I was waiting for Nolan in our room when he returned from work in the evening.

“Hey,” he said as he closed the door behind him. His tone was solemn.

And then he saw where I was sitting, and what I was doing.

I was at the little dining table in our suite, with the divorce forms stacked neatly in front of me.

Nolan walked over slowly. He loosened his tie and shrugged off his jacket on the way. His eyes were on the stack of papers the whole time.

“I decided… that I can agree to this,” I told him.

I couldn’t look him in the eye while I said it. I didn’t want him to see how badly I was hurting.

It was everything I could do just to sit through this. To say these awful words, do this awful thing.

“I signed it all,” I said. “I’m pretty sure I got to everything. Took a long time to look at all the pages, but I did it.”

Hearing my own voice was strange. It sounded totally empty of emotion.

I think I had run out of feelings. All that crying flushed them out. All I had left inside of me was exhaustion and emptiness.

My eyes were still hot and itchy, still swollen from the sobbing. But I resisted the impulse to touch them. It would just make them puffier.

And I didn’t want him to see my pain.

He could probably feel it… at least a little. But I didn’t need to put it on display for him. How badly he had hurt me.

Nolan stood across from me, clutching the back of a chair with both hands. I still couldn’t look up at his face. But the white-knuckle grip I saw that he had on the chair back… at least that told me that this wasn’t easy for him, either.

He slipped into the chair and sat across from me. But still, didn’t say anything.

“I don’t know what comes next,” I continued.

I was just saying something to break the tense silence.

“It seems like… you take over from here I guess.” I pushed the stack of papers across the table slowly.

Nolan didn’t reach out for them. He was still as a statue.

NOLAN

He knew Yena had filled out the divorce forms the moment he saw her sitting there with the stack of papers on the table.

Her usually confident shoulders were slumped, and she was looking down, avoiding eye contact.

Nolan heard, “I signed it…”

And she said a few more things, too, but it was like after that, her volume got turned down. Or someone had stuffed cotton into his ears.

And then his vision went dark around the edges, pressing inward, telling him he was about to black out.

Nolan reached out and braced himself on the back of a chair before he could collapse. And then somehow managed to get himself seated into the chair. His knees were wobbling.

He hoped she did not notice.

Nolan closed his eyes.

He was lost for breath.

He tried his usual strategy… breathing in the through the nose, then out through the mouth.

It didn’t work the way it usually did. He still couldn’t breathe. It was like all the oxygen had been sucked out of the room.

His heartbeat was slow, then fast, then fluttering. His chest was tight, and there was a sharp, stinging pain right in the center of it.

And in his mind, he thought, I know what this is.

It was his heart breaking.

Yena pushed the stack of papers across the table, saying something about him needing to take over.

He looked and there was her signature on the very first page, written out in shiny black ink.

This was the first time he had ever really looked at her signature.

The smooth, loopy letters of her cursive handwriting were beautiful.

Of course they were. She was an artist.

Everything she did with her hands was beautiful.

Nolan tried to look Yena in the eyes, but she would not lift her face. She just kept staring down.

Now that the papers were over in front of Nolan, her gaze was fixed on her lap, where she had her hands folded limply.

This didn’t make any sense.

Why would she sign the papers?

How could she leave him?

Nolan realized he did not know how long he had been sitting there in silence. Maybe a minute. Maybe five.

Yena was waiting patiently for him to say or do something.

He tried another slow inhale and exhale.

It helped a little.

Nolan cleared his throat, afraid his voice would come out shaky or cracking.

“Alright,” he said at last. “I will get my portions signed. And get it back to my attorney.”

Yena, head still hung low, nodded in agreement.

So this was it.

Yena loved him… but not enough.

Not enough to stay with him.

Not enough to let go of a silly, temporary desire to travel.

She loved Nolan, but she loved her independence a lot more.

A heavy exhale escaped his lips.

He didn’t want to look vulnerable in front of Yena. Not now.

“I’ll go get this started,” he said. “No use in delaying.”

And then he got up. Picked his jacket back up and put it on. And left the room without looking back.

“It’s urgent,” Nolan told his secretary. “I need to see her immediately.”

“Of course, Sir.” The man picked up the phone and began conveying the prince’s request to Luna’s team.

Nolan went into his office to wait.

He opened the bottom drawer of his desk and pulled out a bottle of very old, very expensive whiskey. Twisted off the cap and threw back a long slug.

The bottle was back in his desk and his desk was locked again when the secretary came in and told Nolan he could meet the queen in her suite now.

Then he was riding up the elevator, hardly remembering having walked across the palace to get there.

Luna was standing by the window when the gold elevator doors rolled open. She turned to look at Nolan, and when she saw his face, an expression of concern immediately flashed across hers.

“What is that?” she asked, jutting out her chin and looking at the folder that Nolan was holding in his arms.

He walked over to a glass-topped table and set the folder down. Opened it up and took the papers out.

“It’s a divorce contract.” Nolan’s throat felt dry.

He looked up at his mother and found she was staring at him with wide, wild eyes.

“Whose?” she asked, though Nolan felt she knew the answer.

He blew some hot air out of the side of his mouth. Not realizing he’d been holding his breath.

“Mine. I offered them to Yena, and she signed them.”

“What are you talking about, Nolan?”

He had never seen his mother’s eyes go so wide.

“It was… an idea that I had,” Nolan confessed. “I didn’t want to divorce her, I just…”

Suddenly he could not even remember why he had done this.

What had been the point?

To test her?

To prove to himself that she loved him more than she loved her anything else?

Why?

His mother picked up on the same thought.

“Why?” she asked. “Why would you do such a thing?”