Chapter 49: To Confront The Truth

“Should we have sex?”

The question lingered in the room like poison gas: colorless, inescapable.

“Do you want to?” Maximilian asked quietly.

The familiar pain of the curse flared in his chest, sharp enough to steal his breath. He turned away first, carefully placing the baby into the bassinet, as if grounding himself in that small, fragile weight would keep the world from collapsing.

Catherine didn’t answer.

Her head remained bowed, eyes fixed on the floor.

Want.

He asked as though it mattered. As though her desire still belonged to her.

Something inside her snapped.

A soft, broken laugh slipped from her lips.

This—this might be insignificant in the grand design of the curse, but she couldn’t accept it. To be forced into intimacy with a man she hated just to reclaim her autonomy—

It was absurd.

No.

Unless—

Unless the bracelet hadn’t been created by fate at all.

If Aurelia—or whatever woman from that other century—had forged this for her lover so she could bind him, keep him from leaving, then the logic was simple.

This bracelet wasn’t destiny.

It was him.

It had to be Maximilian.

Why else would the universe care enough to entangle two enemies across centuries? Fate didn’t trap lovers or enemies out of sentimentality. People did… out of fear.

She didn’t want to become someone she no longer recognized.

But that didn’t mean she would kneel and accept whatever cruelty was placed before her.

She only knew how to fight.

And if she couldn’t win…

She would fight until she broke.

I will not let you win over me.

When she lifted her head, her eyes were red.

Maximilian’s hands flew to his chest as her pain crashed into him, sudden and overwhelming.

She didn’t retreat.

She walked toward him.

“I love you,” she said.

The words struck like a blade.

Maximilian’s eyes widened even as his jaw clenched. His fingers fisted in his shirt, knuckles white, breath shuddering.

“It hurts?” Catherine asked softly, stepping closer. “This is what you want to hear—and it hurts?”

Her lips curved, sharp and merciless.

“Truth,” she said through clenched teeth. “Truth has to be uncovered, doesn’t it? You said it yourself—my convictions might be wrong.”

She was bound.

But the curse gave her this much power.

The seven-foot man before her trembled, unable to withstand the agony pouring out of her—pain steeped in her soul in two lifetimes.

Perhaps that was the only mercy in this hell.

Maximilian dropped to his knees.

He looked up at her.

Her face was unrecognizable.

Hatred felt like too gentle a word.

“Aren’t you ashamed?” she asked coldly. “Kneeling now… after standing above everyone else for so long?”

His hands hit the floor.

He couldn’t lift his head.

“This…” he gasped, coughing as if breath itself were rationed. “This is what you feel?” His voice cracked. “How much did you suffer?”

Her anger didn’t fade.

If anything, it sharpened.

The more he mirrored her pain, the more she despised him. His restraint. His endurance. His selflessness.

If he thought pity, or pretending to care, would soften her heart, he was gravely mistaken.

She grabbed his collar, her nails scraping his neck, drawing a thin line of red.

“You can stop acting,” she said, staring into his eyes—blue darkened, bleeding into violet.

She wanted the truth.

And she knew the oldest way to drag truth into the light was through suffering.

She couldn’t think of a better way to torture Maximilian. Not because she enjoyed it, no. She had to dig into her biggest failure and her deepest pain. But she had to.

“I don’t need your pity,” she whispered. “I need the truth.”

Maximilian gasped, lungs burning, though nothing physically restrained him.

Catherine didn’t have to imagine much—only the moment she had returned.

If holding her miscarried and stillborn children had been hell—

Then holding her toddler son, who loved sleeping against her warmth, laughed and threw tantrums, and looked at her like he was her whole world… butchered, blood-soaked, lifeless…?

That was the deepest pit of it.

No one deserved that kind of pain.

No one.

But he deserved to feel it. Her pain.

“Enough,” Maximilian said, gripping her wrists.

She let go instantly.

His touch burned.

“What do you want to know?” he asked quietly.

And for the first time, Catherine realized…

He wasn’t resisting anymore.

Of all the questions she could have asked, she chose the one that had been clawing at her from the very beginning. The one thing she never believed he was capable of doing.

The one thing he had done.

She needed to know why.

“Why did you kill my son?” she asked.

For a heartbeat, she thought he might finally break. Open up. Confess.

Instead, he became stone.

A solid, unyielding wall. An emotionless psychopath—just as she had always believed. Everything he did was an act. The only thing he truly understood was physical pain.

Maybe… just maybe… that would be enough to force the truth out of him.

“Your son?” Maximilian whispered.

He collapsed onto all fours, his forehead dipping so low it nearly brushed the floor, his body curling in on itself as though trying to escape the agony ripping through him.

Catherine watched him… and scoffed.

That was pain?

She had lived with it. Endured it. Survived six more months with that hollow, bleeding ache lodged permanently in her chest. She had reclaimed parts of her kingdom without her husband’s aid. She had hunted down the men whose arrows had struck her child.

All while that pain sat, unmoving, at the bottom of her heart.

And he couldn’t even lift his head?

Who said men were stronger than women?

“You don’t have the right to mention him,” she snapped. “Just tell me why!”

She wanted to tear him apart. To shred him piece by piece and soak her hands in his blood to avenge her son. But vengeance could wait.

She needed answers.

Yes—children died in war. Even toddlers. It was brutal, but not unheard of.

But this—

It was him.

And it was her son.

How could he do it, knowing how much she had already lost?

“Tell me,” she demanded, her voice shaking despite herself. “What did I ever do to you to deserve such hatred?”

“I don’t understand what you’re—”

She didn’t slap him. She didn’t need to.

The sheer cruelty of his refusal—his continued detachment—hurt far more than any blow she could have delivered. He couldn’t even give her closure.

The pain surged.

And as it always did, it transferred to him.

“I don’t remember,” he said hoarsely.

Catherine laughed bitterly.

“Who are you protecting?” she asked. “She’s here, isn’t she?”

Maximilian looked up at her, eyes narrowed as he fought to breathe through the pain.

“Your wife,” Catherine said. “Charlotte.”

The name tasted bitter on her tongue.

Maximilian scoffed, the corner of his lips lifting in something dangerously close to a smile.

Catherine’s teeth clenched. “What’s funny?”

Bracing himself on his hands, he raised his head. His expression was unreadable—pain carefully leashed behind something colder.

“Elyndra killed my brother,” Maximilian said.

Catherine’s heart stuttered.

What?

His brother?

Ah…

The crown prince. The elder brother.

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