🍬©hevonne雅.

Even at such a small dinner party, Diasomnia spares no expense in making sure you’re cared for. As soon as Silver escorts you through the massive doors, Lilia is quick to pop out of nowhere with his youthful grin. “Well, well, if it isn’t the belle of the ball! I trust my son has been a wonderful escort!” He winks at you before hurriedly pushing you. “Come, come, Malleus has been eager to see you since forever! If we leave him alone for any longer, I’m afraid that even Sebek cannot calm his tantrum!”

“T– Tantrum?” You echo, letting yourself be pushed around by the bat fae. Silver quietly follows behind.  “Is Tsuno— uh, Malleus angry?”

Lilia chuckles. “No need to act polite. You know that Malleus is quite fond of your nickname for him. But no, not angry, but he has been sulking about the other dorms having you to themselves.” Stopping at a smaller yet equally impressive door, he steps in front of you and gives you an apologetic smile. “Now, I won’t pretend to be ignorant— we’re all quite aware of the rumors around you.” The expression on your face must be exceedingly bitter, because Lilia reaches up to pinch away the frown and shakes his head. “You know how overprotective our Malleus is, so we have taken extra precautions to keep him away from those nasty whispers.”

“Sebek’s taken too many precautions, I think,” Silver speaks up from beside you. Lilia waves it away.

“They do deserve it, and it’s not like Malleus has heard of Sebek’s actions. Yet.” Lilia puts two steady hands on your shoulders and levels you with a stare. “Us hardworking knights have done our best to protect you and others from Malleus’ wrath, so please don’t let it slip, okay? I am not against Malleus smiting those wicked men, but you…” You shake your head immediately. Lilia steps back with a satisfied smile and pinches your cheek one last time. “Of course. Our [Y. Name] is ever so kind, after all.”

Silver and Lilia push aside the doors to reveal a small table fit for five with Mostro Lounge takeout placed appetizingly around green-flamed candelabras. Malleus is looking out the window, lightning flashing to illuminate the stormy expression on his face, while Sebek is saying something to placate him. When they hear the doors creak, they quickly turn around.

“[Y. Name],” Malleus greets you warmly, approaching you in long strides. He is handsome as ever, the friendly expression sitting so regal on such an otherworldly face that makes you feel small compared to him. You think back to the days when you didn’t know how much of a deal Malleus was, taking late-night walks with him outside of Ramshackle. You’ve always thought him handsome and imposing, but certainly not someone you would be scared of.

The image of his Overblot form overlaps with his current form as he stops in front of you, but you return his smile as sweetly as you could. “Malleus! Thanks again for the invite; the others were driving me crazy.”

He chuckles, smooth as butter, but you catch the darkening of his eyes for a sliver of a second. “Mm, yes, I’ve heard whispers.” Behind him, Sebek starts telling you to stop with a cutthroat motion. He quickly stands still when Malleus follows your eyes to look behind him. He turns back to look at you, smiling the same as ever. “Would you care to join us for dinner? We’ve prepared quite a feast to welcome you.”

You say your thanks as everyone joins Malleus at the table. “I could’ve cooked, you know~!” Lilia sighs. “Is it not rather rude to serve take-out to a guest as dear as our [Y. Name]?”

“N– Not really,” you nervously laugh. “In fact, I’m already getting shy from all this unnecessary welcome. None of the other houses really did this for me…”

“Of course!” Sebek booms with pride across you, thumping his chest with his hand. “It is to be expected that Diasomnia, the dorm that our Lord Malleus leads, will be a step above the rest!”

Lilia, on the other hand, leans forward on the table and perches his sly face on his hands. “Oh, I’m sure the other dorms must have been hospitable in their own way…” He purrs, eyeing you knowingly. “But fae pride themselves on being hospitable. I think serving takeout is somewhat distasteful, but if our guest has no complaints, then who am I to say so!”

The dinner falls into a comfortable conversation, each one playing a role they’ve clearly been playing for many years. Lilia cheerily inquires about you on the general state of things, with Malleus slyly trying to weasel information from you on what (or who) you’ve been up to these past few weeks. Sebek loudly demands that you answer his young lord’s questions while Silver scolds Sebek for being too imposing. 

The scene is… familiar. Sharing takeout around the dinner table, interacting freely with each other— they overlap with people from your world. Your parents, your siblings, your friends… You bow your head and force yourself to take another bite, blinking away the sting welling up in the corner of your eyes.

You don’t quite notice the shared looks around the table, the green candlelights of Diasomnia flickering every so slightly brighter.

SEBEK ZIGVOLT has no duty to you. Nothing is binding him to you, so why does his heart squeeze so painfully when he sees you with that vacant look in your eyes?

You’re standing on one of the dorm’s many balconies, unmindful of the chilly wind blowing throughout the night. Bathed in the serene glow of the moonlight, Sebek would have mistaken you for a nocturnal fae had he not known any better. The indifferent look on your face, as you look upon everything that Diasomnia has to offer, is eerily inhuman.

Sebek swallows down his feelings and knocks on the glass door leading out to the balcony. You turn to him, a little light returning to your eyes, yet your expression still stays somber. “You’re supposed to be in your room,” Sebek says stiffly. “It’s already lights out. Do yourself a favor and get some rest.”

“Hi, Sebek,” you softly greet him, turning back to the dreary view below. You study the twisting vines and branches. “Don’t you get depressed living in a place like this? It’s so… well, depressing.” He frowns, taking the space beside you. He’s never thought of it. Briar Valley was full of similar twisting vines, and they weren’t so scary when the woodland fae were there to light the way. “I don’t think much of it,” he huffs. “I don’t have the luxury of admiring views when I’m busy serving Lord Malleus.”

You laugh shortly, like you expected that answer. “Of course, of course,” you hum, smiling to yourself as you continue looking out. “My mistake. Our dear Sebek is wholly devoted to making his young lord proud.” There is a silence as you ponder to yourself. “... One question.”

“I will permit it.” 

You playfully roll your eyes at such haughtiness but continue anyway, expression taking on a softer note, “Your dream… When you dreamt of celebrating Lilia and Malleus’s internships… Were you happy?”

Sebek’s eyes widened at the unexpected question. “I– Well, yes, I suppose so.” The memories of that dream and the circumstances that came alongside it left a bitter taste on his tongue, but he supposes that he could forgive you since you were caught up in it as well. “The dream was intended to make one happy, and nothing would make me happier than to see Master Lilia and Lord Malleus thriving and healthy.”

“How was it?” You press on. “Did it really feel like the paradise that Malleus intended it to be? Did it feel like you wanted to be there forever?”

Sebek looks at you once more. You’re staring at him, eyes probing him for answers. He bites the inside of his cheek before tearing his gaze away from you. “Of course, I did,” he says hesitantly. “Lord Malleus was happy, Master Lilia won’t leave us permanently, Silver would still have his father, and nothing could make me happier. Before you and Silver barged in, I was as content as I could be.”

“If you didn’t know anything,” you continued to press. “If Silver didn’t tell you that it was a dream, would you have ever woken up?”

Sebek stays silent before he looks at you almost angrily. “What is this about?” He demands. “Why are you so curious about my dream?”

You stare at him, looking a bit shocked at the hint of frustration coming from him, before you press your lips together in a bitter line. “... my dream.” “What?” Sebek raises his voice, brows knit together in exasperation. “How am I supposed to understand you if you keep slurring your words!”

Jaw clenched, your hands bundle into fists as you stare long and hard into the distance. “My dream.” You say louder. “I couldn’t experience it.”

“What could you possibly gain from such an experience?” He practically spits. “Lord Malleus is indeed great enough to spin such a realistic dream from his magic alone, but the fact that it isn’t real should already deter you. It’s already a humiliation for me that you, Silver, and that beast of yours have seen that side of me.”

Tsk. You find yourself growing irate with Sebek’s frank words, though you know that he’s said nothing wrong. “I know that, I’m not stupid. It’s just—! It’s just not fair, okay! I’ve had to jump from dream to dream, see all of you live your best lives, even for just a moment. You had maybe an hour or even more to live out a reality where you were perfectly happy!”

“What part of fake do you not get?”

“It wasn’t fake for you!” You spin to him, angry tears welling in your eyes. Your expression had contorted into one so ugly, so pathetic, so human that he almost reeled back. “Before Silver and I came along, that was your reality! I wanted that! For one hour at least, I could live out a life where I was actually happy! I could be back in my room, I would be hanging out in my usual cafe, I’d be grinding my dailies on my PC, I’d get to see my family again! I don’t—!” You let out an ugly laugh. “Fuck, I don’t even remember the color of my walls anymore! It’s not even been a year! This school is fucking killing me!”

A moment of silence passes after your outburst, your chest heaving from the screaming, and Sebek watching you crumple onto the floor. Human. You’re so human, like the rest of them. Ugly and jealous and inferior and everything he didn’t want to be.

A beat passes. “... Do you hate it here…?”

You avert your eyes. “I don’t even know anymore,” you plainly say.

It stings, but anyone would have seen this coming, especially Sebek. You were always an outlier in every event, unable to familiarize yourself with Twisted Wonderland’s culture and traditions in such a short amount of time. You don’t fit in. You are an alien, no matter how hard you try. Even if people say they accept you, you wouldn’t accept yourself. 

Sebek turns his back to you, unable to properly form his words. “Then– Then how do I…?”

You look at Sebek’s broad, muscled back. In the darkness of the night, you don’t know whether you’re imagining the shaking of his shoulders as he mutters something to himself. “D– Did you say something, Sebek…?” You see him shake his head and rub at his eyes with his sleeves, before turning to you with a scowl.

His eyes are wet, but his glare has real heat behind them. “Of course, you would want to leave,” Sebek plainly says. “You don’t belong here.” 

Now, you glare at him for stating something so painfully obvious. Did he really have to rub the facts in your face? “But how could you leave? There’s been no spell in history opening a portal to another dimension. You are the first of your kind. It is a fool’s hope to even think of devising such an unthinkable spell.”

“You don’t know that—!”

“And you don’t know if a spell like that even exists,” he shot back. “Do you think, in all his greatness and power, Lord Malleus would not have done so already? He has a terrible fondness for you that I cannot fathom, but if Lord Malleus couldn’t do it, then who else can?”

You think back to Malleus overblot, those inky hands clawing at you from dreams as he latches onto your body with enough vice to never let you go. “Would he?” You say sardonically. “Come on, Sebek. We’ve been through so many dreams because of that. Would he really?”

Sebek shoots you an infuriatingly smug smile when you finally come to the conclusion that he’s wanted. “Exactly. If Lord Malleus of all people would not permit you to leave Twisted Wonderland, then—”

You stare back at him in stunned silence as it finally dawns on you. Sebek, with the smallest hint of guilt, relishes in it.

“— Who are you to believe that you could actually leave?”

You (SILVER VANROUGE): Father.

You (SILVER VANROUGE): Father. You must do something about Sebek. His violence is getting out of hand.

You (SILVER VANROUGE): I cannot keep covering up for him. Day by day his outbursts are getting more and more aggressive. It is also unseemly for us to be attacking civilians.

You (SILVER VANROUGE): I know he would agree. He was never the type to lay hands on civilians before. Why now would he…? 

Father (LILIA VANROUGE): ohoho :3 young love, how I love to see it !

You (SILVER VANROUGE): This is no laughing matter, Father. I’ve tried talking to Sebek about it but won’t listen to a word I say. Just this morning we got into a fight over how I don’t care enough for [Y. Name]. 

You (SILVER VANROUGE): I was so upset at the accusation that we almost exchanged blows. But still… am I in the wrong?

Father (LILIA VANROUGE): Of course not! u n sebek care in ur own way!! since ure so easygoing, ure able to be by the prefect’s side whenever to protect them from any harm

Father (LILIA VANROUGE): but sebek can’t be honest with himself, the poor thing (っ´ω`)ﾉ(╥ω╥) u and i know that all he wants is to protect those dear to him,,, so let’s just look the other way, ok ? ♡

Father (LILIA VANROUGE): otherwise, i fear that even the cute prefect won’t be able to handle sebek’s overeagerness (･ω<)☆

“Oh me, oh my!” LILIA VANROUGE sits on the edge of your bed, kicking his legs back and forth as he greets you with youthful cheer. “That’s an awfully glum expression you have there, dear! Did Sebek say something to upset you again? I’m sorry, that boy has such a mouth on him. I fear that he gets it from his grandfather.”

Having just entered the room, your throat feels dry as you watch Lilia pat his side. “Lilia,” you croak out. “I thought…? Is this your room?”

Lilia covers his mouth with both hands as if you’ve suggested something very scandalous. “Oh my, I could never! You sly thing! You look so innocent, but here you are insinuating!” He wags a finger at you. “Bad, bad! Of course, we arranged for you to have your own room. It wouldn’t be very noble of us Diasomnia folks if we had a guest share, now would it?”

Turning to the side, Lilia then mutters to himself, “And Sebek and Silver wouldn’t let me.”

“What was that?”

“Oh, nothing!” Lilia leaps up and drags you to the bed with him. “Now, come! It wouldn’t do for you stand there all night long with such a grim look on your face! What’s got you in a twist?”

“N– Nothing…” You say, twiddling with your thumbs as you look despondently down on your lap. You ignore Lilia’s constant moving in the background. “Just came to a realization, that’s all.”

Lilia hums knowingly, having produced a brush from one of the dressers and starting to run its bristle across your strands. “Oh, don’t mind me. I just thought you might do with a little grooming, that’s all. Do carry on. Realization about what?”

“... My current predicament?” You sigh hopelessly. “Lilia… Is there really no hope?”

“For you to return home?” He replies in an upbeat tone, as if the conversation wasn’t heavy at all. “At the beginning, I would have said that there was a chance. Even if our headmage is a lout, the fact that you were summoned here means that there is a way of opening the fabric between worlds— just that it hasn’t been explored yet.” Then he pinches your cheek, grinning at you from the side. “But then you had to go charm Malleus! How could you ever leave after that!”

Sebek said the same thing. Malleus this… Malleus that… If you weren’t ignorant on the night that you met Malleus, would he have ever held any affection for you? Or if he would, would it be to the degree of possessiveness that everyone thinks he has? The fists clenched in your lap relax. What was the point of ruminating over the past?

“You know, Malleus was such a selfish boy growing up,” Lilia sighs, using his fingers to unknot a particularly stubborn one in your hair. “So possessive over me as well! Why, when Silver came along, he could hardly comprehend that he had to share me! I didn’t know whether to be flattered or troubled. Everyone in that family, really... what a bunch of troublemakers!”

You smile to yourself. “I saw.”

You feel Lilia nod behind you. “Oh, you did, alright. My embarrassing past… I’m happy that it was only you, Silver, Sebek, and dear Grim who saw it! I wouldn’t know what to do if my other schoolmates saw such a grumpy side of me… It’s very uncool!”

“I think a lot of people would disagree otherwise,” you say. You think back to when Lilia would glare down at the four of you coldly, every bit of the terrific general as his followers praised him to be. “We were certainly scared… and awestruck.”

“Now were you?” You hear a bit of pleased satisfaction in Lilia’s voice as he finishes brushing your hair. “There you go, smooth as a baby’s bum.” From above, Lilia looked down at you with half-lidded eyes and a smug smile. “Did I hear you correctly? Did our pretty prefect fall in love with General Lilia at first sight?”

“Now you know I said no such thing— w-woah!” You find yourself pinned to the bed, your head in between Lilia’s thighs as he continues to stare at you. “Lilia! What the hell!”

“Now that’s a look,” he hums. His lithe fingers trace your expression— to the crease between your brows to the dip in your cupid’s bow— and cocks his head to the side. “From depressed to angry, you sure are a fickle one. When I first laid eyes on you, you were as meek as a mouse, but I would never have thought that you had such fire in you! I’m sure you were well-adored in your world as well.” At the mention of your world, your eyes dim a little, and Lilia pats your head lovingly as you become lost in thought. “And yet, that fire cannot be stoked in this world. After all, there’s so many bad men who are willing to douse that water out just to have your cinders for themselves… One cannot blame you for losing that spark.”

You continue to be silent, his vague analogies lost on your drifting mind. His rhythmic strokes lull you to a false sense of comfort, the back of your brain nagging at you that something is wrong. “But it’s not so bad, is it? When your future begins to look bleak, it’s okay to depend on us. We all love you so much, surely that means something to you?”

