I touched my own lips without thinking.
How long had it been since he'd touched me?
Over a thousand days and nights.
I'd lost count.
Around me, he hadn't just been mute.
He'd been almost pathologically distant. Cold. Untouchable. A husband in name only, bound to me by blood oath and Family obligation, but never—never—by choice.
But now—
He kissed her without a shred of hesitation. His hands cupped her face like she was something precious. Something worth protecting.
Something I had never been.
Suddenly, the world felt like some absurd stage. A cruel comedy written by a God with a taste for tragedy.
My blood-bound husband, the one with selective mutism—
Publicly proposing to his former lover.
In the same building where his wife lay recovering from injuries his woman had caused.
So that was it.
Not loving someone was the original sin.
And I had been guilty from the very beginning.
I lingered in the shadows of the city until the evening bled into night.