Blake

Cater sighs, but then smiles. "Yeah, I guess you're right."

It was Felix's first birthday. You decided to throw a small party to celebrate, inviting Cater's family, Trey, Riddle, Ace, and Deuce. Between Ace and Deuce and Cater's sisters, Felix would have more presents than he could fathom opening. Not to mention, they continued to argue over who was Felix's favorite uncle/aunt. (It was in fact Riddle)

You don't think your son quite understood why everyone was fussing over him. It was common for your friends and family to be over as everyone was quite active in his life, so to him, it was probably just another day to him. He was honestly more enamored with all the dinosaur themed decorations as it was his current hyper fixation.

"Why don't we go ahead and sing happy birthday and have him eat his cake?" You suggest. You could honestly tell that Felix starting to grow sleepy from the way he was rubbing his eyes. "I think we don't have much longer before the birthday boy will need a nap."

Felix didn't have sweets often either. so when he was given the smash cake Trey had graciously made for the party, he only continued to pick at the red and white frosting.

"It's your birthday cake, Felix," you say, squatting beside his high chair.

"Ake?" Felix repeats.

"Yes. You're supposed to eat it. See." You dip your finger into the frosting and bring it to your mouth to taste. Felix's head tilts, thinking, before he dips his own finger into the frosting to mimic you. Instead of eating it however, he holds his finger out to you. "No," you laugh. "You eat it."

"Like this, bud." Cater guides Felix's frosting-covered hand to his own mouth. Felix's eyes widen. Every adult begins to laugh when the one-year old begins clawing at the cake and trying to shove handfuls into his mouth. He makes a mess, dropping crumbs on to the floor, smearing icing around his mouth, and somehow, some of it ends up on his forehead and in his hair.

"Ake?" Felix asks, holding a crumbly handful out to you and Cater. Thankfully, there were cupcakes for the adults, so no one had to worry about slobber with their chocolate, but it was still sweet he was trying to share.

"No worries, buddy," Cater chuckles, ruffling the boy's hair. "That's all for you."

You kiss your son's chubby cheek as he shoves more cake into his mouth. "Happy birthday, sweetheart."

trey clover

Hazel Clover, born March 21 Name Meaning: Hazelnut tree, brownish-green color

Trey calls his daughter his "lucky clover." She has him wrapped around her finger, and you playfully warn Trey that his caving to her every whim will get him in trouble when she's older. He hates when she cries, even if its something simple as wanting to eat, because it hurts his heart to see her upset

Hazel sometimes thinks she's bigger than she actually is. As she nears one, she enters the phase of wanting to always help. She helps pick up her toys. She helps mommy pick up clothes. She wants to help daddy in the kitchen.

On days when business is slow, you like to bring Hazel by the Clover bakery.

It not only gives you the chance a few minutes to breathe, but it also allows your daughter to see her grandparents, whom are always eager to take her. Hazel is also quite known among the regulars, and a lot of the elderly patrons love to see her. Your mother-in-law always jokingly says that her granddaughter boosts business.

But, pretty much everyone else is irrelevant the moment Hazel spots Trey.

"Oh look. Her favorite person is here," Trey's mother teases, her jesting further solidified when Hazel stretches her arms out to be held by Trey instead. "I'm going to pretend that I'm not offended that you prefer my son over me."

"Trust me, she treats me the same," you laugh. Trey bends down to quickly kiss you before taking his daughter from his mother.

“Well, this is a pleasant surprise.” Trey smiles when Hazel tries to grab at his glasses. He gently stops her hand, and she giggles when he kisses her little knuckles. “I thought you two were running errands today?” Trey asks you.

“We were, but your mother offered to watch her instead, so I could actually get my shopping done in peace,” you explain. “Her timing couldn’t have been better though, because Hazel wouldn’t go down for a nap today, and you know how fussy she gets when she’s tired.”

Hazel's bubbly giggles fill your ears as Trey tickles her. "Giving your momma trouble, huh, little clover?" He coos.

You smile at the sight, albeit somewhat tiredly. Your husband was always so good with her, even from her early infancy. He even limited his hours at work until Hazel was about four months old, and while you assured him that you would be fine if he went back full time, you would be lying if you said that there weren't times you were a bit overwhelmed.

"I hate to trouble her," you begin nervously, "but do you think your mom can be persuaded to keep her overnight? Just for the night! I'll pick her up first thing in the morning, but if it's a problem, then it's no big deal and--"

"Sweetheart," Trey interrupts. "I'm sure my parents would be happy to babysit. You never ask them for anything, so I'm sure they won't mind."

“A-are you sure?”

Trey reaches into his pocket for his wallet and hands you his debit card. "I'll go talk to her. Go run your errands and do something nice for yourself while you're out."

You take the card hesitantly, trying to downplay your budding excitement. "Really?"

Trey nods, his expression softening. "I'll make reservations somewhere for us to do dinner. Just the two of us. I think a break will do us well." He knew his mother wouldn't mind, truly, but seeing the smile on your face when you eagerly ran out the bakery was worth it.

leona kingscholar

Amara Kingscholar, born August 1 Name Meaning: Grace, Elegance, Strength in Igbo language

Your daughter is a daddy's girl through and through. It's a running joke in the family that Leona is her favorite person in the entire world. She doesn't necessarily cry if someone else holds her, but she is watching to make sure that Leona doesn't leave the room

Leona denies it all the time, but Amara has him wrapped around his finger. He always calls her "princess" or "runt." There's no doubt that he would go to extreme lengths for his daughter, and is extremely protective over her.

When you went to Amara's nursery to get her from her nap, you tried not to be surprised when you found her crib empty. Now, if this had happened when she was a newborn, then yes, the whole palace would be on lockdown. But now, you were so used to it that it was almost amusing to you.

You walk to the window, pulling the curtains back. Amara’s nursery was just across the hall from you and your husband’s room, but because it faced the opposite side of the palace, her room had an overview of the gardens. A broom lolls leisurely past, weaving through the maze of flowers as if taking a mere stroll.

“Leona Kingscholar!” You shout. “You better not drop our daughter!”

Leona’s ears twitched, annoyed by your yelling. He wasn’t that far away or that high up. And he was the captain of Night Raven’s magicalshift team during his school years for a reason. You seriously worried too much. Especially because Amara was clearly enjoying the ride.

Amara was cradled in his arms. Well, more like Leona confidently carried her with only one arm as he controlled the broom with that cool nonchalance of his. What really concerned you was the lack of harness or anything to keep her secured to Leona, but your young daughter only happily clapped her hands as the wind tickled her cheeks and ruffled the tiny curls on her head.

"Your mother worries too much, doesn't she?" Leona asks Amara, who merely smiles back at him with a mostly toothy grin. One of her canines was beginning to poke through. He holds her close, guiding the broom a bit higher over the garden of sunflowers. Amara squeals excitedly. "See. A little height never scared you anyway, now did it?"

It was a weekly, if not daily occurrence that Leona took his daughter flying. He started it actually as a way to settle Amara when she grew fussy. One evening when she was only a few weeks old, she oddly refused to go to bed. You were beyond exhausted after having tried everything to get her to go to sleep, so Leona told you to go lie down while he handled it.

He decided to try taking Amara outside for some fresh air. When that still didn't work, he figured maybe she'd like taking to the skies, and found one of his old brooms amongst his magicalshift equipment. Although Amara never fell back asleep, her large doe eyes remained transfixed on her surroundings in clear awe.

It quickly became a habit, and something that Leona honestly looked forward to doing when he was finished with his work for the day.

Babbling something incomprehensible, Amara tried to wiggle out of Leona's hold so that she could lean forward to touch the flowers when they flew by. You think your heart nearly stops when Leona swoops her to his other arm and tosses her into the air.

"LEONA!"

“She’s fine!” Leona shouts back, a cheeky grin spreading across his face when a giggling Amara lands safely in his hands. He kisses the tip of her nose before smiling back at you. “Ain’t nothing gonna happen to her while I’m around.”

vil schoenheit

Violetta Schoenheit, born May 8 Name Meaning: derived from the word viola, the violet flower symbolizing modesty, faithfulness, and beauty

From such a young age, Violetta had such a strong personality. Even as a baby, she was sassy. As she got older, if she didn't like something or want it, she'd turn her nose up at it. You blame Vil for her stubborn streak. She quite literally is his mini me

Vil opposed letting his daughter be a part of any form of entertainment. He was a child actor and knowing how hard it was growing up, he did not want his daughter involved in the industry. If she expresses interest when she's older, he'd happily support. But he wants her to enjoy her youth, and he even takes time off working to be a part of her early milestones

"No, Vi, we don't touch that," you lightly scold, moving your daughter away from the outlet she for some reason had a strange fascination with. Your daughter let out a pouty huff, like she was mad that you were simply trying to prevent her from being electrocuted. It almost made you laugh, because it was eerily similar to an expression Vil has made on more than one occasion.

“Here. You can play with this,” you say. You try to hand her her toy mirror that crinkled and made noise when squeezed. Vi was always fascinated with her own reflection, and that seemed to divert her attention from the outlet. (For now).

The front door lock then clicks open. “Hey, I’m home,” Vil announces as he enters the apartment, his tie loosened and blazer across his arm.

Smiling, you quickly stand to go greet him at the door. “Welcome back!” You kiss him then take his jacket. “How was your day?”

“Long,” Vil sighs tiredly.

Now that Violetta was nearing a year old, he decided to slowly start returning to acting. But Vil wasn’t ready to be completely booked up yet, still wanting to be available for his daughter and you if need be. The day had been full of meetings regarding his upcoming schedule and which roles had lower time commitments. And most importantly, he didn’t want any roles that required additional traveling.

“I’ll tell you about it later.” Vil’s expression softened. “How are my favorite girls?”

“Oh you know,” you laugh, “Vi is so full of personality. Just earlier she was—“

When you turn to where you had left your daughter by the coffee table and her play mat, you freeze. Beside you, Vil stiffens, his breath hitching.

Violetta was holding on to the table, standing on wobbly legs.

“When did she learn—?” Vil gapes.

“I-I don’t know. She hadn’t done that all day and—oh my gosh—“

Your daughter takes an unsteady step towards you and Vil. She hesitates to completely let go of the table, one arm outstretched for balance.

“Come on, Vi, you can do it!” Vil drops to one knee, extending a hand out to try and coax his daughter towards you both. Violetta reaches out for him. “That’s it! Come to mommy and daddy. You got it.”

You’re holding your breath, before having half a mind to quickly whip out your phone to record her as she toddles over to Vil, only nearly falling over once. When she stumbles into Vil’s awaiting arms, she bursts into cheerful giggles and the two of you shower her with praises.

Immense pride fills Vil’s chest with a fluttering happiness he can’t fully describe. He also feels, relieved. If he had only been home just an hour later, he would’ve missed the moment entirely. From the day she was born, Vil had made a promise to be present for everyone one of his daughter’s achievements, big or small.

And it was a promise he fully intended to keep.

rook hunt

Adrian Hunt, born November 29 Name Meaning: person from Hadria, dark one

As a baby, Adrian was quiet but observant. He never fussed much or really even played with toys for that matter. Often times, he just likes to look out the window, which gave Rook the idea of taking his son outside for walks. And how your son absolutely loves going outdoors.

Rook endearingly calls his son, Mon petit observateur. Although he is much calmer than him, it seems like Adrian has also taken an appreciation and fascination with beautiful things. However, Adrian kind of has a bad habit of staring blankly at things he finds interesting. Poor Epel thought the baby had a problem with him.

It seems like fatherhood comes so easily to Rook.

Bath time is always a breeze and mess free. Never has he had to fumble or struggle to set up and take down the stroller. And it's almost as if he has the magic touch to put down Adrian for a nap hassle free.

While you're immensely grateful to have such a doting husband who goes the extra mile for the baby while you're postpartum, you can't help at times feel frustrated. Of course, if you want to sit with your son, Rook by no means keeps him from you, but he hardly lets you lift a finger as you recover from giving birth.

He's running all the errands, keeping up with the house chores, and taking care of the baby. And you begin to feel as if you're just sitting around, taking up space, not contributing. Like you're not fulfilling your role as a mother properly.

"Mon amour, what shall we do for dinner tonight?" Rook cheerfully asks, entering the living room where you finished nursing Adrian. "Would you like to go out to eat? Or perhaps I can make something?"

"Actually Rook...could I cook tonight instead?" You ask hopefully.

Your husband's head tilts in seeming confusion. "But of course, if that is what you wish, but wouldn't you prefer to relax?"

"That's the thing. I appreciate all your help, truly, but I'm tired of relaxing." You place your son into his playpen. He coos up at you, putting his hand in his mouth, making you smile. "I don't feel like I'm being particularly useful at the moment, and when I do do something, it already comes so naturally to you that I feel like there's no point of me even being present..."

"Oh, non, mon amour. Please don't think such a thing about yourself!" Rook crosses the room in two quick strides, taking your hands into his. "I truly apologize if I've been overstepping as it was not my intent. Given that your birth was not the easiest, I would be doing a disservice as your husband if I did not allow you to adequately recover."

"I know..." You mumble. "I guess I just feel bad, because I got it in my head that I should be doing more or else I'm a bad mother."

"You are farthest from such a notion, so please get the thought out of your mind." Rook brings your knuckles to his lips, pressing a sweet kiss against them. "I'm only able to be the father I am, because I have you by my side as my wife and the mother of our son. We are a team, and I need you as much as our petit Adrian. Okay?"

You exhale a relieved sigh. "Okay. Thank you, Rook."

Rook flashes you a charming smile. "Non, thank you for all that you do." At that, Adrian babbles something that sounds somewhat akin to agreement, making you and Rook laugh. "And it seems like our petit observateur feels the same."

idia shroud

Caelum Shroud, born August 14 Name Meaning: Heaven, sky

Caelum is a mamas boy to a T. Poor Idia doesn't know what to do, because if you so much as leave the room, the boy will cry. It lowkey starts to offend him how much Caelum prefers you over him. But just like his father, his son is pretty shy around strangers.

Caelum really loves Uncle Ortho, and perhaps its partially because they share the same birthday and that he's fascinated with the technology. He's a curious kid, and once Idia realizes Caelum starts to take an interest in his computers, he begins talking to him as if he's a STYX employee

Idia heaved a sigh of relief when Caelum finally fell asleep.

You went out to run a few errands while Caelum was down for his nap, thinking that you’d be quick enough to return before he woke up. Of course, that wasn’t the case and Idia hardly knew what to do to settle his melt down. Not to mention, the baby had been teething lately and was more fussier than usual as his teeth were starting to come in.

Somehow though, Idia managed to soothe his son without crying himself (thank you white noise machine).

“I’m never ever going to forget giving my mother or my wife something for Mother’s Day,” Idia mumbled. “They both must have superpowers.” He collapsed in his gaming chair, suddenly exhausted himself. On the bed, Caelum slept soundly, softly sucking on his pacifier. For just a few moments, Idia watched him.

It almost didn’t feel real at times—still didn’t nearly five months later—that he was a father. Some days, Idia felt a sense of imposter syndrome. How did someone like him end up so lucky to have a wife that loved him and a literal family of his own? He wasn’t in some video game or false reality? Was he truly even deserving of it all?

On his desk, his phone lights up with a message from you saying that you’ll be home in half an hour.

At that moment, Caelum’s face scrunched up. Idia tensed as the boy began to wail once more. “Oh no. No. No. Please don’t cry.” He picks Caelum up, trying to cradle him the way you do while giving him back his pacifier. Caelum won’t take it.

“Caelum, please,” Idia sighs. “I’m trying my best here.”

As his son’s cries grow louder and his own anxiety spikes, he tries to recall if there’s anything you ever said or done. One memories quickly comes to mind. “I realize that sometimes, he just wants to be held,” you had said, holding Caelum against your chest. “Some people have mixed opinions about holding the baby too much, but I’m not going to let him cry if all he wants is me.”

Sitting back down in his chair, Idia unzipped his hoodie to allow Caelum to lay more comfortably against his chest. Caelum continued to fuss for a bit, but his whimpers quieted down as Idia rubbed his back. It wasn't long before the infant lulled back off to sleep.

“Yes!” Idia whispered after he eventually successfully gave him back the pacifier. He exhaled a relieved sigh, before leaning back into his chair. Just for two seconds, he needed to close his eyes and take a breather.

Thirty minutes later when you came home, you’re welcomed with the adorable sight of your two favorite boys asleep, Idia still holding Caelum securely against his chest. You took a quick picture, planning to show your mother-in-law later.

lilia vanrouge

Mira Vanrouge, born December 21 Name Meaning: Admirable, peace, wonder

Lilia 2.0. From the moment she could start crawling, Mira is a terror. And she inherits her father's cuteness, making it nearly impossible to be mad at her. It also doesn't help that Lilia enables any mischievous behavior of hers. He partly gave her the name "Mira" because in his words, it's "short, cute, and deceptively innocent."

Arguably, her favorite person in the world is Silver. It's not even her parents. And Silver loves his baby sister. Lilia has been around for a long time and has seen much of the world, which he wants to one day show Mira. At the same time though, he's determined to keep her happy and protect her from the same heartbreak he went through centuries ago.

You roam the halls looking for your husband and daughter.

After dinner, you had stayed behind to clean up the kitchen while Lilia offered to run Mira a bath and get her ready for bed. However, imagine your surprise when you went to your daughter's nursery and neither her nor Lilia were present.

"I told him that we have to keep her on a routine, or else it’ll be hell when she’s older,” you grumble.

Unsurprisingly, Mira was a bit of a night owl like her father. But because of her young age, she was often fussy when she didn’t get enough sleep. And trying to soothe a cranky infant was no fun. You had been working on trying to get her to go to bed at a consistent time, but your husband wasn’t always on the same page.

Not finding them in the master bedroom, you circle back to the living room when a dim light catches your attention. Curiously, you peek through the doorframe and catch a view of the most heart warming sight.

Lilia sits in the armchair, Mira in his lap dressed in her footie pajamas. He’s got a book open between them and from the worn cover, you could only assume that it was one of the many fairy tales he’s collected over the years. His voice is calm and soothing as he reads from the worn, yellowing pages. Mira seems to be listening intently, but you note the subtle way her head nods forward occasionally, trying to fight off the sleep.

“Hmm, what ever will happen next?” Lilia muses. “Have you fallen asleep on me, little bat?” Mira rubs her eyes, stubbornly trying to stay awake. Lilia grins. “It seems not. Let us continue then, shall we? Chapter 2: out of fear of the wicked fairy’s curse, the princess was hidden away…”

It doesn’t take much longer for Mira to finally succumb to her slumber. Her eyes eventually flutter close, her breathing evening out steadily as her head lolls back against Lilia. He pauses mid page, then quietly laughs. “Looks like the bedtime story did just the trick, right dearie?”

A smile softens across your face and you enter the room. “Worked like magic, didn’t it?”

Lilia places a bookmark in between the pages before closing the book and setting it on the coffee table. He stands with Mira in his arms, cradling her close. “I’ll finish putting her to bed. You can go ahead and lay down if you would like.”

You give him a kiss on the cheek. “Thank you, Lilia.”

“You don’t need to thank me,” Lilia says with a smile. He traces gentle circles on Mira’s back, prompting her to curl up closer against him. “I’ve seen so much of this world and have so many stories I want to tell her. I just hope I can tell them all to her before my time with her comes to an end.”

malleus draconia

Aurelian Draconia, born October 31 Name Meaning: golden, gilded

Aurelian is a quiet, curious child who always seems fascinated by the most minuscule things. Malleus was the one who actually chose his name, and the elder fae were not happy he strayed away from the typical naming conventions of the Draconia family (His grandmother though loves the name and her great-grandson)

Malleus grew up lonely, and he's determined to keep his son from feeling the same way. He's always actively present in Aurelian's life, and doesn't plan to hold him to the same expectations and pressures of royalty. As long as his son's happy, then that's all Malleus cares about.

Malleus couldn’t fall asleep.

He wasn’t quite sure what the source of his troubles were. Only that the hours continued to stretch into the night, the moon’s glow filtering through the curtains, and he was blankly staring up at the ceiling. Beside him, you slept soundly, likely exhausted from having to get up hours earlier to nurse Aurelian again.

Pressing a gentle kiss against your temple, Malleus quietly rose out of bed so as not to disturb you. He donned his black robe and left the room.

Perhaps it was instinct that took Malleus to Aurelian’s nursery. Although it was common for some of the servants to take care of the royal children, he himself remembers having a nursemaid, Malleus was adamantly opposed to having anyone tend to his son outside of you or himself and the occasional Lilia. He wanted to experience the full extent of fatherhood, even the less savory parts like changing diapers or waking up in the middle of the night.

And most importantly, Malleus wanted to ensure he was there for Aurelian in the way his parents unfortunately weren’t able to. Every moment was a precious memory he valued.

"How peculiar,” Malleus mused as he approached his son’s crib. Aurelian stared up at him, green eyes blinking as the mobile overhead rotated slowly. His arms were swaddled against his chest, but he didn’t appear uncomfortable or bothered by any means. “It seems you were up as well, yet you didn't cry to alert me or your mother."

When he undid the swaddle, Aurelian extended his arms in a big stretch, letting out a small yawn. Immediately after, he stuck his hand in his mouth, beginning to suck on it.

“Were you unable to sleep as well, my little prince?” Malleus asks, bending down to pick Aurelian up. He cradled the infant in his arms carefully, still always worried about potentially dropping him. “The night is still young. Why don’t we take a stroll around the gardens?”

Aurelian cooed something incoherent, which Malleus took as confirmation and smiled. The two of them left the nursery, heading outside. It was rather warm outside despite the time of year, but Malleus still kept the blanket bundled tightly around his son. As curious as ever though, Aurelian tried to peek over the fabric and take in all his surroundings.

"Your mother and I used to frequent these gardens when I was still courting her," Malleus recalls fondly. "We got quite in a bit of trouble with Lilia for being out so late, but he promised not to tell my grandmother that we were unattended after hours."

He continued to talk to his son, speaking casually about fond memories and miscellaneous stories from his youth while he leisurely strolled through the gardens. A particular statue then seems to capture Aurelian's interest, his head turning to keep up with it when Malleus walks by.

You will not remember the first time Lilia Vanrouge saw you.

That is the cruelty of it—the asymmetry, the vast and terrible imbalance of a thing that began long before you knew to look for it. He will tell you later, much later, in a voice like velvet drawn over broken glass, that he watched you for nine days before you ever sensed him. Nine days of your life that you lived believing yourself unobserved, unbereft, untouched. Nine days of morning coffee and late-night research and the small unremarkable rituals of a woman who thought herself alone in a stone library at the edge of a world that was not her own.

You will not remember, but he will. He carries those nine days like some carry prayer beads—turning them over in the dark, counting each moment you existed without him, each breath that belonged to you and you alone. He has had centuries to learn patience. He has had centuries to learn hunger. And he has had centuries to learn that the two are the same animal wearing different skins.

