He could hear her words echoing over and over within his mind, a soft reminder of the loss of her. A slow, daunting torture of hollow promises, whispered in the bed of lovers. Empty ambitions of a life they were deprived of. Desolate promises cast aside with her desertion.

"I want you to know, whatever happens, I love you."

An enigma of a warning hidden in the safety of a confession, tucked in between the lines, a foreshadow of what was to come. He ached with the memories, spinning him sideways, desperate to forget, terrified to let go. The cool midnight air seared his lungs, a physical pain that distracted him from the gaping emotional one she had left in him. Heart breaking, eyes watering, the only thing left to do was sit.

The lakeside was still. Quiet in the milky moonlight that reached long fingers between the braches above, stretching it's faint light towards the shadow he sat in. But it didn't quite reach. So instead he sat in darkness, absorbing the emptiness of this place without her; this place he hadn't been to since that evening he had said goodbye.

Soft lips pressed, desperate in desire, careful in nature, against one another. A quite moment stolen between lovers soon to be torn apart.

Francis had thought that that pain had been the worst, the idea of losing her to another man. To another King. But he had been wrong. The wound of watching her leave with his brother had hurt so much more.

The moon was fading, it's vast being sinking beneath the horizon of the lake, hiding away until it's hours were up and it's turn came again. He rose to his feet, body aching and stiff with immobility. He had been there all night, unable to leave the spot where her fingers had touched the grass, her body had laid upon the ground. Drawn to his moments under the trees with her.

Light was beginning it's ascent across the sky, stretching long arms in the opposite corner of the world, reaching it's depths to light the darkest corners of the earth. Francis wanted none of it. He turned from the spot, from the memory of her, and walked slowly back to the castle, back to another room where everything was laced with her essence.

"Because I love you."

How foolish to believe that it was enough. That his love for her could endure all the inevitable obstacles fate had waiting for them. How naïve to believe that she wanted the same. Francis wanted to convince himself that Mary didn't love him, that she left him for Bash. He thought the pain of it would be easier to bare. But it was nagging at him, the indecision on her face, the haunting promise of her love, the non-existent goodbye. It was wrong, all wrong.

Francis liked to believe that, in their time together, he had come to know Mary. Know her tells, the way her body moved, the dimple that tucked itself into each cheek, hidden under the curve of a cheekbone. He knew her as he knew himself, two halves of one whole, separated, joined, then torn apart again. He could see it in the way her dark eyes met his light, a steely resolution in her decision to leave, mounted on a horse beside his brother. But it was there, under the air of confidence of choice that Francis could see it: the heartbreak, the indecision, the belief that what she was doing was for someone's betterment. Francis wasn't sure of whose.

Suspicion gripped him. The pull of his love for Mary wrapped a cocoon of denial around him. The thin hope that her hand was forced, that she hadn't left of her own volition.

"If anything happens to Mary, anything, I will suspect you."

His heart stuttered. Francis didn't want to believe that his mother was capable of driving away the woman he loved, the woman he was promised to marry, but he knew in his heart that not only was she capable, but that she had proved that capability time and time again. Determination seized him. He would be damned if he let her get away with taking Mary from his life.

He stormed her rooms with a vigour that surprised the night guards, still half asleep from their dull and quiet shift, walked in unannounced and stood, breathless and demanding answers.

"What did you do?"

A mockery of confusion knit itself between her eyebrows, body folded in upon itself in a chair beside the fire.

"Francis? I don't know what you're talking about."

He knew her tells, too. The thin fold of lip she tucked between her teeth and bit down upon, the physical manifestation of the lie from her lips.

"I know you did it. I know you drove her away. But with what? What did you have over her Mother?"

She almost would have preferred if he yelled. Quiet and hushed, she could hear the menace laced into every syllable he spoke.

"I did no such thing. Mary left because she wanted to, Francis."

He shook his head, denial wrapping him in it's warm embrace. "She loves me."

The sorrow in her sons voice almost broke her heart. But the queen reasoned with herself that the heartbreak she caused him now would only spare his life in the end.

"Mary left you, Francis. It's been weeks. It is time you start to move on. Olivia…"

"No!"

The volume of his assuredness took a gasp of air from her lungs.

"No." A whisper just as deadly. "I'm not moving on. I'm going to find her. And I am going to get answers. And if I find out that you had anything, anything to do with this, than you have lost me for good."

He turned away from her, the sight of her sickening, and didn't stop when she called desperately after him. Francis didn't care what anyone told him. He knew that Mary had not left because she wanted to, had not left because she didn't love him. Denial, warm and safe, wrapped him in the belief that their love was real, was strong, and Francis vowed that, come hell or high water, he would discover the answers he needed.