I congratulated him on his victory.
He proposed in front of the entire city.
We married, we grew old together, we never parted.
It took a third life to see the truth: I'd given my heart to the wrong man.
I tightened my grip on Gemma's hand. "We're going home."
The crowd pressed in from every side, the air thick with dust and the stench of too many bodies. Each breath felt like swallowing stones.
Gemma pointed at my hair. "But you got up before dawn to do your hair. Wasn't that for him?"
"Did he make you angry? Is that why you won't let him see your pretty hairdo?"
I had no answer for that.
I reached up and pulled the crabapple blossom from my hair.
Placed it in my palm and crushed it, slowly, between my fingers.
Once, a bright-eyed boy had tucked a twin-stemmed crabapple blossom behind my ear.
He made me promise to wear one when I came to welcome him home from war.
And so for ten years, I, who never cared for anything flashy or ornate,
always pinned the most vivid crabapple blossom I could find before going to see him.
I stood beside him through his glory days, his fine robes and fast horses, his meteoric rise.
And my reward was a sword through the belly and a family in the ground.