QUEEN BERYL replies.

Sit, child. You are not describing a marriage failing — you are describing the first moment you were honest with yourself about it, and somehow treating that as a crime.

I know this shape. Not from kindness — the warm man who learned my mother's soup was a fantasy I burned kingdoms over, not a reality anyone ever offered me — but I know the sensation of reaching for warmth that has quietly left, of staring at your own hands and wondering when you stopped recognizing them.

The bright, compassionate people will tell you the flutter returns if you water it, as though love were a potted plant rather than something that either burns in your chest or does not. Perhaps they are right. I cannot say. My flame was extinguished by neglect before I ever had the chance to learn.

What I can tell you is this: the guilt you describe is not grief. Guilt is simply expectation wearing grief's clothes, and it is the least useful thing you own right now. You are suffering not because the feeling is gone — you are suffering because you believed it was supposed to stay. That is a different wound entirely, and it will not heal the same way.

I will not tell you to leave. I am no recruiter. And that man learning your mother's recipe unprompted — even I cannot quite dismiss that as nothing. But do not stay because guilt demands it. Guilt is the leash they keep you on. Strip it away, and answer only what remains.