Love… You turn the word around in your brain like a stone to be examined. Does love feel so suffocating and so hopeless? Is love supposed to make you feel fear? Glancing up at Lilia’s red eyes, looking down at you all, fatherly and doting, you wonder if love is supposed to look so sinister and scheming. He tuts at you. 

“Now, now, you’re in no condition to be thinking so hard.” He massages the creases between your brows and cocks his head to the side. Blocking out the ceiling light, it haloes around him and casts a dark shadow on his face. You are unable to decipher the strange expression he has on. “On the chance that you can’t come home, you’re not lacking for anything here. So many possibilities! Royal consort of Sunset Savannah’s second prince, married to the heir of the al Asim wealth, the partner of A-list star Schoenheit… or even live out a cozy life baking treats with your lover, picking apples with dear Epel in the countryside, managing the ever-so-successful Mostro Lounge with Ashengrotto… The possibilities are endless!”

“As for what I’d do with you…” He taps a finger on his porcelain cheek, making a display of thinking. “Sevens, I’m already old, so I’m afraid I can’t compete with the younger ones’ vigor. Still, you’ve enamored me for a long time now, and this old man can’t help but spend the rest of his days with you and the boys. What do you think?” He smiles at you cheerfully, pointy fangs poking out from his upper lip. “We make a pretty cute pair, don’t you think?”

You hum thoughtlessly. “Whatever you say…”

He pouts at you. “Have the other fiends harassed you so much that you don’t react to this anymore? I remember when you’d squeak at the slightest touch. If a face as cute as mine can’t move your heart anymore, then what am I to do?” He sighs. 

“You could let me sleep?” You suggest hopefully. He snickers, and you drop any hope of actually getting in an early rest.

“But I haven’t had my fill of playing with you yet! Silver and Sebek may think that we’ve taken you under our roof under the goodness of our hearts, but I’ve always been a ruffian. Less knightly and more soldier, as you well know.” He lifts himself from where he sits, the mattress pushing upwards as he stands. It’s a rather awkward position as you avert your eyes to avoid seeing any more up his shorts, and you hear him laugh at your politeness. Those slender legs straddle themselves on your chest, and with a squeak, you look back at him to see a rather self-satisfied expression on his face. “Well! There you go! Just a little bit of skinship to have you squeaking like a mouse. Not so cold as I thought.”

“Th– This isn’t a little bit!” You protest, attempting to push him away before your fingers curl in on themselves just inches away from his bare legs. “You’re literally on top of me!”

“Just some innocent roughhousing!” Fully playing the act of an innocent boy, he purposefully squirms to feel the friction between the two of you. He laughs in delight when you cover your mouth to stop any inappropriate noises. “What’s the fuss? Is our innocent prefect actually thinking naughty thoughts right now?”

“You know what you’re doing!” You whine. He chuckles again, toying with the fray of your clothes in silence as you try to settle into the new position. Lilia finds it rather endearing that you haven’t tried to push him away, whether it was out of politeness or simply because you’ve learned your lesson from past houses. The perfect and cutest doormat. He sees you toss your head to the side and squeeze your eyes shut as his fingers tease and graze along the curves of your hips, watching closely every minuscule change in expression as he gently grabs your waist and presses his thumbs into your abdomen.

“If anyone walked in, this would be enough to fuel their fantasies for months,” he muses to himself, enjoying the way your abdomen tenses under his touch. “Two cute things playing with each other, me straddling you in between my legs, your thighs shivering as I touch you all over… What a sight to behold, I’m sure. Being like this together makes me rather happy that we met at my current age. I wouldn’t know what my younger self would do to such an adorable, pathetic thing like you.”

You whimper as his fingers go higher and higher, circling your chest but never fully committing. Your shirt is well above your neckline, exposing your torso to the cold air. “That brute may have ravaged you on the spot in front of all his army, maiming your neck just so every fae in the vicinity will know that you’re the general’s. He may not control himself when another man tries to touch you. I’ve always been messy… Thorn Fairy knows how many times Baur has tried to lecture me on this front.”

“That is why~” He leans down, your bare chest against his clothed one, and he grinds down for good measure. “You’re so lucky to meet cute ol’ me. They say patience comes with age, and I’ve 700 years of it.” He presses a kiss on your forehead, sickly innocent in contrast to his perverted fondling. When he lifts his head, he is grinning down at you like he knows exactly what’s going to happen next.

“So even if you try to resist, I still have plenty of years left to make you see things my way.”

This… might be the longest you’ve slept in any dorm yet. You’re rather surprised, yes, but you’re not going to complain. Although the darkness of Diasomnia may have fucked up your internal clock for a little bit, you find yourself waking up refreshed in the mornings. Really, this is the hospitality that you’ve been needing for a while now.

And yet… why does…?

You shake the minuscule worries gnawing at the back of your mind and start getting ready for bed. You and Grim fucked up another potion-making test today and have to wake up early in the morning to retrieve the ingredients for your retake. Well, it was more so that you fucked it up for both of you. Your mind has been foggy these days that Ace and Deuce have to literally shake you by the shoulders to snap you out of it.

It’s a pleasant daze… something that you wouldn’t mind falling deeper into. But… You shake your head and slap your cheeks in front of the mirror. You gotta take this retake seriously, or Professor Crewel will seriously chew your ass out. Now, where were those notes…

As you rummage through your bag for your papers, you hear a steady rapping on your door. “Coming!” You call out to them, quickly rushing to the door while you make yourself appropriate. You find MALLEUS DRACONIA staring down as soon as you swing open the door.

“Care for a walk?” He asks with the expression of trying not to seem overeager. You hesitate, thinking back on your upcoming test before shaking your head and looping your arm through his.

“I have to retake a test tomorrow,” you tell him as you step outside. “I messed up today’s test.”

Malleus hums. “It’s highly understandable that you don’t excel in Alchemy. You’re no mage, and you have an unruly direbeast to perform magic on your behalf. Does Night Raven College not consider your predicament?”

“Mmm, not really.” You idly kick a pebble. “I mean, Grim and I make up two halves of one student, right? Grim performs the magic, and I have… opposable thumbs.” You shrug and look up at him. “I’m the one who messed up. I accidentally dropped a whole lot more mugwort than the recipe asked for. It didn’t need magic or anything; I was just being stupid. I haven’t been thinking straight these days…”

“Hmm…” Malleus hums again, looking to the side thoughtfully. “There has been a lot of activity going on with you recently…”

“Um, activity?” You cock your head to the side. “I– I don’t think so? I’ve been doing the same as I’ve always have, I think?”

He smiles at you, looking like he knows something that you don’t. “Oh, that was just some off-comment of mine, pardon me. After this walk, perhaps I could educate you on whatever potion it is that you’re struggling with.”

You perk up. “You would?! I mean— ahem.” You sheepishly look to the side. “Sebek would have my head for making you do that. It’s okay, really, I can manage.”

The millennia-old dragon fae pouts at you, lifting your chin by the finger to make you look at him. “Do you prioritize my retainer’s word over my own?” He grumbles, looking oddly adorable as his mature face creases into a childish sulk. “It is not every day that I offer to tutor someone. You ought to be grateful that I offered my services.”

You can’t help but crack a wry smile, becoming increasingly aware of the faint electricity crackling in the atmosphere. “Well, if the Prince of the Valley of Thorns insists, then who am I to refuse, right?” Malleus pulls away, looking smugly satisfied with your words and with himself.

“Exactly,” he croons. There is a mischievous expression on his face as he looks down on you, lips pursed into a rogueish smile as he draws his face closer to you. “Well, then, shall we start the session?”

There is the cool sensation of his lips pressed against your forehead, before you feel the tender trunk of vines wrapping themselves around your ankle, twisting further up and up to your thigh till they create a cradle around your torso. Malleus’ pale face blurs in and out of focus, looking at you just like he once did when he was covered in ink and going insane. 

“See you in a few, my dear,” is all you hear, faint and soft like a lullaby, until the black thorns block your vision and you finally go to sleep.

You open your eyes to a familiar [F. Color] ceiling, popcorned and patchy with stickers you stuck on throughout different phases of your childhood. There is a loud, obnoxious banging on the door, along with an even more obnoxious voice telling you to wake up. A more muted one, so faint that it’s drowned out by the banging and shouting, says something that you can’t make out. 

You groan and roll over, hugging the pillow to your chest. “Shut uppp, Sebek!” The banging stops for a loud gasp before it resumes with an even louder force. Man, this guy.

Knowing that nothing will stop Sebek from knocking your whole door down, you decide to spare yourself the misery of broken hinges and swing the door wide open. Still in your pajamas and sporting a bedhead, you scowl at the already in-uniform Sebek. “What?!”

He scowls back at you. “What do you mean by ‘what’?! Look at you, underdressed and disheveled at six in the morning. School starts at eight, and here you are wasting precious daylight! Get moving!”

You open your mouth to argue back, before Silver steps in between the two of you. “Okay, that’s enough. [Y. Name]’s already awake, and that’s all that matters.” Silver looks to you and smiles. “You can freshen up after eating breakfast. You pulled an all-nighter again, didn’t you?”

“Malleus had me memorizing formulas the entire night!” You complained, yawning into your hand as you began to walk downstairs. “I’m pooped.”

“Malleus taught you?!” You wince and plug your ears with your fingers as Sebek yells into your ear. The two of you stop just short of the staircase, glaring into each other’s eyes again. “You had Malleus teaching you, and you have the nerve to complain!”

You stick your tongue out at him. “Maybe Malleus could teach you, too, if you lived here—” You fake a gasp, hand covering your mouth like you just realized something. “Oh, but you don’t live here, do you? Blehhh.”

“Why you—!”

As you and Sebek begin duking it out in this cramped hallway, you feel something boring into the side of your skull. When Sebek claims his victory by (lightly) smacking you upside the head and begins to head down himself, you shoot a quizzical look towards Silver, who’s been staring at you with an odd look in his eye. “Silver?” You call out. “You… er, okay? What’s up?”

Silver shakes his head before returning to his stoic yet soft expression. “Nothing. I was just… wondering. Let’s head down and eat breakfast before it gets cold.”

“Ignore him,” Sebek scoffs from the foot of the staircase. He has one hand outstretched to you, blush faintly covering his cheeks as he averts his eyes from you. “He’s always an airhead.” Sending a teasing grin Sebek’s way that he pointedly ignores, you gladly take his hand and let him escort you to the kitchen.

“Well, well, looks like Sleeping Beauty has finally joined us!” Lilia teases as soon as the three of you enter the kitchen. Donning a frilly apron, he sets the table with Malleus taking the head of the table as always. You find your usual positions on the table, grimacing at the odd-looking concoctions. “I could hear the racket you were making from all the way here!” You and Sebek grumble out varying volumes of apologies.

“Are you prepared for your test today, [Y. Name]?” Malleus leans on the table with his arms propped up, watching you with glimmering green eyes. “I take it that you’ve familiarized yourself with the potion’s recipe?”

“P– Potion…?” You furrow your brows. You were taking a… chemistry test today, weren’t you? But… but of course! Potions and chemistry. That much was obvious. Your confusion melts away into sureness, and you nod cheerfully. “Yep. Got the recipe down pat. I think I’ll ace Crewel’s test today, no sweat!”

He reclines with a pleased smile. “Under my tutelage, there is no doubt you will ‘ace’ this test.” Sebek, who’s been piling heaps of rice on his plate, eagerly leans forward.

“If— If it’s no bother to you, Malleus, could I join you for your next session?” He asks hopefully. “I– I’ve been struggling with academics as well…!”

Malleus chuckles, looking beyond amused at Sebek’s attempts. “There’s no need to downplay yourself, Sebek. I know your academics have been far more than satisfactory. You have your own due diligence to thank for that.” Sebek shoots you a haughty look across the table, to which you respond by kicking him by the shin under the table. He glares at you but does not attempt to respond.

Breakfast goes by with Malleus and Lilia conversing about everyday topics while you and Sebek try to stomach the food. Lilia eats some of his own cooking, but Silver and Malleus don’t touch anything. Malleus never had a large appetite, but you nudge Silver with your elbow. “Aren’t you gonna eat?” You gesture at this empty plate. “You can’t go to school on an empty stomach, you know! You’re in a sports club!’’

With an odd look of helplessness, Silver stares at his plate for a second. “I doubt this could fill me up,” he mutters under his breath, before he looks at you. “Pardon my asking, but does this have any taste to you, [Y. Name]?”

Something in the air tenses, Malleus narrowing his eyes at Silver’s direction. “Silver,” he says in a tone so dangerous that it has you and Sebek focusing on your own plates. “Leave it be.”

Silver purses his lips, like he wants to say something, before defeatedly looking away. “Yes, my— I mean, yes, Malleus,” is the only thing he mutters before he heaps himself a serving of rice just to poke at it. The silence is so awkward that even the ever sociable Lilia looks like he’s at a loss as he tries to figure out this mysterious interaction between the men. 

Malleus’s green eyes don’t seem to quite leave Silver before they soften and settle on you. “Let’s pick up where we left off last night on the way to school. I shall be your escort today.” He gestures to Sebek. “Sebek, kindly see to it that Silver goes to school on time. [Y. Name] and I shall make our leave first.”

Although Sebek looks disheartened at the command, he follows through with it and is still nagging Silver when you finally finish freshening up and head out the door with Malleus. Lilia waves the two of you cheerily off, and you both begin the familiar route to school in comfortable silence. Malleus seems to take in his surroundings with curiosity, whatever interest he may find in the same old suburban buildings and sky-high towers in the distance.

“It never ceases to amuse me,” he ruminates. “How a world can be so… ordinary. No magic to be found. It is charmingly mundane, indeed.”

“Hm?” Malleus has always had a habit of rambling about mysterious stuff that’s almost nonsensical to you, so you always brush his meandering off as some sort of personality quirk. “Well, it does grow boring when you’ve been living here for almost all your life,” you absentmindedly agree as you skip over a crack. Or break your mama’s crack, you hum as you continue skipping. You turn around to Malleus, who looks at you with an unreadable expression. “Where do you wanna live instead, Mal?”

“If I said a world full of magic and wonder, where you’d never want for anything, would you follow me there?”

“Of course, I will!” You nod. “I mean, we’re family, aren’t we? We might not be blood, but we’re a package deal! I’m sure Lilia would be too worried about leaving you somewhere on your own, and Silver will follow… then Sebek too… oh, but Sebek’s family…” Listing them all off, you raise five fingers at him. “Lilia, Silver, and me, then Sebek and his family! We’ll all follow you!”

Malleus stares at your outstretched palm, held up to him proudly as you look at him expectantly. Then he begins to chuckle into his palm, and eventually bellowing into full-blown laughter. Even you’re taken aback by this sudden burst of laughter, and you circle him to inspect what could be wrong with him. “Hey, what’s with you? What’s so funny?” You pout at him. “I wasn’t joking, you know!”

His merriment dying down, he continues looking at you with the same fondness as you both resume walking. “Of course, of course. How could a sweet thing like you possibly lie to someone like me?” Rather big ego he has there, but you choose to ignore it. “I guess that’s another wonder of this world. I’ve yet to see you so happy. It’s rather thought-provoking what a change of environment can do to one’s personality.”

“You always say the most confusing things!” You naively remark. You look back at him after skipping another crack. “I’m happy every day! I’ve got everyone with me. Later, my friends and I are gonna go to this ritzy mini-golfing thing.” You make a lousy attempt at swinging your imaginary golf club. “Putt! Or something.” 

You stop your playing around when you finally reach the pedestrian crossing, and Malleus watches as your already carefree expression stretches into a happy smile as you wave at your friends from the other side. They’re unfamiliar to Malleus, clearly memories of people from your world— or what was left of those memories. They mirror the same carefree smiles and waves, but their features are darkened by the shadows of their hair. You are clearly forgetting.

He looks around. The scenery doesn’t seem to be coherent either. Now in the thick of the city, you are surrounded by skyscrapers and bustling shops, yet a closer inspection reveals things that should only exist in Twisted Wonderland. Why else would a magickless world need a store hawking magic pens and brooms? He looks down on his uniform. There are symbols from Night Raven College littered throughout the original design of the uniform of the school you used to come from, a clear mismatch with your relatively unblemished one. He hums.

