CHAPTER 57: THE SHAPE OF SORRY

A thousand small thoughts unfurled in Ilaria’s mind when that single word left his lips. Her breath snagged and would not fall back into place, caught between disbelief and fragile ache in her chest. His head weighed against her hands; his fingers closed around hers like chains.

Sorry? He just said sorry?

This was not the Levan she knew. The man whose face was almost an honest ledger, who answered in dry lines and measured silences. She wanted to ask what happened last night, to make him look at her, to demand an explanation, but his body stayed bent away, making her feel helpless as if she was the one in chaos.

When he spoke again, the sound was low, so low she might have mistaken it for a prayer if she did not know better.

"I should stop letting things twist me this way." His words were a murmur, more to himself than to her. "I should have thought before speaking. Saints— I should’ve just done what I always do, put it in order, keep it clean, keep it distant."

He exhaled sharply, the sound rough against the stillness. The muscle in his jaw twitching like he was trying to reason with a reflection only he could see.

"The banquet...it wasn’t that I didn’t want you there." His grip went taut around her fingers. "House Thalvane thrives on venom. They look for weakness and circle like carrion. If I’d brought you, they’d have torn you with their poisoned tongues, and I don’t think you could have stood it."

He bowed lower, trembling into the curve of her lap as if his apology had weight enough to bend him.

"But I should have told you. I should have spared you the waiting, spared you dressing with hope only to be abandoned. I had no right to promise you, to give you an entire week to look forward to something I could not keep."

The pause stretched painfully; the words scraped at his throat before he pushed them free. "...For that, I am sorry."

Had it not been because of his unexpected emotional outburst, she might have laughed softly, embarrassed by how near he was — her husband, being so close it should have made her shy. But his voice was too raw, too broken that the ache in it swallowed any trace of girlish fluster she might have felt.

"H-husband—" she tried to cut the conversation, but he went on as if she had not spoken.

"I’ve never been used to having anyone at my side when making decisions. I carried everything. Every choice was weighed and executed because I stood alone. That’s how it’s been for years." His voice was rough with something that sounded almost like disgust at himself.

"But ever since you came here, I find myself thinking of you. You slip into the spaces where I make my plans, and it unsettles me because you should always be in the equation. But instead, I lock myself away and weigh it all without you as though you aren’t there. As though I don’t have a wife."

He dragged in a bitter breath. "That’s what I did that night. I decided without you. I convinced myself it was for your sake and in the end you were the one left waiting."

He bowed his forehead into their joined hands, whispering, "...Damn it, Aria. I’m sorry."

The name landed like a thing too fragile to hold and somehow heavier than any stone.

Ilaria could only stare. Her lashes trembled; even blinking felt like violence, as if any movement might break the shape of him. Her chest constricted until each breath was a small, stolen thing. He had never, ever said her name before, not with the weight of so many bruised nights under it, not even on normal days.

And her heart...her soft, foolish heart could not take it.

His palms were warm around hers; his thumb moved uselessly over the back of her hand. The roughness of his voice vibrated against her skin and it unpicked her thread by thread until her hands went cold and her knees steadied only because his weight kept them from shaking.

Thus the tears came without warning, little salt explosions that blurred the dark of his hair and the slope of his cheek into a watercolour she could not hold steady. Then a tiny, broken sniffle tore from her throat. And the silence that swallowed it afterward felt like accusation.

It was all too much...

The sight of him unmade, the surrender in his voice, the intimacy of a man who had always been careful with himself suddenly careless and bare. In the hush between them, everything she thought she knew rearranged itself.

Her fingers clenched around his, hard enough to hurt, because that small, hurt squeeze was all the language left to her.

The sensation must have reached him; his head lifted from her lap, eyes unfocused and dazed until they found her face. Her cheeks were wet, lashes clumped with tears she did not seem to notice.

He really did not expect the tears. Because he had seen her sad before, but never crying.

"You..." his voice faltered, the syllable almost a breath.

Ilaria shook her head quickly as if to stop him before he could speak again. "Why are you— suddenly—" her voice broke halfway through, fumbling, "why are you saying things like this? You’re making me sad..."

The words were simple and small yet they cut him anyway. He almost laughed at the absurdity of it, but the sound turned to fire in his throat. Because people cried at him and accused him, never for

him.

"You shouldn’t say sorry," she whispered, reprimanding him weakly through her tears. "You sound as if...as if you’re the only one who did something wrong. But I— I should’ve understood too..."

