“Then let’s find out together, my emperor. One memory at a time.”
“You married me four times,” Lyra said, her voice shaking. “You killed me in two of them. And in the thirteenth fantasy, you loved me so gently that I forgot you were capable of cruelty. Which one is this, Kaelen? Which version of you woke up today?”
“I don’t know which version I am yet,” he said honestly. “But I remember every sin. Every kindness. Every lie. And every single time I watched one of you die.” fourteenth fantasy : harem reborn
It had been reborn as a jury.
He woke to silk sheets that smelled of jasmine and old blood—his own, from a timeline where wife number seven had slit his throat during lovemaking. “Then let’s find out together, my emperor
His head pounded with fourteen overlapping lifetimes. In one, Sera, the knight-captain, had died protecting him from a demon. In another, he had executed her for treason she did not commit. In a third, she had been his most loyal ally, only to watch him fall into madness. All of it. All of her. All of them.
“The fire,” she said, stepping inside, hand on her sword. “The poison. The night you called me a monster. And the night you died in my arms—the first time you died in my arms. There were three others after that. I remember all of them.” And in the thirteenth fantasy, you loved me
You have failed every path, Kaelen of no house. The voice was cold, amused. The kind emperor. The cruel tyrant. The absent scholar. The jealous lover. The sacrifice. The conqueror. Each fantasy, failed.