The library at Night Raven College breathed differently after sunset.

You had learned this in your first week—the way the air thickened when the sun dropped below the Spire, the way the torches lit themselves in a sequence that felt less like automation and more like ceremony. The books murmured. Literally, in some cases; the enchanted texts in the restricted sections spoke in languages you had yet to catalog, and the older grimoires exhaled dust that tasted of copper and regret. You had developed a habit of working late, partly because your research demanded it and partly because the silence of the Diasomnia wing after dark was the kind of silence that made thinking feel sacred.

Your research—Fae Military Structures and Their Cultural Echoes in Peacetime Societies—had brought you to Night Raven College on a cultural exchange fellowship that most of your colleagues had envied and a few had called suicidal. The magical world did not invite human scholars with open arms. The fae world invited them with barely concealed contempt. But your work was good, your reputation solid, and the headmage had approved your access to the primary source archives with a smile so slippery it could have oiled hinges.

So there you sat, on a Tuesday evening in late October, with a text on Briar Valley cavalry formations open on the table before you and a translation that refused to cooperate scratching at the inside of your skull.

The Old Fae script was beautiful—flowing, organic, its characters like vines that wound around meaning rather than stating it. But it was also deliberately obscure, designed to be read by minds that processed language differently than human minds did. You had been staring at the same passage for forty minutes, and the words kept sliding just out of reach, like fish through reeds.

"That line reads, 'And the general turned his face from the burning so that his soldiers would not see him weep.'"

The voice came from behind you—close enough that its speaker could have rested a chin on your shoulder, light enough that it might have been a thought you'd accidentally spoken aloud. You twisted in your chair, heart ramming against your ribs, and found a figure leaning against the end of the bookshelf with the ease of someone who had been there for some time.

He was small. That was the first thing—you had expected someone taller, though you could not have said why. He barely reached your shoulder. His hair fell in long dark streams past his waist, and his eyes were the particular scarlet of embers in a fireplace that has been banked for the night. He wore the Diasomnia dorm uniform, but it sat on him the way a costume sits on an actor—worn rather than inhabited, as though his true clothes were something far older and stranger.

He smiled at you. It was a smile that belonged at a tea party, or a funeral, or a coronation. It fit all three equally well.

"I do apologize for the intrusion," he said, and his voice was music played on an instrument you could not name—bright and old and threaded with something that made the fine hair on your forearms stand at attention. "I couldn't help noticing you were struggling with General Vourneis's memoir. He was a dreadful writer, I'm afraid. All poetry and no precision. A disaster on the battlefield and on the page."

"You—" You caught your breath, pressed a hand to your chest. "You startled me."

"Did I?" He tilted his head, and the motion was birdlike, curious, the gesture of a creature assessing something it had found in the grass. "How interesting. Most people don't notice me until I want them to."

There was a beat of silence in which you felt the weight of that statement settle against your skin like a fever. Then he laughed—high, bright, crystalline—and the mood shattered into something ordinary.

"Forgive me, forgive me! A poor joke. I have a terrible sense of humor, I'm told." He drifted closer, peering at your translation notes with open interest. "You're a researcher? From the human side of the exchange?"

"Yes. I'm—" You gave your name, your institution, your field. The standard introduction you had delivered a hundred times since arriving. It felt thin in your mouth, inadequate, like presenting a visiting card to a cathedral.

He considered you for a long moment. His eyes moved over your face with the unhurried thoroughness of someone reading a map—tracing the geography of your features, charting the rivers and ridges, marking the places where the terrain might prove difficult.

Then he smiled again, and this time it reached his eyes, and the reaching was worse than the distance had been.

"I am Lilia," he said. "Just Lilia. No title, no surname, no grand declarations. A humble old fae who happens to be old enough to remember when General Vourneis was still wet behind the ears and crying for his mother." A wink. "I would be delighted to help you with your translation, if you'll have me."

There was a choice embedded in that sentence. You sensed it the way one senses a root beneath the soil—something hidden, something that could trip you if you weren't careful. But the translation had been fighting you for an hour, and his knowledge was clearly genuine, and you were, above all things, a scholar. Curiosity had always been your gravity, your orbit, the axis around which your life turned.

You pulled out the chair beside you.

"Please," you said.

Lilia sat.

And the thread wound once around your wrist.

The days that followed arranged themselves like flowers in a vase—beautiful, seemingly natural, and entirely the product of a careful hand.

Lilia appeared everywhere. In the mornings, when you took your coffee in the east garden, he would happen by with some excuse about watering the moonpetals. In the afternoons, when you worked in the archives, he would materialize between the stacks with a book you needed or a clarification you hadn't known you required. In the evenings, when the sky bruised purple and the candles in the library began their nightly whisper, he was already there, perched on the edge of the table like a gargoyle carved by a sculptor with a sense of humor, ready to walk you back to your quarters before the forest-things began their prowling.

He told you stories.

Not the sanitized fae tales in your textbooks—those bloodless morality plays with their clean lessons and tidy endings. Lilia told you the real ones. He told you about the Siege of Blackthorn Keep, where the fae defenders ate their own horses and sang death-songs to the children so they wouldn't cry and give away their position. He told you about the Truce of Ashes, when the fae and human generals met in a burned-out chapel and signed the peace accord in their own blood, mixing it in a single cup and drinking together like wedding guests. He told you about the lullabies mothers sang in the border villages, the ones with the hidden verses that mapped escape routes through the forest.

And you wrote it all down. Of course you did. You were a researcher. This was gold—the pure, unrefined ore of primary source testimony, and you were selfish enough, hungry enough, to reach for it without asking what it would cost.

"Tell me about the cavalry formations," you said one evening, your pen flying across the page. "The Silver Ride—I've seen references to it in three different texts but no one explains what it actually was."

Lilia was quiet for a moment. The candlelight caught his face at an angle that deepened the shadows beneath his eyes, and for a single breath you saw something in his expression that was older than the stones around you—something flayed and raw and patient in the way that only things which have survived unimaginable pain can be patient.

Then the moment passed, and he was Lilia again, your Lilia, the cheerful fae with the terrible cooking and the wonderful stories.

"The Silver Ride," he said, and his voice had dropped into a register you had not heard before, a low thrumming like a plucked string on an instrument tuned to a frequency below hearing, "was a formation of three hundred mounted fae who rode into the Battle of Hollowmere knowing they would not ride out. They wore silver armor—not for protection, but so their own people could watch them die. So the generals could see exactly when the line broke, exactly how many seconds three hundred lives could buy."

Your pen stopped. "That's—"

"Horrifying?" He smiled, and the smile was the knife-edge of something vast and cold and unimaginably old. "Yes. It was also necessary. Three hundred riders bought four hours. Four hours evacuated a city of twelve thousand. The math is simple, you see. Even a child can do it." He paused. "I was the child who did it."

The silence that followed was not empty. It was full—swollen with the weight of centuries, with the ghosts of three hundred riders in silver armor whose faces he had memorized, whose names he had never forgotten, whose deaths he had calculated like a musician calculating the intervals between notes.

You reached across the table and touched his hand.

He looked at your fingers on his skin as though you had placed a coal there. Not with pain. With wonder. With the bewildered, trembling awe of a creature that has lived in darkness so long it has forgotten that light can be warm.

"Thank you for telling me," you said.

His hand turned beneath yours and closed around your fingers. His grip was cool and dry and gentle.

"Thank you for listening," he said.

And the thread wound twice more.

He gave you things.

A pot of tea from the eastern valleys that tasted of smoke and honey and could not be purchased anywhere in the human world. A slim volume of fae poetry printed on paper so thin it seemed held together by intention rather than fiber. A flower you did not recognize—its petals black at the edges and pale as bone at the center, blooming only between midnight and dawn, fragrant with something that made your thoughts soft and slow.

"From my garden," he said, placing it on your windowsill. "It is called evening-heart. It only opens for those it trusts."

"Flowers can trust?"

"In Briar Valley, everything can trust. And everything can choose not to." He touched one of the dark petals with a fingertip, and the flower leaned toward him like a worshipper toward an altar. "This one likes you. I thought you might like it back."

Each gift was small. Each gift was perfect. Each gift was a knot in a net you did not yet feel.

You noticed the wrongness in fragments. A shattered mirror reassembling itself in your peripheral vision—each shard reflecting something slightly different, slightly off, but gone before you could focus on it.

He knew things. That was the first shard.

You had mentioned, once, in passing, to no one in particular, that you missed the sound of rain on a tin roof—a sound from your childhood home that had followed you into sleeplessness. Two days later, Lilia invited you to his rooms, and there was a small enchanted device on his desk that produced exactly that sound. "A curiosity I picked up somewhere," he said. "I thought you might find it soothing."

You had never told him. You were certain. You combed your memory, turned it inside out, shook it by the edges. You had not told a soul.

He was there. That was the second shard.

In places he should not have been, at times you had not mentioned, in moments you believed yourself alone. You would turn a corner in the library and he would already be there, book in hand, as though he had been waiting for the specific geometry of that encounter—the angle of your body, the light through that particular window, the expression on your face when you saw him.

"Are you following me?" you asked once, half-joking, the question wearing a smile like a mask.

He laughed. "My dear, if I were following you, you would never notice." And then, softer, with something behind his eyes that made your stomach tighten: "I simply enjoy your company. Is that so terrible?"

Other fae gave him room. That was the third shard.

When you walked through the corridors of Diasomnia together, the other students parted around Lilia like water around a stone. Not with the casual deference offered to a vice-dorm leader— with something sharper, more instinctive. Sebek would fall silent mid-sentence when Lilia approached. Silver would watch his father with a careful, measured affection that suggested love tempered by long experience of something unnameable. Even Malleus Draconia, the prince of Briar Valley, the fae whose name was spoken in whispers even among his own kind, regarded Lilia with an expression that hovered between fondness and wariness.

"He is dangerous," Malleus told you once, when you asked about Lilia's history. The crown prince of the fae said it simply, without drama, the way one says water is wet or fire burns. "He has always been dangerous. The kindness is real. Do not mistake that. But it is a kindness that has survived things which would have burned it out of a lesser being, and what remains is—" He paused, choosing his words with the precision of a surgeon. "—more complex than it appears."

You should have listened.

You should have taken that warning and held it against your chest like a shield and walked away from Lilia Vanrouge and never looked back.

Instead, you wrote it in your journal—Malleus says Lilia is dangerous. More complex than he appears. Must interview further.—and turned the page and continued your research and let the thread wind tighter and tighter and tighter.

The evening he finally told you his name—his full name, his title, the weight of seven hundred years of history pressed into a single introduction—you stood in his room, surrounded by his things, and felt the floor tilt beneath you.

General Lilia Vanrouge. The Blood-soaked General. The Right Hand of the Draconia Throne. The fae who had won three wars, survived four, and raised the most powerful mage of the current age. The creature whose name was carved into the foundation stones of Briar Valley's peace, written in the blood of his enemies, spoken in the lullabies of his allies.

You had been sharing meals with a warlord. Walking to your quarters with a tactician who had designed the deaths of thousands. Laughing with a monster who had worn the face of a grandfather so convincingly that you had shown him your research notes without a second thought.

"Why didn't you tell me?" The question came out raw, scraped from somewhere deep.

He was sitting on the edge of his bed, hands folded in his lap, watching you with an expression you could not decode. "Would you have treated me the same if I had?" He tilted his head—that same birdlike motion, that same assessment. "Would you have shared your tea and your thoughts and your translations and your time with a monster?"

"You're not—"

"I am, though." Simple, unadorned, delivered without self-pity or performance. "I am exactly that. I have killed more people than you have met. I have ordered deaths the way a conductor orders symphonies—with precision, with art, and without losing a moment's sleep over the notes that must be sacrificed for the music to work."

He rose. He moved toward you with the fluid economy of a creature who had learned to walk silently before your species had learned to write, and stopped at a distance that was precisely calculated—close enough for intimacy, far enough for safety. A distance that said I know exactly where the line is and I am standing on my side of it for now.

"I wanted you to see me before you saw the title," he said. "I wanted—" A pause. In it, you heard something break, or bend, or come apart at a seam that had been holding for centuries. "I wanted someone to look at me and see something other than the General. Just once. Before—"

He did not finish.

You realized, in that moment, that Lilia Vanrouge was lonely in a way that transcended the word. You had studied loneliness—you had written papers on the isolation of immigrant communities, the dislocation of refugees, the quiet epidemic of solitude in modern cities. But this was different. This was the loneliness of a being who had watched every face he loved turn to dust, every hand he held grow thin and cold, every voice that called his name fall silent. This was the loneliness of a creature who had survived not through strength but through the sheer, grinding, mechanical persistence of a body that refused to die, and who had been forced to carry the weight of every loss as though it were a stone placed carefully in his chest, one by one, century by century, until the weight was all he knew.

You reached for him.

It was instinct—the same instinct that made you touch his hand after the story about the Silver Ride, the same instinct that had been building in you for weeks like a tide rising toward a shore. You reached for him, and he let you, and his arms came around you, and his face pressed into your hair, and his breath caught in his throat like a bird in a cage.

Inhale.

You felt it. The deliberate drawing-in of your scent, the way a drowning man drinks air after breaking the surface. His arms tightened—just slightly, just enough, a grip that wanted to be fierce and was holding itself to gentle by threads you could not see.

"You're shaking," you whispered.

"I know." Muffled against your hair. Thick and rough and scraped raw. "I know. Give me a moment. Just a moment."

He held you until the shaking stopped.

When he pulled back, his smile was in place again—bright and warm and full of the easy charm that made you forget the things you should have remembered. But his eyes were wet, and the wetness was real, and you filed it away with all the other fragments of wrongness you had been collecting, and you told yourself it was evidence of his humanity, his capacity for tenderness, his essential goodness.

You did not yet understand that it was evidence of his hunger.

The first time he came to your room at night, he brought a manuscript.

You were still awake—sleep had become a fickle companion since arriving at NRC, skittish and easily startled by the sounds the castle made after dark—and the tap at your window was gentle enough that you might have imagined it. But you looked, and there he was, perched on the windowsill like a roosting owl, the moonlight turning his hair into a cascade of dark silk, a leather-bound folder in his hands.

"I found something I thought you'd want to see," he said, climbing through the opening with a grace that made the motion seem like flight rather than entry. "The Marenthia Codex. Your research mentioned you'd been searching for it."

He was right. You had been. The Codex was one of the rarest texts on fae military history in existence—only three copies known to survive, all in private collections, all inaccessible to human scholars. You had written to four archivists and received four rejections, each more politely dismissive than the last.

"How did you—" You took the folder from him, opened it, and felt your breath leave you in a single rush. The real thing. Hand-lettered, illuminated, the ink still faintly luminescent after centuries. "Lilia. This is—this is priceless. I can't possibly—"

"You can. You will." He was already moving through your room, touching things—a book on the desk, the edge of your pillow, the evening-heart flower on the windowsill, which leaned toward him as it always did. "It's a copy, of course. I wouldn't risk the original. But it's an accurate one. I made it myself, two hundred years ago, when I was recovering from a rather nasty curse and needed something to do with my hands."

He paused at your desk, and his fingers lingered on your research journal. You watched him touch it—stroke the spine once, gently, the way one touches a sleeping child's forehead—and a small cold thing turned in your stomach.

"Lilia."

"Hm?" He turned, and the moonlight caught his face, and for a moment he looked ancient—the weight of his years pressing through the youthful mask like water through a cracked dam.

"The manuscript," you said. "Why bring it now? It's the middle of the night."

"Because you're awake." As if this were obvious. As if the answer were simple. As if the fact that you were awake at two in the morning were sufficient reason for a seven-hundred-year-old fae general to climb through your window bearing irreplaceable historical documents. "And because I wanted to see you."

The cold thing in your stomach grew teeth.

You should have asked him to leave. You should have noticed that the room felt smaller with him in it—not physically, but in the way the air seemed to compress around his presence, in the way the shadows bent toward him like plants toward light. You should have observed that he had been in your room for less than five minutes and already the space had rearranged itself around him, your belongings orbiting his gravity like moons around a planet.

Instead, you sat on your bed with the Codex in your lap and asked him about the Marenthia campaign, and he told you, and the hours unspooled like thread from a spindle, and when he finally left—pressing a kiss to your forehead that burned like a brand and lingered like smoke—you realized that the chair beside your bed had been moved closer.

Not by much. Three inches, perhaps. Four.

You told yourself you had imagined it.

You went to sleep with your journal beneath your pillow and your grandmother's silver ring pressed against your chest, and you dreamed of a garden with no gate, and a gardener with red eyes and gentle hands, and flowers that opened only for him.

He cooked for you.

This was presented as a joke—a comedy, a bit—his disastrous culinary exploits the stuff of Diasomnia legend. The first time he made you dinner, you watched him burn water (somehow) and reduce a perfectly good cut of meat to something that resembled the aftermath of a siege, and you laughed until your ribs ached, and he laughed too, his high crystalline giggle filling the kitchen like music.

But you were a researcher. You observed. You catalogued. You noticed.

You noticed that his knife work was flawless—the precise, economical cuts of a being who had field-dressed wounds on a battlefield, who had carved shelter from wood and bone in the wilds of Briar Valley, who had survived for centuries on the kind of knowledge that separates the living from the dead. You noticed that when he reached for ingredients, his hands moved with a certainty that belied the chaos that followed. You noticed that the "accidents" were too convenient, too perfectly timed, too precisely calibrated to produce maximum endearing mess without ever actually hurting anyone.

You noticed because you were paying attention, and you were paying attention because something in you had already begun to understand that Lilia Vanrouge was a text written in invisible ink, and you needed only the right light to read him.

The right light came at three in the morning on a Thursday.

You could not sleep. The insomnia had worsened—your dreams had grown strange, crowded with images that dissolved when you tried to grasp them, leaving only the impression of red eyes and an ancient melody you could not quite recall. You padded to the kitchen for water, the stone floors cold beneath your bare feet, the castle silent in that particular way that meant the nocturnal enchantments were dormant.

And there he was.

Lilia stood at the counter, and he was cooking.

Not the performance. Not the comedy. The real thing.

His hands moved with the precision of a surgeon and the economy of a soldier—each motion purposeful, each ingredient measured to the grain, each adjustment to the heat instantaneous and exact. The dish before him was something complex, something layered, something that required technique you had seen in professional kitchens and nowhere else. He was humming—that same melody you had been dreaming, low and old and winding—and his face in the moonlight was not the face of the grandfather who told funny stories and burned toast.

It was the face of the General. Attentive, calculating, in control. A face that had coordinated the movements of armies and the deaths of thousands and the survival of nations. A face that had learned, over centuries, that precision was the difference between victory and annihilation.

He looked up and saw you in the doorway, and for one terrible instant his expression did not change.

The General looked at you. Red eyes, flat and assessing, weighing and measuring and calculating something you could not name. The humming stopped. The hands stilled. The silence was absolute.

Then the mask descended like a curtain falling at the end of an act.

"Ah!" He grinned, and it was the Lilia you knew—bright, embarrassed, silly. "You caught me! Don't look, don't look—this is a complete disaster, an absolute catastrophe—"

"Lilia."

"You should be asleep, my dear! A researcher needs her rest, you know. The brain does its best cataloging during—"

"Lilia. You're cooking."

The grin faltered. Just a fraction. Just enough. "I'm making a mess is what I'm making. You know how I am in the kitchen—"

"You're good at it."

Silence.

The moonlight was merciless. It showed you the exact moment when the calculation behind his eyes shifted—when he weighed the cost of maintaining the lie against the benefit of revealing the truth, when the General's tactical mind processed the variables and produced a decision.

He turned off the heat. Set down the spoon. Faced you with his hands folded behind his back and his chin lifted and an expression of such careful neutrality that it was more revealing than any emotion could have been.

"Yes," he said. "I am."

"You've always been good at it."

"Yes."

"The disasters—"

"Are deliberate." He said it without apology, without embarrassment, with the flat certainty of a statement that needed no justification. "People expect a certain kind of creature when they look at me. The kindly old fae. The doting guardian. The harmless grandfather with the funny stories and the burnt dinners. That creature is safe. That creature is loved." A pause. "That creature is not the one who walks onto battlefields."

"Why show me this?"

The question hung in the air between you, and Lilia regarded it as though it were a riddle with no correct answer—a door that opened onto a cliff, a path that led somewhere he had not yet decided to go.

"Because you see," he said finally. Quietly. With the weight of a confession that had been pressing against his teeth for longer than you had been alive. "You observe and you catalog and you notice the things I work very hard to conceal, and I find that—" Another pause. Longer this time. The sound of something ancient and patient deciding whether to trust. "I find that I do not mind being seen by you."

He reached for your hand. You let him take it. His fingers were warm—warmer than they should have been, warmer than they had ever been—and when he raised your knuckles to his lips, the kiss was slow and deliberate and lingered like a question.

"Go back to bed," he murmured against your skin. "I'll bring you something proper to eat in the morning. Something I haven't pretended to ruin."

You went. You lay in the dark with your hand pressed against your mouth where the ghost of his lips still burned, and you thought: I should be afraid.

But you weren't. Not yet.

That was the cruelest part. That was the trap. Not the lying, not the manipulation, not the careful architecture of a personality designed to disarm—but the fact that when he dropped the mask, what was beneath was not a monster but a person, lonely and ancient and achingly real, and every instinct you had screamed at you to reach for him rather than away.

You reached.

You always reached.

And the thread wound tighter.

The girl from the botanical research division was named Elara, and she was kind.

You met her in the greenhouse—she was cataloging growth patterns of indigenous magical flora, you were researching the historical use of certain plants in fae military rituals, and the overlap in your interests produced a friendship that unfolded naturally and without calculation. She was human, like you. She understood the dislocation of existing in a world not designed for your species, the constant low-grade friction of being perpetually out of step with the environment. She brought you tea and asked about your work and laughed at your jokes and did not look at you the way Lilia did—as though you were a text to be decoded, a puzzle to be solved, a flower to be cultivated.

She looked at you the way people look at people. Equal. Uncomplicated. Free.

You began having lunch with Elara on Tuesdays and Thursdays. You began looking forward to it with an eagerness that surprised you—the simple pleasure of conversation without subtext, connection without calculation, presence without the sense of standing at the edge of something vast and incomprehensible and hungry.

Lilia noticed immediately.

You knew he noticed because he said nothing about it. The silence was the signal. He asked about your work, your research, your sleep, your meals, your dreams—but never about Elara, never about your Tuesday and Thursday lunches, never about the new warmth in your voice when you mentioned the greenhouse. He simply... omitted. As though she did not exist. As though the space she occupied in your life were blank and empty and waiting to be filled by something else.

Three weeks after you met Elara, she was gone.

Transferred. A family emergency, the official notice said. A situation requiring her immediate return to her home institution. She had left a message for you—short, apologetic, oddly vague—and then she was simply absent, like a book removed from a shelf, leaving only the outline of where she had been.

