Shackled To The Enemy King

Catherine smiled, a wistful smile of someone remembering a life that had already slipped through her fingers.

"You’re asking the wrong question."

Fitzgerald frowned. "Then what’s the right one?"

She didn’t answer immediately. Instead, she looked down at their joined hands before lifting her eyes to him again.

"People always ask why we love someone." A slow turn carried them across the ballroom. "But..." she murmured, "...that’s never really how it happens."

He waited.

"Have you ever wondered why you breathe?"

His brows knitted together. "...No."

"Exactly." She smiled. "You don’t wake up every morning and decide to breathe. You simply do."

Another quiet turn.

"Love is a little like that."

Fitzgerald’s answer came almost immediately. "That’s biologically inaccurate."

She laughed. A genuine laugh. "See?"

His expression remained serious.

"That’s exactly why you don’t understand it."

He blinked.

Catherine’s smile softened. "You’re trying to explain love from the outside." She looked directly into his steel-grey eyes. "It only makes sense from the inside."

For the first time since they had begun dancing... Fitzgerald had no immediate reply.

"...Inside?"

She nodded. "You keep asking what makes someone worth sacrificing everything for." Her gaze drifted briefly across the ballroom before returning to him. "But by the time you’re asking that question..."

She smiled sadly.

"...you already have."

He stared at her.

The orchestra faded into the background.

She continued quietly. "Nobody sits down with a list and decides...This person is worth my life. It happens one ordinary moment at a time. You worry when they’re late... You notice when they skip a meal... You remember how they like their coffee... You start celebrating their victories more than your own."

Her finger clenched. "Or... you just drive your truck into a moving vehicle to protect them..."

She gulped, and her eyes wandered somewhere far beyond the ballroom. "One day... you look around... and realize someone else’s happiness matters more than yours."

A small breath escaped her. "Their pain hurts more than your own. Their tears become unbearable."

Like when she thought Maximilian hated her, and still she saved his son, because she didn’t want him to be in that kind of pain... Like how he was willing to set her on fire, because she had asked...

She looked back at him. "And the strange part is... you won’t remember when it happened. You’ll only realize... that you’d crossed that line a long time ago."

Silence.

There was a real silence between them; the kind that follows a truth.

Fitzgerald’s thoughts drifted despite himself.

Samantha.

He had convinced himself he came to Stonehaven searching for answers. For truth. For evidence.

But was that really why?

He had abandoned board meetings, ignored business, flown across the country, and waited hours in a hospital.

None of it had benefited him.

No... He had done it because he expected Samantha there.

The realization settled over him so quietly that it frightened him.

His voice became almost inaudible. "...How do you know when you’ve crossed that line?"

Catherine looked at him for a long moment. Really looked at him. She saw the confusion, the curiosity...the childlike honesty hidden beneath decades of carefully constructed control.

Then she answered gently.

"When protecting them starts feeling more natural than protecting yourself."

He froze.

The consultation room.

He could have taken Catherine’s gun.

He hadn’t.

He could have sent the email to Dorian.

He almost had...

But the moment he realized Samantha would cry...

Nothing else had mattered.

Catherine continued, her voice barely above a whisper. "Love isn’t a decision. The decisions come afterward."

She smiled.

"Love comes first." Another slow turn. "People think love is supposed to make you happy."

She shook her head. "No. Love simply gives you someone whose happiness and pain become your own."

Something inside Fitzgerald tightened painfully. Not because he disagreed, but because, for the first time in his life... He thought he understood.

He looked at Catherine. "Is that what happened to you?"

Her eyes instinctively found Dorian across the ballroom. Then, beyond the walls... Toward a hospital she could no longer see, toward the man lying unconscious... toward another little boy who had died in her arms centuries ago.

Her smile trembled.

"Twice."

She said nothing more.

She didn’t need to.

And Fitzgerald, for perhaps the first time in his thirty-five years, realized there were truths that could never be measured, diagnosed, or reduced to logic alone.

They simply... lived inside a person.

But another thought quietly surfaced, refusing to be ignored. His steps slowed almost imperceptibly.

If everything Catherine had just said was true... Then what about her?

He had traveled to Stonehaven because of Samantha. He could admit that now.

But this evening... He hadn’t come for Samantha. He had come because Catherine Preston was here.

He had known Dorian Blackwood would be here. He had known she would be standing beside him.

And after their meeting in the hospital, he couldn’t stop thinking about Catherine. For reasons he still couldn’t explain... He had wanted to see her.

No... That wasn’t right. He had wanted to make sure she was all right.

His brows slowly furrowed.

That... Didn’t fit.

He could understand Samantha. She had occupied his thoughts for years... she’d be there, in his closet when his eyes landed on the hat she gifted... her taste lingered on his lips each time he ate an apple... whenever he heard that drawling accent, her face was the first thing that popped in his mind.

Samantha made sense. Every memory led back to her. Every irrational decision suddenly had a cause.

Catherine didn’t.

She should have become someone he avoided.

Instead, ever since the hospital, his mind kept circling back to her. He found himself drawn toward her, with something stranger.

Something that whispered...

Protect her.

The thought unsettled him.

Could a person... Love two people?

No.

That wasn’t it.

The feeling wasn’t the same.

When he thought of Samantha, his chest grew warm.

When he looked at Catherine... It felt older. Instinctive, as though his body had reached a conclusion long before his mind had been invited into the discussion.

He was about to ask...

A sharp tug interrupted the dance.

Catherine stumbled half a step. Fitzgerald’s eyes immediately dropped to her arm.

Dorian’s fingers were digging painfully into it. "You’ve been monopolizing my fiancée for quite some time, Mr. Rathbourne."

His smile was flawless. Only his grip betrayed what lay beneath it.

Fitzgerald looked at Catherine first. She wasn’t resisting, but he saw the tiny crease between her brows and the stiffness in her shoulders.

She was hurting.

Without thinking, he took a step forward.

"Dorian—"

Before he could finish, Dorian had already pulled Catherine against his side.

"Come, darling." His voice remained pleasant enough for nearby guests to hear. "We’ve neglected our guests long enough."

Catherine met Fitzgerald’s eyes only for the briefest moment.

Then she was gone... Dragged back into the crowd.

Fitzgerald remained standing alone on the dance floor, watching the place where she had disappeared.

His jaw tightened.

That feeling returned.

The same unreasonable, instinctive impulse...

The urge to walk after her... To pry Dorian’s hand from her arm... To stand between them...

Should he?

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