How To Tame An Empress (BOOK I)

Chapter 40 - When The Past Catches Up

--Valeria POV--

For a long moment, neither of us moved.

The village faded away until there was nothing left but the two of us, and all I could hear was my own heartbeat. Stacius, he was really, truly here. Not in my dreams, nor in my guilty thoughts that visited me every night. But here.

Alive, and looking at me as though I had risen from the dead.

I had imagined this moment more times than I cared to admit. Sometimes he was furious, sometimes relieved, and sometimes he never found me at all. But never had I imagined him looking at me like this. Like a broken man.

The shadows beneath his eyes were darker than I remembered, his hair had grown longer and was tied back carelessly, stubble now lined his face where he had once been clean shaven, and though his armour remained as polished as ever, the man wearing it looked exhausted.

It looked as though the last six months had stolen years from him.

And at that thought, a pang of guilt twisted painfully inside my chest, telling me that I had done this to him. To us.

"I spent six months mourning my wife and child... and now I find her hiding from me." Slowly, almost hesitantly, he began to cross the distance between us with one heavy step, and for the first time in years, I could not tell whether he was angry or upset. Or both.

But before I could say anything more, his gaze turned to Livia as she watched the whole exchange with both confusion and disbelief which was no surprise to me. I have fooled not only her, but this whole village for the last six months and now? Now, it is over.

"Leave us." Stacius ordered as her head immediately fell to look at the ground. "Now." And she turned on her heels, looking straight past me as she left to go to her house.

"Stacius, let me explain." I began, failing to make my voice any louder than a whisper as his eyes returned to me, glowing with something which I could not explain.

"Expalin what, Ria? That for six months, you decieved me?" He pushed the gate aside as though it were made of paper, stepping closer to me.

"Or how you painted a story explaining that you were killed by bandits, and that our son was kidnapped?" He took another step closer, and then another one, until I could feel his very presence suffocating me.

"Six months." He whispered, standing before me, looking at me as though memorising every part of me all over again. "For one hundred and eighty two days, I woke up alone, and for one hundred and eighty three nights, I went to sleep alone. Without my wife and without my child. Left alone in a world that no longer held any meaning."

"Stacius..." I struggled to find my voice.

"How could you leave me alone for so long, Ria?" Then, ever so carefully, his hands rose, warm palms settling against my cheeks exactly as they always had, and I could not find it in me to push him away. How could I? When this felt so normal.

"You knew that I could not live without you, yet you chose to leave me anyway. You left, and you took everything with you." My hands moved of their own accord, coming to rest lightly against his chest where I felt his heart racing, though I doubt mine was much calmer.

"I never wanted things to happen like this." His thumbs trembled against my skin as I unknowingly leaned into his touch, biting my gum to hold back any tears from surfacing.

"No?" His head tilted, but not in anger. Rather sadness. "Then why?"

"I..." The words struggled to leave my lips, and I had to lower my gaze. "I was thinking of Evan."