You stood in the greenhouse where you usually met, alone among the plants, and you reread her message for the fifth time, and something cold and formless moved in the water of your thoughts.

"How strange," Lilia said from behind you. He had appeared without sound—a habit you had stopped finding unsettling, which was itself unsettling. "I heard about your friend. A family emergency, how dreadful. I do hope she's all right."

"Yes," you said. "How strange."

"You must miss her." He moved to stand beside you, and his presence was warm and solid and achingly familiar, and you hated the part of you that was grateful for it. "But perhaps it's for the best? Now we have more time for our research~"

You turned to look at him.

He was smiling. The warm, bright, cheerful smile that had disarmed you from the first evening in the library. But his eyes—his eyes were still, like the surface of water that runs very deep and very cold, and in them you saw something that you would not have a name for until much later.

Satisfaction.

The satisfaction of a gardener who has removed a weed.

You wrote it all down.

Every detail, every fragment, every wrongness. Your research journal became less a scholarly document and more a record of survival—though you would not have used that word, not yet, not for months. You wrote about Elara's absence and Lilia's silence and the way the other students gave him room and the way he knew things you never told him and the way he moved through your space like water filling a container, assuming its shape, making it his.

You wrote: Something is wrong. I cannot say what. I cannot name it. But it is there, in the space between his smile and his eyes, in the fraction of a second before his mask descends, in the way he says "my dear" like a prayer and a claim and a warning all at once.

You wrote: I am afraid. I am not afraid of him. I am afraid of how much I want to not be afraid of him.

You wrote: He was in my room again. I did not invite him. I did not unlock the window. He was simply there, sitting in the chair beside my bed—closer now, always closer—watching me sleep. When I woke, he said he was concerned about my nightmares. I don't remember telling him about the nightmares.

You wrote these things, and then you closed the journal, and you placed it beneath your pillow, and you lay in the dark and listened to the sound of the castle breathing and wondered why the evening-heart flower on your windowsill had begun to bloom during the day.

The next morning, Lilia referenced something you had only written in your journal.

It was subtle—a turn of phrase, an observation about your sleeping habits that you had documented in private ink, a comment about your feelings that you had confessed only to paper. He said it casually, laughingly, as though you had told him yourself, and when you stared at him with the cold thing in your stomach blooming into something sharp and bright, he tilted his head and smiled.

"You must have mentioned it," he said. "Your memory must be playing tricks, my dear. You've been so tired lately—so much research, so little rest. Perhaps you should let me help you sleep better. I know several techniques that work wonders~"

"I didn't tell you," you said. "I know I didn't."

The smile did not waver. The red eyes held yours, and in their depths you saw the General looking back at you—not the kindly old fae, not the clumsy cook, not the charming storyteller. The General. Patient. Calculating. Certain of the outcome before the battle had begun.

"Then I suppose I must have guessed," he said. "I am very good at guessing, when it comes to you."

He reached out and adjusted the collar of your shirt—a small, intimate gesture, the kind of motion that should have been casual but was not, because his fingers lingered at the hollow of your throat and his touch was feather-light and impossibly warm and you felt your pulse beating against his hand like a bird against glass.

"Better," he said softly. "There. Now you look proper."

He withdrew, and the absence of his touch was its own kind of wound, and you stood very still and did not move until he had left the room, and then you sat on your bed and pressed your hand over your heart and tried to remember how to breathe.

You started sleeping with your journal inside your pillowcase.

You started sleeping with your grandmother's silver ring on every finger.

You started sleeping with the door locked and the window latched and a line of salt across the threshold—an old folk remedy from your grandmother's grandmother's grandmother that you had always dismissed as superstition and now clung to like a life raft.

None of it mattered.

Lilia came and went as he pleased. The locks did not hold—though they showed no signs of tampering, they simply did not engage when he was near. The salt remained undisturbed, but you woke in the morning to find the evening-heart flower had been moved from the windowsill to your bedside table, its petals brushing your sleeping hand. The journal remained in your pillowcase, but the entries you wrote about him began to feel like letters to someone who was already reading them.

You were being hunted. You understood this in the way a mouse understands the owl—not with logic, not with evidence, but with the deep and primal certainty of prey that has felt the shadow pass overhead.

But you could not run. You could not hide. And the most terrifying part, the part that made you sick with shame and confusion and a desire you could not name, was that some small and secret part of you did not want to.

The gathering was a Diasomnia affair—some celebration or another, the details lost in the blur of candlelight and music and the low thrum of fae voices raised in harmony. You attended because Lilia asked you to, and you wore the dress he had selected (a gift, delivered to your room without a card, in exactly your size, in a shade of green that matched the tiles of his garden), and you smiled when he introduced you to the other guests, and you felt the weight of his hand at the small of your back like a brand.

A fae from another dorm—you did not catch his name—found you by the refreshment table. He was tall and silver-haired and his smile was easy and uncomplicated, and he asked about your research with genuine interest, and he laughed at your jokes, and for a moment you felt the tension in your shoulders ease.

"You're the human scholar, aren't you?" He leaned against the table, his posture open and friendly. "I've heard about your work. The fae military history project—it's fascinating. We don't get many human researchers who actually listen."

"Listening is my job," you said, and he laughed again, and the sound was warm and ordinary and safe.

His hand brushed yours as he reached for a glass of wine. A casual touch. An accident. The kind of thing that happens at parties between people who are enjoying each other's company.

Lilia appeared between you.

He did not walk. He did not hurry. He was simply there, as though the space had folded to bring him to you, and his body was positioned with the precise geometry of a shield—between you and the silver-haired fae, between you and the door, between you and every exit in the room.

"Having a nice conversation?" he asked. His voice was light. His smile was bright. His eyes were red and still and absolutely without warmth.

The silver-haired fae went pale. You watched the color drain from his face in a single wave—the blood retreating like an army abandoning a siege—and his easy posture collapsed into something rigid and careful and very, very small.

"Lord Vanrouge," he said. "I didn't—I was just—"

"I can see that." Lilia's hand found your elbow, and his grip was gentle, so gentle, but underneath the gentleness was a pressure that said I could break you and I will never let you go and mine. "I believe I was about to introduce my dear companion to the visiting dignitaries. If you'll excuse us."

It was not a request.

The fae vanished. You did not see him leave—simply one moment he was there, and the next he was not, and the space where he had stood was cold and empty and ringing with the aftershock of a terror so intense it had become atmospheric.

Lilia turned to you. His smile was still in place, but his hand was trembling—fine vibrations running through his fingers where they gripped your elbow, and you realized with a shock that the trembling was not fear but its mirror image. The effort of holding back. The strain of a leash pulled taut against a force that wanted, with seven hundred years of accumulated hunger, to unleash.

"Lilia." Your voice came out steady, which surprised you. "What did you just do?"

"I introduced myself," he said. "That's all. Just a friendly conversation between old acquaintances~"

"He was terrified."

"Was he? How odd." He released your elbow and folded his hands behind his back, and the trembling stopped, and his smile widened, and you were suddenly and completely certain that you were standing next to a creature who had once turned a battlefield into a mass grave and had felt nothing but satisfaction at the efficiency of it.

"Come," he said, offering his arm. "The dignitaries are waiting. And you look so lovely tonight—it would be a shame to waste it."

You took his arm.

You do not know why you took his arm. You will spend years—not months, not weeks, but years—turning that moment over in your mind, trying to find the point where choice became compulsion, where free will dissolved into something murkier and more desperate. You will never find it. The line was not a line. It was a gradient, and you had been walking along it since the first evening in the library, and the ground beneath your feet had been tilting so gradually that you had never noticed the descent.

You took his arm, and he led you into the crowd, and his hand covered yours where it rested in the crook of his elbow, and his thumb stroked your knuckles in slow, deliberate circles, and you felt the thread wind so tight that it cut, and the cutting felt like love, and the love felt like drowning, and the drowning felt like coming home.

The night you tried to leave, he was waiting at the gate.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You packed in the dark.

Not because you feared the light—you feared what the light might reveal, the shape of your own hands folding shirts, the expression on your own face in the mirror, the undeniable evidence that you were choosing to flee. Darkness made it simpler. Darkness made it survival rather than surrender. In the dark, you could pretend you were the same woman who had arrived at Night Raven College months ago with a research grant and a suitcase full of ambition and a heartbeat that belonged entirely to yourself.

The suitcase was lighter than you expected. You had accumulated so little that was truly yours. The clothes Lilia had given you hung in the closet like questions—each one tailored to your body with an accuracy that suggested measurement without permission, each one in colors he had chosen, each one smelling faintly of the night-blooming flowers from his garden. You left them. You took only what you had brought: your research notes, your journal, your grandmother's silver ring, and the stubborn, burning, furious conviction that you were still capable of walking away.

The corridors of Diasomnia were empty at this hour. You had timed your departure with the care of a general planning a retreat—which routes were monitored, which doors locked automatically, which shadows belonged to the architecture and which belonged to something older and less forgiving. You had spent three days watching. Three days mapping. Three days pretending to smile while you memorized the rhythm of the night patrol and the location of every exit and the particular quality of silence that meant you were alone.

You made it to the main gate without incident.

And there he was.

Lilia Vanrouge leaned against the stone archway with the loose-limbed ease of someone who had been waiting for hours and found the waiting pleasant. The moon hung fat and orange above the Spire, and its light turned his hair to a dark waterfall and his eyes to twin coals and his smile to something that belonged in a fairy tale—the original kind, the kind with teeth.

"Going somewhere?"

The question was soft. Almost playful. It floated through the night air like a leaf on still water, and beneath its surface you felt the current—the pull of something vast and cold and patient that had been flowing toward this moment since before you were born.

"I'm leaving." Your voice did not shake. You were proud of that. You would be proud of very little by the end of this night. "I have to leave."

"Do you?" He tilted his head. The gesture was familiar—the same birdlike assessment you had come to know, the same curious angle—but its meaning had shifted. It was no longer a creature examining something it had found. It was a creature examining something it had kept, trying to understand why the kept thing was struggling. "And where will you go, my dear? Back to your institution? Your colleagues? Your empty apartment and your empty life and your empty, empty research?"

Each word landed like a stone in still water, sending ripples through the silence. You felt them in your chest—in the space where confidence should have been, where certainty should have lived, where the conviction that you could escape had been building all day and was now, suddenly and terribly, beginning to crack.

"That's my business."

"Is it?" He straightened from the wall, and the motion was unhurried, almost lazy, and in its lack of urgency was the most frightening thing you had ever seen. He was not worried. He was not afraid. He was not uncertain of the outcome. He was simply rising, the way the sun rises—inevitable, indifferent to anyone's desire for night to continue.

"Let me pass, Lilia."

"No."

The word was quiet. Gentle, even. Spoken the way one speaks to a child who wants to run into the road—patient and firm and laced with the absolute certainty of someone who knows better.

"If you walk through that gate," he continued, and his voice dropped into the register you had heard only once before—the voice of the General, the voice of battlefields and body counts and decisions that had reshaped nations—"you will die within the week. Not by my hand. I would never." He said this with such tenderness that your eyes burned. "But there are things in that forest—things I have lived alongside for seven centuries, things that know my name and fear it—that will destroy you. The moment you step beyond my protection, you become prey. And I have—" A pause. A breath. A fracture in the composure so thin you would have missed it if you hadn't been watching his mouth. "I have made certain they know you are unprotected."

The cold that moved through you then was not the cold of the autumn night. It was the cold of understanding—the cold of a door closing, of a key turning, of a wall where there had been a window.

"You arranged this."

"I arranged nothing." His hand found your face. The touch was feather-light, impossibly gentle, his palm cupping your cheek like something precious and fragile and breakable. His thumb traced the line of your jaw. His eyes held yours, and in their red depths you saw centuries of loss and centuries of hunger and centuries of a loneliness so immense it had collapsed in on itself and become something gravitational, something that pulled everything toward its center and refused to let go.

"I simply told the truth. I told the forest what you are. A human. Alone. Unclaimed." His voice was a whisper now, his forehead almost touching yours, his breath warm against your lips. "The forest knows what to do with humans who wander without a fae's protection. I have seen it before. I have watched it before. I have held the remains of humans who thought they could walk where they were not wanted and I have—" His voice cracked. Actually cracked, like ice over deep water, and beneath the crack was something that sounded like grief. "I will not hold yours. I refuse."

"You're threatening me."

"I am begging you." The words came out raw, unmade, stripped of every mask and every performance and every carefully constructed layer of charm. His hand trembled against your face. His eyes were wet. He looked, in that moment, like what he was—not a general, not a guardian, not a grandfather, but a creature that had been alone for so long that the thought of being alone again had driven it to the edge of something irreversible. "Stay. Please. I will give you everything—I will be everything—I will spend every remaining century of my existence making certain you never regret it. Just—"

His voice broke.

"—don't leave me."

You stood at the gate with your suitcase in your hand and his tears on your face and the moon hanging orange and terrible above you, and you understood that this was not a choice. It had never been a choice. The moment you turned that first page in the library, the moment you pulled out that chair and said please, the moment you reached for him after the story about the Silver Ride—you had been walking toward this gate your entire life, and the gate was closed, and the key was in his hand, and his hand was on your face, and his tears were real.

Every part of it was real.

That was the horror. That was the heart of it. His love was not a performance. His loneliness was not a manipulation. His grief at the thought of losing you was as genuine as the stars above you—ancient and burning and impossibly, punishingly vast. He was not lying. He was not pretending. He was simply a being who had survived so much that survival had become the only language he knew, and in that language, love and possession were the same word.

You dropped the suitcase.

It landed on the stone with a sound like a closing door, and you felt the click in your chest—in the place where resistance had lived, where the conviction that you could escape had been burning—and the flame went out.

"Okay," you whispered.

Lilia's arms came around you, and he held you the way the ocean holds a ship—completely, overwhelmingly, with the absolute certainty that what it holds will never be free of it. His face pressed into your hair, and you felt him inhale—deep and shuddering and hungry—and his body shook with the force of something that might have been relief or might have been triumph or might have been the terrible, beautiful, devastating weight of getting what you want after centuries of wanting nothing.

"Thank you," he breathed against your temple. "Thank you. Thank you. I will make you happy. I swear it. I will make you so happy you will never think of that gate again."

Over his shoulder, you looked at the forest.

The trees moved. Just slightly. Just enough. A rustle that was not wind, a shadow that was not shadow, a presence in the dark between the trunks that watched you with eyes you could not see and waited with a patience that had been promised by the creature currently holding you like a prayer answered.

You closed your eyes.

The gate disappeared behind you as Lilia led you back into the castle, and the thread wound tight enough to cut, and the cutting felt like surrender, and the surrender felt like silence, and the silence was the sound of a cage closing around a life.

You did not sleep that night.

You lay in your bed—your bed in your room in Diasomnia, though both adjectives felt provisional now—and stared at the ceiling and listened to the sound of your own breathing and tried to locate the exact moment when the floor had tilted beneath you. You could not find it. The gradient had been too smooth, the descent too gradual, and every step had felt like level ground until you looked up and realized you were at the bottom of something with no stairs and no ladder and no voice to call up to the world above.

The evening-heart flower on your bedside table bloomed.

It bloomed in the dark—in the absolute absence of light—and its petals unfurled with a soft, wet sound, and its fragrance filled the room, and the fragrance was the same as Lilia's breath when he had held you at the gate, and you understood that the flower had never been a gift. It was a monitor. A sentinel. A living thing that reported to its master whether you were sleeping or waking, peaceful or afraid, present or absent.

You picked it up.

You considered throwing it against the wall. Considered crushing it beneath your heel. Considered the small, petty satisfaction of destroying something he had grown in his garden, something that leaned toward him like a worshipper, something that belonged to him in the way he believed you belonged to him.

You set it back down.

You could not do it. That was the most humiliating part. You could not bring yourself to destroy the flower because destroying it would mean admitting what it was, and admitting what it was would mean admitting what you were, and what you were was a woman who had dropped her suitcase at the gate and walked back into the castle with the creature who had built the cage around her.

You were a prisoner who had locked the door from the inside.

You wrote in your journal. The words came out jagged and raw, the handwriting of someone who was holding the pen too tightly and breathing too fast:

I tried to leave. He was waiting. He said the forest would kill me. He said he had made sure of it. He cried. His tears were real. His love is real. I don't know if that makes it better or worse. I don't know if there's a difference anymore between being kept and being loved. I don't know if I want there to be.

You closed the journal. Slid it under the pillow. Lay in the dark and listened to the flower breathing.

In the morning, Lilia brought you breakfast.

He entered your room without knocking—without needing to, the lock turning of its own accord as he approached, the door swinging open at his touch like a subject bowing to its king. He carried a tray with your favorite foods, prepared with the skill he had stopped pretending he didn't possess, and he set it on your bedside table with a tenderness that made your chest ache, and he sat on the edge of your bed and stroked the hair back from your forehead and smiled at you with an expression of such uncomplicated joy that you could almost forget the gate and the forest and the trembling in his voice when he said don't leave me.

"How did you sleep?" he asked.

You looked at him. At his small, clever hands, at his ancient, knowing eyes, at the curve of his mouth that could be a smile or a blade depending on its angle. You looked at him and you saw the General and the guardian and the monster and the lonely, lonely creature who had held you like a drowning man holds driftwood, and you felt the terrifying, shapeless, inadmissible thing in your chest that was not fear and was not anger and was not love but was some fourth thing for which no word existed in any language you knew.

"Fine," you said. "I slept fine."

He knew you were lying. You could see it in his eyes—the flicker of something that was not quite amusement and not quite disappointment and not quite satisfaction but some alloy of all three. He knew, and he did not press, and the not-pressing was its own kind of victory, because it meant he was confident enough in the structure of the cage that he did not need to check every bar.

He leaned down and kissed your forehead. His lips lingered. His breath stirred your hair. His hand rested on the curve of your shoulder with a weight that said here and stay and mine.

"Eat," he murmured. "You'll need your strength. I have plans for us today."

He left. The door closed behind him. The lock clicked—not locking you in, you realized, but locking everything else out. The flower on the bedside table leaned toward the space where he had been, petals still warm from his proximity.

You ate. You ate because he had asked you to, and because the food was perfect, and because the alternative was lying in bed and staring at the ceiling and thinking about the gate, and you could not think about the gate without feeling the click in your chest, and you could not feel the click without acknowledging what it meant, and acknowledging what it meant was a door you could not open without falling through.

The cage was golden. That was the cruelest part. The bars were warm and the floor was soft and the keeper was kind, and the kindness was real, and the warmth was real, and every comfort was a thread that wound around your throat like a caress and tightened when you pulled away and loosened when you leaned in.

You leaned in. You had no other direction.

Weeks passed. Or months. The measurement of time had become unreliable—days blurring into each other like watercolors left in the rain, the boundaries between them softened by Lilia's presence and the steady, hypnotic rhythm of a life that had been reshaped around a single axis.

He read to you in the evenings. Books of poetry and history and philosophy, texts you could never have accessed on your own, stories from civilizations that had risen and fallen while your species was still learning to write its name. His voice was music—old music, modal and strange, pitched in frequencies that resonated in the hollow spaces between your ribs—and when he read, the world contracted to the size of the room, and there was nothing beyond the sound of his voice and the warmth of the fire and the weight of his gaze on your face.

He sang to you at night. Lullabies in languages that had died before the written record, songs that had been old when the stones of Briar Valley were still being quarried, melodies that wound through your dreams like smoke and left you waking with tears on your face and no memory of why.

He cooked for you—properly now, without the performance of incompetence—and each meal was a masterwork, each dish tailored to your preferences with an accuracy that should have been flattering and was instead another document in the case file of a woman being known too completely by a creature who had made a science of knowing.

He anticipated your needs before you voiced them. A blanket appeared over your shoulders the moment you felt a chill. A cup of tea materialized at your elbow the instant the thought of thirst crossed your mind. A book you had been wanting was placed on your nightstand the evening before you thought to ask for it, as though the desire had traveled from your mind to his through some channel you could not perceive.

It should have been suffocating. It was suffocating. But it was also—god help you—comfortable. The way a bed is comfortable when you have been walking for days. The way a fire is comfortable when you have been cold for years. The way a hand in yours is comfortable when you have been reaching into empty air for so long you had forgotten what contact felt like.

You were being digested. Slowly, gently, completely. Dissolved by the acid of a love so total and so consuming that it left no room for the person it loved. He was eating you, and the eating was warm, and you could feel yourself disappearing, and the disappearing felt like rest.

The man's name was Aldric, and he had been your thesis advisor.

He arrived at Night Raven College on a Wednesday—unexpected, unannounced, his presence at the gate explained by a letter of concern that had apparently crossed the desk of the headmage and been granted approval. You did not see him arrive. You did not know he was coming. You were in the garden with Lilia, listening to him describe the irrigation systems of ancient fae fortresses, when a message arrived via enchanted paper bird that a visitor was requesting your presence in the entrance hall.

Lilia's expression did not change.

That was the thing you noticed. The absence of reaction—the stillness that settled over his features like frost over a windowpane, the way the warmth in his eyes did not dim but simply focused, redirecting from you to the message to the implications of the message with the speed and precision of a war computer processing threat data.

"A visitor," he said. "How lovely. Shall we go together?"

You walked to the entrance hall with his hand on your lower back, guiding you through the corridors with the ease of someone steering a vessel through familiar waters, and when you saw Aldric standing in the doorway with his coat over his arm and his concerned, scholarly face turned toward you with the relief of a man who has found what he was looking for, you felt something crack in your chest—a seam reopening, a wound you had thought was healed splitting along its old lines.

"Thank god," Aldric said, and his voice was warm and ordinary and human, and the sound of it was like water in a desert. "I've been trying to reach you for weeks. Your letters stopped, your messages went unanswered—I thought something had happened. I had to see for myself."

"Nothing happened," you heard yourself say. "I'm fine. I've been busy with my research—"

"Too busy to answer a single message?" He stepped closer, and his eyes moved over your face with the searching concern of a man who had watched you grow from a nervous graduate student into a published scholar, who had read every draft of every paper you had ever written, who knew your silences and your evasions and the particular quality of your voice when you were hiding something. "You don't look fine. You look—"

"Who is this?" Lilia's voice cut through the reunion like a blade through silk. Not hostile. Not aggressive. Simply present—the way gravity is present, the way winter is present. An environmental condition rather than a social interaction.

Aldric turned. His eyes found Lilia—small, bright-eyed, smiling—and you watched the same process happen in reverse: the assessment, the sizing-up, the instinctive calculation of threat level that every human being performs when meeting someone new, running on subconscious algorithms that have kept the species alive for millennia.

You saw Aldric dismiss him. Saw the calculation return low threat based on Lilia's size, his cheerful demeanor, his harmless posture. Saw your advisor file Lilia under quirky local and turn his attention back to you.

