When the tears stopped, shame rose up alongside the awareness that she did something embarrassing. How long had it been since she cried like this in someone’s arms? Long enough that she could not remember. Anais forced herself to speak as though nothing was wrong.

“I’m sorry. I tend to get a little emotional around this time of the month.”

The hand patting her back went still. A soft voice fell from above her head.

“So you’re hurting and feeling sorry for yourself, and you cried because you were glad I came. That’s it, isn’t it, Ana?”

Killian’s playful reply drew a small smile from Anais.

“Yes, I’ll let you have that.”

Anais always craved affection. She lost her mother early, and her father was always strict. Louis resented her. Every small thing Killian gave her was exactly the kind of affection Anais wanted. The warmth she wished for from the people around her.

She wanted to blame it all on Killian. She wanted to resent him. She wanted to sulk and tell him that she gave him her whole heart because he treated her so well. But Killian only agreed to what she asked. It was Anais who set the summer as the limit, and Anais who persuaded Killian when he pushed her away at first for being inexperienced.

The time to end things was drawing near. She knew that all too well.

If she sorted through her feelings over the week, she thought she could say goodbye to him calmly. She told herself she would return to the capital, meet a man her father approved of, and live that life. She talked herself down from the edge of collapse that way. Everyone lives like this, she told herself. So it will be fine.

But then he appeared. As always, the world did not move according to Anais’s wishes. Neither did her own heart.

Anais lifted her face and placed her slender hand against his cheek. The hand that traced his cheek traveled past his brow and down the bridge of his nose.

Killian did not pull away from the careful touch mapping his face. When her fingers neared his lips, he turned his head and pressed his lips to them. It tickled, and Anais laughed with swollen eyes.

She never once spoke honestly to Louis. She wanted to confess to him that if he found the courage, she was ready to leave everything behind and go with him. She wanted to tell him that her love kept deepening, that seeing him reduced to a servant in her own estate broke her heart and left her helpless.

But she never said any of it, and so even the ending was unclear. He was already done long before, while Anais carried it alone. When he told her he was marrying Emily, all she managed was to force out a congratulations.

Why they fell apart the way they did, how their engagement began by the decision of their elders but their feelings were real, why they could not even choose their own ending. Anais never said any of it.

She simply ran.

Because there was nothing else she could do.

Killian was someone so averse to commitment that he avoided women with no experience. If he found out she was serious and heavy-hearted, he would be the one to pull back and leave her. And she no longer wanted to be left behind.

She started this, so she would end it properly. Just as they agreed from the beginning.

Her pale blue eyes moved slowly toward the window. The wind that once blazed with scorching heat now carried a coolness when night came.

Summer was fading without her noticing.

The end of their time together was coming.

And yet her heart showed no sign of ending. That, suddenly, felt a little sad.

* * *

Killian’s day began in the very late afternoon. That was still true now, as late summer approached.

After his shower, he ate a light meal of fruit laid out on the balcony. It was a bright, sunny day. A head of bright golden hair came to mind. Lately, every thought Killian had ended with Anais. No matter what he did, that woman surfaced.

Maintaining a relationship with one woman for this long was a first for him. When he met Anais at the threshold of summer and found himself drawn to her proposal over dinner to see each other only through the summer, there was also a resistance.

At the time, he could not pinpoint exactly why. But thinking back on it now, it seemed to be because he never kept up a relationship for months like that before. He did not trust himself to.

Killian let out a quiet laugh and stepped off the balcony. His butler, who slipped in at some point, gestured toward the documents on the table and bowed.

“You’ll want to look at these, my lord.”

“What for? It’s the same thing every day.”

Killian dismissed the butler with a wave and sat at the table. His only brother, Valerius, king of Fiorenza, sent profiles of noblewomen every single day lately. Documents on noblewomen from the capital, the north, the east, the west arrived before him like neatly wrapped gifts.

It amused him that noblewomen from the south were conspicuously absent from the pile, and he snickered. Killian set the documents on the table and narrowed his eyes.

Marriage.

He would have to do it someday, but he had no interest in it right now. The days spent with Anais, who filled this summer to the brim, were genuinely enjoyable. Enjoyable enough that he found himself thinking marrying Anais would not be so bad.

The look in Anais’s eyes when she looked at him was growing deeper. This was the very reason Killian never kept a long relationship with any one woman. The scales always tipped.

But Anais looking at him that way did not feel bad. Sometimes the affection she hid behind those innocent pale blue eyes sent a thrill through his entire body.

Anais said she needed to marry eventually too, so maybe when summer ended he would float the idea. That they got along well, so marriage would not be bad either.

Anais did not seem like the type to fixate on fated love. He was thoroughly tired of that in other women. It felt suffocating when a woman slept with him once and then looked at him with starry eyes like it was destiny. He was also done hearing the nonsense about falling in love from a single glance. That was part of why Anais appealed to him more.

Actually, if there was such a thing as fate, would it not be Anais?

A noblewoman stranded in the pouring rain with a wheel off her carriage, and a gentleman passing by at just that moment. And yet Anais never once let her feelings show toward him. Even as she kept them carefully hidden, the affection that slipped through now and then left him genuinely thirsty.

But if Anais acted like other women, it would have been dull. The way she behaved, the look in her eyes when she watched him, made it clear she was not without feeling, and yet she kept that feeling hidden and did not let it show. He liked that about her very much. In that she never gave him anything to find irritating.

He thought he would miss her if she left.

Was there really a reason they had to part when summer ended?

And it seemed Anais felt the same way. With the end of summer approaching, she sent word that she would not be able to see him for a week. That was not something he could accept, so he went to her villa.

Anais cried in his arms when he showed up without warning. That was as good as proof that she loved him.

Viscount Bellini might feel a slight imbalance with the Visconti grand ducal house, but his brother would be nothing but pleased to hear Killian was getting married. With a woman like Anais, there was nothing more to say.

With the end of summer approaching, he ought to bring it up around that time. Killian spent a leisurely day turning that thought over in his mind.

The approaching end of summer no longer felt like something to regret.

* * *

The week passed in the blink of an eye.

During that time, Killian came to see Anais twice more, and once he confirmed she was well enough, he kissed her deeply. Every day he sent bouquets or snacks. Growing accustomed to his thoughtfulness felt both good and not good at the same time.

How was she supposed to tell him it was over?

Thinking about ending things with Killian made her chest tighten and her breath come short. There was an ache near her heart. The truth was, she did not want to part from him. Just imagining her days without him made everything go dark.

She regretted coming all the way here on reckless impulse. But thinking about the happiness she found meeting him, thinking about how thoroughly she soaked in the affection he gave her, she thought that even if she could turn back time, she would still choose to come to Solean.

The deepening thoughts came to an end at a quiet knock on the bedroom door.