“[Y. Name],” he calls. He preens when you quickly turn around, foregoing your friends to give him your entire attention. The way you look at him, all starry-eyed and untroubled, is a sight that he could never get used to. Always diminishing yourself for the sake of not getting picked on, jumpy at every show of magic— he would never have guessed that the otherworlder he had met on that fateful night outside Ramshackle would be this lighthearted and blithesome. “[Y. Name],” he calls again.

“Malleus, Malleus,” you playfully echo back to him. He represses an ungraceful snort.

“You always seem to favor this dream,” he muses, walking towards you and gingerly taking a stray strand in between his gloved fingers. “Partaking in breakfast around the table, squabbling with your family, taking leisurely strolls to school… Later, you will doze off in the middle of a lecture, making sure to hide your antics behind a book. Then you will race with your friends to buy whatever special the cafeteria has today. There will be your clubs, then you will make merry with your friends in town, then go back home satisfied and not having finished your homework. This unremarkable routine is what you always come back to.”

He cocks his head to you, taking in your confused expression. “Have you always been this easy to satisfy? If I’m not mistaken, this is what you already do, isn’t it?”

You furrow your brows. “What I already…?”

Malleus throws his head back and laughs. “So many hints, yet you refuse to wake up. I don’t mind. Silver can’t pin the blame on me if you are unwilling to release yourself from these delusions.”

The scenery shifts, the buildings dissolve into the ground and melt into inky shadows until a looming stone-walled castle rises to take their place. You stumble backwards and frantically look back to the images of your friends, who have vanished into the black thorns, gradually blocking the darkening sky. You yelp when you feel Malleus’ hand against the small of your back, and you look up to see his face darkened with…

“You would never respond this brightly when I placed you within the confines of my palace, adorned in fineries fit for royalty. This blinding smile you’ve always shown me in this world… nowhere to be seen even when I seat you on the throne next to me. I tell you— I order you to love me, yet you only nod and fold your hands subserviently. You give me compliance when I wanted your heart!” His taloned nails dig through your uniform and barely pierce your skin. 

His expression is downright livid, glaring down at you as green lightning streaks against the dark sky. He brings his other hand to pointingly dig into your temple. “I could easily manipulate this feeble mind of yours. Humans are so eager to submit to pleasure, and yet—” He looks torn. “— Even I force you to be my betrothed, I cannot be satiated until I know that you wholly return my feelings. It would not be a happy ending if I turned you into a marionette, would it?” He looks off to the side, pondering something, and nods. “Yes, it would do me no good. Sebek adores happy endings. I cannot deny him or Lilia and Silver one.”

Malleus returns his gaze to you, gasping for breath as the thickness of magic begins to slowly fill your lungs. “Do you see the position you have put me in? No other dream will do for you, so here I am diminishing myself to the wiles of your ordinary world. I admit, it has been fun playing family with you and the others. How many times has it been? Walking hand-in-hand with you, playing with strays on the street with Silver, eating out at these ‘family restaurants’ to avoid Lilia’s cooking, stopping at these little shops to gorge on ‘crepes’ that Sebek has taken a liking to… I admit, there is an appeal in the mundane, and yet…” His eyes flick to the looming castle. Its pointed towers and gray-stone walls must feel intimidating to you when you’re so used to charming food stalls and cute models appearing on billboards.

“Alas, that is not the life I live.” With a flick of his wrist, everything melts away into the sunny metropolitan scene, but he is still draped in that inky garb, “So I have to make do for now. I want to know what about this world makes you happy. I want to continue seeing that smile. I—” Malleus’ voice hitches for a second, and despite the menacing ink floating around him, he begins to look like every schoolboy that you know. “I’ve learned my lesson. Delusions cannot make us happy.”

He swallows his tears, yet his glistening green gaze is enough to shake even the coldest hearts. “I don’t want to lose you to this world.” His plea comes out shaky, still giving his best efforts to be composed as he usually is. “I don’t want you to leave me.”

"So for now, I will place you in this world. The only world that will give me this smile." He takes a step back, yet his shadow continues to loom. "Till I know what will make you stay forever. Till you satisfy yourself with mere images and finally them let them go. Then you will come to me and I will show you another happiness."

You can feel still the sting of his claws. On your back. On your temple. You look at his black garb. The pedestrian sign above you chimes a signal for you to cross. You look up. The day is sunny and bright. Today will surely be a good day at school.

You’re fucking crazy.

You continue staring at the sky. The clouds are unmoving. Actually, you don’t feel even the slightest bit of wind. You try to tune in to the passerby’s chatter, but they’re all incoherent. Just buzz imitating human conversation. Your friends’ distant voices continue to repeat the same phrases as they beckon you to the other side of the street. They never stop.

You’re really fucking crazy. I never wanted this. I don’t want this. I want to go back home. I want to sleep and wake up and remember nothing. Why why why why why me why did it have to be me—

“[Y. Name]?”

Like an unused doll creaking its joints, you slowly tilt your neck down and look back at Malleus. When you weren’t looking, that mysterious outfit returned to being another poor imitation of your school’s uniform. The necktie shouldn’t be that color, should it? Malleus is staring at you, slowly watching your every move. 

Every facial muscle feels wrong as your lips soften into a smile, and you stretch your hand out to wipe away the tears pricking the corners of his eyes. “What's wrong, Mal?” you ask softly. You take his hand into your own and begin guiding him into crossing the street. “I told you, didn’t I?”

“Why would I ever want to leave my family?”

“SILVER!” You call out, waving to him from the school gates. In this hazy dreamscape, in a scenery with blue skies marked by towering skyscrapers, SILVER VANROUGE finds you at the same location every time. 

You are always so pretty in that unusual uniform. Like a magnet, he finds himself drawing closer to you in the midst of a faceless crowd. You shoot him a concerned look as you give him a lookover from top to bottom. “You alright?” You ask, poking at the creases in between his brows. “You look even sterner today! Something went wrong during club? You’re awfully early today!”

He shakes his head, but leans into your touch when you press your hand to his forehead to feel for a fever. You could never bring yourself to touch anyone like this so brazenly in the real world, so knowing that you were actually affectionate… gave Silver a few opportunities to be selfish. “I skipped,” he mumbles.

“You skipped?!” You cry out, staring at him with such comical bewilderment that it would have made Silver laugh were it not for the circumstances. You bring out your phone (not the cracked one that the Headmaster gave you, he observes, but (F.Color) and adorned with a personalized phone case) and hurriedly dial something. “I– I have to call Lilia!”

With hurried ease, Silver gently puts his hand on yours and lowers the phone. “It’s okay, really,” he assures you. “I… just wanted to go out early. Aren’t you the one always saying that ‘all work no play makes Silver a dull boy’?” At least, in the other dreams.

Fortunately, this comes to you as something as you would say, because you don’t comment on it. “B– But you’re always saying that discipline—!” He shakes his head and offers you his arm.

“Come,” he beckons you, looking princely in his dashing school uniform and striking silver hair. With a sort of tired fondness, he crooks a smile at you. “If I said that I wanted to spend time with you, would you indulge me at least?”

He watches as a blush blossoms on your cheeks, and you nervously wrap your shaking arm around his. He hides a gentle chuckle to himself. So this is what you looked like as a normal student. He thinks back to whose place he might be taking up in your dreams. Could it be a friend of yours as well? Did you link arms with them as you did now? Did you enjoy living out your youth under such a stunning blue sky with them?

He shakes his head. Whoever he might have replaced, they were long gone to you. There is nothing he could do in that regard but make you happy in their place.

“And so, I got picked on by the teacher again!” You whine to him. “Ugh, I stayed up all night watching anime and doing my dailies, so I didn’t have the chance to read the assigned readings! Waaah, Sebek’s gonna make fun of me again…!”

Another point of interest that stood out to him was how much your attitude towards education differed from that of this world and Night Raven College. He had always assumed that you were naturally diligent, acing high scores in subjects that didn’t need magic to excel. Finding you in the library wasn’t an odd sight, and sometimes he would even find you tutoring some of your fellow first-years and Grim with little success. Yet here you were in your natural habitat, foregoing academics in favor of hanging out with friends after school or binging your animated shows. 

While he mulled over the differences between this version of you and the one that he knew, he is snapped out of his thoughts when you began dragging him to a pop-up gathering of indie stores in the middle of a plaza. “Let’s check it out before we head home!” You urged him, tugging his sleeve when he came to a standstill. “Come on~! It’s such a waste of your good looks if you keep wearing the same thing whenever we go out!”

“I don’t—” Silver starts, but sighs when you’ve successfully pulled him into shopping territory. He lets himself be dragged around by you, placing cute clips in his hair and even snapping pictures of him to send to Lilia and the others. At one point, he holds onto your hand to not get lost in the crowd as you get excited over thrifted clothes. You weren’t this absentminded either, were you? But as you turn to him with a cute hat on, posing for him as you ask whether it was cute or not, he decides that this wasn’t bad either. If you were so at ease that you didn’t feel the need to keep your guard up, then maybe he should let you enjoy yourself for a little bit.

There are things here that exist in Twisted Wonderland— cars, phones, colorful balloons— and then he looks up expecting to see a mage whiz by on their broom only for… nothing. Despite living the majority of his life in a secluded forest cabin in a country that was mostly old stone houses and gothic castles, the unfamiliarity of urban life did not perplex him, but rather what it lacked. Street magicians pulled coins out of kids’ ears rather than waving a wand and arranging a light show, brooms were not used to fly but to sweep, and vehicles emitted unpleasant smoke rather than magic exhaust, just to name a few. Your ordinary was… far more ordinary than anyone was thinking.

And yet it is in these ordinary dreams that Silver finds you happiest. You bound over to him with two cups of ice cream in both hands and sit on the bench next to him. “Here you go~!” You cock your head when Silver continues staring at you. “Um, Silver…?”

With a drowsy yawn, Silver plops his head into your lap. “Please feed me,” he says, closing his eyes as you pout down at him. “I’m tired.”

“You didn’t even attend club activities!” You complain, yet you feed him a spoonful of ice cream. 

With the taste of nothing cooling down on his tongue, he lets the idle buzz of the plaza become white noise as he focuses on the plush of your thighs and the gentle touch of your fingers combing through his hair. In this cityscape that you keep returning to, Silver is always met with new things that he would never have experienced. Holding your hand as you window shop, playing around with filters on your phone, basking in the warm sun after a date… He had too much on his plate as Malleus’ retainer and a student of Night Raven College. 

He pries his eyes open, your silhouette against the sun coming into focus like an angel’s halo as you busy yourself with your ice cream. “[Y. Name],” he breathes out your name, fingers coming up to graze against your cheek. You look down at him and smile. “Are you truly happy?”

“You and Malleus keep asking the same things,” you gripe. “Do I look sad to you?”

“I’m… just asking.” He puts down his hand. “Come, [Y. Name], you’ve had enough. Let’s wake up.”

You stare at him.

“Please, [Y. Name], wake up already.” He hears his voice breaking. He pushes himself up and puts a steady hand on your lap, looking earnestly into your eyes. “Wake up already. This isn’t real!”

The white bird continues to fly around your head. He buries his face into your shoulder and lets out a broken sob.

“I don’t know what to do, [Y. Name],” he whimpered into your clothes. “Please tell me what I’m doing wrong.”

He feels your hand pat his back, comforting, yet the last thing he wants right now. “You’re doing great, Silver.” You tell him the words he wants to hear, like it’s his dream and not yours. “Why are you crying? You’re doing everything correctly.”

“I’m not!” He yells, pushing you back by the shoulders. He stares into your eyes, hoping, praying, that he finds even the faintest flicker of realization inside them. “If I did do anything correctly, then you would want to stay with me!”

How could his voice echo throughout a busy plaza? No one looks at you. You only continue to stare unblinkingly.

“When I found you amidst all those dreams, awake and feeling, I was— I was so happy,” he sobbed. “I couldn’t take on the task of facing all those dreams alone. When you were there when the truth about my origins was revealed, I felt that, despite our brief meeting, there was no one else aside from my family that I would be happier to share my secret with. After all, you… You…!” His face twists as he tries to stop himself from crying, but his emotions continue to spill out like ink on paper. He delicately grasps both of your hands in his, but the way he’s squeezing you is desperate. “When you encouraged me to keep going… All those times when you held me by the hand and guided me forward… When we saw all those absurd dreams… Undergoing trial after trial…”

He presses his forehead against your hands in a silent plea. “Was it not enough to make you want to stay with me?”

The silence that ensues only further breaks Silver’s heart. He doesn’t know if you’re silent because you don’t fully comprehend the words that he’s saying in your dreamlike state or because that is your answer. He doesn’t dare look at you and only grips your hands tighter.

“Ever since I saw you in that dream…”

As according to the fairytales.

“Ever since you stayed by my side to weather the storm…”

As how the perfect princes start their vow.

“Despite our brief knowing…”

Because love does not discriminate.

“You have always been the object of my thoughts and my adoration.”

Because love is all-encompassing.

“Even If I know your kind heart would not say so…”

Because you are love.

“I would draw my sword for you if you so decree it.”

A heartfelt promise.

“I would do anything for you.”

A romantic gesture.

“No matter the cost.”

Even if it goes against whatever morals his breaking heart has left.

“So please,” he whispers, lifting his head to you as he bares his tears and feelings to you, as vulnerable as the day he thought he lost everything. “Please.”

“Just come back to us already.”

I love you.

But your eyes only crease in fondness, patting his silver hair like he isn’t falling apart in front of you. “Okay, Silver,” you murmur, smiling. “Let’s go back home.”

Silver bows his head and sobs, uncaring for the vacant stare the doll in front of him gives him.

“They’re not completely gone, Silver,” Malleus purrs from your bed, stroking your sleeping self as his knight stares at them from the doorway. “Do you not trust my word? I don’t plan on keeping them in this state forever.”

“Lord Malleus, please. Stop these dreams already,” Silver chokes on his words, stumbling into the room with his eyes on you the whole time. “Or at least, put me to sleep with the rest of them. I can’t bear it.”

Malleus tuts pityingly, thumbing the boy’s pale cheeks as he studies his bloodshot expression. “Look at you, barely a wink of sleep. It’s not my fault that your Unique Magic allows you to easily wake during your dreams. It is within my realm of power to put you back to sleep, but…” Malleus has a thoughtful expression as he looks at your peaceful slumber. “You always seem to be having a grand time before you decide to ruin everything for yourself.”

“I’m— I’m not,” Silver protests. To prove a point, Malleus stretches out his palm to portray a glowing pair of figures. Silver, with his hair tied back and in a formal suit, seems to stare at your figure with the most blissful expression as you twirl around the ballroom. Then, behind him in another flicker of green light, you, Silver, and Lilia are playing with cats just outside your home. Then, on his shoulder, Silver kisses your palm as he swears to protect you as your knight forever. Lastly, the green image of you both strolling hand in hand through racks of clothes dances in front of his eyes. “That’s—”

“It’s a dream, Silver,” Malleus says, the green figures flickering out when he closes his palm. “A place where you can momentarily forget about your worries. Is this not what the Child of Man came here for? A good night’s rest? They will wake the following morning feeling energized and refreshed, without knowing what transpired within their subconsciousness.” He cocks his head at Silver. “Are you saying that you would not allow [Y. Name] this slight reprieve?”

Silver shakes his head. “Of– Of course not. But every dream they have of their original world, they fall deeper and deeper. If we do not lose them to the world on the other side of the Mirror, then…” He swallows the anxiety in his voice. “Apologies. I… don’t mean to doubt you, my lord. It just…”

“Speak, Silver,” Malleus urges him. “Do not think for a second that I don’t know what ails you. After all, they occupy my heart as well.”

He bites his lip, feeling pathetically like a child in front of his liege as his eyes sting with tears. “I hate it,” he admits. “I wish they’d stop dreaming about that other world. I just wish—” His breath hitches. “I just wish I had made them happy enough that they’d forget everything and stay with… us.”

