and tell them the joy you will have in taking whoever you choose to wife. I will make certain you are welcomed at the Peace Accord table. And I will hold Ayleth when she cries about losing you on the Day of Unions. There will be a day you will thank me for this. And if not… well, that is your cross to bear."

"I will never thank you for this. The Father of Lights curse you," he whispered as she moved towards the door. She stopped in her tracks and turned to face him again. But he refused to be cowed. He met her eyes and let her see his conviction. "No matter what we do, no matter where we go, no matter what hurt lays between us, you cannot erase the union between Ayleth and I, because it was made in the eyes of God. And even you cannot breach that."

She smiled then, and it turned his stomach. "What you don\'t seem to understand is that I do not care to," she said overly-sweetly. "I only care to make certain my daughter\'s power and presence never benefit you or your Kingdom. I will do anything it takes to subvert that."

"Even kill your own daughter?"

The lines at the side of her mouth deepened, but her gaze didn\'t waver and she gave a short, sharp nod. "Yes, even that. If she is not mine to wield, she will never be yours."

Then she turned, her skirts swirling, stepped through the door and pulled it quietly closed behind her, as if she did not wish to disturb whoever was inside.

Etan stood, staring at the door, his entire body trembling. A scream lodged in his throat—a roar of rage and of terror, and of injustice. But he did not loose it. 

Shaking though he was, he understood exactly what had just happened. And he knew that if he were the one to reveal it, his wife was the one who would pay with her life.

What was it the Queen had said? He scanned back over the preceding minutes and his stomach began to churn. He was so neatly tied into knots, bound from doing all that was right, by giving in to evil to avoid the worst wrong…

He\'d accused her… no one who loved would destroy the person they loved this way. And she\'d smiled. 

She\'d smiled.

"…That\'s where I can prove you\'re wrong, Etan. Because you are about to do it."

And curse her to the deepest caverns of hell for being right. Because he loved Ayleth with everything within him. He loved her to his bones. He loved her to his soul. Yet he was about to break her heart in the very, very worst way. 

For a fleeting moment he wondered if it was worth it. 

Was it worth taking every good thing between them and sacrificing it on the altar of her life? Sacrificing her wellbeing, her heart, her knowledge of truth, for the sake of merely keeping her alive.

Was that a life she would even want?

He turned towards the door, picturing himself racing through the castle to warn her, to show her what her mother was, to tear her away from this place of evil—to hell with the peace accord, they could leave now!

But then he remembered the Queen\'s smug satisfaction, the darkest evil she\'d wrought on her own daughter…

If he stole her away, she would die—and she would die without knowing the Father of Lights. 

He shook his head violently, recoiling from the images of eternal death and destruction. No. No! He would not curse her to that fate.

The Father of Lights could save her. Even in heartbreak. Even if she believed a lie about what Etan had done. 

He would not condemn his wife to death—on any level. He would not be the tool of the devil to end her.

He wanted to weep. His jaw began to ache and his palms sting from the tension he held so tightly, the rage that yearned for release. But he swallowed it back.

He would save Ayleth\'s life. He would pretend for the Queen. Then he would leave. Then, when his Kingdom was safely held by the Peace Accord, he would return home and ask the Proctor how to release Ayleth from this curse of her mother\'s. There must be a way it could be done and he would find it, and he would save her, and he would pray in the meantime that she wasn\'t forced into an adulterous union with another man.

"Oh, God," he groaned. "Save her from that. Save us from that."

His breath came too fast, too thick. His hand, when he raised it to push the hair back off his face was trembling. But he knew. 

It had to be done. 

There was no other choice. 

He had to find Borsche.

*****

THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE! Thank you for being willing to come on this very up-and-down ride with me. And thank you for purchasing privilege, and your summoning pens. I am so humbled by your kind words and dedication to these characters.

In September I am going to try and make sure you have at least a couple updates a week. If I gain more time, I will release more chapters. But we\'ll have to see how it goes. Regardless, I wanted to throw an extra chapter to you today to say thank you for still being here! I hope you enjoy!