"I'm taking you back," Aldric said. "Your fellowship is being reviewed. There are concerns about your well-being, your access to resources, the—" He lowered his voice. "The isolation. People have noticed that you've withdrawn. I've noticed."

"You can't—" You glanced at Lilia. His smile had not wavered. His eyes were fixed on Aldric with the steady, unblinking attention of a cat watching a bird through a window. "I'm not ready to leave yet. My research—"

"Can continue at home. I've arranged it." Aldric reached for your arm, and his grip was firm and familiar and safe, and you felt the pull of a world beyond the cage, and the pull was painful, like tearing a wound open to let the light reach the infection, and you wanted—

Lilia stepped between you.

The motion was fluid. Economical. A single shift of weight that placed his body in the exact position to obstruct Aldric's reach without making contact, without raising his voice, without any visible indication that the movement was intentional. He simply was there, in the space between you and the door, in the space between you and the world, in the space between you and every exit that had ever existed.

"I'm afraid that won't be possible," Lilia said. His voice was the voice of the General—not raised, not strained, carrying no inflection of threat or anger. It was the voice of a statement of fact. The voice of weather. The voice of death. "Her research is being conducted under the auspices of the Briar Valley cultural exchange, and her continued presence is required for the duration of the project. I'm sure you understand."

"I don't understand, actually." Aldric's voice had sharpened. The calculation was recalibrating—the low threat assessment being revised, the algorithms spinning faster, the ancient human instinct for danger beginning to prickle at the base of his skull. "And I don't believe you have the authority to—"

"I have every authority." Lilia tilted his head. The smile remained. The eyes remained fixed. The temperature in the room dropped by three degrees—not metaphorically, not imaginably, but literally, the air conditioning around the pulse of ancient magic that was beginning to seep from his skin like heat from a furnace. "I am General Lilia Vanrouge, vice-leader of Diasomnia, guardian of the Draconia heir, and I have been protecting things more valuable than you can imagine since before your great-grandparents learned to walk. This woman is under my protection. She is mine to protect."

The last sentence hung in the air like a blade suspended by a thread.

Aldric opened his mouth to respond, and Lilia raised his hand.

Just his hand. Palm out, fingers slightly spread, the gesture of a conductor preparing to bring down the baton. And in that gesture was contained seven hundred years of power—the accumulated might of a being who had reshaped the political landscape of an entire nation, who had commanded armies and toppled fortresses and made decisions that echoed through centuries, who was, in this moment, choosing to extend mercy rather than destruction, and wanted the recipient to understand exactly how much restraint that choice required.

"You will leave," Lilia said softly. "You will return to your institution, and you will file a report stating that your advisee is healthy and well and continuing her research as planned. You will not send messages. You will not arrange visits. You will not express concern. You will simply—"

His hand closed into a fist.

"—forget."

The magic moved through the room like a wave through water—visible, almost, a ripple in the fabric of the air that distorted the light and pressed against the eardrums and settled into Aldric's eyes with the weight of a command that was not a suggestion and could not be resisted.

Aldric's face went blank.

The animation drained from his features like color from a sunset—leaving behind a smooth, empty mask of neutrality, a face without a thought behind it, a mind that had been gently and precisely and irreversibly edited. He blinked. Once. Twice. His eyes found Lilia, and then they found you, and there was nothing in them. No recognition. No concern. No memory of a advisee he had traveled across an ocean to rescue.

"I—" Aldric shook his head. "I'm sorry, I seem to have—why am I in this hallway?"

"You were looking for the faculty offices," Lilia said, and his voice was warm and helpful and bright, and his smile was the smile of the kindly old fae who burned water and told funny stories, and the transition was so seamless that you could almost believe you had imagined the General. "They're down the corridor, third door on the left."

"Right. Yes. Thank you." Aldric nodded vaguely, his feet already carrying him toward the exit, his body moving through the motions of departure with the hollow automatism of a wind-up toy. "I don't know what I was—must be the travel. I'll just—"

He left.

He walked through the door and down the steps and out of the gate and out of your life, and he did not look back, and he did not remember your name, and the thread that had connected you to the world outside the cage was severed as cleanly and painlessly as a surgeon's cut.

The silence he left behind was absolute.

You stood in the entrance hall with Lilia's hand on your arm and the echo of a man's voice in your ears and the knowledge that you had just watched your last bridge burn, and the flames were warm, and the warmth was Lilia's, and his hand was gentle on your arm, and his voice was soft in your ear, and he was saying—

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I didn't want you to see that."

You turned to face him.

He was crying.

The tears fell from his eyes without sound or ceremony, tracing silver lines down his cheeks, and his expression was not the mask of the General or the performance of the grandfather but something in between and beyond both—the face of a creature who had just done a terrible thing and felt the terribleness of it and could not undo it and could not stop himself from doing it again.

"He would have taken you from me," Lilia whispered. "I couldn't—I couldn't—"

His arms came around you, and he held you with the desperate, crushing force of a being who was trying to press you into himself so deeply that you became indistinguishable, and his tears fell into your hair, and his voice broke over your name like a wave over rocks, and you stood in his embrace and felt the cage close around you with a sound like a heartbeat, and the heartbeat was his, and it was steady, and it would never stop, and neither would this.

The weeks that followed were a slow drowning.

You did not resist. Resistance implied the possibility of success, and that possibility had been edited from your mind as thoroughly as Aldric's memory of your face. You moved through the days like a body moving through water—heavy and slow and accompanied by the constant pressure of a medium that resisted every motion while supporting every weight.

Lilia noticed.

He noticed everything—your quietness, your stillness, the way you answered questions with the minimum number of words and the way your eyes drifted to windows and doors and the way your hand found your grandmother's silver ring in the dark and turned it around and around your finger like a rosary.

He tried to fix it.

More gifts. More stories. More evenings by the fire and nights of song and meals prepared with the care of an artist painting a masterpiece. He brought you rare texts and enchanted objects and a cloak made from the wool of cloud-sheep that was warm without weight and soft without wear. He filled the room with flowers that bloomed at different hours so that you were never without color and fragrance and the visible evidence of his devotion.

He filled the room with himself.

He was always there—sitting beside you, walking with you, reading to you, watching you. His presence was a gravity field that bent everything toward its center, and the center was you, and you could feel the pull in your bones, in the way your body turned toward him without your consent, in the way your eyes found him in a crowded room before you had consciously registered he was there.

He was rewiring you. You understood this. You could feel it happening—the gradual replacement of your instincts with his, the slow overwrite of your desires with the desires he had curated for you, the gentle, persistent erosion of the person you had been before you walked into that library and found a red-eyed creature waiting to be seen.

And the most terrifying part—the part that made you sick with shame and confusion and a longing so deep it had no bottom—was that some of it felt good. The warmth was real. The comfort was real. The safety was real. He had built a cage of gold and silk and starlight, and the bars were beautiful, and the keeper was kind, and when he held you at night and sang to you in languages older than stone, you could almost believe that this was love and love was enough and enough was all you needed.

Almost.

The confrontation came on a night of rain.

You had been sitting by the window, watching the storm, and the sound of the water on the glass reminded you of the device Lilia had given you—the one that produced the sound of rain on a tin roof, the sound from your childhood, the sound you had never told him you missed—and the reminder was a spark in the dark room of your mind, and the spark caught, and the catching became a flame, and the flame became a voice, and the voice was yours.

"This isn't love."

You said it to the window. To the rain. To the reflection of yourself that looked back from the glass—older than you remembered, quieter than you used to be, wearing a green dress in a shade he had chosen.

Behind you, Lilia went still.

You felt the stillness the way you felt the weather—a change in atmosphere, a shift in pressure, the sudden and absolute attention of a creature who had been waiting for this moment and was now deciding how to meet it.

"Isn't it?" His voice was careful. Measured. The voice of a General considering a battlefield. "What would you call it, then?"

"Possession." The word came out raw, scraped from the place inside you where the last remnant of the woman you used to be was still breathing, still fighting, still refusing to go quietly into the dark of complete surrender. "You've isolated me. You've driven away everyone who might have helped me. You've manipulated my environment, monitored my movements, controlled my access to the outside world. That's not love. That's—that's—"

"Protection." He said it simply. Without defensiveness, without apology, with the flat clarity of a statement so fundamental to his worldview that questioning it would be like questioning gravity. "I have protected you. From the forest, from the fae who would harm you, from the humans who would take you from me and bring you back to a life that was eating you alive. You were drowning before you came here—drowning in loneliness and work and the endless, grinding emptiness of a world that didn't see you. I see you. I have seen you from the first moment. And I will spend every century I have left making certain you are never unseen again."

"That's not—"

"Tell me the difference." He rose from his chair and moved toward you, and his stride was unhurried but inevitable, and the space between you contracted with each step. "Tell me the difference between what I feel and what you call love. Is it the wanting? The needing? The inability to imagine a future that does not contain you?" He stopped behind you. Close enough that you could feel the warmth of him through the thin fabric of your dress. Close enough that his breath stirred the fine hairs at the nape of your neck. "Because I have watched humans love, my dear. I have watched them marry and mate and raise children and grow old together, and every single one of those loves contained possession. Every marriage is a contract of belonging. Every parent holds their child with a grip that says you are mine. Every lover looks at their beloved and sees something they cannot bear to lose."

His hands found your shoulders. His touch was light. His voice was soft. His words were a blade sliding between ribs.

"The humans I watched—they held on so tightly they crushed what they cherished. They loved so selfishly they devoured the thing they fed. They built cages of obligation and guilt and social expectation and called it commitment." His lips brushed your ear. "At least I am honest. At least I do not pretend my love is selfless. At least I will never let you go."

You turned to face him.

The rain streamed down the glass behind you, and the lightning turned his face into a study in contrasts—half shadow, half light, half the creature who had held you while you cried and half the General who had erased a man's memory without hesitation. His eyes were red and wet and ancient and absolutely certain, and in them you saw the reflection of yourself—smaller than you remembered, quieter than you used to be, held in the arms of a being who had decided you were the answer to seven centuries of loneliness and would never, ever release the question.

"I'm not a person to you," you said. "I'm a—a solution. A cure. Something to fill the space that all those centuries carved out of you."

"Yes." He did not flinch. Did not deny. Held your gaze with the steady certainty of a creature who had made peace with what he was long before you were born. "And you are also the woman who reached for me when I told her about the Silver Ride. And you are also the woman who stayed up with me until dawn translating poetry. And you are also the woman who saw me cooking—the real cooking—and did not run."

His hand rose to your face. Cradled your jaw. Tilted your chin up so that you could not look away from the red, red eyes that had seen empires rise and fall and had decided, after seven hundred years, that you were worth the weight of forever.

"I am a monster," Lilia Vanrouge said. "I have never pretended otherwise. But I am a monster who loves you—completely, terribly, without reservation or restraint—and I will not apologize for the only thing that has made my existence bearable since the day I watched my first human friend turn to dust and realized that I would outlive everything I ever—"

His voice broke.

The break was not performative. It was not a manipulation. It was the sound of something ancient and brittle and held together by will alone finally cracking under the weight of its own history, and the crack let something raw and bright and agonizing leak through, and you saw—truly saw—the full scope of what it meant to be Lilia Vanrouge: to have loved and lost and loved and lost and loved and lost until the loving had become indistinguishable from the losing, until the only way to love without loss was to hold so tightly that the holding became a cage.

"I will not lose you," he whispered. "I cannot. Not you. Not after—"

He did not finish.

He did not need to.

You stood in the circle of his arms and felt the cage around you and the warmth inside you and the tears on his face and the rain on the window and the flower breathing on the bedside table and the thread wound so tight it had become part of you—fused to your skin, threaded through your veins, stitched into the fabric of who you were and who you were becoming—and you made a choice.

Or perhaps the choice had been made long ago. Perhaps it was made the moment you pulled out that chair in the library and said please. Perhaps it was made before you were born, in the space between two heartbeats of a creature who had waited seven hundred years for something worth keeping.

You raised your hands.

You placed them on his chest, over the place where a heart beat steady and ancient and true, and you felt the rhythm of it against your palms, and the rhythm was the same as your own.

"Okay," you said.

The word was small. A pebble dropped into an ocean. But the ripples spread outward through the dark water of his eyes, and his arms tightened around you, and his face pressed into your hair, and his breath caught in his throat, and the sound he made was not a word but something older—a sound that existed before language, before civilization, before the distinction between love and possession had been invented by beings who had never felt the thing he was feeling now.

He held you through the storm.

He held you through the night.

He held you through the slow, quiet, irreversible process of a woman learning to stop fighting the current and let the water carry her home.

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Silver came on a Sunday.

You heard him before you saw him—the particular rhythm of his footsteps, even and unhurried, the gait of a young man who had been raised by fae and had learned to move through their spaces without disturbing the air. He appeared in the doorway of the garden where you sat with a book open on your lap—a history of Briar Valley agricultural practices, a text Lilia had recommended three days ago over breakfast, and you had found it waiting on your desk that same afternoon with a sprig of lavender tucked between the title page and the binding.

You had smiled when you saw the lavender. You had brought it to your nose without thinking, and the scent had settled into your lungs like a second heartbeat, and the thought that followed was not he is monitoring my reading but he remembers that I like lavender, and the thought was warm, and the warmth was real, and you had turned to the first page with the kind of quiet eagerness that used to belong to research alone.

Silver stood in the doorway, and his expression was the careful, measured blankness of someone approaching a wounded animal they did not wish to startle. You recognized the look. You had worn it yourself, once, in the early days—when you were still the kind of person who startled.

"May I sit?" he asked.

You nodded and shifted on the bench to make room, and the motion was automatic, practiced—the bench was large enough for two but you always sat slightly to the left now, leaving the space on the right open for the warmth that usually filled it. Silver sat, and the absence beside you was noticeable, a gap in the pattern of your morning, and you found yourself wondering when Lilia would finish his meeting with the Diasomnia underclassmen and join you, and whether he would bring tea, and whether it would be the rose blend or the chamomile, and the wondering was not anxious but anticipatory, the way one anticipates the next measure of a song.

Silver was looking at you. You could feel his gaze on the side of your face—the weight of it, the particular pressure of someone searching for something they had lost. You turned to meet his eyes, and what you found there was not concern but grief. Raw, private, barely concealed—the grief of someone mourning a person who was still breathing.

"You look well," he said. The words came out rough, as though they had to be dragged through something sharp to reach the air.

"I feel well." You smiled. The smile was easy. It had become easy somewhere in the last month—somewhere between the morning Lilia stopped pretending he couldn't cook and the evening he had read you the poem about the starlight prison and you had understood it, finally, as a love story rather than a tragedy. "The garden is beautiful this time of year. Have you seen the moonpetals? They only bloom for a week, and Lilia said—"

"You used to hate it here."

The sentence landed between you like a stone dropped into still water. You blinked. The smile remained—it was harder to dislodge now, set deep in the muscles of your face—but something behind it shifted, a window opening onto a room you hadn't visited in a while.

"Did I?" you asked, and the question was genuine. You searched your memory for the feeling—the resistance, the panic, the desperate clawing at walls that you had once been so certain were walls—and found it distant, foggy, like a childhood memory viewed through the wrong end of a telescope. You remembered packing a suitcase. You remembered standing at a gate. You remembered the shape of the moon that night, and the sound of his voice when he said don't leave me, and the feeling of dropping the suitcase handle from your fingers, and—

And the memory did not hurt. That was the thing. It should have hurt. It had hurt, once. Now it sat in the archive of your mind like a pressed flower in a journal—flat, dry, stripped of its fragrance, preserved in a form that was recognizable but no longer alive.

"I don't think I hated it," you said slowly, reasoning through the statement the way you would reason through a translation. "I think I was afraid. There's a difference."

Silver's jaw tightened. His hands—his father's hands, you realized with a small start; the same long fingers, the same careful grip—clenched on his knees and then released, and the restraint in the gesture was enormous, the kind of force it takes to hold back a tide.

"You used to laugh differently," he said. "Louder. You used to argue with Father about historical interpretations—you'd spend hours debating cavalry tactics, and you'd get this look on your face when you disagreed with him, this—" He made a gesture near his own brow, indicating a furrow, a crease, something physical and particular. "You used to have opinions he hadn't approved first."

A bird sang in the garden. The melody was old, borrowed from a fae who had been singing it for four hundred years. You had learned to find the song soothing. You had learned to find most things in the garden soothing—the rustle of the leaves, the gurgle of the fountain, the way the light filtered through the canopy in shafts that moved across the ground like slow, golden creatures. The garden was Lilia's design. Every flower, every path, every carefully cultivated vista had been shaped by his hand over centuries, and you had learned to read it the way one reads a letter from someone beloved—absorbing the intention behind each stroke, finding pleasure in the knowledge that it had been made for you.

"I still have opinions," you said, and there was no defensiveness in your voice because you believed it. "I think the rose blend is better than the chamomile. I think the moonpetals should be moved to the eastern wall where they'd get more light. I think—" You paused, searching. "I think the archive needs better organization. I told Lilia that just yesterday, and he agreed."

Silver was staring at you with an expression you had never seen on his face before—something cracked and desperate, the look of a man watching a house burn from the inside while the owner stands on the lawn and remarks on how warm the fire is.

"Those aren't opinions," he said, and his voice was barely above a whisper. "Those are preferences. Those are choices between things he's already given you. Do you—" He stopped. Swallowed. Started again. "Do you remember what you wanted? Before? Before any of this? Do you remember what you were working toward, what you cared about, what kept you awake at night?"

You considered the question. It deserved consideration; it was asked with the weight of someone pleading for a specific answer, and you wanted to give it to him, because Silver was kind and Silver was Lilia's son and you had learned to want the people Lilia loved to be happy.

What had you wanted?

The research. The career. The publication. The respect of colleagues who had dismissed you, the validation of institutions that had excluded you, the proof that a human woman could walk into the archives of the fae world and emerge with knowledge that mattered. You had wanted these things. You remembered wanting them the way you remembered the plot of a novel read long ago—accurately, dispassionately, with the intellectual acknowledgment that the desire had been real but without any of the visceral urgency that had made it feel like breathing.

"I wanted to not be alone," you said. And the answer surprised you, because you had not known it was true until you spoke it, but speaking it felt like setting down a weight you had been carrying so long you had forgotten it was there. "I wanted to be seen. I wanted—" You paused, and the pause was not hesitation but the careful selection of the right word, because precision mattered, because Lilia had taught you that precision mattered, because he had spent months demonstrating the difference between almost right and exactly right and you had learned to feel the satisfaction of exactly right. "I wanted what I have."

Silver closed his eyes.

He did not speak for a long time. The fountain sang. The bird sang. The garden breathed around you, and you sat in its rhythm the way one sits in a comfortable chair—not questioning the support, not analyzing the cushion, simply allowing the structure to hold you.

When Silver opened his eyes, they were wet. He did not wipe them. He let the tears stand, and he looked at you with the raw, terrible grief of someone who has come to visit a grave and found the headstone smiling at him.

"You sound like him," he said. "You sound exactly like him."

You took this as a compliment.

He left shortly after—standing, pressing his forehead to yours in the fae gesture of farewell, and holding the contact a moment too long, as though he were trying to transmit something through the touch, some message that his words could not carry. His forehead was cool against yours. His breath was uneven. And when he pulled away, his eyes held yours for a long, searching moment, and you saw in them the shape of a question you could not decode—a question that seemed to be directed not at you but at the space where something else used to be.

You watched him go. You felt a faint pull of something—concern, perhaps, or the ghost of an instinct that said you should follow, should explain, should make him understand that you were fine, you were happy, you were exactly where you wanted to be.

The pull faded. The garden resumed its breathing. You turned back to your book, and the lavender sprig released another pulse of fragrance as the pages moved, and the scent was Lilia's garden and Lilia's recommendation and Lilia's thoughtfulness, and you inhaled it deeply, and the breath settled in your lungs like a word in a language you were no longer aware of learning.

The morning routine had become a kind of liturgy.

You woke at six—not to an alarm, but to the sound of Lilia's breathing changing rhythm beside you, the subtle shift from the cadence of sleep to the cadence of waking. He did not use an alarm either. He simply rose when the light reached a certain angle through the curtains, and his rising was your rising, and this was not obligation but nature, the way the tide rises with the moon.

You lay still for a moment after he left the bed—feeling the absence of his warmth, the coolness of the sheets where his body had been, the particular quality of silence that followed his departure from a room. Then you rose, and the motion was not reluctant but directed, the way a compass needle swings toward north.

The bathroom was warm. Lilia had adjusted the enchantment last week after you mentioned—casually, half-asleep, your face pressed into his shoulder—that the tile was cold under your feet in the mornings. He had not said anything about it. He had simply changed the temperature, and the next morning the tile was warm, and you had stepped onto it and felt the heat seep into your soles and thought: he listens, and the thought was not alarmed but grateful, and the gratitude was not forced but genuine, and the genuineness was the thing you no longer examined because examining it would require a distance you no longer possessed.

You washed your face. The water was the perfect temperature—the temperature you preferred, 38 degrees, though you had never told him that and could not remember when he might have learned it. The soap was the kind you liked—unscented, mild, the brand you had used at home—and it sat in a dish on the counter beside a second dish that held Lilia's soap, and the two dishes were shaped like intertwining vines, and you had not bought either of them, and you did not know where they had come from, and you did not ask.

You dressed. The wardrobe was organized by color and season, and every garment had been selected by a hand that knew your measurements better than you did—the exact circumference of your wrist, the precise length of your spine, the way the fabric should fall across your shoulders to produce the effect he preferred. You reached for the green dress today, the one with the buttons he always lingered over when he fastened them for you, and the choice was not conscious but reflexive, your hand moving toward the fabric the way a plant moves toward light.

You fastened the buttons yourself. He was in the kitchen. You could hear him moving—the clink of a spoon against ceramic, the soft sigh of the oven opening and closing, the particular rhythm of his footsteps on the stone floor. The sounds were as familiar as your own heartbeat, and you tracked them without meaning to, the way you might track the movement of the sun across the sky—aware of the warmth's location at every moment without needing to look.

You smoothed the dress over your hips. You turned toward the mirror above the dresser—the full-length one, the one with the silver frame that had appeared in your room one morning without explanation—and you looked at your reflection, and the woman looking back was not a prisoner.

She was well-rested. Her skin was clear. Her hair fell in a style that suited her face—not the style she had worn when she arrived, which had been practical and efficient and forgettable, but a style that Lilia had once described as the way you were meant to look, and the words had landed like a key in a lock, and you had worn your hair that way ever since.

You looked at the woman in the mirror, and the woman in the mirror looked content, and the contentment was not a mask—you could see that in the softness around her eyes, the absence of tension in her jaw, the way her shoulders sat lower than they used to, as though a weight she had carried for decades had finally been set down.

You adjusted the collar of the dress. The green brought out your eyes—he had told you so, and he was right, and being right about you was something he did the way other people breathed, effortlessly and constantly, and you had stopped wondering how and started simply accepting that the world was more accurate when filtered through his perception.

