The Confession

Leonidas's POV

She had been a slave.

The thought moved through me like cold water, slow and thorough, reaching every place I had spent years learning not to feel. She had been a slave in my castle. She had scrubbed floors I walked across without looking at. She had been sold here by my brother — my brother, who stood at my table and shared my wine and spoke of loyalty with the practiced ease of a man who had been lying his entire life.

She had died in this room. On that ...