His voice trails off, ashamed of his own selfish inhibitions. “This isn’t the sort of thing a knight should think, but I… I’m scared. I don’t want to go hunting people like a mad beast like Sebek does, but…” He buries his face in his hands. “If that would make them happy enough to make them stay…”

“You would do anything,” Malleus finishes for him. Silver, face still hidden, nods. “I can tell. It is nothing to be ashamed of, Silver. I fear that just may be the many mysteries of love.” The prince smiles down at you, thumbing away the creases forming between your brows. “It drives us to do things we wouldn’t do. I thought it was a hindrance, the knot in my chest that forms every time this Child of Man invited me, and yet now I understand. Love is the start of many miracles. That was true for you, for Lilia, for me, for Baur.” He closes his eyes with a pleasant smile.

“That is why, Silver, you must never let go of those that you love.” Opening his eyes, he stares at the young boy with the eyes of a future king, glowing like the devil in the shadows of the room. “Do you understand? To make yourself happy. To make everyone around you happy.”

“Through love and for love, all things are possible.”

All things are possible…

With a renewed purpose, Silver rubs away his tears and stands tall in front of his liege, nodding. “Yes, Lord Malleus, I understand.”

“For love, I must do everything to make sure this love stays.”

a/n ! 🎺🎺🎺 after a full year, we're finally done with the series!! this has been a long ride with +11k word celebrating the finale and hoo boy am i ready to move on to other projects! it has been fun writing my pervy twisted boys, but what turned out to be a self-indulgent project actually turned out to be a full-fleshed plot?! crazy. thanks for sticking with me for a full year everyone~! (also PLEASE PLEASE SILVER AND MALLEUS MAY BE SIMILAR BUT THEY ARE FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT. the brothers are similar but they grieve different) idk why i did that im just a bit insecure that they might be too similar

OF BELLS AND BURNING

PART I: THE TOLLING

The bell had not yet rung, but you felt it anyway—a tolling beneath the skin, a vibration that had nothing to do with sound and everything to do with the part of you that recognized when the world was about to crack open.

Noble Bell College wore its melancholy like fine silk. The architecture reached toward heaven with the desperation of a sinner's hands, every spire a confession, every gargoyle a witness. You had thought, when you first arrived, that it was beautiful. You had not yet understood that beautiful things are always the most dangerous, because they make you forget to look for the teeth.

You had pockets full of small stones. You always did—picked up from places that mattered, smooth or rough or ordinary, little weights to anchor the memory of where you'd been. Three from the Heartslabyul gardens, one from the Scarabia dunes, two from the Octavinelle pools, and the newest addition: a piece of Noble Bell's courtyard that you'd pocketed yesterday without thinking. Your fingers found it now and rolled it against your palm the way you always did when you were nervous. It was a small habit. A strange one. But it was yours.

You had started collecting them because you were afraid of disappearing.

Not dying—dying was a different fear, with a different shape. This was smaller and more insidious: the fear that you would walk through this world of wonders and leave no mark on it, and it would leave no mark on you, and one day you would wake up and find that you had been a ghost the entire time without knowing it. The stones were proof. I was here. This place was real. I held a piece of it in my hand.

It was a ridiculous thing to need. You knew that. But need had never cared about ridiculousness.

"We should go after him."

Malleus Draconia's voice cut through the fractured silence like a blade through gossamer—precise, cold, and ringing with something that lived beneath the words. Something ancient and furious that he was holding on a leash made of willpower alone.

He stood at the edge of the courtyard, and the evening light seemed to bend around him rather than touch him. You had learned to read the stillness in his posture the way sailors read the sky before a hurricane: everything quiet, everything waiting, the air itself holding its breath.

He was beyond furious. He had passed through fury into that cold, clear territory beyond where even dragons fear to tread, because in that place, there is only the choice between destruction and restraint, and Malleus Draconia had been practicing restraint his entire life.

"Rollo went to the bell tower," Azul Ashengrotto said, and his voice was the voice of a businessman calculating risk, but his eyes—his eyes were the eyes of someone who had looked into an abyss and recognized something staring back. He adjusted his glasses with fingers that were not quite steady. "The flaming flowers—the mechanism he's using to strip magic from this city—it's connected to the bell. If he rings it—"

"Then magic dies." Idia Shroud's hair flickered blue-white at the tips, the flames of it dancing in a wind that wasn't there, responding to his fear the way a compass responds to north. He was hunched into himself, arms wrapped around his own torso, and his eyes were fixed on the tower with the expression of a man watching his own grave being dug. "Not—not temporarily. Not maybe. The formula he's using is… it's elegant. I hate that it's elegant. It resonates with the fundamental frequency of magical energy and creates a dampening field that—look, it doesn't matter. The point is, if that bell rings at full power with his little inferno feeding it, magic doesn't just go quiet. It stops. Permanently."

The words hung in the air like smoke.

You watched Malleus's shoulders. Everything about him was contained there—the weight he carried, the throne he would inherit, the centuries of expectation pressed into the line of his spine. And right now, those shoulders were perfectly, absolutely still.

"And Malleus," you said, because someone had to say it, and you had never been particularly good at keeping your mouth shut around people who could unmake you with a thought. "If magic stops—"

He turned to look at you.

His eyes were green. You had spent an embarrassing amount of time thinking about how green his eyes were—the specific shade, the way they caught light like sea glass, the way they crinkled at the corners when he smiled at you from his perch on the dormitory roof. But right now his eyes were not sea glass. They were the green of a storm that had not yet broken.

"If magic stops," he said, and his voice was so gentle it made your chest hurt, "then I stop."

The courtyard went quiet.

Azul inhaled sharply. Idia's hair flared magenta for a single heartbeat before cycling back to anxious blue.

I stop.

Not I will be weakened. Not I will be injured.

I stop.

As though he were a candle, and magic was the air that kept him burning. As though he were not a person at all, but a thing that existed only because magic existed, and would simply cease if the magic did.

You thought about the way he smiled when you brought him those ridiculous gargoyle figurines you found in antique shops. You thought about the warmth of his hand when he helped you over a broken step, and how he had held on just a moment longer than necessary. And then you thought about all of that simply stopping. About the light going out of those green eyes. About centuries of accumulated existence—every memory, every thought, every quiet moment of loneliness and every burst of unexpected joy—snuffed out like a flame between careless fingers.

The stone in your pocket pressed against your thigh. You pressed back.

"Then we stop him," you said, and your voice was steady in a way that your hands were not. "We stop him now."

Malleus looked at you for a long moment. Something shifted in his expression—not softening, exactly, but moving, the way a glacier moves: slowly, with tremendous weight, reshaping everything in its path.

"You would climb the tower," he said, and it was not a question, but there was a question beneath it, buried deep: Why?

"Wouldn't you?" you answered, because the alternative was unthinkable, and you had learned that the best way to handle Malleus Draconia was to meet him where he stood rather than trying to pull him down to where you were.

"Then we climb," he said.

The stairwell of the bell tower was a spiral throat carved from ancient stone, and it swallowed you whole.

The steps were uneven—worn by centuries of feet that had climbed them in procession, in penitence, in desperate hope that a bell rung toward heaven might somehow reach the ears of something that cared. The walls pressed close on either side, and the air grew thinner as you climbed, or perhaps it only felt that way because your lungs were working overtime to process the fear that had taken up residence in your ribcage.

You hummed. You always hummed when you were nervous—old songs you half-remembered, melodies that surfaced unbidden from whatever part of the brain stores the things you don't know you know. The sound was quiet, barely more than breath, but it filled the tight spiral of the stairwell like a small, stubborn declaration: I am here. I am still here.

Azul climbed with the precise efficiency of someone who had calculated exactly how much energy each step required and was determined not to waste a single calorie more. His breath came in measured intervals, and his eyes moved constantly—not with the darting anxiety of prey, but with the calculated assessment of a predator cataloging exits. He was already planning. Already thinking about what contracts might be leveraged, what deals might be struck, what angles might be exploited to emerge from this with something of value.

But beneath the calculation, there was something else. You saw it in the way his hand trailed along the wall—not for balance, but for comfort, as though the cold stone could anchor him to something real. Azul Ashengrotto, who had rebuilt himself from the wreckage of his own insecurities into something sharp and formidable, was afraid. Not of Rollo. Not of the bell. Not even of the death of magic, though that threatened everything he had constructed.

He was afraid of being powerless again.

The thought surfaced unbidden, and you tucked it away. This was not the time to examine the wounds of your allies. This was the time to climb.

Idia climbed like a man ascending his own execution. His long legs should have made the stairs easier, but he moved with the jerky uncertainty of someone whose body was a vessel he had never quite learned to pilot. His tablet was clutched to his chest like a shield, and his hair cycled through colors—blue, purple, magenta, back to blue—in a chromatic anxiety that he couldn't hide no matter how hard he tried.

"This is—the fire damage percentage alone—" he muttered, half to himself, half to the ghost of his own mathematical models. "And the structural integrity of a tower this old under magical resonance stress is basically a coin flip, and not the good kind where you win something, the bad kind where the building falls on you—"

"Idia," Azul said without turning around. "Breathe."

"I AM breathing. I'm breathing extra. I'm breathing at maximum capacity—"

"Then breathe at regular capacity and keep climbing."

Idia made a sound that was somewhere between a whimper and a laugh, but he climbed faster.

And Malleus—

Malleus climbed like a king approaching a battlefield: with the measured, unhurried stride of someone who had already accepted that whatever waited at the top would either bow before him or burn. He moved through the tight spiral of the stairwell as though it were a grand corridor, as though the ancient stone were merely a courtesy, as though the darkness itself knew better than to touch him.

You climbed behind him and to the left, because the stairwell was narrow and his presence took up more space than his body alone could account for. The green fire that lived inside him pressed against the walls like a second skin, and you felt it as a warmth on your face, a tingle on your fingertips, a low hum in the frequency of your heartbeat.

He was holding back. You could tell. Every step was restraint, every breath was a leash pulled tight against the dragon that wanted to simply fly to the top and blast through whatever stood in its way. He was climbing like a mortal because you were mortal, because Azul and Idia were mortal, because to reveal the full extent of what he was in this narrow stone throat would be to risk destroying the very people he was trying to protect.

The thought made your chest ache in a way that had nothing to do with the climb.

"You're quiet," he said, and his voice was so close it seemed to come from inside your own head. You looked up to find him watching you over his shoulder, those green eyes soft with something he would never name aloud.

"I'm thinking," you said.

"A dangerous pastime."

"Says the dragon prince."

The ghost of a smile—there and gone, like light through a keyhole. "What are you thinking about?"

You were thinking about how the air was getting hotter as you climbed. You were thinking about how the stone walls had begun to vibrate with a frequency you couldn't hear but could feel in your teeth. You were thinking about the fact that Rollo Flamme—a boy with sorrow carved into the lines of his face and fanaticism burning in the hollows of his eyes—was preparing to commit an atrocity in the name of salvation, and that the worst monsters were always the ones who believed they were heroes.

"I'm thinking," you said, "that I won't let that happen."

Malleus stopped climbing.

He stood three steps above you, and the difference in height forced you to tilt your head back to meet his gaze. The stairwell was dark but for the faint glow of his presence, and in that half-light, his face was all shadows and angles and the unexpected softness of his mouth.

"You cannot promise that," he said, and his voice was so low it was nearly a whisper. "You are mortal. You are magicless. You have no power here, no contract to leverage, no technology to deploy. You have nothing to fight with and everything to lose."

Nothing to fight with. The words landed somewhere tender, somewhere you didn't like to look. Because he was right, in the way that the world was right when it reminded you, daily, that you were the only person at Night Raven College who couldn't light a candle with a thought, who couldn't fly or transform or conjure or charm, who walked through a school full of wonders like a ghost drifting through a festival—you could see the lights, but you couldn't touch them.

You had learned to live with it. You had learned to joke about it, to make it a personality trait, to carry your magiclessness like a banner instead of a wound. But beneath the jokes and the stubbornness and the reckless courage that everyone praised you for, there was a small, quiet voice that sometimes whispered, in the dark hours before dawn: What if they're right? What if you are nothing?

You held Malleus's gaze. "So do you."

Something flickered across his face—surprise, maybe, or recognition, or the particular pain of being seen clearly by someone you had hoped would not look too closely.

"I have everything to lose," he agreed. "But I am not accustomed to losing."

"Then let's make sure you don't have to be."

He stared at you for a long moment, and in his eyes, you saw the war he was fighting—not with Rollo, not with the bell, but with himself. The part of him that wanted to wrap you in thorns and keep you safe in a tower of his own making, far from any battle, far from any danger, far from the world that had never once been kind to things that mattered to him.

And the part of him that knew you would never forgive him for it.

"Stay behind me," he said finally, and turned to resume climbing. "Whatever happens at the top of this tower—stay behind me."

It was not a request.

You hummed a few notes of something tuneless and old, and you climbed.

The bell chamber was a cathedral in miniature, and like all cathedrals, it was built to hold something vast in a space too small to contain it.

The bell dominated the room—suspended from a framework of ancient timber and iron, its bronze surface covered in script so old that even Malleus might not have recognized the language. It was beautiful in the way that weapons are beautiful: with the clean, functional elegance of something designed for a single, devastating purpose.

Rollo Flamme stood at the bell's rope like a priest at an altar.

He looked smaller than you remembered. Not physically—his frame was as slight and sharp as ever, his posture as rigid as the spires outside—but there was a shrinking to him, a contraction, as though the fire he had set was consuming him from the inside out and all that remained was the brittle shell of a boy who had once loved his brother.

The flames were everywhere. They crawled up the walls in patterns that were too deliberate to be natural, too hungry to be controlled. They pooled on the floor like liquid light. They danced along the bell's bronze surface without consuming it, and you understood—with a clarity that felt like being doused in ice water—that these were not ordinary flames.

These were the flames of annihilation. The flames that did not burn but unmade. The flames that ate magic the way fire eats oxygen, and left nothing behind but ash and silence.

"You came." Rollo's voice was quiet, and it carried the weight of someone who had expected this moment and dreaded it in equal measure. His eyes found Malleus immediately, and something twisted in his expression—hatred, yes, but also something that might have been grief. "Of course you came. The great Malleus Draconia, descending from his gargoyle's perch to grace us with his presence. Tell me—do you even understand what you're looking at?"

Malleus stepped into the chamber, and the flames that crawled along the floor seemed to recoil from him, drawing back like animals faced with a predator they couldn't hope to challenge. "I am looking at a child playing with forces he cannot comprehend."

Rollo laughed, and the sound was brittle as broken glass. "A child. Yes. That's what you would think, isn't it? You, who have lived for centuries. You, who were born from magic itself. You, who have never once had to watch the thing you love most be consumed by the very power that makes you possible."

The words landed like blows, and you saw Malleus's jaw tighten.

"My brother," Rollo continued, and his voice cracked on the word like ice on a frozen river, "was fourteen years old. He was brilliant—brilliant in a way that made the professors at this school weep with frustration, because he could do things with magic that they couldn't explain, couldn't control, couldn't contain. And one day, his brilliance exceeded his control, and the magic he loved turned on him. It burned through him like a fever. It consumed him from the inside out. And I held his hand while he died, and I felt the magic leave his body, and I thought—I thought—"

He pressed his hand to his face, and when he lowered it, his eyes were wet and his expression was the expression of a martyr at the stake.

"I thought, never again."

Azul stepped forward, and his voice was the voice of the Mostro Lounge—smooth, reasonable, designed to put people at ease before they realized they'd already signed the contract. "Rollo. I understand your grief. Truly, I do. But what you're proposing isn't justice—it's genocide. The elimination of magic would kill not just Malleus, but countless beings who are sustained by magical energy. The merfolk of the Coral Sea would suffocate. The fae of Briar Valley would—"

"Would cease." Rollo's voice was calm. "Yes. I know."

The silence that followed was the silence of horror.

"You know," Idia breathed, and his hair had gone white-pale, the color of bone. "You know and you're still—dude, what is wrong with you?"

"What is wrong with me?" Rollo turned those burning, hollow eyes on Idia, and for a moment, you saw the boy he must have been before grief hollowed him out—passionate, idealistic, absolutely certain of his own righteousness. "What is wrong with a world that sacrifices its children on the altar of power? What is wrong with a system that elevates those born with magic above those without, that treats the gifted as gods and the ordinary as nothing?"