The smell of breakfast drifted through the door. Something with rosemary. Something with the sharp, bright scent of citrus. Something that made your mouth water and your feet move toward the kitchen without conscious direction, and you walked through the doorway and saw him standing at the counter with his back to you, and the sight of him—the small, precise figure, the fall of dark hair, the economy of his movements—produced a feeling in your chest that was not fear and not anxiety and not the desperate, scratching hunger for escape that you used to carry.

It was relief.

It was the relief of coming home. The relief of a door closing behind you and locking out the wind. The relief of warmth after cold, of safety after exposure, of being held after a lifetime of holding yourself together with nothing but will and pride and the stubborn, grinding conviction that you could survive alone.

You did not need to survive alone anymore.

You crossed the kitchen and slid your arms around his waist from behind, and your cheek found the space between his shoulder blades, and his hands paused in their work, and he made a sound—a small, satisfied hum that vibrated through his back and into your chest—and his free hand came to rest over yours where they clasped at his stomach, and his thumb stroked your knuckles in slow, warm circles.

"Good morning," he murmured.

"Good morning."

"Did you sleep well?"

"Yes."

"Any dreams?"

A question he asked every morning. A question you answered every morning with the same word, and the word was always true, because the dreams had stopped—sometime in the last month, sometime between the night he first held you through the storm and the morning you woke to find your hand already reaching for him before your eyes were open. The dreams had stopped, and in their place was sleep—deep, dreamless, restorative sleep that left you soft and warm and ready to receive the day he had prepared for you.

"No dreams," you said.

He turned in your arms, and his face was close, and his eyes were red and fond and ancient, and his smile was the smile he wore only for you—the one without performance, without calculation, without the careful architecture of charm that he presented to the world. This smile was real. Everything about him, in this kitchen, in this morning, in this life you had been shaped to fit, was real.

"Breakfast is almost ready," he said. "Sit. I'll bring it to you."

You sat at the table—the table where you took every meal now, the table that was always set with your preferred cup and your preferred plate and a small vase containing a single flower from his garden, the flower changing daily but always blooming, always perfect, always oriented toward the seat where you sat.

You sat, and you waited, and the waiting was not passive but peaceful, and the peace was not the peace of surrender but the peace of arrival, and the arrival was not a destination you had chosen but it was a destination nonetheless, and you were here, and the sun was warm through the window, and the food was coming, and the man who loved you was bringing it, and the love was real, and the real was all that mattered.

Malleus came on a Tuesday.

You were in the garden when he found you—pruning the moonpetals, a task Lilia had taught you last week with the patient, precise instruction of a master passing on a craft. Your hands had learned the angles quickly. The stems should be cut at forty-five degrees, just above the third node, and the cut should be clean and decisive, and the flower should be placed in water within thirty seconds to preserve the bloom, and the water should be drawn from the fountain in the eastern corner of the garden because the mineral content was different there and the moonpetals preferred it.

You had memorized these instructions the way you once memorized translation keys—eagerly, thoroughly, with the scholar's hunger for accuracy and the additional, newer hunger of wanting to do a thing the way Lilia would do it, wanting your hands to move with the same certainty as his, wanting the garden to look the way it would look if he were tending it himself.

The shears felt natural in your hand. You had not held pruning shears before coming to Night Raven College. You had never gardened. You had lived in apartments and worked in libraries and spent your mornings reaching for books instead of blooms. But the motion was familiar now—cut, place, water, repeat—and the rhythm of it matched the rhythm of your days, which matched the rhythm of his days, which matched the rhythm of the castle itself, and everything moved together, and the movement was music, and the music was peace.

Malleus stood at the edge of the flowerbed and watched you work.

You were aware of him the way one is aware of weather—a change in pressure, a shift in the quality of the light. He did not announce himself. He did not need to. His presence altered the atmosphere of any space he entered, and the alteration was recognizable in the way the flowers leaned slightly away from him, in the way the birds fell silent, in the way the very air seemed to thicken with the gravity of his existence.

"Lord Malleus," you said, and the title came easily now—another adjustment, another adaptation, another small surrender to the vocabulary of a world you had not been born into but had learned to inhabit with the fluency of a convert. "What a pleasant surprise."

"Is it?" He moved closer, and his footsteps left no impression in the garden path, as though the earth itself was careful not to mark beneath his weight. He lowered himself onto the bench beside the flowerbed, and his presence was vast and cool and immovable, and you felt it the way you felt the stones of the castle—as a permanent feature of the landscape, something that had been there before you and would remain after you were gone.

But that was not quite right anymore. You were becoming a permanent feature yourself. The thought produced a small, warm flutter in your chest—pride, perhaps, or the particular satisfaction of belonging.

"You have adapted well," Malleus said. His eyes moved over the garden—over the pruned moonpetals, the weeded paths, the careful arrangement of the beds—with the assessing gaze of a ruler surveying his domain. "The garden flourishes under your attention. Lilia speaks highly of your progress."

"I had a good teacher." You smiled, and the smile was genuine, and the genuineness would have surprised you once but no longer did, because genuine was the only kind of smile you produced anymore, because the circumstances of your life no longer required the performance of emotions you did not feel.

"He tells me you have abandoned your research." Malleus's voice was neutral—not accusing, not questioning, simply stating a fact with the detached precision of a being for whom facts were the only currency that mattered.

The statement produced a pause in your pruning. Brief. Barely perceptible. The shears hovered above a stem for a moment longer than the rhythm required, and then they closed, and the cut was clean and decisive, and you placed the bloom in the water, and the motion was complete, and you considered his words.

Abandoned was not the word you would have used. The research was still there—your notes, your journals, the fragments of translation you had completed before the project shifted from the center of your life to its periphery. But the urgency was gone. The hunger was gone. The desperate, driving need to prove yourself, to justify your presence, to carve a place in a world that had not invited you—it had evaporated like morning mist, and in its place was something quieter and warmer and infinitely more comfortable.

"The research is on hold," you said. "I've been focusing on other things."

"Other things." His eyes found yours, and the contact was like touching a deep, still pool—something ancient looking up through the surface, measuring you with a gaze that had seen empires rise and fall and could distinguish between the things that lasted and the things that merely appeared to. "You have become a fixture of this place. Did you know that? The students speak of you as they speak of the stones or the fountains—as though you have always been here. As though you grew from the garden alongside the flowers."

You felt the warmth in your chest expand. A fixture. A part of the landscape. Something that belonged.

"That's kind of them to say," you murmured.

"It is not kindness." Malleus's voice carried the weight of correction—not harsh, but absolute, the way gravity corrects a dropped object. "It is observation. You have been assimilated. The castle recognizes you. The garden responds to you. My guardian—" A pause. The smallest fracture in the ancient composure, there and gone like a crack in stone that seals itself before the eye can register the damage. "My guardian has made you his, and the making is thorough, and it is complete, and I see that clearly now, though I confess I did not see it until this moment."

He rose from the bench. The garden seemed to exhale in his absence—the flowers straightening, the birds resuming their song, the air thinning to its normal density. He looked down at you with an expression that was not pity and not resignation and not grief but some alloy of all three, refined by centuries of experiencing loss into something heavy and luminous and still.

"You are happy," he said. It was not a question.

"Yes," you said. It was not a defense.

He nodded. The nod was the nod of a being who had made a calculation and arrived at a result he had not anticipated, and the result was not wrong, simply different from the expected answer, and the difference required a recalibration of assumptions that would take time to complete.

"Then I will not interfere." He turned, and his shadow fell across the garden path, and the flowers bowed their heads as he passed, and the fountain seemed to quiet, and the air seemed to still, and the world arranged itself around his departure the way it arranged itself around his arrival—with the gravity of a thing too large to ignore and too permanent to resist.

At the edge of the garden, he paused. He half-turned, and his profile was carved against the afternoon light, and his voice came back to you across the space between you—across the distance that separated the prince of Briar Valley from the human woman pruning moonpetals in his guardian's garden.

"He has lost much," Malleus said. "More than you know. More than he will ever tell you. What he has found in you is the thing he has spent seven hundred years searching for, and he will guard it with every resource at his disposal, and those resources are vast, and that guarding will be absolute." A beat. The light shifted. The shadow deepened. "I am glad he has found it. And I am—" Another pause, longer this time, weighted with the effort of a being who was not accustomed to admitting uncertainty. "I am glad that you are glad. That is a thing I did not expect to say. But I find that I mean it."

He left.

You sat in the garden with the pruning shears in your hand and the moonpetals in their water and the afternoon light warm on your shoulders, and you felt the shape of his words settle around you like a garment—you are his, and the making is thorough, and it is complete—and the garment fit, and the fit was comfortable, and the comfort was the thing you no longer examined because examining it would require a distance you no longer possessed.

You reached for the next stem.

The shears closed.

The cut was clean.

The hand-mirror was in the archives, wedged between a treatise on warding enchantments and a catalog of Briar Valley mineral deposits. Ordinary. Dusty. A human artifact, out of place among the fae texts the way you had once been out of place among the students—present but foreign, persisting in an environment that had not been designed for it.

You pulled it free and brushed the dust from its surface with your thumb. The glass was cloudy, filmed with the residue of years or decades or centuries—you could not tell how long it had been there, only that it had been forgotten, which was a kind of death, and death in an archive was a thing you understood, because you had spent your career resurrecting the forgotten, translating the lost, giving voice to texts that had been silenced by time.

You wiped the glass with your sleeve. Once. Twice. The film cleared, and the reflection emerged, and you looked at yourself, and—

You had been bracing for something. You realized this only after the bracing proved unnecessary, only after the breath you had been holding released without the expected impact, only after the reflection looked back at you with clear skin and bright eyes and a soft, unguarded expression that you did not recognize as the face of a prisoner.

You stared at yourself. The woman in the mirror stared back. She was well-rested—no shadows beneath her eyes, no tightness in her jaw, no trace of the exhaustion that had lived in your face like a permanent tenant when you first arrived. She was well-dressed—the green dress, the one he preferred, the one that made his eyes soften when they found you. She was well—simply, completely, undeniably well, in the way that a plant is well when it has been given the right soil and the right light and the right hand to tend it.

You tried to frown.

The muscles of your forehead contracted, and the woman in the mirror frowned, and the expression was wrong—strained, artificial, a mask placed over a face that had settled into different configurations. You held the frown for a moment, feeling the effort of it, the way you might feel the effort of speaking a language you had not practiced in years. The muscles remembered the motion but the emotion behind it was absent, like a word you can define but cannot feel.

You released the frown. The face relaxed into its natural configuration, and the natural configuration was soft and open and content, and the contentment was not performed but structural, built into the architecture of your expression by months of mornings spent in warm kitchens and evenings spent by fireside chats and nights spent in the arms of a creature who held you like a prayer answered.

You tried to remember the woman who had packed the suitcase.

She was there, somewhere, in the archive of your memory—a distinct figure, accessible but distant, like a character in a book you had read long ago. You could recall her actions: the packing, the walking, the standing at the gate. You could recall her emotions: the fear, the desperation, the conviction that escape was possible and necessary. But the recall was intellectual rather than visceral, the way you might recall that fire is hot without feeling the burn.

You looked at that remembered woman—standing in the dark with her suitcase and her silver ring and her desperate, clawing need to be free—and you felt something that was not pity, exactly, but a tenderness colored by distance. She had been so stressed. She had been so lonely. She had been so exhausting in her certainty that freedom meant standing alone in a world that had never offered her a place.

You understood her, the way you understood the texts you translated. But understanding is not the same as identification, and you no longer identified with the woman at the gate. She was a previous edition. A draft that had been revised. A translation that had been corrected by a hand that knew the original language better than she had ever known herself.

You set the mirror down.

Not in horror. Not in grief. In the simple, practical motion of a woman who has seen what she needed to see and found it satisfactory.

You returned to your work.

The evening-heart flower bloomed on the bedside table. Its petals were open wide, drinking in the sound of your breathing, and its fragrance filled the room with the scent of a life you had learned to live. You had watered it this morning—not because he had asked you to, but because you had noticed the soil was dry, and the noticing was automatic, and the care was reflexive, and the flower was yours now, in the way that everything in this room was yours, which was to say it was his, and the distinction between yours and his had dissolved so completely that the two words had become synonyms.

You were lying in bed. The sheets were soft. The pillow smelled of him—of the rosemary from the kitchen and the night air from the garden and something underneath that was simply Lilia, the essential fragrance of a creature who had been part of your life for so long that his scent had become the smell of home.

You were waiting for him.

This was not unusual. You waited for him every evening—the space beside you cold and expectant, the room incomplete without his presence in it. The waiting was not anxious but anticipatory, the way a stage waits for an actor, the way a sentence waits for its verb.

You heard his footsteps in the corridor. The sound was distant but recognizable—the light, precise tread of a being who had learned to walk silently and chose not to, because you had once told him that you liked hearing him approach, and he had remembered, and he had walked audibly ever since.

The door opened. He stood in the doorway, and the light from the corridor framed his silhouette, and his eyes found you in the dark—red and warm and ancient—and his smile was the smile that belonged only to you, the one without performance, the one that said I have found you and you are here and you are mine.

"I thought you'd be asleep," he said softly.

"I was waiting for you."

The words came out without thought, without deliberation, without the flicker of calculation that would once have accompanied a statement so revealing. They were simply true, and the truth was comfortable, and the comfort was the air you breathed.

He crossed the room. The door closed behind him without being touched—the lock engaging with a soft click that you no longer heard as confinement but as safety, the sound of the world being shut out, the sound of the cage being sealed, and the sealing was warmth, and the warmth was love, and the love was the thing you had wanted all along without knowing you wanted it.

He sat on the edge of the bed. His hand found your face—the gesture automatic, proprietary, tender—and his thumb traced the line of your cheekbone, and the touch produced a response in your body that was beyond conscious control: your eyes closed, your cheek pressed into his palm, your breath synced with the rhythm of his caress, and the synchronization was not surrender but nature, the way a river syncs with the shape of its bed.

"You had a good day," he said. It was a statement, not a question. He could read it in the set of your shoulders, the pace of your breathing, the particular quality of stillness in your body. He could read everything in you now—you had become a text he had memorized, a language he spoke with native fluency, and the fluency was the result of attention so total and so sustained that it had become indistinguishable from devotion.

"Mm." You opened your eyes. His face was close. His eyes were red. His hair fell around you like a curtain, blocking out the room, blocking out the world, leaving only the two of you in a space that was small and warm and absolutely private. "Silver came. He seemed upset."

Lilia's expression shifted—a micro-movement, barely perceptible, the kind of adjustment that would be invisible to anyone who had not spent months learning the topography of his face. "Silver worries. He has always worried. It is his nature."

"He asked me if I remembered what I wanted. Before."

"And what did you tell him?"

The question was casual. The tone was light. But beneath the casualness and the lightness was something else—the attention of a creature who was listening not to your words but to the space between them, the way a musician listens not to the notes but to the silence they inhabit.

"I told him I wanted what I have." You reached up and touched his face—mirroring his gesture, your thumb tracing the line of his cheekbone, your palm resting against his jaw. His skin was cool and smooth and familiar, and the familiarity was a kind of home, and the home was a kind of surrender, and the surrender was a kind of peace. "I told him I was happy."

Lilia's breath caught.

It was a small sound—a hitch, a fracture, the sound of something breaking and reforming in the same instant. His eyes brightened—not with tears, not quite, but with the pressure of tears held in reserve, the weight of an emotion so vast that it required all of his considerable control to keep it from flooding the room.

"Are you?" he whispered. "Are you happy?"

The question was genuine. That was the thing you understood about him—the thing you had always understood, even when understanding it felt like stepping off a cliff. His love was real. His hunger was real. His need for you was as fundamental as breathing, as ancient as stone, as vast and consuming and absolute as the ocean that holds a ship and will not release it.

And your answer was genuine too. That was the thing that would have horrified you once and no longer did, because the horror required a perspective you had lost, and the loss was not a wound but a healing, and the healing was the most terrifying thing of all, because healing felt like peace and peace felt like surrender and surrender felt like love and love felt like the only thing that had ever made the weight of existence bearable.

"Yes," you said. "I am happy."

He kissed you.

The kiss was soft and deep and slow, the kiss of a creature who had all the time in the world and intended to spend all of it here, in this room, in this bed, with you. His hands cradled your face with the reverence of a worshipper handling a sacred object, and his body lowered over yours with the care of someone placing something precious in a space designed to hold it, and the space was the shape of him, and the shape was the shape of your life, and the life was this—warmth and weight and the smell of him and the sound of his breathing and the absolute, incontrovertible, bone-deep certainty that you were where you belonged.

He pulled back. His forehead rested against yours. His breath mingled with your breath. His eyes were closed, and his lashes were dark against his cheeks, and his expression was the expression of a being who had been granted something he had never dared to ask for and could not quite believe he had received.

"Stay with me," he said. The words were barely audible—a breath rather than a voice, a vibration rather than a sound. "Stay. Always. I will give you everything. I will be everything. I will—"

His voice broke.

"—I will never let you go."

The words fell against your skin like a seal pressed into warm wax. They were not a threat. They were not a promise. They were a statement of fact—the kind of fact that exists prior to language, the kind of fact that does not require acknowledgment because it simply is, the way gravity is, the way time is, the way the stars that burned for seven hundred years in the sky above Briar Valley are, and will continue to be, and will not be moved by any force you possess.

You did not argue. You did not flinch. You did not feel the cold hand of fear close around your throat or the hot spike of rebellion surge through your chest or the desperate, clawing need to run that had once been the background radiation of your existence.

You felt warmth.

You felt safety.

You felt held.

And the holding was the thing you had wanted all along—the thing you had been reaching for your entire life, in every empty apartment and every silent library and every conversation that left you more alone than you had been before it started. The holding was the answer to a question you had never known how to ask, and the answer was Lilia, and Lilia was the question, and the question and the answer were the same, and they were here, in this room, in this bed, in this body that had learned to breathe when he breathed and wake when he woke and want what he wanted and be what he needed, and the learning was not loss but completion, and the completion was not a cage but a home, and the home was the only place you had ever been where the door could close and the wind could howl outside and you could lie in the dark and feel—genuinely, completely, irrevocably—warm.

You closed your eyes.

You pressed your face into the curve of his neck, and the curve was the exact shape of your fitting, and your shoulder found the hollow beneath his arm, and your body aligned with his the way a key aligns with a lock—not through effort, not through choice, but through the simple physics of things that were designed to go together.

He held you.

His arms came around your back, and his hands spread across your spine, and his chest rose and fell against yours, and you felt your lungs adjust—the inhale beginning when his began, the exhale releasing when his released, the rhythm of your body becoming indistinguishable from the rhythm of his.

He hummed. The lullaby. The one about the starlight prison, the one where the mortal learns to love the stars. The melody moved through his chest and into yours, vibrating through the places where your bodies touched, and the vibration was warm, and the warmth was music, and the music was sleep, and the sleep was rising around you like water, and you did not fight it, because fighting was a language you no longer spoke, because the current was gentle, and the current was him, and he was carrying you, and being carried was the most natural thing in the world.

The evening-heart flower closed its petals.

The castle breathed.

The garden bloomed in the dark, tended by hands that had learned the angles from hands that had been tending for seven hundred years, and the blooms were healthy, and the paths were clear, and the fountain sang its ancient song, and everything was in order, and the order was his, and the order was yours, and the distinction between the two had dissolved so completely that the question of which was which no longer made sense.

You slept.

You slept deeply, and dreamlessly, and warmly, and the warmth was the warmth of a body that had been designed to fit beside yours, and the dreamlessness was the peace of a mind that had nothing left to fight, and the depth was the depth of a surrender so complete that it had become indistinguishable from choice.

And in the dark, in the silence, in the space between one breath and the next, Lilia Vanrouge held you.

His arms did not loosen. His breath did not change. His eyes stayed open—red and ancient and watchful—and they did not close until he was certain you were asleep, until the rhythm of your breathing had slowed to its deepest cadence, until the last tension in your body had dissolved into the warmth of his embrace.

Then, and only then, did he close his eyes.

Then, and only then, did he speak.

His voice was the voice of the General—the voice of battlefields and body counts and decisions that reshaped nations—and it was also the voice of the creature who had told you about the Silver Ride, who had wept in your arms, who had erased a man's memory without hesitation and held you while you shook and cooked you breakfast in the morning with hands that had once been instruments of war.

It was the voice of a being who had waited seven hundred years for something worth keeping, and had found it, and would never release it, and the finding and the keeping were the same act, and the act was love, and the love was possession, and the possession was peace, and the peace was the only thing that had ever made the weight of existence bearable.

And he whispered into the dark, into the silence, into the soft and steady rhythm of your shared breathing:

"You are mine.

You will always be mine.

And I will hold you until the stars burn out and the ocean dries and the last stone of this castle crumbles to dust—and even then, in the dark that comes after everything, I will still be holding you.

You will never leave me."

The flower bloomed in the morning.

It opened its petals to the light that filtered through the window, and the light was warm, and the warmth was the same as the warmth of the arms around you, and the arms were the same as the walls around you, and the walls were the same as the world around you, and the world was small and soft and close, and it smelled of rosemary and night air and something underneath that was simply him.

And you woke.

And you did not remember the gate.

And you did not remember the suitcase.

And you did not remember the woman who had stood in the dark and felt the cold hand of fear close around her throat, because that woman was a draft that had been revised, a translation that had been corrected, a text that had been overwritten by a hand that knew the original language better than she had ever known herself.

And you smiled.

And the smile was real.

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VIL

ꨄ︎ physical appearance: for Pomfiore beauty is effort, NOT a standard. Hence why jumping to the conclusion that Vil would only be attracted to conventionally attractive people is not only foolish, but completely wrong. Beauty comes in all different forms, shapes and sizes, hence why I tend to believe that Vil’s type is particular in the sense that it cannot be quantified necessarily. He wants someone who, not matter if skinny or fat, knows their worth. Someone who puts an effort to get ready in the morning, even as simple as doing your makeup and/or skincare. It’s about expressing yourself through fashion as well. There has to be something about you that makes him stop and asses, not because he wishes to change it, but because he wishes to learn. I do think though, he would be really into eyes. He can immediately tell who you are, as a person, through your eyes. And he just likes to get lost into them.

ꨄ︎ other: Which brings me here to say that if you have an unconventional style, extravagant, bright, anything flashy, he will be into it. That aside, I feel he needs someone who knows how to listen as well. Someone who sees AND hears him beyond his pretty face.

MALLEUS

ꨄ︎ physical appearance: Malleus would be attracted to cool people. Cool as a broad spectrum term, can be from your style, to your makeup, just something that makes you unique in his eyes. I also feel if you’re a softer/plus size and taller build he would very much like/prefer that. This guy is HUGE, he needs someone tall and big enough to balance him out. If you’re a human too, I think he would love to trace the shape of your round ears, although he wouldn’t necessarily admit it. I can imagine him tracing it, his face soften immensely, more than he lets on usually, and you’re half awake from the nap you previously took. You don’t move, don’t breathe even, in the fear that if he notices you he will stop. He does notices you, of course, but he doesn’t say anything.

