Chapter One Hundred and Sixty-Five

Irina's POV 

The months after Alexei's death were the hardest of my life. This was grief, pure and unrelenting, a weight that sat on my chest and made it hard to breathe.

I had not expected to love Alexei. When I learned the truth about that night, I had hated him. He had deceived me and violated me and taken something that was not his to take.

But then I watched him change. Slowly and painfully, he tried. He really tried. He learned to hold Nikolai gently. He learned to speak softly. He learned to ask for forgiveness.

And somewhere in those months, I fell....