The fact that it was the veranda that gave the best view of the drawbridge, that was mere coincidence.

There she was. His chest seized up at the sight.

Not that he'd been looking for her, mind you. But her tall frame, made taller still by the way her back was held taut by anger, the pride and indignation spilling forth from her in waves so powerful that Valerius felt them from where he stood, her silken brown hair blowing loose in a not-quite-natural wind, and the bright green of her dress...

His favorite of her dresses, and she knew it, damn her...

...All this would have made it impossible to miss her, even if he weren't looking. Which he wasn't, really.

His gaze must not have been as dispassionate as he felt sure it was, because Mayla felt it burning on her skin.

She turned and met his gaze, causing him to startle, almost dropping his glass.

The venom in her eyes struck him in spite of the distance. And yet...

And yet the pair's regret and longing hung thick in the air between them, like an invisible thread connecting them for an instant.

Valerius' icy gaze threatened to thaw, tears boiling behind his eyes.

Mayla's steely glare was at risk of softening, like a knife dropped in the white-hot embers of their love.

In that fragile instant... there was a breath of a chance that everything might have been all right. The rift, for a heartbeat, might have closed. A thread, held in the Fates' eager shears, may perhaps have escaped being cut.

But the poison they'd cast at one another still stung bitter in their mouths and rang in their ears.

Fine! Go ahead! Go and die, for all I care! ... At least you'll be a martyr!

And you can stay here and rot in your gilded cage! ... At least my life will have meant something!

And Mayla's gaze didn't soften. Valerius' didn't thaw.

She turned, snapping the last tenuous thread connecting them, and walked away, to a destiny as of yet unknown.

Valerius watched her go. His own foolish pride, his vile words, his misplaced anger born of the fear of losing her... They had destroyed the only thing he cared about.

"...Damn it all," he whispered to the unfeeling air.

He thrust his glass into the moat below, the eels dodging it, the wine muddying the water just as tears muddied Valerius' eyes.