Even though it had been tearing her apart, she had stayed away from him. The guilt that has been festering and eating away at her had finally reached a point that she could no longer push it aside. She knew that he knew she was pregnant again; she knew that he knew that they weren’t his. It wasn’t the first time they had been in this situation, of course. They both had had their fair share of straying, of breaking each other’s hearts and having to put each other back together.

But this was something else entirely.

There was something explosive that simmered below her surface, a tension that has been brewing like a storm. Every day it, it wound tighter and tighter, and nothing that she did — not even seeking out Ashhal over and over again — brought her any relief. Instead, it continued to build, piling up, until it fogged her mind, and controlled her thoughts. She needed a release — she needed anger, she needed someone to pull the pin and detonate the grenade.

She doesn’t want it to be him, though.

From a distance, she watches him, her jaw clenched against the emotion that builds inside of her chest. For some reason, she had been afraid to see him; afraid to actually face all the damage she had caused. But just for the simple fact that it was him — that it was them, their hearts, forever entwined and tangled — she finally gives in.

Her steps are cautious, her impossibly dark brown eyes unable to tear their focus away from his emerald green face. And as their eyes meet, she is star struck again, spinning into the past — a new queen coming to the tundra, trying to ignore the way the charismatic king was threatening to kickstart her tattered heart, but never being able to shake him from her mind, and over a hundred years later, she still never has. She stops, and for a moment she simply stares at him, unblinking but trembling. It begins with only one tear, ever so slowly sliding down her porcelain cheek, and then another, and then another. ”You look exactly like I remembered you,” She whispers, her voice tremulous and wavering, her eyes tracing the lines and angles of his handsome face, that she had never forgotten.