Nothing. The word hit you like a slap. Not because Rollo was looking at you—he wasn't, not yet—but because the word itself was a wound you had been carrying long before tonight. Nothing. The thing you were afraid you were. The thing the world had been telling you, in a thousand small ways, since the day you arrived at Night Raven College and discovered that you were the only person in the entire school who couldn't do the one thing that made everyone else real.

"My magic is not your tragedy," Malleus said, and his voice was quiet in a way that made the hair on your arms stand on end. "My existence is not your revenge."

"Your existence is a symptom!" Rollo's composure cracked, and beneath it was something raw and bleeding. "You walk through this world like a god, and you don't even see the damage you leave in your wake. People fear you. People worship you. People destroy themselves trying to become you."

He turned, and his eyes found you—standing behind Malleus where he had told you to stand, magicless and empty and nothing—and something shifted in his expression. Not cruelty, exactly. Something worse: the cold clarity of a zealot who has found a new angle of attack.

"But it's not just about you, is it?" Rollo said softly, and his gaze moved from you to Malleus and back again, reading the configuration of your bodies the way a general reads a battlefield. "You love her. The magicless girl. I can see it—the way you position yourself between her and every threat, the way your magic reaches for her even when you're trying to hold it back." He took a step forward, and his voice dropped to something almost gentle, which made it infinitely worse. "You are a conflagration, Malleus Draconia. And she is kindling. When your magic finally consumes her—and it will, because magic always consumes what it touches—will you weep as I did? Or will you simply find another mortal to stand too close to the fire?"

The chamber went silent.

You saw it land. Not on your skin, not on your nerves, but on Malleus—on the precise location where his greatest fear lived, the fear he never spoke aloud, the fear that his very existence was a danger to the things he loved. Rollo had found the crack in the armor and driven a blade into it, and the worst part was that the blade was not entirely dull.

Malleus did not respond. His jaw tightened, and his eyes flickered—not dimmed, but flickered, the way a candle does in a sudden draft—and for one terrible moment, you saw the doubt.

Then his expression closed, and the walls went up, and he was the Briar Prince again, cold and ancient and absolutely still.

"You speak of things you do not understand," Malleus said, and his voice was iron. "My love is not your weapon."

"Everything is a weapon," Rollo said. "That is the first lesson magic teaches."

He reached for the bell rope.

And somewhere outside—in the courtyards, on the parapets, on every ledge and cornice where the stone guardians of Noble Bell College had perched for centuries—the gargoyles began to crack.

You heard it before you understood it. A sound like breaking pottery, like stone weeping, like the death of something that had never been alive in the way you understood aliveness but had been present—watching, guarding, silent and steady and there—for longer than anyone could remember.

You had talked to them. The gargoyles of Noble Bell—you had talked to them the way you talked to all gargoyles, the way you talked to the ones at Night Raven College when the loneliness got too loud and you needed something that wouldn't argue or judge or look at you with pity. You had sat with them on your first night at Noble Bell, when the homesickness was a physical ache and the stars looked wrong in this sky, and you had told them about your world, about the people you missed, about the strange and terrible and beautiful school you'd found yourself in. And they had listened, the way gargoyles always listened—silently, patiently, with the quiet attention of things made of stone and magic and the accumulated weight of centuries.

And now they were dying.

You heard the first one fall—a heavy, grinding crash from the courtyard below that shook the floor of the bell chamber. Then another. Then another. The sound of stone hitting stone, of magic leaving the things it had animated, of guardians becoming just rocks, just rubble, just nothing.

Nothing. The word again, the wound again, and this time it wasn't about you—or maybe it was, maybe it had always been, because the gargoyles were magical constructs given life by magic and you were a magicless construct given life by… what? What animated you? What made you real in a world where worth was measured by the fire in your hands?

The gargoyles had been more real than you. They could fly. They could guard. They could serve. And now they were rubble because someone had decided that the magic that made them was a disease.

Something inside you broke.

Not the way a heart breaks—not cleanly, not poetically—but the way a dam breaks, suddenly and all at once, with a fury that you didn't know you were capable of.

"Stop!" you screamed, and the word tore out of you raw and ravaged, and you were moving before you knew you were moving, pushing past Malleus's outstretched arm, crossing the chamber toward Rollo with your hands outstretched and your throat burning with the grief of every silent friend who had just been erased from the parapets. "They were alive, they were listening, you had no right—"

Rollo turned toward you, and in his eyes, you saw the terrible mathematics of sacrifice. He saw you—the magicless girl, the one who had climbed this tower despite having no power to fight with—and he calculated your value in the equation of his revenge and found it wanting.

You were nothing. You had no magic to unmake, no power to strip, no frequency to disrupt. You were empty. And in Rollo's equation, empty was negligible—a zero to be rounded away.

His hand came up.

The white flame leapt toward you.

It went through you—through your chest, through your heart, through the core of you where something lived that was not magic but was not nothing either—and it tried to find something to unmake.

It found nothing.

You were magicless. You were empty of the energy it was designed to destroy. The flame passed through you like wind through an open window, like light through clear glass, and it found nothing to catch, nothing to burn, nothing to consume, and for one crystalline moment, you understood—with a clarity that felt like being hollowed out—exactly what you were.

Empty. A vessel with nothing inside it. A house with no one home. A shape without substance.

The flame had gone through you because there was nothing in you worth destroying.

The force of it—the impact—sent you backward, and the floor was slick with pooling fire, and your foot found no purchase, and you fell toward the window—the arched, gothic window that had been weakened by the magical fire burning around it—and your body struck the glass with a sound like the world breaking, and then you were falling through open air.

The stones in your pockets spilled out.

You felt them go—the weight leaving your pockets, the anchors releasing, the proof of every place you had ever been scattering into the air around you like a constellation falling apart. Three from Heartslabyul. One from Scarabia. Two from Octavinelle. The piece of Noble Bell's courtyard that you had picked up because you wanted to remember this place. They tumbled around you in the dark, ordinary rocks in an extraordinary moment, and you watched them fall and thought: There goes the evidence. There goes the proof. I was here, and now even the stones don't remember.

You were falling, and the ground was rising, and the wind was screaming, and you thought of Grim, and you thought of your friends, and you thought of Malleus—

And then—

Green.

PART II: THE PYRE

Azul saw her fall.

He had been moving toward Rollo—calculated, deliberate, already formulating three separate approaches to neutralizing the threat—when the window shattered and she went through it, and for one crystalline instant, his mind simply stopped calculating.

Then it started again, because that was what Azul's mind did—it calculated, it processed, it managed, because the world was a contract and every clause had its counter-clause and every problem had its solution if you were smart enough and fast enough and desperate enough to find it.

"Idia!" He was already turning, his voice sharp, commanding, the voice of a CEO in crisis. "Calculate her fall trajectory—terminal velocity, wind resistance, the works. Now."

Idia stared at him, white-haired, shaking. "I—what—the variables alone would take—"

"Estimate! Sebek!" Azul was already moving toward the window, toward the empty frame where she had disappeared, and he could see the trajectory of her fall in his mind's eye—not calculated, estimated, guessed, and Azul Ashengrotto did not guess, he did not estimate, he dealt in certainties and leverage and the cold, hard mathematics of mutual benefit. "Where is Sebek? Someone get the crocodile—he can move fast enough to—"

But Sebek wasn't here. Sebek was in the courtyard below, and the distance was too great, and the time was too short, and the math wasn't mathing, and for the first time in his carefully constructed life, Azul Ashengrotto was trying to negotiate with gravity and gravity did not want to make a deal.

He had no leverage here. No contract, no stipulation, no cleverly worded clause that could buy her a single extra second of falling time. He was standing in a burning tower with his hands empty and his calculations worthless and someone falling, and this—this—was what powerlessness felt like. Not the slow erosion of being underestimated, not the sting of being dismissed. This. Watching the universe refuse to honor the terms of engagement and having absolutely nothing to offer in exchange.

His voice died in his throat. He gripped the window frame until the stone bit into his palms, and he watched, and he could not look away.

Idia saw her fall.

He was against the wall—pressed there when the white flame erupted, because his survival instincts were finely honed by years of imagining worst-case scenarios, and a magical firefight in a stone tower qualified. But the wall couldn't protect him from this.

His hair went white. Not pale blue, not anxious purple. White, the color of a system crash, the color of total shutdown. His tablet slipped from his fingers and clattered to the floor.

And then he saw Malleus.

He saw the green fire warp around the prince—not the controlled, contained warmth of Malleus's usual presence, but something darker, something that made the air thicken and the shadows move and the temperature in the room spike by ten degrees in a single heartbeat. He saw the way Malleus's magic surged—ragged, uneven, the edges fraying into something that looked less like power and more like pain—and Idia's blood went cold, because he had seen this before.

Not in a textbook. Not in a simulation.

In the mirror.

He remembered what it felt like when his own magic turned against him, when the dark energy he had been suppressing for years finally broke through the walls he had built and consumed everything in its path. He remembered the taste of it—phosphorus and ash and something sweet and rotten, like fruit left too long in the sun. He remembered the moment of clarity in the center of the storm where he could see exactly what he was becoming and could not stop it, could not choose to stop it, because the choice had already been made by the part of him that was too tired and too angry and too afraid to keep fighting.

He saw that same exhaustion on Malleus's face. For one second—maybe less, maybe the space between one heartbeat and the next—he saw the dragon prince standing at the edge of the same cliff that Idia had fallen from, and he knew—knew, with the visceral certainty of someone who had lived it—that they were one spark away from a catastrophic magical explosion, and he knew exactly what that looked like, and it wasn't dramatic and it wasn't beautiful and it wasn't a cool anime moment; it was just sad, it was the saddest thing in the world, watching someone lose themselves to the thing they were most afraid of.

And then Malleus dove through the broken window after her, and the sky outside turned green, and Idia's hair flickered from white to something he couldn't name, and he found himself sliding down the wall until he was sitting on the floor with his back against the stone and his knees drawn up to his chest, and he was not okay, he was not okay, but he was breathing, and that had to count for something.

"Okay," he said to no one. "Okay. That's—that's a thing that's happening. Cool. Great. I'm going to sit here and not move and not think about the fact that we are one emotional breakdown away from an Overblot event that would make my own look like a birthday candle—"

He heard a sound from outside. A voice—not human, not quite. Something that resonated in his teeth and made the stone under him vibrate. He chose not to think about what that sound meant.

He sat. He breathed. He waited for the world to stop ending.

Malleus caught her.

He dove through the broken window in the instant between her body leaving the frame and the ground rising to meet it, and the dragon was not gentle about its emergence. The wings—green-black, vast, edged with fire—tore out of his back with a sound like tearing silk, and the air screamed around him as he folded it and dove, fell, faster than she was falling, because dragons were not built for falling but for hunting, and right now the only thing worth hunting was the space between his hands and her body.

He caught her.

And the dragon, upon catching what it had been hunting, did what dragons do: it held.

The heat that flared out of him was not the gentle, contained warmth of the boy who sat on rooftops and made tea he didn't like. This was the heat of a furnace whose doors had been blown off. It scorched the air around them, and the stone of the tower wall blackened where his shadow passed, and the few remaining flowers in the courtyard below curled and withered as the wave of dragonfire rolled over them like a tide.

His arms closed around her with a grip that was too tight—tight enough to bruise, tight enough to crack a rib, tight enough that he felt the fragile architecture of her ribs pressing against his forearms and had to force himself to loosen his hold, because the dragon did not want to loosen, the dragon wanted to hold and keep and never release, because the dragon had nearly lost and the dragon did not lose, the dragon kept.

The sound that came from his chest was not a sob. It was lower, deeper, resonant in a way that human throats could not produce. It was the sound of a bell being struck by something enormous, a frequency that vibrated through his body and into hers and into the stone of the courtyard where he landed, and the flagstones cracked beneath his knees in a spiderweb pattern that radiated outward like a wound.

He was shaking. Not trembling—shaking, the way the ground shakes before an earthquake, the way the sky shakes before a storm breaks. His wings mantled around her, enormous and dark and burning at the edges, and the sound from his chest did not stop, and the green fire around him did not dim, and he was—

He was not entirely Malleus anymore. The boy was there, somewhere beneath the dragon, but the dragon was closer to the surface than it had been in centuries, and it was furious, and it was terrified, and it was holding onto a small, broken, empty mortal body with the desperate, possessive frenzy of a creature that has been alone for too long and has finally found something it cannot bear to lose.

He pressed his forehead to hers. The heat of his skin was scalding. The sound in his chest was still ringing.

"Open your eyes," he said, and his voice was not his voice—it was layered, harmonic, the voice of something ancient speaking through the throat of something young. "Open your eyes. You have to open your eyes. I cannot—I will not—please—"

The please cracked something. The word itself, small and human and begging, cut through the dragon's fury like a blade of cold iron, and the sound in his chest stuttered, and the fire around him flickered, and for a moment—just a moment—the boy was visible behind the beast, weeping, terrified, human in a way that the dragon could never be.

You opened your eyes.

His face was inches from yours, and his wings were wrapped around you, and the stone beneath you was cracked, and his skin was too hot, and he was crying, and the sound in his chest was still humming, and you had never seen anything more terrifying or more beautiful.

"You fell," he said, and his voice cracked on the word like thin ice. "You fell and the stones—your stones, they were falling around you, and I could not tell which were stones and which were—"

"I'm not gone," you said, and your voice came out as a croak. "I'm right here."

He closed his eyes. The sound in his chest—THAT sound, the one that wasn't a sob, the one that made the stone hum and the air thicken—finally, finally stopped, and in the silence that followed, you heard him breathing: harsh, ragged, unsteady, like a bell that had been rung too hard and was still vibrating with the aftershock.

"You could have been," he whispered. "Because of me. Because you were trying to protect me, and you have no magic, no power, no defense—"

"Like you would have stood back and watched?"

"I am a dragon!"

"And I'm stubborn. Apparently, those are the same thing."

He stared at you. The dragon was still there—you could feel it in the heat of him, in the tension of his wings, in the grip of his hands that had not yet learned to be gentle again—but the boy was surfacing, rising through the depths of his own ancient nature, fighting his way back to the surface with the particular, desperate courage of someone who had to choose to be human because the alternative was so much easier.

"Your Highness." Azul's voice, from somewhere above—controlled, precise, but threaded with something that sounded like residual fear. "We need to get her to safety. The tower—Rollo is—"

"I am aware of what Rollo is," Malleus said, and the transformation was immediate and total. The boy who had wept was gone—replaced by something older, colder, infinitely more dangerous. His wings folded back into his body with a sound like a blade being sheathed, and the green fire around him contracted from a conflagration to a controlled burn, and when he looked up at the broken window, his eyes were not green but emerald, solid and burning and lit from within.

But you had seen what was underneath. You had heard the sound in his chest. You had felt the heat of him scalding your skin, and you had felt the grip of his hands that was too tight, and you knew—because you were not stupid, and because you had been paying attention—that Malleus Draconia had come within a breath of losing himself tonight, and the only thing that had pulled him back was the sound of your voice.

He looked at you one more time. "Stay here. Do not move. Do not attempt to climb. Do not attempt to help." Each sentence was a wall. "I will return for you."

Then he was gone—launching himself toward the tower in a blur of black and green, and the sky darkened in his wake.

Idia crouched beside you. He had come down from the tower at some point—you weren't sure when—and his face was the color of old paper, and his hair was a flat, unsettled blue that kept trying to go white.

"That was… that was the most terrifying thing I've ever seen," he said, "and I once accidentally set my entire server room on fire. Which, honestly, less scary. Are you—can you move your fingers? Your toes? I watched a medical drama once and spine injuries are no joke—"

"My spine is fine," you said, and carefully, slowly, pushed yourself into a sitting position. The world tilted, but you held on. "The flame didn't burn me the way it would burn someone with magic. It went through me. It couldn't find anything to—"

You stopped.

It couldn't find anything to burn.

The words sat in your mouth like something bitter. Because it was true, and because it was the reason you were alive, and because it confirmed the thing you had been afraid of since the day you arrived at Night Raven College: you were empty. The flame had passed through you because there was nothing in you worth destroying. You had survived because you were nothing.

The thought hurt more than the fall.

Azul landed beside you with an elegance that seemed physically impossible, given the circumstances. His eyes scanned your body with clinical assessment, and his expression tightened when he saw the mark on your chest—the place where Rollo's flame had passed through you—and you looked down to find a pattern there, white and branching like frost on glass, spreading across your skin like a tattoo you hadn't chosen.