He could only look at her then. He did not even have the strength to be annoyed by her selflessness. Her trembling lips, her tear-streaked lashes, the way she still tried to shoulder blame when she had none to bear, it stole the breath from his lungs that for a moment, Levan forgot how to breathe at all.

He realized, then, what an ass he truly was.

Because how could she still look at him like that? Eyes full of worry, and heart filled with softness...after everything he had done? He had ignored her, snapped at her. He had left her to wait alone, and still she sat here crying for him.

Was she truly that kind, or simply blind to what she was worth?

The thought twisted something ugly inside his chest. The sight of her tears should have moved him to comfort, but instead it hollowed him out. Because he knew, with a clarity that burned, that he was the reason she was a crying mess right now.

"You shouldn’t be like this toward me," he said.

Ilaria sniffled, the sight was almost too pitiful to look at. "...What do you mean?"

He dragged in a breath, exhaling through his nose. One hand raked through his hair as if he could steady himself while the other refused to let go of hers.

"You’re too—" he broke off, searching for a word that did not sound like a curse. "Too gentle."

Her brows furrowed slightly, confusion softening into quiet hurt. "But you’re my husband," she murmured, as if it was the simplest thing in the world.

Levan closed his eyes, frustration tightening through him. Exactly, he thought. And that was the worst part.

He could barely sort out his thoughts when he felt her tugging at his hands.

"Why are you saying things like this so early in the morning?" she repeated the question from earlier. "Did something happened last night?"

"It’s barely even light out and you—" She hiccuped. "You talk like you’re going to leave or something."

Her trembling voice cut through the fog in his head like a blade. Right. It was still morning. The sky was still a pale bruise. And here he was, making apologies like a penitent and somehow managing to make her cry again before breakfast.

Wonderful. Truly brilliant. He had spent the entire night feeling monstrous for one set of tears only to conjure another.

He exhaled hard and bowed his face into her lap, palms splayed against her knees. The faint scent of him mingled with the warm cotton of her dress. His heartbeat was loud in his ears, absurdly loud. Breath. Breathe. He tried to order himself the way he ordered every plan and decree, but the commands would not come.

Was this some curse?He wondered with a small, frantic part of his mind. To confess and then unmake it at the same breath? To apologize and ruin the apology with the truth that followed? He felt unstitched. He felt small. He felt like a child who had broken something he could not put back.

He wanted to say something fierce to steady it, to explain and to place blame on himself and then fix it, but the sentences scattered like birds at the first movement. So instead he stayed bent there, forehead flattened to her hands while hearing the hollow scrape of his own guilt.

"...I don’t know what I’m doing, Aria," he breathed out finally, and even the whisper felt thin, betrayed by the weight of what he had already done.

In that moment, Ilaria moved before she could think. The sound of her own quiet sobs frightened her. She slid off the sofa, her knees brushing the carpet, and before she knew it her arms were around him.

It was not graceful. It was not thought through.

Just her quivering arms circling his shoulders tightly.

"Please don’t say things like that," she whispered, her voice muffled and shaking. "It’s scary..."

Levan went completely still. He did not know where his hands should go, if he should move, or breathe, or do anything at all. Her warmth seeped through his shirt, her heartbeat quick and desperate against him, and he felt as if the world had tilted under his knees.

"...Stop crying," he managed to say, the words coming out rougher than he meant. He hated how useless they sounded, how helpless he felt just saying them.

But he forced himself to try, at least. One hesitant hand, almost clumsy, rose to her back and rested there lightly, his thumb moving in an unsure stroke. The gesture felt foreign to him, like something borrowed from someone else’s life, but he kept it there anyway.

"...I just didn’t want you to misunderstand."

Her fingers dug into the fabric of his shirt. "...Then don’t talk like that again," she plead. "I’d rather you be angry at me, at least I’d know what to do."

Something inside him unknotted. What was he even doing? He had been all apology and no action, all words that scraped and solved nothing. Her emotions were already laid bare, so why is he hesitating again?

For an awful second, he berated himself for being theatrically repentant and practically useless, forcing his body to move.

And slowly, he wrapped his arm more firmly around her. His hand that had stayed idle cupped the hollow at the nape of her neck; his chin came to rest on her crown to accommodate her head comfortably against his shoulder.

It did not erase the hurt she was feeling, but in that simple, clumsy cradle there was a first, honest thing he had done:

He held her properly.