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The crowd around us has begun to notice. Phones come out and people aren’t even trying to be sly about it. Trent sees them too, and his face darkens.

“Look around you, Rachel. People are filming you. You think they’re laughing with you?”

“I’m not the one shouting in the middle of the square.” My voice stays level.

His gaze comes back to me, and for one instant I see the man I married. Not the version from the beginning. The version from the end, the one who could turn any room into a test I was already failing.

He closes the distance between us. “Come with me.” His voice is low and flat, the tone that used to make my stomach tighten before he ever raised it. The tone that used to make me comply.

“No.”

“We’re going to talk.”

“We are talking.”

“In private.”

“No.”

His hand closes around my arm, and everything changes. There’s no time for fear because Locke is there before I can pull away. One moment he’s ten feet away, and the next his hand is around Trent’s wrist.

He doesn’t yank or twist. He only stops the hand holding me. “Let her go.” His voice stays quiet, but the strain shows in the rigid set of his body.

Trent looks down at Locke’s fingers around his wrist and then up at him. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

“Let her go.” Locke doesn’t raise his voice. Trent’s fingers open anyway, and the second they do, Locke releases his wrist.

That should be the end of it.

Then Trent shoves him. Hard.

Locke barely moves. The crowd makes a sound, and Trent hears it. Something ugly flashes across his face. An instant later, he swings.

His fist connects high against Locke’s chest with a sound that’s wrong, not flesh or bone but a hard crack of wood under force. Locke staggers one step, and I scream his name.

A split length of willow punches through his shirt, tearing the fabric at the center of his chest. Several outer strands have crushed inward beneath the impact, one broken end jutting out near his sternum.

Then something gold catches the light inside the narrow break in the weave.

My whole body goes cold. I move before I can think. “Locke.”

He puts one hand against his chest. “I’m all right.”

“You’re not.”

Trent is staring too, but I barely register him. The light catches the gold again, and this time I see the curve.

My wedding ring, caught inside Locke’s chest.

The gold is half-hidden behind broken willow, no longer bright from flame but dulled by weeks inside him. I remember it against my skin, my thumb turning it under tables, the small hard circle I once couldn’t stop touching. Now it’s inside Locke, and for one impossible second those two facts refuse to belong in the same world.

Trent sees my face and looks back at Locke’s chest. “Is that your ring?”

Locke looks down at the gold, then straight at me.

I can barely breathe. “Yes.”

Trent gives a short, disbelieving laugh. “You put our fucking wedding ring inside him?”