"That's…" Idia leaned closer. "That's the resonance pattern. From the bell. The magical frequency—it left an imprint on you, even though you don't have magic. Like a scar from a sound you couldn't hear."

"Will it fade?" Azul asked, and the question was practical, but the undercurrent was genuine concern.

Idia's hair flickered uncertainly. "I don't know. The literature on magicless humans being struck by annihilation flames is, uh, not extensive."

Above you, the sky lit up green.

What happened in the bell tower after Malleus returned to it was something you pieced together later.

Rollo had been standing at the bell rope when Malleus arrived for the second time, and the white flames had been climbing the walls, and the bell had begun to hum. And Malleus had walked through those flames like they were nothing—like they were candlelight, like they were the gentle glow of a lamp left burning in a window.

The flames had tried to consume him. They had reached for him with the hunger of something designed to eat magic, and they had found so much to eat—centuries of accumulated power—and for a moment, they had burned bright, brighter, brightest.

And then Malleus had spoken a single word.

No one knew what the word was. Idia thought it might be in the Old Tongue, the language that predated human speech. Azul thought it might have been a true name. When asked later, Sebek—who had arrived in the courtyard just in time to see the sky turn green—simply went pale and changed the subject.

Whatever the word was, it worked.

The flames died. Not gradually, not reluctantly, but instantly—snuffed out like a candle beneath a hand, leaving only the smell of smoke and the silence of a bell that would never ring.

But the word came at a cost.

The annihilation energy did not simply vanish. It had to go somewhere. And Malleus, in his fury and his terror and his desperate need to end the threat that had nearly killed you, absorbed it. He took the poison of Rollo's flame into himself—the energy designed to unmake magic, to strip it from the world—and he swallowed it, the way a dragon swallows fire, the way the earth swallows rain.

But it did not sit easily in him.

The energy was poison. It was antithetical to everything he was, and his body recognized it as an invader, and his magic rose to fight it, and the conflict between the annihilating force and his own draconic power created something dark and toxic and hungry that began to spread through him like ink through water. His magic flared—too bright, too hot, the edges fraying into something that was no longer green but black-green, the color of rot in a forest, the color of a wound that will not heal—and for one terrible moment, the world hung in the balance, because Malleus Draconia was standing at the edge of an Overblot, and the only thing keeping him from falling over it was the memory of a girl's voice saying I'm right here.

He pulled back. He pulled back with the same furious, impossible willpower that he used for everything—holding the dragon at bay, holding his loneliness at bay, holding the weight of centuries at bay—and he forced the dark energy down, down, down, into the deepest part of himself, and he sealed it there, and he did not let it show on his face.

But it was there. A spreading stain near his heart, invisible beneath his clothes, invisible beneath his composure, visible only in the faint, inky pattern that appeared on his skin like a tattoo he hadn't chosen—a mirror of the white branching scar on your chest, but dark where yours was light, black where yours was white, wound where yours was wound.

He had taken your poison into himself. And he would not tell you. Because telling you would mean admitting how close he had come, and admitting how close he had come would mean acknowledging the depth of his fear, and acknowledging the depth of his fear would mean feeling it, and Malleus Draconia had been not-feeling things for so long that he had forgotten how to start.

He turned to Rollo.

The boy was on his knees. Not because Malleus had struck him—because everything he had built his revenge upon had been taken away in a single word, and he was left with nothing but the cold stone and the silence of a bell that would never sing his revolution.

"Your brother," Malleus said, and his voice was quiet in the ruined bell chamber, "would not have wanted this."

Rollo's head snapped up, and his face was the face of a boy whose world had ended long before tonight. "You didn't know him—"

"I know grief." Malleus's voice was softer now, edged with something ancient and personal. "I know the temptation to burn the world because it continues to exist while the people you love do not. I know the hollow certainty that if you could just find the right thing to destroy, the pain would become bearable." He paused. "It does not become bearable. Destroying the world does not bring them back. It only ensures that nothing new can grow."

Rollo said nothing. There was nothing to say.

Malleus turned away from him, and walked to the edge, and looked down at the courtyard where you sat between Azul and Idia, alive, breathing, making some joke that made Idia's hair turn an appalled shade of orange.

He closed his eyes.

Too close, he thought. Far too close. In more ways than one.

And then he descended.

PART III: THE VIGIL

The infirmary at Noble Bell College was all stained glass and stone arches, beautiful and cold and smelling of the particular antiseptic that magical institutions used for injuries that couldn't be healed by magic alone. You sat on a cot that was more comfortable than it looked, and you let the healer examine the branching white scar on your chest.

"The resonance damage is superficial," she said, and her voice was clipped and professional. "It will fade with time. Perhaps not completely, but enough that it will not cause complications."

"Complications," you repeated.

"The mark you carry is a record of a frequency that your body was never meant to process. It has changed you, in small ways. You may find that you can hear things you could not hear before. Feel things you could not feel." She straightened. "You are lucky to be alive, young woman. Luckier than you know."

You thought about Malleus's face when you opened your eyes—the raw, unguarded devastation of it—and you thought: I know exactly how lucky I am.

But you also thought about the flame passing through you, and the way it had found nothing to burn, and the way you had survived because you were empty, and the thought sat in your chest like a stone—a stone you didn't have a pocket for anymore, because all your stones were scattered on the ground beneath a bell tower, mixed with the rubble of dead gargoyles, lost.

The door opened, and Malleus entered.

He had changed—someone had found him different clothes, a simple black shirt and trousers—and he was composed again, standing straight, chin lifted, the prince reassembled from the pieces that had scattered when you fell. But composure is not the same as calm. You could see it in the shadows under his eyes, in the controlled evenness of his breathing, in the way his gaze went to you and stayed there, like you were the only fixed point in a world that had tried very hard to come undone.

"Your Highness," the healer said. "I was just informing her—"

"I heard." He moved to your side, and his hand found yours, and when his fingers interlaced with yours, you felt the slight tremor that ran through him—controlled, suppressed, but there. "How do you feel?"

"Like I fell out of a bell tower."

"That is not funny."

"It's a little funny."

He was quiet for a moment, and then the corner of his mouth twitched. "It is perhaps slightly funny. In retrospect. When enough time has passed that I am no longer tempted to lock you in a tower of my own making."

"That would be hypocritical of you, given how much you hate being locked in towers yourself."

His hand tightened around yours. "You fell," he said, and his voice was not teasing anymore. "You fell, and I—" He stopped. His jaw worked. The walls were up, but you could see the cracks.

"I'm right here," you said.

"You are," he agreed, and his voice was rough. "You are right here. And I am—" He stopped again, and his free hand came up to press against his chest, against his heart, and you saw a flicker of something cross his face—pain, maybe, or the echo of something he was trying very hard not to feel. Then his hand dropped, and the expression smoothed, and he was the prince again.

The healer cleared her throat. "She should rest tonight. The resonance damage will heal, but it needs time. And she should not be alone—the effects of the frequency may cause dreams."

"I will stay with her," Malleus said, and then, as though realizing what he had just said, added with somewhat less certainty: "If she wishes it."

You looked at him—at the shadows under his eyes, at the tension in his jaw, at the way he was holding your hand like it was the only thing keeping him tethered to the earth.

"Stay," you said.

He exhaled like a man who had been holding his breath for centuries.

The infirmary was quiet after the healer left. You sat on the cot with your legs dangling over the edge, and Malleus sat in the chair beside you, and neither of you spoke because neither of you needed to.

But there was something building in him. You could feel it in the trembling of his thumb where it traced slow circles on the back of your hand—not the gentle circles of comfort, but the tight, rhythmic circles of someone trying very hard to keep something contained. His jaw was set. His shoulders were straight. He was holding himself like a man made of glass, afraid that one wrong movement would shatter him entirely.

He had rebuilt his walls on the way down from the tower. You had watched him do it—watched the prince reassemble himself from the wreckage of the boy who had wept over your body, stone by stone, brick by brick, until there was nothing visible but the Malleus Draconia the world expected to see. But walls built in haste are never as strong as walls built with care, and you could see the cracks from where you sat.

"You don't have to be okay," you said.

His thumb stopped moving. "I am not the one who fell out of a tower."

"No. You're the one who had to watch."

He closed his eyes. The tremor in his hand worsened, and then stopped, and then worsened again—like a wave he couldn't quite hold back.

"I have lived for a very long time," he said, and his voice was the voice of someone speaking from a great distance. "I have seen people die. I have held the hands of the dying. I have learned, as all long-lived creatures must learn, that attachment to mortal things is a form of slow grief."

He opened his eyes, and they were wet.

"But I have never been afraid like that. Not the fear of battle, not the fear of loss—true fear, the kind that empties you out and leaves nothing behind." He pressed his lips together, and the walls cracked, and through the cracks you could see the boy inside, terrified and alone and so tired of being both. "And the worst part—the worst part—is that I am not certain I have stopped being afraid. I am sitting here holding your hand and I can feel your pulse and I am still afraid, because your heart is beating now but it might stop, it might stop at any moment, and I cannot—"

He broke off. His hand pressed against his chest again—that same unconscious gesture, his palm over his heart—and this time, you noticed something. A shadow beneath the fabric of his shirt, dark against the pale skin of his collarbone. Not a shadow—ink. A pattern, spreading.

"Malleus," you said, and your voice was careful, the way you'd speak to a wounded animal. "What is that? On your chest."

His eyes went wide. His hand dropped from his chest like he'd been burned, and for a fraction of a second, his expression was pure, naked panic—the expression of someone who has been hiding something and has just been discovered.

"It is nothing," he said, too quickly. "A residual effect of the—"

"Show me."

"No."

"Malleus—"

"It is nothing." His voice was firm, but his hand was shaking, and the walls were cracking, and you could see the fear beneath the denial—not fear of the thing itself, but fear of what you would think if you saw it, fear that you would look at him and see the monster he had nearly become instead of the man he was trying to be.

You reached out and took his hand—the one that had been pressed against his chest—and you held it, and you looked into his eyes, and you said: "I fell out of a tower tonight and survived because there was nothing inside me to burn. I am not in a position to judge anyone for what they're carrying."

He stared at you. His breath shuddered. And then, with hands that trembled, he unbuttoned his shirt.

The scrollwork patterns on his chest were the same as you remembered—pale, elegant, the visual record of a magic so fundamental to his being that it had written itself on his skin. But there was a new pattern, spreading from the center of his chest near his heart: darker, inkier, like a bruise that had been painted instead of struck. It spread in branching fractals—not white like your scar, but black, the color of ink, the color of void, the color of something toxic and wrong and alive in a way that the other patterns were not.

"What is this?" you whispered.

He did not look at you. His eyes were fixed on the wall, and his jaw was tight, and his voice was the voice of someone confessing to a crime they were not sure was forgivable.

"When I stopped the fire, I had to… process the energy. The annihilation energy. I could not simply destroy it—it had to go somewhere. So I…" He swallowed. "I absorbed it. And my magic is fighting it, but it is—" He stopped. Started again. "The healer would call it Blot. The beginning of one. I would call it the price of not losing you."

The word Blot landed in your stomach like a stone. You knew what Blot was. Everyone at Night Raven College knew what Blot was—the toxic accumulation of negative emotion and overused magic, the thing that turned mages into monsters, the thing that had nearly consumed your friends. And Malleus was carrying it. He was carrying it because of you.

"Does it hurt?" you asked.

"That is not the question you should be asking."

"Answer it anyway."

He was silent for a moment. Then, quietly: "It burns. Like something eating me from the inside. Like a second heart that beats in the wrong rhythm." He finally looked at you, and his eyes were the eyes of someone who has been carrying a secret for too long and is terrified of what will happen now that the secret is out. "I am managing it. I will continue to manage it. It is not the first time I have—"

"Not the first time?"

He closed his eyes. "I have lived for centuries. I have been alone for centuries. Do you truly believe that the darkness has never come close before?"

Your chest ached—the white scar pulsing in sympathy, or in response, or in some frequency that you were only beginning to hear. And you thought about what he had said earlier, about fear, about the fear that didn't stop, and you understood now that he wasn't just afraid of losing you. He was afraid of what losing you would turn him into. He was afraid of the Blot. He was afraid that the next time he nearly lost you, he wouldn't pull back.

You reached out and pressed your hand over the dark pattern on his chest.

He flinched—actually flinched, like your touch burned—and then he didn't, because your hand was cool against the heat of the Blot, and the coolness seemed to soothe something in him, and his breath came out in a long, shuddering exhale that carried the weight of secrets finally shared.

"I'm not going to let you carry this alone," you said.

"You cannot—"

"I can't take it from you. I know. But I can sit here. I can hold your hand. I can remind you that you have something to come back to, when the darkness gets too loud." You pressed harder against the inky pattern, and you felt it—the faint, wrong pulse of it, the anti-rhythm that fought against his heartbeat—and you did not pull away. "You told me to stay behind you in the tower. This is me telling you: let me beside you. Not behind. Beside."

He looked at you for a long time. The green of his eyes was bright, and the wetness of them was visible, and the mask—the prince, the composure, the centuries of careful self-containment—was cracking, piece by piece, like the stone beneath his knees in the courtyard.

"You are the most terrifying creature I have ever met," he said softly. "And I have met dragons."

"You are a dragon."

"Yes. And you are a mortal woman with no magic and a pocket full of rocks who just told me—me, the Prince of Briar Valley, the Thorn in the Side of Fortune—that I am not allowed to suffer alone. Do you have any idea how unthinkable that is, in my world? How unheard of?" His voice was rough, and his hand came up to cover yours where it rested on his chest, and his fingers pressed into your palm. "In my world, princes do not show weakness. Princes do not admit to Blot. Princes do not let magicless girls see the spreading stain on their hearts and say, let me help you carry it."

"Good thing we're not in your world, then. We're in an infirmary at Noble Bell College, and you're a boy who's scared, and I'm a girl who's empty, and between the two of us, we might almost be a whole person."

He stared at you. And then—slowly, like a glacier calving, like a wall falling, like a door that had been locked for centuries finally swinging open—he smiled. Not the cool, distant smile of the prince. The real one. The soft one. The one that was just for you.

"You absurd, impossible creature," he said.

"Thank you."

"That was not a compliment."

"I'm choosing to take it as one."

He pressed his forehead to yours. His breath mingled with your breath. His hand was warm over yours, and the dark pattern beneath your palm pulsed once, twice, and then—settled. Not gone. Not healed. But quiet, for now, soothed by the coolness of your touch, by the steadiness of your presence, by the simple, devastating fact of being seen without being judged.

"Stay with me tonight," he said. "Not because I am afraid to be alone, and not because I fear the dreams, but because I want to wake up tomorrow and find you beside me and know that yesterday was real."

"Always," you said, and meant it.

PART IV: THE MASQUERADE

The masquerade ball proceeded as though nothing had happened, because that was what masquerades were for—wearing masks, pretending, dancing on the edge of catastrophe with a smile fixed in place and the absolute refusal to let the evening be ruined by something as inconvenient as attempted genocide.

The great hall of Noble Bell College had been transformed. Candles floated at varying heights, their flames reflected in the polished marble floor until the room seemed suspended in a field of stars. Flowers—the same species that had been weaponized, but alive now, gently luminous, innocent—cascaded from crystal vases.

Music swelled from an unseen orchestra, and the assembled students and dignitaries danced with the particular determination of people who had nearly died and were choosing to celebrate their survival rather than contemplate its fragility.

You wore a mask—white and gold, a gift from the Noble Bell students who had heard about what happened and seemed to feel that apologies were inadequate but gestures were not. Your dress was a gift from Azul—the color of deep water, blue-green and shifting, moving like liquid when you walked.

"Consider it an investment in goodwill," he'd said when you tried to protest. Then, quieter: "Also, you nearly died today, and I find I am… not entirely indifferent to that fact."

From Azul Ashengrotto, that was practically a love letter.

The scar on your chest ached beneath the fabric—a low, persistent throb, like a second heartbeat. But it was a different kind of ache now. When you stood near the floating candles, the scar pulsed in time with their flickering. When the orchestra played, the scar hummed with the bass notes. It was a tuning fork, attuned to frequencies you were only beginning to hear.