ꨄ︎ other: a friend. That’s it. No, for real, I think to be in a relationship with malleus you must get close to him on a friendship level first. He has been so isolated and lonely and it’s not necessarily easy for him letting people in, even if he craves that connection. He needs to see that you want him, all of him. That you aren’t scared of him, of his fae attributes especially. That his fangs, claws, eyes, presence mostly too, does not scare you away but draws you in instead. Show him. Tell him.

AZUL

ꨄ︎ physical appearance: I think he would have a preference for smaller builds. Long hair too that are soft, super soft. Like the kind of hair that feels like water for how light they are. I don’t think hair colour would be a trait he necessarily looks for, but he does like darker tones, especially brunette shades. I also think he has lowkey something for hands(?), I can’t explain, he gives that vibe. If you have well taken care of hands, and pretty nails (not necessarily manicured, even bared) he is already gone lol

ꨄ︎ other: talk back to him please. I think he would love (and hate) someone who’s bratty enough to shut him up when needed. Someone to pull him back down and let him realise that he is going too far. At the same time he needs someone smart, not necessarily academic smart, but intellectually. Tell him if that situation is worth to deal with, if the deal is a good one. Don’t guide him, but do give him a lil push if needed in the right direction. Azul gives the vibes of someone who desperately clings to the idea of being able to do everything alone, but eventually reality crashes down on him and he realises that isn’t possible. Thats when he needs someone good enough to give him a wake up call before due time.

LILIA

ꨄ︎ physical appearance: literally anything lmao. This guy is 700 years old man, do believe that he is everything but picky. He has changed a lot throughout the centuries and has learned a lot too, while I do believe he finds certain styles aesthetically attractive, and pleasing to look at, that’s not a requirement he seeks. Long hair, short hair, unnatural or natural hair colours, doesn’t matter. Give him all. greedy. He is however, rather a small man, and while he wants some height difference, I don’t think he would seek out at first someone who’s overly muscular or larger than him. Lilia is strong, but he also strikes me as someone who likes to be in control and doesn’t want to necessarily lose that control.

ꨄ︎ other: What he does seek however, is someone’s present. He has loved and he has lost. His magic will eventually fade away too, leaving him in need for something stable. Someone to call his, and only his. To laugh, to cry, to joy with. Someone that he can be as mundane as possible with. Someone he can be as loud and unapologetically himself with. What Lilia has learned is that, despite being a fae, centuries does fly in a blink of an eye and life can be taken away from you when you least expect it. He wants, and needs, someone who can be their authentic self alongside him for the next few centuries you two will spend together.

JADE

ꨄ︎ physical appearance: I don’t know how to explain it, but he gives me boobs guy type. Small? That’s amazing. Big? Even better. Huge? He is not complaining. I also think he would appreciate someone with a softer body type. I can just see him tracing your rolls with his index finger, looking curiously at everything softness your body holds. Your belly and hips are however is favourite things to hold and caress. Seeing the little shape of your belly pouch from that tight dress you’re wearing? Superb. Passing by you, and instead of walking around, he places his hands on your hips to move you just because he wants an excuse to touch you? Even better.

ꨄ︎ other: don’t be fooled by his calm aura. This guy is a FREAK. He needs someone to match that freak. I think jade is pretty much the personification of a wolf in sheep clothing, he acts innocent, naive even, but he is everything but that. Cunning little prick. Hence why he needs someone as deceptive as him. Not mean, not necessarily, but someone who knows how to play the game. Don’t be overly loud, but be precise, be mindful of what you say and do in public. But that’s in public, in private it’s another story. Be interested in his hobbies, in who he really is. The armour has to drop, he is still a freak, but softer. I think he would enjoy cuddling a lot. After a long day, he just wants to close his eyes and hold you tight, all barriers drop and while he might bite you out of appreciation if you scratch his sweet spot on his head, he also just wants to keep you close. And perhaps have his head in your chest, but I didn’t say that

FLOYD

ꨄ︎ physical appearance: muscles 100%. Don’t have to be too defined, anything is fine. But back muscles especially and arms, makes him lose his mind. He is an energetic guy, I can see him being w someone who’s into sports just as much as him and that they take it super seriously, I mean competitive as fuck to drive him crazy and absolutely delighted at the same time. Also low key (?) show off your strength, as in pick him up, maybe one day he was pushing it with that mouth of his, so you just decided to pick him up and carry him away on your shoulder. That shut him up really quickly. And perhaps he found it hot too

Marriage isn't easy.

Lilia knew this fact when he asked your father for your hand. He knew that your union would not be one of love, but of duty, and that was a sacrifice he was selfishly willing to make. He never asked your opinion — there was no point in doing so when the final say was your father's to make — he never warned you of what to come, he just expected you to fall in line and make that sacrifice just as he did.

For a time, you did exactly that. You complacently exchanged your vows and said 'I do' because it was for the greater good. Tying yourself to a powerful General such as Lilia offered you a modicum of safety from the humans who sought to take out high-ranking nobles like yourself, but that safety came with a heavy price.

You were safe, yes, but you were not happy. Lilia wasn't around much, something that could be considered both a blessing and a curse. He had a war to fight, a country to defend, and lives to safe and most days, those duties took him far away from you. You worried for him and wondered when or if he'd never come back. Every day without him was an agonizing waiting game, but somehow things were even worse when he did finally return.

Never once over the course of your marriage did Lilia ever show you any kindness. He wasn't cruel per se, just… indifferent, apathetic even. You were a duty, a sacrifice he was willing to make, not someone he loved or truly saw a future with. He never said as much aloud, but the way he looked at you — as though you were nothing more than a loathsome burden — spoke volumes.

Things went on like this for some time, until one day, you simply weren't there. After everything Lilia had sacrificed to keep you out of harms way, still it wasn't enough. He'd done his duty, but duty didn't matter at all to the kidnappers who stole you away from him in the dead of night.

Perhaps if he had been a better husband he wouldn't have lost you. Maybe if he'd set aside duty and tried to make something out of your marriage, you'd still be here by his side to this day. If he had done so much as share a bed with you, he could have stopped you from being taken, but he didn't. No, instead he insisted on keeping separate bedchambers — not too far apart, but apparently far enough for him to have been none the wiser to your kidnappers whisked you away into the night never to be heard from again.

In the aftermath, Lilia could only blame himself, and to this day he still does.

On days like today, when the house is quiet, and he's alone with nothing but his thoughts, Lilia's mind often drifts to what could have been. He likes to think you'd still be by his side, that, despite everything, you would have one day grown to love him as he did you after all these years. They say absence makes the heart grow fonder, and Lilia can't help but agree.

A quiet knock on the front door pulls Lilia from his reverie. How odd… he wasn't expecting any visitors. It's a day like any other, at least that's what he thinks as he rises from his comfortable seat to greet the guest on the other side of the door.

Little did he know that by opening that door, this day would go from mundane and innocuous, to something straight out of his daydreams.

There, on the other side of the door is a face he was slowly beginning to forget, one he longed to see in the waking world, and not just in his dreams. With trembling hands, Lilia reaches out, half expecting to grasp at thin air while hoping, praying even, that this is real, that you are real and not just a conjuration of his guilt-ridden mind. Lilia's hand meets your cheek, his fingertips just barely grazing your skin enough to confirm that you truly are here with him.

All this time, he thought you gone to the world for good, yet here you stand, just as lovely as the day you were taken from him. All the things Lilia had hoped to tell you find themselves caught in his throat, unable to be spoken aloud as tears begin to spill forth from his eyes. A small, choked whimper slips past his lips the moment you reach out to brush away said tears with a tenderness he finds himself entirely undeserving of.

"Don't tell me you missed me, husband." Even your voice is exactly as he remembers it. It was in the same voice, that same tone that you exchanged your vows all those years ago — vows that he can still recite by heart to this day.

Of course Lilia missed you. Every day for hundreds and hundreds of years he's wanted nothing more than for you to return to him. In truth, he thought you were gone for good, yet still he wished for a miracle to one day deliver you back to him. After all that praying and all that wishing, you've finally come back.

Unable to muster up the words to express how ardently he's longed to have you in his life, Lilia instead pulls you into a tight hug. He clings to you like you'll disappear again the moment he let you go. He's already lost you once, and he'll do everything in his power to make sure he never loses you again.

Hot tears soak through the fabric of your shirt as Lilia cries into your shoulder. He sobs and sputters out murmured apologies against the curve of your neck, his lips pressing quick kisses against the skin between words. A small, brittle voice in the back of his head tells him that he doesn't deserve this, that he ought to repent in some way, shape, or form for being such a poor excuse of a husband.

"You needn't apologize, husband. I promise you, I hold no ill will for our past, only hope for our future." Your assurances sends another round of sobs tearing through Lilia. He wouldn't blame you if you hated him, and in all honesty, a part of him wishes you did. You're too kind to and too forgiving of a man who has done nothing to treat you as you deserve. Still, despite all his faults and shortcomings, you hold him tightly and comfort you through the tears.

"I thought I had lost you for good, that I let one of the few good things in my life slip through my fingers like sand."

"You didn't. Even if we weren't together, I was always with you, just as you were always with me. Every day, I thought of you and how I'd one day make it back to my place by your side. I'm here now, Lilia, and if you would have me, then I promise I shall never part from you again."

Lilia pulls away enough to meet your gaze. His gaze slowly sweeps over your face, taking the time to burn your visage into his memory after he came so close to forgetting it. There's a long pause as his gaze settles on your lips where he unabashedly admires their size, shape, and fullness before finally deigning to speak.

"I would love nothing more than to have my dearest spouse by my side. It is where you belong, and where you should have been all this time. Allow this poor fool the chance to repent and make up for all the days we've spent apart — I promise I shall never let you go again."

"You need not repent, but I shall take you up on your offer nonetheless. Let us never part again, so long as we both shall live."

"So long as we both shall live."

With that, Lilia pulls you into a long-awaited kiss. This is the first time he's ever dared to press his lips to yours, and he absolutely regrets not having done so sooner. He pours out every emotion he's felt for you into the kiss; the longing, the yearning, the regret, the fear, and everything else he can't bring himself to name. He kisses you like he means to steal the breath from your lungs until you need him instead of air to survive.

There's a fierce tenderness in the way Lilia's lips move against yours, like he means to worship and devour you at the same time. It takes a sharp tug of his hair to get him to finally break the kiss and let you come up for air. He lets out a small, desperate whimper in protest and at one point tries to dive back in and attach his lips to yours once more, but he instead ducks his head to mouth at your neck instead.

"Ahh, you really did miss me, hm?" Lilia offers a muffled hum against your neck, as he finds himself a bit too caught up in lavishing you with some overdue affection. He's meticulous in the way he kisses the skin, alternating between gently biting at the flesh — sinking his teeth in just enough to send a shiver down your spine, but not enough to cause you any pain — and licking at it like a kitten would milk.

"I have for centuries, my dear. Please forgive me for being eager to make up for lost time." A smirk finds its way to Lila's lips between ragged breaths. You're in a similar state, all flushed and out of breath and the sight of you in such a state only serves to spur your dear husband on.

"There is nothing to forgive. If I may speak plainly, I am rather eager myself."

"Well, I shall not keep my beloved spouse waiting any longer then."

With that, Lilia lifts you into his arms and whisks you away for some much-needed catching up.

The next few hours are spent wrapped up in each other's arms in the comfort of Lilia's bed. More tears — both happy and sad — are shed, and even more kisses are shared. He's all over you — hands in your hair, on your hips, your waist, and anywhere else you're gracious enough to let him touch — practically trying to fuse your bodies into one being so that you truly will never be apart.

Emotions are heightened, even as the intensity of your reunion finally dies down. It's in the aftermath as you both lie there catching your breaths, that Lilia tells you of everything you missed — of Malleus and Silver and Night Raven College and everything else that comes to mind, and you listen to it all with a smile on your lips and your hands in his hair.

The pair of you stay like this for however long, focused entirely on each other while the rest of the world fades away into the background. Right now, at this moment, nothing else matters. As far as you and Lilia are concerned, nothing else exists beyond the threshold of his room.

"I'm sorry." The whisper somehow seems loud in the quiet of the room even if it’s spoken as quietly as possible. Lilia has apologized to you just about every other breath since your arrival, yet it still doesn't feel like enough to make up for all his failures.

"I already told you there's no need to apologize." Your assurance, combined with the soft carding of your fingers through his hair, and your nails against his scalp, manages to soothe Lila's worries. A part of him still feels unworthy of your forgiveness, but he is grateful for it all the same.

"I know, but I still feel the need to beg your forgiveness."

"Beg? And here I thought Generals were too proud to beg."

"I am a General no more, my love. I'm just a man who loves his spouse — nothing more, nothing less."

Once again, Lilia moves to connect his lips with yours, but he finds himself stopping just short of actually doing so as his ears catch the sound of the front door opening.

"Father, I'm home!"

Ah, Silver. Lilia had almost forgotten about the boy, which in hindsight, is a pretty poor showing of his parenting. In his defense, he was rather preoccupied with other, more pressing matters to anticipate his son’s return from the market.

"Would you like to meet Silver?" There's a tinge of excitement in Lilia's tone as he turns to you. He'd always imagined how you'd interacted with his dear boy, and now is the perfect chance to see exactly that. You'll be a part of his life from now on anyway, so now is most likely the best time for the two of you to meet.

"I would love nothing more, but do you think he will take to me? I must imagine it would be a shock for him to meet the longtime spouse his father never spoke of." This time, it's Lilia's turn to comfort you. His hand rises to cup your cheek, while his thumb affectionately swipes back and forth just beneath your eye in a gesture he hopes is soothing. Truly, you have nothing to worry about when it comes to Silver, who he knows without a doubt will be accepting of you.

"He will love you, my dear, I'm sure of it. He is a kind boy, one that would be a fool not to adore you."

"You sound very sure of yourself."

"Well, I did raise him, after all. I’d like to think I know my own son and his character well enough to make such an assured claim.”

"Hm, fair enough. I suppose introductions are in order, then."

You leave without another word, slamming the door behind you. You run back to your dorm on autopilot, crashing in the foyer as soon as the door shuts behind you. You lie there and stare at the ceiling. The pain in your heart is so bad that it spreads to every last cell of your body. Was this Leona’s game all along? To make you think you were special to him, just to rip it away with a careless lashing from his sharp tongue?

Grim silently walks up and makes himself comfortable on your chest. He warned you that confessing to Leona was a bad idea, but he won’t rub it in while you’re down. He’ll just stay with you so you don’t have to suffer alone. While absentmindedly petting Grim, it hits you how intentionally awful Leona was to you. Even Grim, who barely knows what life is like for regular humans, has a better understanding of how to treat you than Leona. So, Leona really cares that little about you, huh? Then why should you care about him? You’re too good to cry over a man. 

“You know what, Grim? Fuck him. Let’s go get some snacks and watch a movie.” You pick Grim up and carry him out with you. 

“Yeah! You deserve better, henchman! Focus on me instead!”

The first person to notice your change in demeanor is, unsurprisingly, Vil. The man who can sense the slightest change in someone’s skin or eyelash length or other trivial things like that. He picks up on the sadness behind your eyes that you thought you were hiding well.

“You must be so vain to fall for Leona, Y/n. His good looks just aren’t enough to make up for that personality.” Vil shakes his head, handing you a green smoothie. To help you get over that spoiled prince who doesn’t deserve your love, Vil has been regularly inviting you to spa nights in his room.

“It was definitely a horrible lapse in judgement on my part,” you sigh. “I really thought he felt the same way.”

“Honestly, so did I, but I guess that man would never be honest with his emotions. What I can’t figure out is why he wanted to toy with your heart in the first place. He can’t gain anything from it.”

“To entertain himself, maybe. Whatever. I’ll choose my men more carefully from now on.” You and Vil clink glasses, celebrating a harsh lesson that will ultimately make you stronger.

Leona’s sleep has been off since the rejection. Not that he can’t sleep, but he wakes up more in the night, thinking about you. It was for your own good, he tells himself. He would be a terrible boyfriend. Hurting you now means saving you from worse pain somewhere down the line. It was the whole reason he never let his mind wander to the idea of having feelings for you. Shut down the thought before it can form.

Spending all your time with Vil was a nasty move on your part, though. He can sense that Vil is shit talking about him every time he sees you heading back to Pomefiore with the bastard. If you’re trying to piss him off, you chose the best guy to do it with. Still, Leona doesn’t want you to be unhappy, so if wasting your time with Vil and calling him an asshole behind his back helps, he can live with it. Very begrudgingly, but living with it nonetheless. He doesn’t sleep well tonight.

He could understand at first, but you’re starting to really test his patience. Do you plan on avoiding him forever? You don’t need Vil. What, you think he’ll treat your heart any more delicately than Leona would? Vil will throw you to the wolves as soon as his fans find out about the girl who’s always hanging around him. At least Leona wasn’t afraid to be up front about letting you down. At least he got it over with quickly.

When he sees you and Vil heading into town together, he decides he’s had enough. Someone’s gotta talk some sense into you. Might as well be Leona.

“Oi, Y/n. I need to talk to you.” Leona shoves past Vil and stands in front of you.

“Excuse me!” Vil pushes Leona back and links arms with you. “Y/n and I have a reservation. Inconsiderate brats aren’t invited.”

“This isn’t your business, Vil. I need to tell her something important.” They glare at each other, two rival males ready to fight to the death over their territory.

“Go ahead without me, Vil. I’ll meet you at the cafe,” you say. He hesitates for a second, but knows you can handle yourself. He walks on while you and Leona stand by the school gates. “Well?”

“You’re playing a dangerous game, getting close with that guy,” Leona warns. “I know you’re mad at me, but he won’t make you any happier.”

“Is that all? I was expecting an apology. You don’t get to tell me who I can spend my time with.”

“What do I have to apologize for? I’m sorry you keep picking men who will only break your heart, but that isn’t my fault, and I’m allowed to turn you down.” His cruel words can only make you scoff.

“I’m not mad that you rejected me. You see, the thing about Vil is that if I said the exact same thing to him, he would let me down gently. A simple ‘no’ would have been better than what you said to me. I won’t give my energy to someone who doesn’t consider my feelings at all.” You turn on your heel and march in Vil’s direction.

“Y/n— Ugh, this woman.”

Another night of shitty, shitty sleep. No matter how he tries to fight the thought off, the words ‘I miss her’ keep flashing in his head. All that time he spent fighting off the growing feelings he had for you, denying them to himself and the world, and you have to go and ruin his effort by frolicking around with Vil. Can’t you see that he did it for you? You would be miserable being stuck as Leona Kingscholar’s mate. Anyone would be.

But it’s fucking. Killing. Him. If he doesn’t say something, he might never get a good night’s sleep again. Let this be his last night of tossing and turning. He’ll come clean tomorrow. Then you can be the one to reject him and feel better about yourself.

“Not with Vil today? Did he burn you like I said he would?” Leona’s voice makes you jolt, almost spilling your tea on the Ramshackle porch.

“His club is having an important meeting today. I’m having dinner with him later,” you say. Leona sits next to you on the steps. “Can I help you?”

“I’m sorry,” he whispers.

“Hm.”

“What does that mean?” He asks, shifting around uncomfortably. 

“I guess I wasn’t expecting a real apology. You’re forgiven. Is there anything else? I want to drink my tea in peace.” He drops his face in his hands and groans.

“Y/n, you have to understand why I rejected you.”

“No, I really don’t. You did a great job tricking me into thinking you felt the same. Was it fun for you?”

“I…” He sighs heavily. “I do feel the same. But I can’t give you what you deserve. I would be a terrible boyfriend, Y/n.”

“That’s not for you to decide.” You turn to face him, putting a hand on his cheek and making him look at you. “I know who you are, Leona. I saw in you what you couldn’t see in yourself. And yet, you couldn’t even show me basic courtesy.” Your hand starts to slide away from his cheek. He grabs your wrist, keeping your hand in place.

“I’m afraid I’ll hurt you worse later on,” he quietly admits. You shock him by smiling at him.

“I’m a big girl, Leona. I can take my own risks.” You rest your forehead on his. His eyes flutter shut, and he lets out a small hum.

“I’ll try to be what you deserve, Y/n. I really will.” Leona pulls you in for a soft, long kiss, erasing the bad memory of what he said to you the other day. You’re breathless when he pulls away, but he somehow has enough air to chuckle darkly. “Too bad for Vil. He’ll need to find a new doll to play dress up with.”

“Hah!” You break out laughing. “I can’t believe you were jealous of Vil! He’s my friend, idiot!”

“You—”

“It was pretty petty of you to only want me when you thought I was taken,” you giggle. He pouts and crosses his arms. “Cancel your dinner plans with him. I’m taking you out instead.” Leona stands up and offers you a hand. You rise up and give him another quick kiss on the lips. A low rumbling noise comes from his throat.

“Take me somewhere nice,” you demand. The two of you walk into town, hand in hand, smiles on both of your faces.

Floyd Leech

“Hahahaha! Silly Shrimpy! Why would I wanna date you?” Floyd clutches his stomach and rolls on the floor laughing. Your whole body goes cold, though you did brace yourself for something like this. Floyd is never delicate with others’ feelings. Hearing it in person rather than in your own head hits harder than you expected. You leave him laughing on the floor of Mostro Lounge and book it back to your dorm. 

He laughs so long that he doesn’t notice you leaving. “A date!? Quit joking, Shrimpy!” His laughter slows and he sits up, wiping a tear from the corner of his eye. “Eh? Where’d Shrimpy go?” He looks around the lounge for you, but there’s no trace. “Maybe her joke wasn’t as funny as she expected and she got moody?” He shrugs his shoulders. He’s sure you can come up with something funnier next time. 

“Fffngaa… Henchman, stop petting me so hard,” Grim whines. 

“Sorry…” You mumble. You don’t stop petting him. You’ve been in a daze since the rejection that afternoon. 

“What’s got you so gloomy today? You were even moping through dinner.”

“Um… Floyd kinda… rejected my confession,” you reveal. 

“FLOYD!? THAT FLOYD!?!?” Grim yells. “Why would you even want to be with him? You’re weird, henchman! You can do better.” Amazingly, Grim said something helpful. You can do better than a guy who has no consideration for your feelings. There are plenty of eels in the sea. You won’t give Floyd any more of your energy. 

Being around Silver could heal anyone’s soul. He doesn’t ask questions about why your mood has been down, and he doesn’t try to convince you to date someone else. He just lets you exist near him while he naps, woodland creatures cuddling up to him without him realizing. A sweet little sparrow jumps around on your knee while its friends nap beside Silver, comfortable under the shade of a tree. 

