After a long moment of silence, Nero looked into her eyes. His ominous red met her ice blue, and in that gaze, something profound passed between them. It was as if, for just a moment, the walls between their souls dissolved. He saw her—not her beauty, not her power, not her status. He saw her. The woman beneath the ice. The girl who had been lonely, who had built walls, who had waited without knowing she was waiting.
And in her eyes, he knew, she saw him too. The boy who had been discarded. The anomaly that had been hunted. The man who had found in her a home he had never dared to hope for.
He spoke, his voice rough with emotion.
"Because your love is so whole, my missing pieces appear." He reached up, his hand cupping her cheek, his thumb brushing away a single tear that had escaped despite her control. "Because your touch carries such passion, what was scarred becomes soft once more. Because you are steady and patient, my open wounds have time to seal and vanish."
