Chapter Thirty-Six: The Plea
The garden had become my sanctuary.
My cloister of quiet breaths and dandelion wishes.
The afternoon sun lay thick and golden across the path, honeyed and indulgent, as if the world itself were trying to soothe me. I sat watching a sparrow take a dust bath beneath the low hedge—its tiny body fluffed and frantic, wings fluttering as it threw grit joyfully into the air. It looked absurd. Alive. Entirely unconcerned with tomorrow.
For a moment, I let myself be like that bird—small, present, unafraid.
Then the air shifted.
It wasn't a sound. Not footsteps. Not a voice.
It was something deeper—an instinctive tightening in my chest, a pressure change, the way the body reacts before the mind can form a thought. The warmth thinned. The light felt sharper. A shadow stretched across the gravel path, long and unmistakably familiar.
My heart reacted first.
That foolish, treacherous organ recognized him instantly.
I turned.
Rowan.
He stood at the edge of the wisteria bower, half in bloom-shadow, half in sun, as if the garden itself couldn't decide whether to accept him. He wasn't armored in his usual precision—no immaculate suit, no corporate sharpness. Just dark, simple clothes that clung to a body wound tight with restraint.
His face undid me.
The cold, clinical mask from our last conversation was gone. What replaced it was worse. Shadows lived beneath his eyes, bruised and sleepless. His jaw was set too hard, as if he were holding something dangerous inside himself. And his gaze—God, his gaze was chaos. Not anger. Not triumph.
Turmoil.
It cracked through me like lightning.
He was here.
For me.
In this garden of broken things.
Every lesson I had learned. Every promise I had whispered to myself beneath the sun. Every careful stitch I had placed over my open wounds—gone. Vaporized. The stone in my chest split wide open, and something wild and desperate poured out.
My breath caught. A small, humiliating sound.
"Rowan."
His name escaped me before I could stop it. Not a greeting. Not an accusation.
A prayer.
A surrender.
He took a step forward—and stopped. Abruptly. As if he'd reached the end of his courage. His eyes swept over me with an intensity that burned: the pallor I hadn't yet lost, the way I stood too carefully, the hospital bracelet peeking from my sleeve like an accusation neither of us could ignore.
Something flickered across his face. Guilt. Rage. Fear.
"Aira."
My name, spoken like that, wasn't a blade.
It was a bruise pressed too hard.
That was all it took.
The composure I'd borrowed from sunlight and bees and children's laughter collapsed. The fragile peace I'd found dissolved like sugar in rain. Tears rushed up, blurring his face into something unreal.
"You came," I whispered. My voice shook violently. "You came for me?"
He didn't answer.
He only looked at me—and the pain in his eyes reflected my own so perfectly it felt like standing before a shattered mirror.
It was confirmation enough.
The love I had tried to bury roared back to life—not gentle, not forgiving. A wildfire. It devoured reason, pride, dignity, and left only need behind.
"I can't," I choked, taking a step toward him. My legs trembled, unreliable, still remembering the fall. "I can't marry him, Rowan. I can't. Please."
Another step.
The sparrow startled and flew away.
The world narrowed until there was nothing but the space between us.
"Don't leave me here," I begged, my voice breaking wide open. "Don't leave me in this… this beautiful cage. Take me with you."
He flinched.
"Even if it's for revenge," I rushed on, words spilling, ugly and desperate. "Even if you hate me. Even if it was all a game—just take me. I'll be anything. I'll be your revenge, your punishment, your mistake. I don't care. Just—just don't let me belong to him."
Each word stripped me further. I felt it happening. I didn't stop.
The love he had built on lies had become the only truth my heart recognized. It wasn't love anymore.
It was addiction.
Religion.
Ruin.
"Aira, don't—" His voice broke, rough as gravel. "Please."
But I couldn't hear him. The wounded animal inside me had clawed its way to the surface, feral and terrified. My knees buckled—not from weakness, but from surrender.
I collapsed onto the gravel path.
The stones bit into my skin. I didn't feel them.
I knelt before him, hands clasped together as if in prayer, my vision swimming with tears. I looked up at him through the blur, offering myself to something I knew would destroy me.
"Marry me," I sobbed.
The words tasted like blood.
"You wanted to punish a Grace?" I whispered hoarsely. "Then keep me. Punish me forever. Own me. I belong to you. You broke me, Rowan—so you keep me. Please."
The sun beat down on my bowed head. The garden went impossibly still. I was an offering laid bare at the altar of my own annihilation, every last shred of pride placed on the stone.
I waited.
For his cruelty.
For his rejection.
For the final, killing words.
Instead—
A sound.
A strangled, ragged breath.
I lifted my head.
Rowan Royce was staring down at me, and there was no victory in his eyes. No cold satisfaction. No triumph.
There was horror.