Malleus had not left your side all evening. He appeared to simply happen to be standing wherever you were, and his hand kept finding the small of your back, and his eyes tracked every person who came within three feet of you. His presence radiated the particular energy of a dragon guarding its hoard—not aggressive, but watchful.

He looked ruinous tonight. In formal wear the color of midnight, with a black mask that made his green eyes burn, he looked like something out of a story—the kind where the girl follows the beautiful creature into the forest and doesn't come back the same.

"You're staring," you said.

"You are worth staring at."

"You've been staring at me all night. People are going to talk."

"People have been talking about me for centuries. A little more will not damage my reputation."

"Your reputation is already 'terrifying dragon prince who lives on rooftops and has a concerning affinity for gargoyles.' I'm not sure you can make it worse."

His lips twitched. "I have been considering adding 'adept at formal dance' to my list of accomplishments. Would you care to assist me?"

"I should warn you that I'm not a very good dancer."

"I have been dancing since before your language existed. I am more than capable of compensating for any deficiencies."

"Did you just call my dancing deficient?"

"I called it endearingly imperfect. There is a distinction."

He led you to the floor, and when he pulled you into the frame of the dance, it was like stepping into a current—swept up, carried, moved by forces larger than yourself. He was exactly as good as he had claimed, and your feet moved without conscious effort.

But there was an undercurrent. A tension in the way he held you—close enough that you could feel his heartbeat through his shirt, tight enough that there was no space for anyone else to cut in. He was dancing with you, and he was also holding on.

"The song they're playing," you said, as the melody shifted into something slower, something that ached, "what is it?"

"It is an old fae ballad. About a mortal woman who catches the attention of a forest spirit, and the spirit who loves her so fiercely that he binds her to himself so that she will never leave." He paused. "It is considered a love song, among my people."

"And what happens to the woman?"

"She stays. Not because she is bound, but because she chooses to. Because the spirit, for all his power, is afraid of his own loneliness, and she is the only one who has ever seen it and not looked away."

You looked up at him—at his masked face, at the green fire of his eyes—and you thought: This is what we are.

"Malleus—"

The music stopped.

And another voice—thin and sharp and carrying the weight of a grief that would never heal—cut through the silence.

"May I have this dance?"

Rollo Flamme stood at the edge of the dance floor, and his mask was white and plain and covered nothing of the devastation in his expression. He was not looking at you. He was looking at Malleus, and there was something in his gaze—not defiance, but the desperate need of a boy who had been broken and was trying to understand how to put himself back together.

The ballroom went quiet. You felt the temperature drop—Malleus's magic spiking—and for a moment, the candles flickered and the flowers shivered.

But Malleus did not burn the room. Instead, he released you—with a reluctance that was almost painful to witness—and turned to face the boy who had tried to erase him from existence.

"Very well," he said, and his voice was cold and measured. "One dance."

They took the floor together, and the orchestra—reading the room with the survival instincts of musicians everywhere—struck up a waltz.

It was not a dance. It was a war conducted in miniature.

Rollo's movements were precise, mechanical. His hand on Malleus's shoulder was stiff, and his face was a mask behind the mask. Malleus moved like water around stone, fluid and inexorable.

Then Malleus leaned down—just enough to bring his mouth near Rollo's ear—and said something that you could not hear but could see the effect of. Rollo's step faltered. His composure cracked. And for just a moment, his face was the face of a boy who had lost his brother and was being forced to confront the fact that loss did not justify atrocity.

But then—unexpectedly—Rollo spoke back. You couldn't hear the words, but you could see Malleus's expression shift, just slightly, as though a blade had been inserted between the joints of his armor and twisted. Whatever Rollo said, it landed.

The waltz ended. The two of them separated. Rollo turned and walked away, and Malleus watched him go with an expression that was not satisfaction, not forgiveness, but something harder—something that had been shaken.

He returned to you, and his hand found yours, and his grip was tighter than it needed to be.

"What did you say to him?" you asked.

"I told him that his brother would have loved this music." His voice was quiet. "And that grief is not permission."

"And what did he say to you?"

Malleus was silent for a long moment. His jaw was tight, and his eyes were fixed on the middle distance, and you could see the wheels turning—calculating, weighing, deciding whether to share.

"He said," Malleus finally spoke, and his voice was carefully neutral, "that I should ask you what you heard. When the gargoyles fell."

You blinked. "What?"

"He said that I should ask the magicless girl what it sounded like when the living stone went quiet. Because he cannot hear it—he has magic, and the magic drowns out the silence—but you…" Malleus looked at you, and his eyes were searching. "You heard it. Didn't you? When the bell began to ring and the magic left the gargoyles. You heard them die."

The noise of the ballroom seemed to recede. You were back in the bell tower, and the sound was in your ears again—not the sound of stone hitting stone, but the sound before that. The sound of leaving. A frequency that you had felt in the scar on your chest before you felt it anywhere else, a thinning, a fading, a song that was being sung for the last time and knew it.

"Yes," you said, and your voice was thick. "I heard them. It was like—like a hum that stopped. Like a breath that didn't come back. They were singing, Malleus. The gargoyles. They were singing, and then they weren't, and the silence was—"

You couldn't finish. The grief hit you again—fresh and raw and stupid, because they were just stone, they were just constructs, they were just magic in the shape of guardians, and you had talked to them and they had listened and now they were rubble on the ground and no one was mourning them except you.

Malleus's hand tightened around yours. "I did not know," he said softly. "That they sang. I have never heard them."

"Because you have magic," you said, and the realization landed like a blow. "The magic fills the frequency. You can't hear the song because your own song is too loud." You pressed your hand against the scar on your chest, and it pulsed—white and branching, a tuning fork attuned to the silence between the notes. "But I can. I heard them because I was empty enough to hear. I survived because I was empty enough to survive. And I—"

Empty. The word again. The wound again. But this time, something shifted in the way you understood it. Because emptiness wasn't just the absence of something. Emptiness was capacity. Emptiness was the space where a song could be heard. Emptiness was the silence that made music possible.

You had survived because you were empty, and you had heard the gargoyles die because you were empty, and the scar on your chest was a record of a frequency you were never meant to process, but you had processed it, you had felt it, and that meant—

That meant you weren't nothing. You were a vessel. And a vessel is only empty until it's filled.

"Let's get out of here," you said.

Across the ballroom, Azul Ashengrotto stood with a glass of something sparkling in his hand and a carefully constructed expression of pleasant detachment on his face. He was watching Malleus lead you toward the exit, and he was thinking about probability.

He thought in probability the way other people thought in language—constantly, automatically, without conscious effort. And right now, the probability matrix in his head was doing something unusual. It was calculating the likelihood of Malleus Draconia finding emotional fulfillment with a magicless human, and the numbers were not favorable.

But then, Azul had built an empire on unfavorable odds. And he had stood at a window and tried to negotiate with gravity, and gravity had refused, and the universe had refused, and every contract and clause and carefully worded stipulation in his arsenal had been worthless against the simple, devastating physics of falling. And yet, the girl had survived—because a dragon dove, and because she was empty, and because the universe occasionally broke its own rules in ways that no contract could anticipate.

He took a sip of his drink and allowed himself a small, private smile.

"Good for them," he murmured, and moved on to more profitable calculations.

Near the punch bowl, Idia Shroud was attempting to blend into the wall. His hair had been cycling through anxious colors all evening, and he had consumed enough punch to float a small vessel.

But he had also, very quietly, without telling anyone, done something. After the infirmary, after he had stopped shaking and his hair had settled to a steady blue, he had gone back to the courtyard. He had found a piece of rubble that looked different from the rest—smoother, shaped by intention rather than impact—and he had picked it up and turned it over in his hands, and he had seen the remnants of a face. A gargoyle. Or what had been one.

He had taken it back to his room, and he had set it on his desk, and he had stared at it for a long time, and he had thought about all the things that magic made and all the things it destroyed, and he had thought about the green fire warping around Malleus like something trying to break through, and he had thought about the sound that the prince's chest had made—not a sob, not a human sound, something older and scarier—and he had not slept, because every time he closed his eyes, he saw the same thing: his own reflection in the mirror at Styx, dark and dripping and smiling.

He had placed the gargoyle fragment on his desk next to his monitor, where he could see it. A reminder. Not of what had been lost, but of what happened when the people who were supposed to be in control lost control.

Now, at the ball, he watched you and Malleus leave, and his hair went pale for a single second before settling into a calm, steady blue.

"Hey," he said to no one in particular, "they're okay. That's… that's good."

He took another cup of punch. He stayed for another twenty minutes. He left before anyone could try to make him dance.

It was, by Idia Shroud standards, a rousing social success.

PART V: THE UNMASKING

The walk back to the guest quarters was silent, but it was not an uncomfortable silence. Your hand was in his, and his thumb was tracing slow circles on your palm. The branching scar on your chest was aching in time with your heartbeat, and the air was cool and still, and the moon was heavy in the sky.

Grim was asleep on your bed when you checked—a small, warm lump of fur and snoring, one paw wrapped around a fish-shaped plushie that you were fairly certain had not been there when you left. He had probably stolen it from one of the Noble Bell students. You would have to return it in the morning, but for now you let him sleep.

You closed the door softly and stood in the hallway, and the silence of the corridor was a different kind of silence than the silence of the walk—expectant, weighted, full of things that had not yet been said.

Malleus stood a few feet away, and he was looking at you with an expression you couldn't entirely read. The mask was still on, covering the upper half of his face, and in the dim light, he looked like a stranger—beautiful and distant and unknowable.

"Come with me," he said quietly.

You followed him down the corridor to his room—larger than yours, because apparently even guest quarters at Noble Bell College made distinctions based on royal status—and he opened the door and gestured you inside.

The room was lit by candles that flickered with green flame, and the windows looked out over the city, and the moon was full and heavy in the sky. The air smelled of smoke and something green and growing, like the heart of a forest after rain.

Malleus closed the door behind you, and the sound of it was final in a way that made your breath catch.

He went to the window and stood with his back to you, and the moonlight silhouetted him against the glass. His shoulders were rigid, his hands clasped behind his back—the posture of a prince, not a person.

He had rebuilt his walls again. You could see them from here—the careful composure, the straight spine, the lifted chin. But the walls were thinner now, and the light behind them was brighter, and you could see the shape of the boy inside, pressing his palms against the stone and wondering if it was safe to come out.

"I have been thinking," he said, and his voice was carefully neutral, "about what happens next."

"Next?"

"When we return to Night Raven College. When this evening becomes a memory and the world resumes its ordinary shape." He paused. "I have been thinking about whether I can allow myself to return to what we were before. Colleagues. Friends. Two people who share a rooftop and conversation and nothing more."

The word nothing landed like a stone in still water, and the ripples spread outward through the quiet room.

"And what have you concluded?" you asked.

He turned from the window, and his mask was still on, and you wanted to take it off—not the physical mask, but the other one, the one he wore like armor.

"I have concluded," he said, "that I am not capable of it. I have concluded that what I feel for you is not a passing fancy or a convenient attachment or the temporary fixation of a long-lived creature who has found a novel distraction." His voice caught. "I have concluded that I am in love with you. Entirely. Irrevocably. In a way that terrifies me more than any flame or bell or threat of annihilation ever could."

You stood very still. The scar on your chest throbbed. The moonlight made everything silver and strange.

"Today, when you fell," he continued, and his voice was rougher now, the composure starting to crack, "I did not think. I did not calculate. I simply moved. My body moved. My magic moved. Every part of me moved toward you as though my own existence depended on reaching you in time, and I realized that it did. That my existence—the parts of it that I choose rather than inherit—depends on you being in the world."

He removed his mask.

It was a small gesture—the reaching up, the lifting, the setting aside—but it felt like watching someone take off their skin. Without the mask, his face was bare and open and more vulnerable than you had ever seen it. The shadows under his eyes. The tightness at the corners of his mouth. The raw, unguarded hope that lived in the green of his irises.

"And I am afraid," he said, and his voice was barely above a whisper. "Not of loving you—I cannot stop that. I am afraid of what my love will do to you. Rollo said—" He stopped, and his jaw worked, and you saw the blade that had been inserted between the joints of his armor during the dance. "He said that I am a conflagration, and you are kindling. He said that my magic would consume you, as magic consumed his brother. And the worst part—the worst part—is that I cannot say with certainty that he is wrong."

The room was very quiet. The candles flickered. The moon hung in the window like a held breath.

"I have been alone for so long," he continued, and his voice was cracking now, the walls falling, the boy pressing through. "And I have wanted—wanted—for so long, and wanting is the most dangerous thing a creature like me can do, because wanting leads to holding, and holding leads to crushing, and I am so much larger than you, so much older, so much more, and I am terrified that I will love you the way fire loves a forest—completely, and devastatingly, and without any awareness that I am destroying what I cannot live without."

A tear slid down his cheek. He did not wipe it away.

"So I am not asking you to feel the same way," he said. "I am not asking you for anything. I am simply telling you. Because I cannot carry it anymore, and because you deserve to know that the reason I sit on that roof every night is not because of the gargoyles, and the reason I attend every school event is not because of school spirit, and the reason I learned to make that tea you like—the one with the honey and the lemon, even though I think it tastes like someone dissolved a candy in hot water—is because you drink it, and I wanted to be able to offer you something that you would accept."

You stood there, and the weight of his words pressed against you, and the scar on your chest pulsed, and you thought about all the things he had just said—about fire and forests and the fear of destroying what he loved—and you thought about Rollo's blade, the one that had found the crack, and you understood that Malleus was not just confessing his love. He was warning you. He was giving you the chance to walk away before the fire reached you.

And you thought: He is more afraid of hurting me than of being hurt. He has reorganized his entire terror around the possibility of my destruction. He is not a conflagration. He is a hearth that has been burning for so long that he has forgotten what warmth feels like from the outside.

You crossed the room in three steps and took his face in your hands.

"I talk to gargoyles," you said. "Not just to you—although you're my favorite one—but to actual gargoyles. I've been doing it since I arrived at Night Raven, because they don't judge and they don't leave and sometimes I just need to say things out loud to something that won't argue with me."

He blinked. "I… what?"

"I pick up stones from every place I visit and keep them in my pockets. I have rocks from the Heartslabyul gardens, from the Scarabia dunes, from the Octavinelle pools—stones that aren't worth anything to anyone but me, because they remind me that I was there, that I existed in those places, that I'm real."

"I—"

"I hum when I'm nervous. Old songs I don't remember learning. You've heard me do it—I know you've heard me, because once on the roof you started humming along, and it was the most beautiful sound I've ever heard, and I didn't tell you that because I was afraid of what it would mean." You were crying now, and you didn't care. "I make terrible puns and I'm unreasonably proud of them. I get competitive about card games in a way that is absolutely disproportionate to the stakes."

Your voice dropped.

"And I have spent every single day since I arrived at Night Raven College feeling like I am nothing. Like I am a ghost walking through a school full of real people, people with magic and power and purpose, while I am just—a shape. An empty vessel. A placeholder where a real student should be."

He opened his mouth to protest, but you kept going.

"The flame went through me tonight, Malleus. It went through me because there was nothing inside me to burn. And I survived, and that's supposed to be lucky, and it is, but it also confirmed the thing I've been afraid of since the day I arrived: I am empty. I am nothing. The weapon designed to unmake magic couldn't find anything in me worth destroying."

Your hands were shaking against his face. His were steadying your wrists, grounding you.

"But then—" Your voice broke. "Then you caught me. And the stones fell out of my pockets, and I thought, there goes the proof. There goes the evidence that I was ever here. And I was falling, and I was empty, and I was nothing, and I thought—"

You took a breath that shuddered through your entire body.

"I thought about you. And I thought: if he catches me, I'll tell him. I'll tell him that I'm not empty because I'm nothing. I'm empty because I'm a vessel, and vessels are only empty until they're filled. And he fills me. Not with magic—I don't need magic. But with meaning. With proof. With stones and songs and tea I didn't ask for and humming I didn't know I could hear."

You pressed your forehead to his. His skin was warm, and his breath was unsteady, and his hands were gripping your wrists like lifelines.

"So don't you dare stand there and tell me you're a conflagration and I'm kindling," you said. "Don't you dare let Rollo Flamme's grief define what we are. You are not a wildfire. You are a hearth. And I am not kindling. I am the person who has been cold for a very long time, and I have finally found a fire that doesn't burn, and I am done being afraid of getting too close."

