Imagine ever loving someone so fiercely, so completely that they became the very air you needed to breathe. That their existence alone kept you tethered to the world, kept your heart from hollowing into an empty, lifeless drum. That was the kind of love Cassius had come to know, not all at once, but slowly, agonizingly, like dawn creeping across a long night that had forgotten how to end.
Before her, before Arabella, there had been only darkness.
He had never loved himself. Not his crown, not his power, not the name "Cassius," which had once rung across the kingdom like the promise of ruin. Confidence— yes, he had that in abundance, the kind born of arrogance and fearlessness. But love? Love for himself? That was a stranger he had never met. For years, he had lived only because death hadn't come soon enough, because the world hadn't yet decided to crush him under its boot.
But then she came. And suddenly, life wasn't something to endure. It was something he wanted.