Pure. Devastating. Unmistakable.
He had wanted a lesson.
He had created a beggar.
He had wanted to wound Lyanna through me.
He had not meant to see himself reflected in the ruins of a soul—kneeling in the dirt, stripped of dignity, offering annihilation as devotion.
For a long, unbearable moment, he didn't move.
Then he turned.
Sharp. Violent. As if the sight of me were unbearable. His footsteps were quick, furious, uneven—as though he were fleeing a crime scene, not a garden.
He didn't look back.
He left me there.
On my knees.
In the beautiful, indifferent sun.
Alone—with the echo of my own begging ringing in my ears, and the crushing realization that even my complete surrender had not been enough to make him stay.
---
The gravel left tiny, crescent-shaped impressions on my knees. I stayed there long after Rowan's shadow had vanished, the cold from the ground seeping up through my bones, colder than the tears drying on my face. He had come. He had seen. And he had left. The final, absolute proof: I was not even worthy of being his revenge.
I had chosen ruin over Julian's careful, suffocating care.
But even ruin had rejected me.
I don't know how I got back to my room. My body moved on its own, a numb vessel carrying a shattered interior. The click of the hospital door behind me sounded like the seal on a tomb.
The storm arrived within the hour.
It wasn't Julian. It was Lucas.
He didn't knock. The door flew open and he was just there, a force of pure, icy fury. The scent of his expensive cologne did nothing to mask the violence in the air. He didn't ask how I was. He didn't look at my face.
He crossed the room in three strides, and his open hand connected with my cheek.
The crack was loud in the sterile silence. My head snapped to the side, a white-hot sting blooming across my skin. It wasn't the worst pain I'd felt, not by a long shot. But it was different. It was contempt, given form.
"You stupid, sentimental little fool," he hissed, his voice low and venomous. "He comes here, and you what? Get on your knees? Have you no sense left in that broken head of yours? No shred of dignity?"
I held my stinging cheek, saying nothing. What was there to say? He was right.
"He was documenting it, you idiot!" Lucas spat, leaning in close. "His men were here. Watching. Getting pictures of the pathetic, jilted Grace heir begging for scraps from the Royce table. Do you understand? He's not here for you. He's here to humiliate us further. And you played your part perfectly!"
His words landed, each one a nail. It made a terrible, logical sense. Of course. Why else would Rowan come? To witness the final result of his experiment. To collect data on my total collapse. A sick trophy.
"You will never see him again," Lucas commanded, straightening his suit jacket with a sharp tug. "You are a Grace. You will act like one. You will marry Julian Thorne, you will be quiet, you will be grateful, and you will forget that criminal and his twisted games. This is the last time your… your emotional incontinence will threaten this family. Am I understood?"
I finally looked at him. My eyes were dry. "Yes."
My flat acceptance seemed to fuel his anger, but there was nowhere else for it to go. He gave me one last, disgusted look and left, the door shuddering in its frame.
Silence, again. But this silence was different. It was expectant. It was waiting for Julian.
He came an hour later. He didn't rush in. He entered quietly, closing the door with a soft, precise click. He didn't come to the bedside. He stood by the window, his back to me, his posture rigid.
The kindness was gone. The gentle carer had vanished. In its place was a man whose investment had just proven dangerously, humiliatingly volatile.
"Lucas told me," he said finally, his voice devoid of all warmth. It was analytical. Disappointed.
I said nothing.
He turned. His face was not angry like Lucas's. It was… recalculating. "After everything," he began, slowly, as if puzzling out a complex equation. "After my care. My patience. My commitment to giving you a peaceful life. After he used you, broke you, and discarded you… you would get on your knees for him." He shook his head, a faint, incredulous smirk touching his lips. "I didn't expect that. I misjudged the depth of the… damage."
He wasn't defending me. He was assessing the flaw. The product was not just broken; it was loyal to its breaker. It was a critical design failure.
"I can't marry you," I whispered, the truth a bare, raw thing.
He laughed then, a short, humorless sound. "That is no longer your decision to make, Aira. You have proven you are incapable of making rational decisions. You have chosen ruin. Fortunately for you, I am still choosing you. Because a promise is a promise. And because," he added, his eyes hardening, "I don't lose investments to men like Rowan Royce."
He walked to the door, pausing with his hand on the knob. He didn't look back.
"The wedding date has been moved up. You will be ready."
This time, when the door closed, it didn't shudder. It sealed with a quiet, absolute finality.
I was alone.
Ruin had refused me.
My brother's love was a slap.
My fiancé's care was a cold business decision.
And the man I begged for had only come to take pictures of his winning hand.
I had no more choices. No more pleas. I had only the certainty of the gilded cage, its door now locked from the outside by the two men who saw me not as a person, but as a problem they were determined to solve.
Even on my knees, I had not been enough. For anyone.