Chapter 16: The Confession

“Have we met before… perhaps in another life?”

There. That was the question.

Maximilian stilled.

For the first time, Catherine truly looked into his eyes.

Blue. Strikingly so… sharper than Jonathan’s, clearer, colder. Were they always that color? Why couldn’t she remember?

His gaze met hers without flinching. Calm. Measured. Unreadable.

“Another life?” he echoed.

She leaned closer.

And that was when she saw it.

The overhead light shifted by the smallest degree, and the blue fractured. Along the rim of his iris, something darker surfaced in his iris… not gray, not shadow.

Violet.

Cool. Precise. Unmistakable.

Her breath caught.

It wasn’t dramatic. It didn’t glow or flare. It simply appeared, like ink bleeding beneath water. The blue softened, deepened, and the purple slipped through, quiet and intimate, as though it had always been there and she had only just learned how to look.

Her heart slammed against her ribs.

How… pretty.

He noticed the pause. His eyes narrowed slightly, not in suspicion, but awareness. The violet sharpened, faint but undeniable.

“That’s…” he murmured.

She realized she had stopped breathing.

Up close, the shift was impossible to dismiss. The purple wasn’t decorative. It was a tell. It surfaced because she was too close. Because something in him had awakened, made him alert and engaged.

Not threatened but aware.

For the first time, the balance tilted.

Catherine straightened just enough to reclaim herself, but the damage was done. She had seen past the calm blue, past the tweed and tenure, past the carefully cultivated restraint. The violet lingered, watching her now with equal intensity.

Her voice came out steadier than she felt. “Just… asking.”

He chuckled.

Low. Deep. The sound slid beneath her skin and settled somewhere dangerously warm. Catherine cleared her throat and leaned back, but it was already too late.

He was still laughing… the rich, unguarded kind she remembered from the youth of her past life, the kind that made his entire body move with it, as if he was in the moment, enjoying himself.

And the violet stayed.

She stood abruptly, putting distance between them.

Her expression hardened.

That smile… she knew that smile. The charming one. The disarming one. The mask he wore when he wanted people off balance. That was not the real one. The real Maximilian was the one etched into her memory: bloodshot eyes, lips trembling with fury barely leashed.

He removed his glasses, polishing them with deliberate slowness, amusement threading his voice. “That’s a new one,” he said lightly. “I don’t believe I’ve heard it before.”

Catherine clenched her jaw.

She hadn’t come here to amuse him. Was he mistaking her for another admirer? Another woman hoping to be noticed?

The thought made her skin crawl.

He set the glasses aside… and stood. The room seemed to shrink around him. Only then did she fully register his height.

He was tall. Not just tall, but imposingly so. Taller than Alexander. Even taller than William, who stood at six-eight. At least six-ten, seven, maybe.

Every instinct screamed at her to step back.

She didn’t.

“How did my flowers find you, Dr. Preston?” he asked, closing the distance.

There was a faint scent of cigars about him; not smoked, but remembered. As if he lingered in rooms where power breathed thickly.

Flowers?

Her mind flashed to the bouquet waiting in her hospital room. Lilies. Forget-me-nots. He had visited her the previous day.

Lilies… were once her favorite in another life. And forget-me-nots…

Do you remember? Is that what he’s saying? That he remembers?

“Those funeral flowers?” she asked coolly, lifting a brow, ignoring the rapid beat of her heart.

When did he get this close?

“I assumed an enemy was wishing me dead.” She managed to finish her sentence.

He let out a soft sound—elegant, amused, unmistakably masculine. His teeth caught briefly on his lower lip, as his eyes landed on her lips… as if he was considering kissing her.

Catherine pressed her lips together.

Is he doing this on purpose… or am I losing my grip?

“White lilies,” he said quietly, meeting her gaze. “Pure intentions. New beginnings… that was what the lady at the flower shop told me.”

Something was wrong.

The air thickened… heavy, almost viscous. Warmth crept along her skin, raising goosebumps as her nerves pulled taut. Her heart began to pound, loud enough that she was certain he could hear it.

Did they turn off the air conditioning? Why is it suddenly so hot?

Then his expression changed.

Softened.

The violet at the edges of his eyes deepened, darkened, as though something long restrained had eased its grip.

He lifted his hand.

He did not touch.

He stopped just an inch from her face… close enough that she could feel the heat radiating from him, close enough that stepping back would have felt like surrender.

“My dearest,” he said, and the words came stripped of charm, of calculation, of fakeness. “In all the histories I have studied, none prepared me for this.”

Her breath caught… sharp, shallow.

Why does it feel like a…

“You are unforgettable,” he continued, voice low, reverent. “And I am powerless against the love I feel for you.”

The room seemed to close in around them.

The violet lingered in his eyes…no, it sharpened, softening the warlord she remembered, making him achingly human. Not the cold strategist carved from blood and conquest, but a man standing far too close, looking at her as though she were something precious… and terribly dangerous.

… a-a confession?

Her hands trembled before she could still them.

In her past life, and this one, she could not remember a single moment when she had been confessed to like this. Not so bare. Not so unguarded.

It knocked her clean out of her footing, leaving her stranded in unfamiliar territory with no script to follow.

Behind all the life she had lived, when it came to love, she was still… inexperienced.

Her heart fluttered wildly, pulse spiking, butterflies erupting low in her abdomen. Heat rushed to her face, unmistakable, uncontrollable. She had to be blushing. Badly.

That voice… Those eyes…

Damn it.

She was stunned: utterly, catastrophically so.

What should I do?

“Catherine…” Maximilian whispered.

Emboldened by her silence, by the way her breath still hadn’t settled, he stepped closer. His hand lifted, slow, almost reverent, as if afraid she might vanish if he moved too quickly. His fingers brushed her cheek.

He bent toward her, as if drawn by instinct, as if she pulled him into a trance.

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