Leaves crunch under someone’s foot, coming closer. The sparrows look horrified and fly off. Somehow, Silver sleeps through the noise. A tall figure hovers over you. You look up and see the goofy face of the man you least want to see. 

“There you are, Shrimpy! I’ve been looking for you since last week!” Floyd smiles down at you, oblivious. 

“Oh, hey,” you say flatly. “I’ve been avoiding you since you rejected me, so that’s why I haven’t been around.” His face drops. One of Silver’s eyes cracks open.

“Eh? But I laughed at your joke? Stop being moody, Shrimpy. I need you to distract Goldfish for me so I can take his notes.”

“No thanks. I’m not going to be helping you steal from Riddle any more. I shouldn’t have done it in the first place, really.”

“Don’t be mean to me~ Let’s go.” Floyd tries to grab your arm. Silver’s hand shoots out, clutching Floyd’s wrist and holding it away from you.

“You need to respect her wishes, Floyd,” Silver lectures. Floyd jerks his hand away, his face going dark.

“You should mind your own business, Jellyfish. Shrimpy is playing with me today.”

“She said no, Floyd. Please leave her alone. You owe her that after breaking her heart.”

“I wouldn’t say he broke my heart—”

“We were just about to go back to my dorm. I suggest you don’t follow.” Silver puts his hand on your back and guides you away from Floyd, who is absolutely seeing red.

“Huhhh?? He really thinks he can take my Shrimpy? I won’t forget this, Jellyfish.”

“Jade, does Floyd seem… depressed lately?” Azul and Jade watch Floyd flick a rolled up straw wrapper around one of Mostro Lounge’s tables, his body completely slumped over.

“Stupid Jellyfish… Evil Shrimpy…” Floyd grumbles. “Just because I didn’t take your joke seriously…”

“Hm, it seems he misinterpreted Y/n’s heartfelt confession of love for a joke.”

“Urk— Y/n confessed to him!? That poor girl must be overworked, falling for Floyd.” Azul shakes his head. “Usually, I would offer to help with someone’s relationship woes, but I think she might be better off this way.”

“AhhhAAAAHHHH!!” Floyd screams, swiping everything off the table. “I miss Shrimpy!!!”

“Floyd, have you considered apologizing to her?” Jade asks. Floyd looks at his brother like he’s an idiot.

“Huh? For what? It’s not my fault that she’s bad at lying.”

“I don’t think she was lying,” Azul adds.

“That doesn’t make any sense. Why is everyone trying to play with my head these days…” Floyd sighs dramatically and drops his head on the table.

“It might be best to let him figure it out on his own.” Jade and Azul leave Floyd to mope in peace. 

Floyd’s mood is at an all time low for the next few weeks. Why are you always with Silver? You need to spend all your time with him again. That Jellyfish can’t squeeze you as good as him. “I’M SUPPOSED TO BE THE ONE SHRIMPY LOVES!!” He shouts in the middle of the courtyard, making a bunch of freshmen run away.

Everyone tells him your confession was genuine. He thought that was ridiculous at first, but you wouldn’t keep a joke going for this long. You have to be upset with him for real. Floyd had never thought of you in a goopy romantic way. That would have been stupid. Unless it’s not stupid.

“Shrimpy…” He whines, his head hanging low. He needs to fix this, or he might feel all gross forever.

Of course he finds you wasting your time with Silver. OF COURSE. He wants to squeeze the life out of that woman-stealing Jellyfish. Killing someone you like probably won’t make you any less mad at him, though, so he’ll control himself. For now.

“Shrimpyyy, can we talk?” Floyd asks. Silver protectively steps in front of you.

“You’ve upset her enough, Floyd,” Silver says.

“It’s okay, Silver. Give us a second.” You put a hand on his shoulder and urge him to walk away, but stay nearby. He nods at you and leaves. “What is it now, Floyd?”

“Uhhh… I guess I did something stupid, laughing like that when you confessed to me. Thought it was a joke,” he mumbles.

“Yeah, it was really stupid. You didn’t even consider how I would feel if it wasn’t a joke? You could’ve just said no if you didn’t like me back.”

“Ahhhhh… ‘M not good with this sappy feeling stuff. Um, I’m sorry, Shrimpy. I want you to love me again.” Floyd apologizing isn’t something you ever saw coming. 

“Um, wow. I… forgive you?” His face lights up. 

“Yayyy!!! So you can love me again, right?” He moves in to hug you, but you block him. 

“Look, I’m not mad at you anymore, and we can be friends again, but I’m not going to love someone who doesn’t love me back.”

“But… What if I love you too? Then will you love me again?” He begs. You quirk an eyebrow at him.

“You can’t just pretend to love me, Floyd. I don’t want to hear it from someone who doesn’t mean it.”

“You’re being too annoying, Shrimpy!” He attacks you in a suffocating hug.

“Urk—” You try to push him off. He clings tighter.

“I’m not pretending! I do love you back! I only laughed because I thought you were pranking me!” Floyd whines loudly in your ear. 

“R-really?? Then why didn’t you say something sooner!?”

“Because I was being stupid! I love you, so you need to love me too!!” He yells.

“How do I know you won’t say something hurtful again?” You ask. “I can’t deal with you messing with my feelings again.”

“Silly Shrimpy, if I hurt you again, you would get mad again. It’s a real pain when you don’t wanna talk to me!” The two of you laugh together.

“You’re right, I’d get really pissed. Okay, Floyd, you get one chance. But if you hurt me again, it’s over.”

“YES!!” Floyd lifts you into his arms and squeezes you tight. “You’re mine, Shrimpy!” He smashes his lips into yours, giving you a sloppy and unpracticed kiss. You wrap your arms around his neck and kiss him back.

“Y/n, I heard yelling! Is everything okay?” Silver comes back to find you and Floyd engaged in some serious PDA. “Oh… I guess you made up.”

“Hehehe, I stole your girlfriend! Sorry, Jellyfish, but I win!” Floyd boasts. You and Silver look at each other. His confused face makes you burst into laughter.

“She was never my girlfriend. I was just helping her feel better after you hurt her,” Silver admits.

“EEHHHH???” Floyd shouts. “I got jealous for nothing????”

“It wasn’t for nothing! It helped you finally realize that you love me!” You cackle. Floyd laughs with you, high on life.

“True! You were good for something after all, Jellyfish! Thanks for the help!” Floyd carries you off into the sunset, happy to have his dear Shrimpy back.

“Heh. I’m happy for you, Y/n,” Silver says to himself. “But please, be careful with that guy.”

Lilia Vanrouge

“Don’t be ridiculous, Y/n. What would ever make you think we could work as a couple. Such a silly young woman.” Lilia shakes his head. His words reach into your fragile heart and squeeze it until there’s nothing left in it. You’ve wanted him for so long, and he can’t even turn you down gently. A kind rejection, you could handle, but his cruelty is too much. 

“Okay,” you say quietly, leaving without another word. You hear him chuckle in the distance as you leave Diasomnia. When you’re sure he can’t see you, you run back to your dorm faster than ever before. You go straight to your room and crash into bed, burying your face in your pillow. 

“Hm! Why do you look so sad?” Grim asks, jumping in bed next to you. 

“It was a long day, is all,” you lie. Grim huffs in agreement. The two of you sit silently together while you let Lilia’s words fully hit you. It stings. It stings so much. But if he cares that little about your feelings, why should you feel for him? Before going to bed, you resolve to yourself that you’ll destroy your feelings for Lilia and move on. 

A confession from a classmate. It’s not something Lilia could have ever seen coming at his age. Such an odd creature you are, Y/n, to look at an old man like him and fall in love. While he enjoys your company greatly, he knows how much of a logistical nightmare a relationship with him would be for you. You will be better off with someone young and hopeful like you. Pretty much everyone in the school is single, so have your pick. Maybe he’ll try to set you up with Trey as an apology for having to break your heart. Trey is a good man, after all. He goes to bed, hoping you’re not too mad at him. 

You distance yourself from Lilia for weeks. You aren’t avoiding him, just not going out of your way to be around him any more. You still say hi to each other in the halls and will exchange small talk if you’re hanging out in a group. But no one is going to find you at Diasomnia or watching the light music club’s rehearsals. Instead, you focus on growing your other friendships. 

“Trey, did I collect enough rosemary?” You and Trey are collecting baking ingredients in the botanical garden. One thing that’s helped the heartbreak more than anything is Trey’s delicious food. As a result, you and Trey have been hanging out a lot. Being around someone as understanding and chivalrous as Trey has been healing in its own right. He’s patient with you when you’re feeling down. 

Lilia walks through the garden in search of ingredients for his potion assignment. He’s lost in thought, your absence in his life weighing on his mind. He didn’t realize how often you came around until you stopped. It makes sense that you wouldn’t want to be around him while the sting of rejection was still raw. Perhaps he should ask to talk so he can explain why he turned you down. You will surely come around once you realize it’s for your own good, and the two of you can go back to being friends. 

He spots you and Trey, his own classmate. The corners of his lips twitch down. It seems the two of you are procuring baking supplies. You never let Lilia cook for you before. You always claimed you preferred to just get food from the cafeteria. He should talk to you now, before you disappear again. 

“Hello, Trey. Mind if I borrow Y/n for a minute?” Lilia asks. Trey looks at you, quietly asking your opinion. You nod and he gives you and Lilia a moment alone. 

“What’s up, Lilia?” There is neither hate nor love in your voice. You talk to him like two businessmen discussing stocks.

“Were you and Trey planning to bake together? I was under the impression that you didn’t like homemade food.”

“Oh, I just didn’t find your food to my taste. Sorry, I was trying not to hurt your feelings,” you admit. His eyes go wide. That… hurt a little. “Trey and I are gonna make rosemary focaccia and tomato sauce. You can join us, if you like.”

Though the prospect of tomato sauce is tempting, the tugging feeling in his heart kills Lilia’s appetite. Why do you seem so comfortable with Trey? And why is he letting it bother him? “No, thank you. I wanted to talk to you about something important, Y/n.”

“Okay, shoot.”

“I hope you didn’t take my rejection of your feelings too harshly. My intention wasn’t to hurt you. It’s just that our lives are headed in very different directions, and it would be unfair to you to waste time on me,” he explains. You narrow your eyes at him. 

“Why couldn’t you say it that way when I confessed?” You sigh and shake your head. “Did you really think I would feel good after you called me a ‘silly young woman?’ Someone your age should have more tact.” Another one of his heartstrings snap. 

“I-I’m sorry, Y/n. You have to understand, it was very shocking to receive a confession. Looking back, I can see how what I said could have been rather cruel.” He looks you in the eyes and sees no emotion in yours. 

“I accept your apology. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt, though. It’s best we just stay cordial. I’ll see you around.” You leave to go find Trey. Lilia stands there, clutching at his heart. He fears he may have screwed up. 

Every time Lilia sees you, Trey is there. Walking in town? Trey’s there. Going to Sam’s? Trey’s there. You wait outside their class every day for Trey. And Lilia just watches you walk away with him, a bad taste in his mouth. Trey is exactly the kind of guy he was hoping you would go for after rejecting you, so Lilia is properly ashamed of himself for wishing you would stop spending time with Trey. Shame aside, he needs to right his wrong. 

“Y/n, do you have a minute to talk?” Lilia asks, catching you on your way home after spending another evening at Heartslabyul. 

“Sure, I got a minute,” you agree. The two of you face each other, with him looking more troubled than you’re used to seeing him. He takes a deep breath, swallowing his pride. 

“I made a terrible mistake rejecting your feelings,” he admits. “I’m sorry, Y/n. I’m aware of how immature this sounds, but seeing you with Trey has been… hard on me.” When he first rejected you, you spent a lot of time imagining what you would do if he came crawling back to you, changing his mind. The fantasies switched between the two of you living happily ever after or him groveling at your feet while you laughed at him. Now that it’s happening and you’ve accepted how things went down, it just feels a little ‘meh.’

“You’re right. That does sound immature,” you say. “Are you going somewhere with this? I have homework to do.”

“You’re very harsh when scorned, Y/n.” He gives you a broken smile. “I understand if your feelings for me have disappeared forever, but mine for you remain. Should you change your mind and decide you still want me, I will be waiting for you. Come by any time, Y/n.” Dejected, he leaves you alone to think it over. You sigh and shake your head, something you’ve been doing a lot lately. 

“Why couldn’t you have just said that the first time?” You whisper to yourself. 

Though the pain in his chest remains, Lilia feels lighter having told you what he had to say. If you don’t want to give him a second chance, he can move on knowing that he gave it his all. This will be a distant memory one day, anyway. He just needs a little alone time in his room with his games. Gloomy Samurai hasn’t been able to offer any helpful words on the matter, saying that he doesn’t understand IRL stuff, but it’s the girl’s loss if she rejects him. 

Someone knocks on his door. He tells his online gaming buddy that he has to log off for a minute. Gloomy Samurai promises to finish the raid for both of them. Lilia opens the door and finds you, looking nervous. You wring your hands and try not to make eye contact with him. 

“I, um, still have feelings for you,” you confess. “I’m done being mad at you.” Lilia smiles brightly. He takes your hand and leads you into his room. 

“Y/n, I can never apologize enough for my cruelty, but I can promise not to hurt you again. That is, if you would like to formally begin dating.”

“Yeah, I think I would.” You smile back at him. He jumps on you, wrapping you in a big hug. 

“Then allow me to take you on a proper date! Since you don’t like my cooking, I’ll take you anywhere in town that you want,” he offers. 

“Why don’t we just have Trey cook for us? I know how much you love seeing me with him,” you joke. 

“Ah, poor Trey. I must remember to apologize to him for stealing your heart.” Lilia grins smugly. You laugh. 

“Trey never had feelings for me in the first place! We’re just friends. You got jealous over nothing, Lilia!”

“Y-Y/n, were you using him to make me jealous!?” He asks in surprise. 

“No, that jealousy was all you.”

A small, selfish part of you had already begun to mourn what would happen to your husband when he set his plans into motion. You hand to cling to him and plead for something else, but what was there to consider? It was clear change must happen, not matter what you felt personally. You gazed at the window to the harsh lands of salt. Many who had come here were those abandoned by other lands. His fairness and just nature drawing them to these otherwise barren and harsh environment.

You clutched your hands in front of your chest – perhaps in a silent prayer that the Creators would listen to your plea. Nothing would come of it, however. It was just a foolish attempt to tide yourself over before you betrayed what you were at heart.

The door of the chamber opening had you turn your head. A smile spread across your face at his return. Approaching him, you embraced him tightly. He gently brought a single arm around you. His helmet may have obscured his face, but you could feel the tender gaze he held. A greeting escaped you. He seemed hesitant. A hand gently came to stroke your hair. Your head rested over his Soul Jam, listening to the subtle pulse of its power. Your adoration for him would simply never wane.

“You must leave these lands,” he suddenly spoke, voice far too low. You pulled away in shock, gazing at him with large, confused eyes. His hand seemingly froze from where you had pushed it back, but he made no moves to lower it. You shook your head, tears welling in your eyes. His hand find moved to rest at his side. “… You must,” he spoke again, “The Silver Kingdom will have you.” A protest escaped from you. Why was he sending you away? Were you some listless ward?!

He was silent, clearly reflecting on his thoughts. Then, he stepped forward and brought his hand to cup your cheek. The warmth set into you. “I do not wish for this,” he continued, “My heart aches at having you away, but… I worry about how things are progressing.” Your brows knit together. He pressed his helmet to your forehead. “Please… I need to have you safe,” he begged, “If I allowed myself one selfish desire, it would be knowing you will face no pain.”

His desperation, something so rare…

You relented if only to ease his troubled mind.

If only you had known that you would watch him seal away the fallen virtues alongside himself.

~

“I wish to travel this path alone,” her voice was soft as you caught her hands in a plea, “… I do not wish for you to come to any harm. Those lands are not safe.” You begged, pressing your forehead to her hands. A floral scent wafted through the air. She gazed at you gently. Tears were once again escaping from your eyes.

Centuries had passed yet all you could do was mourn in shame. How could you protest his will? It was selfish, and his sacrifice was grand. And, before you stood the one who succeeded him. White Lily seemed to give in.

“… I understand,” she gently brought a hand to cup your cheek, “We must find these answers together.”

You hugged her tightly in thanks, making her tense before reciprocating.

~

Yet, you had grown lost in the catacombs. The spirits surrounded you, yelling curses and attacking you. All you could do was accept. These were the people you had abandoned. They looked upon you, too, just as they had the Knight Commander. You pressed your knees to your chest and sobbed into them.

Yet, just as things seemed most grim.

A blade cut the wraiths before you, banishing them away for but a moment. Had they found you? Opening your eyes, you expected to see the group of White Lily, Charcoal, and Pastry. Your body went cold instead. Something before you was more terrifying than any spirit or wraith could hope to be.

He knelt down.

“… I told you never to return to these lands,” his voice echoed in your ears, “Leave. I will only be lenient this once.”

You cried out his name and embraced him. He stood tensely, making no moves to return the affection. You babbled out endless things, desperate for him to stay. Your heart ached with longing and memories.

“My dearest,” he gently whispered, “Leave. I'm begging you.”

You only clung to him tighter.

The hearth had long gone cold.

Once, your voice had filled this hall—bright and bold as banners in the wind, warm as the flame-lit tapestries that lined the stone walls. Now, silence hung between you and your husband like frost between two windows.

You sat across from him at the long council table. No ministers tonight, no audience—just the two of you, seated at opposite ends. You rested a protective hand over your belly. Seven moons now, the midwife had said. The baby stirred often.

Cacao’s eyes flickered toward your gesture, but only briefly. He said nothing. He rarely did anymore. “You used to read the reports aloud,” you said, voice low but steady. “Even when the days were long.”

His hands tensed over a scroll. “There is no need for sentiment in wartime.”

You did not flinch. The weight of your silence was harder than any argument. There had been many silences between you lately—since Dark Choco’s banishment.

Since our son was cast out.

Your heart throbbed, not from the child within, but the one you no longer held.

He had made mistakes—unforgivable ones, some said. He had drawn cursed blades. Sowed ruin. But he was still your son. Still your child. You had fought for him. Pleaded. Raised your voice in a court where that alone had been sacrilege.

And when the sentence came down…

It wasn't just Choco who had been exiled. Something between you and your husband had crumbled too.

Still, you remained. You served the kingdom with fierce grace, overseeing repairs, tending to the people’s needs, appearing before the crowd with your crown straight and your robes immaculate. You smiled for them. You did not falter.

Even when your husband could no longer meet your eyes. “The border fires are under control,” he said finally. “No incursions today.”

No goodnights were spoken when you rose. No soft touch on your shoulder. No hand reached for yours as you left the hall, cloak dragging behind you like a shadow.

The child stirred again. You murmured softly to your belly in the corridor. “He used to sing to you,” you whispered, voice catching. “When he still remembered how.” ... The storm outside raged louder than any voice within the palace, save one.

“Grief changes a cookie, Your Majesty.”

Affogato’s voice curled like incense smoke, sweet and lingering. He moved with quiet purpose, arranging a tray of steaming herbal tea—your usual brew, though he had brought it without your request. His eyes gleamed beneath the fall of white-tipped bangs. “I only worry for your peace of mind. For the kingdom’s.”

Dark Cacao sat by the fire, unmoved. His cloak draped heavy over one shoulder, one hand curled tightly around the hilt of his sword. His jaw did not unclench.

Affogato continued.

“There are whispers, you know. In the lower halls. That she—your queen—has begun asking about troop movements. Border rotation. Guard loyalties. Curious, no?” “She commands no armies,” Cacao said flatly. “Not yet.”

Silence.

Affogato poured the tea carefully. The steam rose, laced with something floral… and something else. “You forget, my king—charisma is a dangerous thing. The people still adore her. Would follow her into snow if she asked. Some might say… more than they would follow you.”

Cacao’s grip on the cup did not tighten, but his gaze dimmed.

Affogato leaned in.

“Grief makes her bold. What mother would not rebel, after losing her son? What wife would not resent her king for it?” He gave a small, mournful sigh. “She loved the prince deeply. Perhaps more than was safe.”

Dark Cacao rose.

“You go too far.”

“Forgive me.” A bow. “My loyalty blinds me at times. I merely wish to preserve the kingdom. And you.”

He stepped closer. Not touching—but nearly.

“You bear such a heavy burden, my king. You should not carry it alone.”

There it was—the first brush. The beginning of seduction masked as service. Fingers lingering too long on a cup. Eyes softening just enough to blur lines of propriety.

“Let me ease your burdens. Just a little.”

Outside, the storm began to still. Inside, something far colder was blooming.

Soon, it was of great importance to attend the great hall. The throne room was full. Too full.

You were summoned at dawn.

Not to the chambers. Not to the war room. But to the Hall of Judgment — where oaths were once sworn, traitors tried, and fates sealed.

Two guards flanked your sides as you walked. Not with chains. But with the finality of ceremony. Their silence said everything.

You were heavy with child. A long robe of royal blue swept around your ankles, weighted with embroidered lilies—the royal flower of Dark Cacao. You had once sewn that pattern yourself.

The towering double doors creaked open. You stepped through.

And you saw them.

The court. The banners. The people. Rows of nobles with expressionless faces. Soldiers standing with spears grounded, shields on their backs. Scribes ready to write down history with ink that could not be erased.

And above them all, seated on the obsidian throne carved into the mountain itself—him.

Your king.

Your husband.

Cloaked in furs, seated with the bearing of a ruler, but none of the warmth of the man you once knew. And at his side, as if he belonged there—Affogato Cookie.

His smile was razor-thin.

“Her Majesty, the Queen stands before us,” Affogato intoned. “To answer charges of subversion, conspiracy, and sedition.”

You stopped walking.

Everything in your body pulsed in resistance. Your hands instinctively cradled your stomach. The baby fluttered once. Even your child seemed to feel it — the moment something sacred broke.

“Subversion?” you echoed, loud enough to ring off the marble pillars. “You dare name me traitor in the very hall I helped restore?”

Affogato’s voice was smooth, almost pitying.

“No one wishes to see your legacy tarnished, Your Grace. But evidence has surfaced—“

“What evidence? Show it to me now.”

A hush fell.

Cacao said nothing. He did not even lift his hand.

You took another step forward, a queen still, even in disgrace. Even with swollen feet, aching hips, and a child not yet born, you carried yourself with unshakable dignity.

“I led this kingdom beside you for decades. I weathered war, famine, disease. I opened our gates to refugees when others would have shut them. I gave this court its strength, not in steel—but in spirit.”

Your gaze swept over the nobles.

“I loved this kingdom. I still do. Even when it took my son from me.”

Gasps murmured. One of the scribes paused their quill.

“I did not rise against the throne when you banished Dark Choco. I stood beside you even then—grieving, yes—but loyal. I did not raise a blade. I did not whisper dissent.”

You turned fully to your husband now, voice lowering—not in fear, but in intimacy.

“I was angry. But I never stopped being yours.”

