Page 125 of Shameless Royalty

Because for all the months I spent trying to suppress it, trying to kill whatever fucking weakness he put inside me, I can’t.

I need to see him.

I need to fucking see him so I can breathe again.

I move faster, taking the stairs two at a time, ignoring the sharp sting of pain as my muscles protest. My heart is hammering now, loud and insistent, my stomach twisted in knots.

I don’t even know what I’m expecting. Maybe he’ll be asleep, curled up in that bed of his, red hair splayed across the pillow, the way he always was when I came to him in the middle of the night. Maybe he’ll be awake, reading one of those books he hoards like a fucking dragon, eyes rolling the second he sees me like he’s already preparing to give me shit.

Or maybe he’ll be pissed. Maybe he won’t even look at me. Maybe he’ll shove me away and tell me I fucked this up, that I left him behind, that I let him rot while I was out playing executioner for the Crowns.

I can handle that. I want him to be mad. I just need him to be there.

I reach his door and knock once before pushing it open, but then I freeze.

The room is empty.

Not just empty—abandoned.

The bookshelves are bare, the cupboards open and hollow, the air thick with dust, like no one’s been here in weeks.

The floor tilts beneath me, my lungs locking up and my vision tunneling in on the emptiness—on the absence, on the fact that I am standing in a goddamn graveyard of what used to be him.

He’s gone.

Malachi’s fucking gone.

My breath comes fast, too fast, my hands clenching into fists, nails biting into my palms. I force myself to move, stepping into the room like if I just get close enough, I’ll find him, like he’s just hiding, like he’s just fucking with me.

But there’s nothing. No clothes. No books. No scent of him lingering in the sheets.

The fucking walls are laughing at me.

I press a hand against my stomach, trying to keep from being sick, trying to breathe past the way my chest is caving in.

I lost him.

I lost him.

This is my fucking fault. I left him here, locked in a gilded cage, while I went off to spill blood and play my fucking part, and I told myself it was for the best. That he’d be safe. That this wasn’t a choice I had.

And now he’s gone.

I stagger back, my heart slamming against my ribs like it’s trying to claw its way out of my fucking body, and then I see it—something small on the pillow.

Something silver.

Something I know better than my own goddamn name and it feels like a bullet to the chest.

My feet move before I can think, before I can breathe, before I can fucking break, and then I’m sinking onto the mattress, staring at the ring on the pillow.

The Claddagh ring.

I reach for it with a hand that isn’t steady, my fingers curling around the metal, cold against my palm. My throat locks up, and I want to scream; I want to break something, I want to fix this, but I don’t even know how.

He left it here for me to find.

I squeeze my eyes shut, pressing the ring against my lips, my entire body shaking—then I lose my fucking mind.

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