Prologue

At forty-eight years old, with death right before her eyes, Silvia realized she had been deeply satisfied with her marriage. Breathing had grown harder with each passing moment, yet she kept her gaze on Luke, the husband she had married at eighteen, watching him tremble as he clutched her hand.

Over thirty years of marriage, the two of them had three sons and two daughters, and their bond had been a warm and devoted one. Luke worshipped Silvia like a faith and granted her every request. Duke Luke Ambrose was the kind of man who would pluck the stars from the sky if she asked for them.

His love proved itself just as steadfast in bed. Every night, Luke wanted to hold her. Even on the nights when her body was too frail to make love, he would pull her on top of him and sleep with her wrapped in his arms. There were times she actually turned down his advances in favor of that, because she loved it more than the act itself. The fierce, steady drumming of his heart was like a lullaby, and his large hands enveloped her whole body as warmly as a blanket.

Unlike other men of noble birth, Luke kept no mistress. Wherever he went, he insisted on bringing Silvia along, always wanting her near. Did she dislike it? Honestly, no. To her, that kind of need felt like his way of showing affection, and she welcomed it. Luke truly loved Silvia, and Silvia loved being loved by him. Their five children were her pride, and Luke was her greatest source of dignity.

Wanting to return the love she had received, Silvia had been planning for them to retire to their estate once all five children were married and had left home. It was something Luke had always wanted, but Silvia wanted it too……a quiet place where it would be just the two of them. She wanted to share meals she had prepared herself rather than ones brought by servants. She had a quiet wish to take a trip together, just the two of them, on a whim. While she was dreaming of that future, she learned she was ill. She had gone to see a physician about some indigestion and was told she had a serious disease. Luke tried everything to save her, but with no name for the illness and no known cause, there was no way to find a cure.

From then on, she struggled to keep food down. What she managed to eat came back up again and again, and sometimes blood came with it. Her symptoms grew increasingly similar to those of a plague patient, and even the household staff began to shrink away from her……yet Luke willingly took on all the burden of her care himself.

‘Ah……I loved my husband. I loved him so very much.’

Another tremendous realization struck Silvia. She had never once said those words to him directly. She had assumed he would know without being told. Would he think her cold? No, she didn’t think so. He knew too well what she was thinking, what she wanted. Sometimes she suspected he could see straight through her, he understood her preferences so completely. Even so, she wanted to try confessing it, just once, at the end.

She had been taught that declarations of love were something men made, not women, and every time she had tried to say it, embarrassment and awkwardness made her put it off until tomorrow……and tomorrow had become now. But she wanted to find courage before she died. Because death would be the end.

“Don’t cry.”

Luke was crying. He sat holding her hand, nothing left of it but skin over bone, and he wept. Watching him plead with her not to die, begging her not to leave him alone, broke her heart. She wanted to tell him she wanted to live too, that she wanted to give back the love she had only ever received.

But death was coming for her too quickly, too boldly. She could not stop it, so she had no choice but to accept it. Rather than waste her final moments in resistance, she had to yield and say the things she had never said to Luke.

“Something from long ago is coming back to me.”

Silvia’s voice was cracked and threaded with a metallic rasp. She tried to speak as though nothing were wrong, but she could barely string the words together, and the labored sound of it was thick with the shadow of death.

“Silvia, please. Don’t leave me.”

Luke was calling her name. Whenever he called her name, Silvia’s heart had always quickened. That she could still feel it quicken even now, with death drawing near……perhaps that was the greatest fortune of her life.

“It must have been the night of a ball. I was suffering alone over a one-sided love. The me back then couldn’t confess. That stayed with me, like something unfinished. If I could go back to that moment, I think I would confess for certain.”

If she had confessed her feelings to that man instead of Luke, she would not have dragged those feelings out and tormented him for so long. With a quietly brightened heart, Silvia looked at him. Luke was no longer crying. He only looked sad. He was a handsome man. He shone wherever he stood. She had pushed that Luke away so fiercely at the beginning.

In the early days of their marriage, Silvia had said terrible things to him. She had blamed him and cut him down for standing between her and the man she had first loved. She had dismissed his sincerity, mocked it, laughed at it. In those early days, when he seemed to want to be with her, she would push him away, and at her worst she had struck him across the face. That struggle went on for five years. For five years, she had only shared his bed when it was necessary to produce an heir, and once she was with child, she avoided any contact that wasn’t required.

Silvia had been a truly cruel woman, at least to Luke. Through all of it, Luke loved her the same. During all those years she had foolishly believed herself in love with another man, he never once lost his temper. He waited in silence. When she struck him, he took the blow. When she pushed him away, he stayed where he landed. He absorbed every bit of her anger without complaint.

So she had to make sure he did not grieve too deeply. Silvia was leaving now, but for as long as she had lived, until this very last moment, she had loved him. She was sorry for ruining their early years together…… She needed him to know that it was the greatest sorrow of her entire life.

She opened her mouth to speak and her breath caught completely. She understood she had reached the end. There was no time. What she wanted to say, which words to begin with……there was so much she wanted to say before dying, but time had run out entirely. From among the countless words crowded inside her like stars in a night sky, Silvia resolved to say just one……the brightest, the most desperate.

“I love you so very much…… I always wanted…… to tell you……”

Silvia could not finish. A tremendous wave called death had crashed over her. Had it reached him? That her final words were a declaration of love for Luke.

‘Still……it was a satisfying life.’

Not even death could stop her heart from loving him. If she were born again, if she went back to that time again, her only choice would be Luke. So she hoped he would grieve only a little. She hoped he would not follow after her too soon from grieving too deeply. Those were Silvia’s thoughts in the moment she died.

Silvia closed her eyes, and not long after, Luke wept like a small child. His cries were so forlorn she wanted to hold him, but the hands that would have held him were growing cold fast. Death was that cold.

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