His eyes met yours. For a flicker of a second, something flickered behind them. But then it was gone—walled over by that frost he wore like armor.

Affogato interjected with mock sympathy.

“Your popularity among the guards… your public mourning… your late-night wanderings through the archives…”

“I walk because I can’t sleep!” you cried, fury breaking through. “Because my dreams are full of my son’s screams, and now… my child stirs with my sorrow.”

Affogato didn’t even flinch.

“A grieving queen can become a dangerous thing. Especially when grief hardens into bitterness. Especially… when one still carries an heir.”

Something cold and ancient moved through the room.

Your voice was shaking now, not from fear—but indignation, raw and righteous.

“That child is yours!” you barked at Cacao. “And you would let this snake twist my womb into a threat?!”

Affogato only lowered his head in reverence.

“The Crown must be protected, Your Majesty.”

The hall froze.

Dark Cacao rose.

Even the wind outside seemed to hush, as if the mountains themselves were waiting.

“You are hereby stripped of your title, your lands, and your authority,” he declared, voice like granite. “You will be exiled beyond the northern pass at first light. Until the truth is known, you are forbidden from speaking in the name of the throne.”

No trial. No defense.

No mercy.

Your legs almost gave beneath you, but you stood firm. You reached up, unclasped your mantle with trembling hands, and let it fall. Your crown did not budge.

“You will have to drag me out,” you said hoarsely. “Because I will not walk willingly from the soil I would have died for.”

And when the guards stepped forward—you did not move.

Your hand cupped your belly again. You did not plead. You did not cry.

“Even in exile,” you whispered, “I remain its queen.”

They did not offer you a final word.

There was no prayer, no rite, no comfort.

Only the hands of soldiers you had once fought beside—hands that once saluted you in reverence—now gripping your arms to lead you away like a criminal.

You didn’t scream. You didn’t beg.

You just dug in your heels.

When your feet scraped against the stone, when your shoulders were pulled forward, when your cloak tore beneath you—still, you fought the floor with your every step, refusing to give the kingdom the image of a weeping queen in retreat.

But they forced you. Two knights. Then four.

Your crown tilted. You did not fix it.

You twisted your head back—just once—to look behind you.

Cacao had not moved.

He stood like a statue, stone-eyed, staring not at you… but through you.

“Do not let them forget me,” you whispered hoarsely, “Like they forgot your son.”

The doors closed.

Behind you, the court returned to silence.

Ahead of you, the snow waited with open arms. The snow did not fall the day after your exile.

But the wind had teeth. It hissed through the battlements, rattled the windows, slipped beneath the throne room doors. No matter how many fires were lit, the chill remained.

Cacao sat alone in the council chamber.

The seats were full of men with voices—but none with yours. No one reminded him of forgotten faces among the citizenry. No one brought him the names of sick children. No one challenged his orders with compassion.

He stared at your empty chair.

The one you always angled slightly—not toward the king, but toward the crowd.

“She sees the people first,” you used to say. “You see the mountain. I see the village at its base.”

He had never understood what that meant.

Not until now.

Affogato came often now, with candles and sweetened words. He poured tea in silence. Bowed with grace. Whispered of strengthening alliances and securing the future.

Cacao no longer responded. His tea went cold in his hands.

He thought often of your voice.

Of the nights you’d sung lullabies to the wind, even when Dark Choco refused to sleep. Of the way you’d rest your forehead against his shoulder, even when war loomed outside the gates.

He tried to remember the last time you’d touched him.

Tried to remember what expression you wore when he spoke the sentence.

All he could see now was the look in your eyes—wounded, not because you were betrayed… but because you were still loyal.

And he had cast you out anyway.

In the empty hours before dawn, he stood at your bedchamber door.

The room was untouched. Your robes hung neatly. A small blanket folded for the baby. A silver comb resting beside a bowl of dried herbs you once brewed for sleep.

He closed the door gently.

It echoed like a coffin lid. Dark Cacao rode alone.

No guards. No attendants. No Affogato.

Only the wind.

The snows howled across the ridges in shrill tones, screaming through the ravines as if trying to speak your name. But the storm gave no answers. The cliffs swallowed his voice. The peaks mocked his silence.

He had left the gates at dawn with no word, no destination—only a map half-marked with patrol routes, and an ache in his chest that had begun to rot.

“She is out here,” he muttered. “She must be.”

The snowfall had buried the paths quickly. His mount staggered through the drifts. Still he pushed on, past the treelines, over broken trails and icy crags.

He had to find you.

You were still carrying his child.

The words slammed into his skull like a hammer.

My child. My child is out here. In this cold. In this storm. Because of me.

His grip on the reins trembled.

He remembered how your breath would hitch when you laughed. How your voice would soften when you spoke to the villagers’ children. How you used to sing to your unborn baby in secret—just under your breath, when you thought no one was listening.

He had heard it, once.

He hadn’t told you then. Hadn’t said anything at all.

You were always louder than the storm. And now... it’s so quiet.

The snow deepened.

He found a scarf first—half-frozen, pinned beneath a broken branch. Your embroidery still clung to its edge: a mountain stitched in silver thread.

Further on, he found footprints. Half-gone now, swallowed by time and snow.

He dropped to his knees, gloved hands trembling as he traced the indentations like sacred runes.

“Please,” he whispered. “Please still be alive.”

He searched for hours.

Found the remnants of a small fire pit, long cold. A ring of stones blackened by soot. A patch of frost-stiff cloth caught on a root—blue. The same blue as your traveling cloak.

But no sign of you.

No sound of crying. No call for help. No cradle. No grave.

Nothing.

He stood there, surrounded by snow, wind biting at his cheeks, and suddenly—he screamed.

A raw, ugly, guttural sound torn from the bottom of his chest. It bounced off the cliffs. The echo did not sound like a king. It sounded like a man dying in pieces.

You trusted me.

You were my fire. My banner. My truest knight.

And I…

He dropped to the snow. The sword on his back clattered behind him, forgotten. His hand buried itself in the frost. He pressed his forehead to the ground, to the last place you may have stood.

“I sent you to die.”

His breath hitched.

“I sent you to die.”

The snowflakes melted on his face—not from warmth, but from tears.

For the first time in decades, Dark Cacao Cookie wept.

You had known Lilia almost his whole life, back before the war, when he had learned you were immortal (either because of your species, maybe a curse, or anything like that) he finally understood why you were always so hesitant to get close to others, you knew they would die while you lived on and it was easier to isolate yourself then face the pain of losing everyone again. Yet no matter how you tried you kept coming back to him, and you eventually fell in love. As time passed everything around you grew older while you remained as if frozen in time, your husband changed a lot his hair shorter and now had hot pink highlights instead of the red, he had more scars and body aches than you could count and his love for you just kept growing everyday. You now had three lovely boys Silver your adopted son, Sebek your good friends grandson, and Malleus your sweet prince who you and Lilia spent so long trying to hatch but it was all worth it. As time continues to pass the boy's all graduated from NRC and moved on with their lives Malleus became king, Sebek and Silver became his loyal knights, and Lilia retired with you, while you tried to make the most of the time you had with all of them.

Then the pain came, one you knew was coming but didn't want to experience again, you were losing your family all over again. Silver was the first, of course he was, he was only human. You and Lilia had to bury the baby you had raised, that tiny baby you had found all those years ago was now grown up and in a box underground. Silver was mourned by his family and friends but it hit you particularly hard because you knew you only had so long before you would be mourning alone.

The next was Lilia. The man you love, who you had known for hundreds of years. You knew this day would come since the day you met but that didn't make it easier when the day actually came. You had lost your other half, and you had to bury him just like you did your son. You knew it would take centuries before you even thought about moving on, if you ever did. Even years after his death you still mourned and you would visit your husband and son every day.

Then Sebek, it had been a years after Silver and Lilia when he passed away. The little boy that you and Lilia had helped raise and train into the strong and fearless knight he had been for so long was now dead. Sebek had lived longer than a human would from his half fae blood but didn't have anywhere near the life expectancy of a full blood fae. Now three graves sat next to each other and only you and Malleus remained.

Hundreds of years had passed but you never stopped visiting your boys, and only once Malleus had died did you completely break. Your first baby was now beside your other babies and husband. You had buried your babies and your lover. But even as time passed and the world changed, you never left, instead you built a new life around your boys. Their graves now lie in your backyard under a beautiful tree, you see them everyday, speak to their graves when the silence becomes to loud.

As you put on your dress/suit you couldn't help but feel both nervous and excited, you were finally marrying the man you love. Your maid of honor Meleanor was helping you fix your hair and reassuring you that today would be perfect "If anyone thinks to ruin today I shall strike them down where they stand Y/N." Meleanor said attempting to comfort your pre-wedding jitters. You smile at her knowing she's trying her best and thank her, "And if Lilia were to even think of changing his mind about marrying you then he would be a fool, you are a wonderful person who deserves nothing but the best." She continues as she finishes fixing your hair, "Thank you Meleanor, for everything, I don't know how I could ever repay you for all you've done, especially after today." You said, and it was true she had done so much for you. She had taken a liking to you when you were all children and once you were older made you her lady/lord in waiting, made sure you were well taken care of, and paid for everything at your wedding despite your protest saying she had done enough and that it was to much but she insisted her closest friends deserved a wedding fit for royalty and that's what she did. "You need not repay me my dear friend, the love you and Lilia have for each other is more than enough." As you were about to thank her for probably the thousandth time today Silver bursts through the door in his adorable little baby blue suit with a small basket of flower petals in his hands "Mama/Papa, aunty Meleanor! Uncle Baul said it's almost time!" Silver said excitedly, as he looked at your dress/suit he gasped "Wow you look like a princess/prince from my story books!" He said with a wide smile, as he finished his sentence Sebek came in wearing a suit that matched Silver's but in a light green "SILVER LET'S GO AS WE MUST SPREAD THE PETALS DOWN THE ISLE!" Sebek yelled trying to sound as serious as he took his job as flower boy with Silver but you could see he was trying not to smile when he saw you, quickly bowing to the queen he dragged Silver towards the door, you and Meleanor giggled quietly at Sebek's antics as you prepared to walk down the isle.

Once everyone was in place the doors open out came Silver and Sebek as they scattered flower petals across the ground and took their place beside Lilia and Baul (Lilia's best man) as they acted as his groomsmen along with Malleus once they reached the end of the isle, then out came Meleanor to take her place on the other side of the altar as your maid of honor and finally you the bride/groom. As you stepped out all eyes were on you, especially Lilia's, and when he saw you he immediately teared up from joy and seeing how wonderful you looked walking to him in a gorgeous dress/suit while smiling at him. As you reacted the end of the isle you took your place across from Lilia tearing up slightly as well, "You look so gorgeous beastie" Lilia whispered to you "Thank you, my love you look wonderful to" you whispered back. As the preacher spoke Lilia held your hands in his as he looked at you as if you hung the stars and you could only imagine you looked just as love struck, when it came time for the preacher to ask if anyone objected to your union you saw Meleanor giving your guests a death glare that made anyone who thought about objecting stay silent in fear of her wrath, and when it came time to give each other the rings Malleus came forward holding a small silk pillow with two beautiful rings on it, Lilia grabbed your ring and slid it on your ring finger and you did the same and as malleus took his place beside Lilia once again and with the "I do"'s said he announced "You may now kiss the bride/groom" and will that Lilia lifted your veil and dipped you in a kiss as the crowd erupted in cheers and applause.

As time passed and the years flew by nothing had changed you and Lilia loved each other just as much, if not more, then you did when you got married. Despite having been married for years you both still felt and acted like newlyweds, and every year on your anniversary he dressed up in his suit and you in your dress/suit and danced like you did on your wedding day and you both felt just as happy and giddy as you did the first time. Lilia was the best husband you could ask for and everyday you were happy to call him yours.

And a little imagine about your wedding. Imagine once you and Lilia got married you asked Silver if he would like for you to adopt him, so while you already saw him as your son he would also be seen as your son by the law. Silver obviously said yes so your wedding day was also the day you adopted your son.

Wedding dresses, suits, and rings I had in mind for the reader while writing this.

Symmetry matters in this business. He knows that better than most. He remembers every audition room, every producer’s pause when their gaze landed on his eyes. Too different. Too distracting. Too noticeable. He learned early that standing out the wrong way could cost you everything.

So when he steps closer, he’s not entirely sure why he does it.

You jump when you realize he’s there, looking everywhere but at him, as if hoping you’ve mistaken his approach for someone else’s. He offers you a crooked grin, half-charm, half-nerves, the kind that never quite hides how aware he is of himself.

“What a unique…” He squints before he can stop himself, and your breath catches. He sees it instantly. The tension. The glassy shine in your eyes. Shit. He already regrets opening his mouth. He should’ve stayed quiet. Should’ve let you disappear back into the crowd instead of poking at something tender.

“…pattern,” he finishes lamely.

Smooth, Whittman. Real smooth.

Before the moment can collapse completely, he straightens and flashes a dazzling smile, the kind he perfected under hot studio lights. There is absolutely no way he’s going to be remembered as the guy who made someone cry.

“Hey—uh, listen,” he says, awkward and unpolished in a way that feels foreign on his tongue. He hesitates, then says the words he never thought he’d say out loud. Words he once desperately needed to hear himself.

“People used to stare at these,” he adds, tapping the side of his glasses where his eyes hide. “All the time. Called them mismatched. Like that was a flaw.”

He exhales softly, shoulders loosening just a fraction.

“But it’s not,” he continues. “It’s rare. Memorable.”

His gaze flicks back to you, warm now, intentional.

“Like you.”

The wink is pure instinct, a practiced flourish, but the small giggle it earns feels like a win that matters more than any rating ever did.

And somewhere beneath the bravado, Vincent thinks that maybe uniqueness like yours, like his, is the reason the world is worth watching at all.

Thank you @blakecheshire for the idea ❤️

📺 Read More? 📺

A few weeks later, Vincent is humming to himself as he moves through the alleyways. For once, he wasn’t here to hide a body. It was just that this route to the aquarium was quicker, and the parking was a bitch, so he figured he might as well walk.

“Vincent!” He doesn’t even have time to register your presence as you slam into him from behind and… hug him. Immediately he’s on alert. You’ve got him in a dimly lit alleyway. He’s not stranger to what that means.

However, as he begins to fall, you grab his hand to steady him, and beam up at him like the world is made of rainbows and cotton candy and sunshine. To you, it probably is.

“Hello, Y/N?” Vincent hates how he can’t stop the confusion entering his voice. “What are you doing here? There’s killers on the loose, you know. It’s stupid for girls like you to be in dangerous areas like this.” You just laugh off his warning - a warning he found pretty generous to give - and sigh happily.

“Well, what killer would be able to get me if I’m with you, silly? You could… Oh, you actually don’t look that strong, but I suppose you could throw your glasses at them and hope for the best?”

Vincent doesn’t know whether to be insulted or not, because you seem genuine and earnest. He decides on labelling you as strange, as some anomaly he can’t quite work out. That’ll do no good. You’re a question mark, and for plans, question marks needed to be cancelled.

He straightens his jacket. He could kill you here honestly. Slam your head against the wall over and over and over. That would prove him strong to you.

Not that he feels the need to prove anything to you.

Vincent clears his throat. “Sorry, but again, what are you doing here?” He smirks. “You aren’t stalking me, are you? That’s not what good girls should do.” You ignore the way his voice drops into almost a purr, or perhaps you don’t pick up on it.

“I was heading to the hospital,” you explain. Vincent scans you over. You don’t look injured. You would be if he was done with you, but right now you’re in perfect health.

You must sense - finally - his curiosity because you quickly clarify. “I volunteer there and read to the sick children when I’m not at work.”

Oh, of course you do. You little bleeding heart. You’re a martyr. It’s irritating. Vincent just can’t understand you.

“You’re going to the hospital,” he repeats. If you’re so insistent on that, he’ll happily take you to the morgue.

“Yep,” you cheerily confirm. Then before he can shove you away, you link his arm with yours and start skipping happily.

Insane, Vincent decided. You were insane.

“Well?” you ask, tilting your head. The light reflects your eyes. “If there’s a killer around, it’s good to be with familiar company. We can look out for each other.” Oh, Vincent could take care of you right here and now - but if you volunteered regularly, they’d realise something bad had happened to you. Damn it. He’ll have to let you drag him around until you go your separate ways.

“Mm,” he agrees dryly. “I’ll certainly be looking out for you in the next few weeks.”

Vincent is just tidying up some paperwork on his desk when he sees you poke your head into his office.

“Hello!” you chirp.

Vincent blinks. “Hello. I wasn’t aware you were still here. It’s normally… dead.” A small smile stretches across his lips at the joke. You don’t understand it though, and just come into his office.

Oh no, Vincent thinks. Make yourself at home, why don’t you?

“Holy smokes, they were right! You did use to be a weatherman!” Ah, you’ve stumbled across Vincent’s ‘Achievement Board’ as he likes to call it. Perhaps stumbling is the incorrect word as it’s massive and wall to wall, but he digresses.

“Do people talk about me?” He raises an eyebrow, genuinely curious.

You look through some of the paper. “Some do. They say you’re weird, but I tell them that’s mean. If they don’t stop, I throw paper at them.”

Vincent can’t help but be a little flummoxed. Sure you think you’re friends, but he treats you like dirt. He’s not exactly been hiding the fact he wants you dead.

“Thanks,” he slowly says. “And yeah, I started as a weatherman, but that was years ago. That’s really what caught your eye out of everything?”

“Oh, I have a Master’s Degree in meteorology,” you say casually.

Vincent nearly drops the blade he was starting to fish out of his blazer. What? What the fuck? You ran a kid’s show!

With all his years of eloquent speech, only one word can truly be used in this situation. “Huh?”

You laugh. “Yeah, after women stated getting them, I wanted to too, just for fun. But I always wanted to be in showbiz, so I chose that.”

Is he dreaming? Vincent thinks this is a strange dream. Not because you’re here, as he frequently dreams about you, but because you’re… smart. You did a degree for fun. In a time most women were housewives. Shit, you must’ve been ridiculed. And for some reason that makes him slightly angry.

More than slightly. It makes his blood boil.

And as you stand with your back to him, all alone and a perfect target, Vincent puts the knife back in his pocket.

You sit in Vincent’s office again, swinging your legs and singing your show’s theme tune over and over again. Vincent either thinks it’s actually quite catchy now he’s heard it again and again, or he’s heard it so much he’s become desensitised and it’s something he hears at 2am when he’s trying to sleep.

He doesn’t know which one is better.

He also doesn’t know how exactly he got roped into walking you home because more people have turned up dead. People above your position and below.

Vincent would’ve called you a difficult target without hesitation a year ago. He still would.

What he hesitates with now is why you’re so difficult. At first it was because you inadvertently helped yourself, but now… he doesn’t know now. All he knows is every day he makes the trek to your door and picks you up and drops you off, sometimes in the car and sometimes on foot. He likes walking about with you, if only to hear the nonsense you babble. It’s entertaining.

“Sorry,” you apologise. “You’re trying to finish up, right?”

“I don’t mind,” Vincent replies. “Your voice is nice. I’ll miss it.” He pauses. “When I’m at home.” He doesn’t want to say the alternative, and it enrages him as much as he is softened by it.

Vincent doesn’t know if he can kill you.

It’s a normal morning, and Vincent adjusts his tie when he hears a knock at the door. Post?

“In the mailbox, please!” he calls. There’s another knock. “I said the fucking mailbox!”

“Vincent!” That’s you.

Without any joy in your voice.

Vincent doesn’t give a shit his tie is askew and his hair is a mess. He runs to the door and almost yanks it open before snapping out of blind panic briefly enough to use the door handle.

His heart lurches when he sees you. You’re bleeding and there’s bruises on your arms.

Something overtakes Vincent then. Some utter primal rage that crashes into his mind like a wave. Without even thinking, he grabs one of the guns he has hidden around the house. When he’d upgraded from his apartment, he’d made sure to have more security - to make an escape if he was ever caught.

“Who?” he practically growls out. “Y/N, tell me who and I’ll fucking kill them.”

You put your hands up but you don’t protest. “It was a mugging. I was walking back from the hospital, and I only put up a fight because I had some paper with your address on it, and I know you don’t want stalkers. I managed to save it.” You hand him the piece of scrunched up paper.

Vox doesn’t take it. He gave you that. If he hadn’t, you wouldn’t have gotten hurt.

He could’ve gotten you killed.

“Y/N,” he says slowly. “What the fuck? You - you could’ve died for this.” For him.

You fidget, and Vincent brings you in and sits you down on the stairs. He knows there are bandages around here somewhere, but he needs to call to get the day off work for you two. The next day off too for himself.

He’ll be going hunting.

“I know it’s silly,” you mumble. “But you’re my friend, so I was worried, and-“

“You could’ve died!” Vincent repeats, yelling now. “I don’t you dying for me, god damn it! I don’t want you dead at all, and I’m going to fucking go out there and murder that guy, and then I’m going to give you his head.”

No. Vincent couldn’t kill you. But he could certainly kill for you. That would be easier than breathing. He can’t even handle seeing you hurt.

“Vincent.” You grab his arm and he softens. Right. He needs to get you cleaned up. As it’s cold and you must’ve lost your coat in your fight, he takes off his suit jacket and drapes it over you. He has some blankets upstairs with sharks on them too. Maybe you’d like them.

“Sorry.” He clears his throat and tries to act charming despite his twitching eye. “I didn’t mean I’d kill him. I’d never kill anyone.”

You snort, and he raises an eyebrow.

“What?”

You look at him like he’s grown a second head. “Vincent, I know. Jeez, I’m not that stupid.”

Oh.

Vincent blinks. “You… know? Since when?”

“Since I saw your narcissist board.”

“It’s really more of an Achievement Board,” Vincent argues.

“Sure. But yeah, I worked it out then.”

“But - but…” Vincent can barely speak. “You wanted me to walk you home because of all the deaths.”

You laugh and then wince in pain. “There are tons of serial killers, Vincent. Most of them go after women. Well, apart from that New Orleans guy like fifteen years back.”

Vincent nods, recalling the amount of bodies found. Well, he hadn’t killed as many as that man, but he supposed killing at all was bad.

“And you still wanted to be my friend,” he says. “You’re - you’re batshit insane.” He’s probably a hypocrite for saying that.

You shrug. “Well, I trust you. We’re friends, so why would you ever want me dead? And when have you ever tried to kill me?”

Vincent internally winces. He can either tell you and have you hate him, or he can omit the truth and keep you by his side.

What you don’t know won’t hurt you, he supposes.

“Of course. When could I ever have tried to kill you?”

Seventy five years later, you shoot up in bed, gasping. Vincent - or Vox as he so loves to be called by everyone else - wakes up as soon as you do.

“Huh - what’s going on?” His screen glitches in and out as he wakes up. “You good?”

“Vincent!” you chide in shock. “You were planning to kill me!”

Red eyes blink back at you before shutting as he tosses himself back into the masses of covers.