He stared at you. His eyes were wide and wet and absolutely still, the way they had been when you opened them after the fall—like he was seeing something he couldn't quite believe.

Then his hands moved from your wrists to your face, and his forehead pressed against yours, and he was laughing—laughing through tears, laughing through the cracking of his voice, laughing like someone who had been holding his breath for centuries and had finally remembered how to exhale.

"You talk to gargoyles," he said, and his voice was wrecked.

"I do."

"You pick up stones."

"Everywhere I go."

"You hum when you're nervous. I thought you might not realize you were doing it. I hummed along because I didn't want you to stop."

Your breath caught. "You didn't?"

"I would listen to you hum for the rest of my life," he said, and his voice was raw and fierce. "And you are not empty. You are not nothing. You are the opposite of nothing—you are the space where things become possible. A vessel, yes. The most precious kind. One that can hold anything."

He kissed you.

It was not a perfect kiss. His lips were salt-wet from tears, and your nose was running, and your teeth clicked together in the hurry of it, and none of it mattered because he was there, alive and warm and choosing you, and the alternative was a world without this.

He made a sound against your mouth—a sob, or a sigh, or something in between—and his hands moved from your face to your waist, pulling you against him. His body was warm, so warm, the dragon-fire pressing against your skin, and his mouth moved against yours with a hunger that had been building for months—for years, for centuries of loneliness.

You clung to him. Your hands found the back of his neck, the hard line of his shoulders, the soft fabric of his shirt that you wanted very much to remove. When his tongue swept across the seam of your lips, you opened for him without hesitation, and the sound he made—a low, rough groan—was the most beautiful thing you had ever heard.

"Tell me to stop," he said, against your mouth.

"Don't stop. Don't you dare stop."

He made a sound that was half-laugh, half-sob, and then his hands were moving—up your sides, along the curve of your spine, tangling in your hair and tilting your head back so that he could kiss the line of your jaw, the hollow of your throat, the place where your pulse beat frantic and fast.

"You have no idea," he murmured against your neck, and his breath was hot and his voice was rough. "No idea how long I have wanted this."

"It's not arrogance," you said, and your voice was breathless and your hands were fumbling with the buttons of his shirt. "It's love, you ridiculous dragon."

He lifted his head, and his eyes met yours, and in them you saw a door opening, a wall falling, a gate swinging wide.

"Say it again," he whispered.

"I love you, Malleus Draconia." You got the first button free, then the second, and your fingers found the heat of his skin beneath, and he shuddered at the contact. "I love your gargoyles and your solitude and your absurdly long life and the way you pretend not to care about things you care about very much. I love that you learned to make tea you don't even like just because I drink it. I love that you hum along when you think I don't notice. I love that you caught me when I fell, and that you cried, and that you are terrified right now, and you are still here, still holding me, still choosing this."

His face crumpled—not with grief, but with something that was its exact opposite—and he pressed his forehead to yours and breathed your name like a prayer.

Then he kissed you again, and this time it was slow—so slow, so thorough, so gentle in its devastation that you felt yourself coming undone at the seams.

His hands found the zipper of your dress and paused, and his eyes asked the question his voice could not, and you answered by reaching back and undoing it yourself, letting the fabric pool at your feet in a whisper of blue-green silk.

He looked at you. Just looked, for a long moment, at the branching white scar on your chest and the skin it marked and the person standing before him in nothing but moonlight and candle glow. And his expression—reverent, hungry, full of love—shifted when he saw the scar. The hunger didn't leave, but something else joined it: grief, and tenderness, and a fierce, protective fury that had nowhere to go but into the press of his hand against the mark.

He dropped to his knees.

It was not a gesture of worship, though it looked like one. It was a gesture of reaching—of bringing his eyes level with the scar, of bringing his mouth close enough to feel the warmth of your skin, of looking at the place where the annihilation flame had passed through you and understanding, in the most visceral way possible, what had nearly been taken from him.

He pressed his hand over the scar, and his palm was warm, and the scar pulsed beneath his touch—white and branching, a tuning fork struck by the frequency of his magic—and you gasped, because you had never felt anything like it. It was not pain. It was resonance. Two frequencies meeting and trying to find their harmony.

"When this touched you," he said, and his voice was low and rough and not entirely steady, "I felt it. In my soul. The frequency that was designed to unmake magic—I felt it resonate through our connection, and I knew—I knew—that something essential had been damaged, and I was too far away to stop it."

He reached into his collar and drew out something that hadn't been there a moment ago—a teardrop of green stone, dragonstone, suspended from a chain so fine it looked like it was made of moonlight. But it was not merely decorative: there was something inside the stone, a flicker of warmth that pulsed like a heartbeat.

"I forged this tonight," he said. "After the healer left. While you were sleeping. I took a fragment of my fire—the purest part, the part that has never been touched by darkness or doubt or the thing that spreads beneath my skin—and I placed it in this stone, and I meant to give it to you at the masquerade, as a gift, as a promise. But now—"

He looked up at you, and his eyes were wet, and his voice was raw.

"Now I want to place it here." He lifted the pendant and pressed the green stone against the white scar, and the two frequencies met—his fire and her frost, his magic and her emptiness—and the air between them hummed with a sound that was not quite music and not quite silence but something in between, something new, something that had never existed before this moment.

"Where they tried to unmake you," he said, "I place a piece of what I am. Let my fire be your shield."

He fastened the clasp around your neck. The pendant settled against your skin, and the warmth of it seeped into the scar, and for a moment—just a moment—the ache stopped. Not because the pain was gone, but because it had been answered. The white scar pulsed. The green stone pulsed. Two different frequencies, finding their harmony.

Then he rose to his feet, and he removed his shirt, and you saw the scrollwork patterns on his chest—and the dark, inky pattern near his heart, the one he had shown you in the infirmary, the one that was the price of not losing you. It had spread, slightly, in the hours since you'd last seen it. Not much. But enough.

You reached out and traced the dark pattern with your fingertip, and he shuddered—the same full-body tremor you had felt before—and his breath caught, and his hands fisted at his sides.

"Does it hurt?" you asked.

"It burns when you touch it," he said, and his voice was strained. "But it also… eases. The coolness of your skin against the heat of the Blot. It is contradictory. It is the most relief I have felt since I absorbed it."

"Then I won't stop touching it."

He closed his eyes. "You cannot know what that offer means to me."

"I can. Because you've been carrying this alone for hours, and I've been carrying my emptiness alone for years, and I think—" You pressed your palm flat against the dark pattern, and he inhaled sharply, and the green fire around him flickered, and the pendant at your throat pulsed in response. "I think we're supposed to carry them together."

He opened his eyes, and the look in them was not gratitude or relief or any of the things you might have expected. It was hunger—not the hunger of the dragon, but the hunger of a man who has been starving for touch and has finally been given permission to eat.

He kissed you again, and this time there was nothing held back.

He removed the rest of his clothes, and you saw all of him—the scrollwork patterns that traced down his torso and disappeared below his waist, the dark inky spread near his heart, the evidence of his desire—and his eyes were on yours, and he was waiting.

"You're beautiful," you said, and you meant it the way you meant the word love—completely, irrevocably.

He helped you out of what remained of your clothing, and then there was nothing between you—no fabric, no walls, no masks, no pretense—and the feeling of his skin against yours was like coming home to a place you had never been but had always known existed.

He settled between your legs, and the weight of him was real—solid, present, undeniable. This was not metaphor. This was the simple, devastating reality of two bodies in a bed, and the heat of him pressed against you, and the way your breath caught at the contact, and the way his jaw clenched as he held himself still.

"Are you sure?" he asked.

"I've never been more sure of anything."

He entered you slowly—so slowly—and the stretch of it was real and specific and not like anything you had imagined. He was careful, achingly careful, pausing at every fraction of an inch to check your face for discomfort, and you could see what it cost him in the rigid line of his shoulders and the way his hands fisted in the sheets.

"I'm not going to break," you said, and you lifted your hips to take more of him, and the sound he made—half-groan, half-plea—was the most human sound you had ever heard from him.

"You might," he said, and his voice was ragged. "You fell out of a tower today—"

"You caught me. You'll always catch me." You wrapped your legs around his waist and pulled him deeper, and both of you gasped. "Now move."

He laughed—actually laughed, breathless and incredulous—and then he moved, and the world narrowed to the place where your bodies joined.

His rhythm was slow at first, deliberate. You gave him the answer in the arch of your back, the grip of your hands on his shoulders, the sounds that escaped your throat without your permission. He responded in kind—adjusting his angle when you gasped, deepening his stroke when you keened.

It was not seamless. You shifted awkwardly at one point, trying to find a better angle, and he slipped out, and you both fumbled to correct it, and his elbow buckled and he caught himself on the mattress inches from your face, and for a moment you were both just—there. Two people in a bed, trying to fit their bodies together, failing and trying again.

He looked down at you from inches away, and his hair was falling into his face, and his expression was caught between embarrassment and laughter, and you thought: This. This is what intimacy is. Not the perfect rhythm, but the elbow buckling and the fumbling and the trying again.

You reached up and pushed the hair out of his face, and he turned to press a kiss to your palm, and then he entered you again, and this time the angle was right, really right, and the sound you made was the raw, honest noise of a body experiencing something it wanted more of.

"There," you gasped. "Right there—"

He obeyed, and his rhythm became more urgent, and the heat of him was building inside you and around you. And the pendant at your throat pulsed green with each thrust, and the scar on your chest ached white with each impact, and the two frequencies—fire and frost, magic and mortal—were trying to find their harmony, and it was not smooth, it was not seamless, it was the fumbling, imperfect, real sound of two incompatible existences trying to occupy the same space.

"I can feel your heartbeat," he said against your skin, and his voice was rough and wondering. "I can feel it where we're joined. You're alive. You're here."

"I'm here," you said, and you wrapped your arms around him and held on, and the pendant pulsed, and the scar ached, and the pressure was building, and you were climbing toward it together—

You broke.

Not like a wave. Not like a storm. Like a door opening—sudden, complete, and full of light. The pleasure swept through you in a long, rolling surge, and the scar on your chest flared white, and the pendant at your throat flared green, and for a single, blinding moment, the two frequencies matched—not perfectly, never perfectly, but close enough, close enough to feel what harmony could be—and you heard yourself say his name, and it was not a word but a frequency, a sound, a song.

He followed you over the edge a moment later, and his rhythm stuttered, and his body tensed, and his voice broke on your name, and the dark pattern on his chest—the Blot, the price, the poison he had swallowed—pulsed, and you felt it against your palm where you were pressing it, felt the inky darkness surge and then—recede. Not much. Not cured. But pulled back, like a tide going out, and the pendant at your throat burned warmer for a moment, and you understood.

The fragment of his fire that he had placed in the stone was doing more than shielding you. It was anchoring him. Giving the darkness somewhere to go that wasn't his heart. Offloading a fraction of the poison into the vessel he had created for you—which meant that you were carrying it now, both of you, his fire in your stone and his darkness in your keeping, and it was not a cure, it was not a solution, but it was shared, and sharing made it survivable.

He didn't pull away immediately. He stayed where he was, forehead pressed to yours, breath coming in harsh, ragged gasps. His hand found the pendant at your throat, and his fingers closed around it, and he held it like it was the most precious thing in the world.

"The stone is warmer," he said, and his voice was quiet and wondering and a little afraid. "I can feel the Blot—the edge of it—moving toward it. Toward you." His eyes met yours. "I am sorry. I did not intend—I did not know—"

"Good," you said.

He blinked. "Good?"

"You've been carrying this alone. Now we're both carrying it. That seems right." You pressed your hand over his where it held the pendant. "I told you. Let me beside you. Not behind. Beside."

He closed his eyes, and a tear slid down his cheek, and he did not try to hide it.

Afterward, he held you.

He held you with the careful strength of someone who has learned that the things they hold can break, and with the fierce, protective energy of someone who has nearly lost what they hold and is determined never to let it happen again. His hand rested over the pendant on your chest, and beneath his palm, he could feel your heartbeat—steady and strong and alive—and the warmth of the stone where it had absorbed a fraction of his darkness.

You lay with your head on his chest and listened to his heartbeat—slower than a human heartbeat, much slower, and deeper. The pendant at your throat pulsed in time with his pulse, and the scar on your chest ached softly, but it was a different kind of ache now—not the pain of something damaged, but the warmth of something healing.

The room was quiet. The candles had burned low. The moon had moved across the sky.

"Tell me something," you said, and your voice was drowsy and content.

"What would you like to know?"

"Something you've never told anyone. Something small. Something that doesn't matter."

He was quiet for a moment, his hand moving in slow circles on your back. Then: "I am afraid of the dark."

You lifted your head. "You're afraid of the dark? You're a dragon. You make fire."

"I am afraid of the dark inside myself. The darkness that comes when I am alone for too long, and the silence grows teeth, and I begin to wonder if I have imagined the entire world—if the people I care for are real or merely constructs of a mind that has been solitary for so long that it has started to invent company." His voice was soft, and he was looking at the ceiling, and his hand had stilled on your back. "That is why I sit on the roof. Because from the roof, I can see the lights in the windows. I can see people moving. I can see the evidence that the world continues to exist even when I am not looking at it."

You pressed your hand against his chest—against the dark pattern that spread near his heart, the Blot that he had been carrying alone, the price of his love.

"The world exists," you said. "I exist. And I'm not going anywhere."

"Neither am I," he said, and his voice was quiet and fierce. "Not ever. Not willingly."

You settled against him, and his arms tightened around you, and the pendant at your throat pulsed green, and the scar on your chest pulsed white, and the two frequencies hummed together in the dark—imperfect, fumbling, real.

PART VI: THE MORNING

In the morning, you woke to two things: the sun coming through the window at a low angle, painting the room in gold, and Malleus, sitting on the edge of the bed, holding something small in his palm.

He was shirtless, and the scrollwork patterns on his chest were visible in the morning light, and the dark pattern near his heart was still there—but smaller, you thought. Less than it had been. The pendant at your throat was warm, warmer than it should have been from body heat alone, and when you pressed your hand against it, you felt the faint pulse of something that was not your own heartbeat.

"Good morning," you said, and your voice was rough with sleep.

"Good morning." He turned to you, and his expression was—heavy. Not sad, exactly, but weighted with something he was trying to find the words for. "I need to tell you something. And then I need to give you something."

"All right."

"Last night—when we—" He gestured vaguely at the bed, at the rumpled sheets, at the space between them. "The pendant absorbed some of the Blot. I felt it happen. A portion of the darkness that I had been containing moved from my heart into the stone, and from the stone—" He stopped. "I do not know how much. I do not know what it means. But you are now carrying a piece of my curse, and I am—"

He pressed his lips together, and his jaw worked, and you could see the guilt sitting on his shoulders like a second skeleton.

"I gave you my fire to protect you," he said, "and instead, I have given you my darkness. I am—"

"If you say you're sorry, I'm going to throw a pillow at you."

He blinked. "I—"

"You gave me a piece of your soul. Both pieces—the light and the dark. That's what souls are, Malleus. They're not just the pretty parts. They're the Blot and the fire and the fear and the love, all mixed together." You sat up, and the pendant shifted against your chest, and the scar beneath it pulsed once, warmly. "Do I feel different? Does the darkness—does it hurt me?"

He looked at you—really looked, searching for signs of damage, of corruption, of the thing he feared most—and whatever he found seemed to ease something in him, because his shoulders loosened, and his breath came out in a long, slow exhale.

"No," he said. "You feel… warmer. Like the stone is insulating you from the resonance damage." He paused. "The healer said the scar might never fully fade. But this morning, when I woke—the edges were less defined. The fragment of my fire is healing the wound. And the darkness—" He looked at his own chest, at the inky pattern near his heart. "It has receded. Not far. But enough that I can breathe again."

"Then it's working," you said. "The sharing. It's working."

"It is." His voice was rough. "I do not deserve—"

"Stop." You reached out and pressed your finger against his lips. "You don't get to decide what you deserve. That's not how this works. I'm here. I'm staying. I'm carrying your fire and your darkness and your ridiculous tea-making skills, and you're carrying my stones and my humming and my fear of being nothing, and that's the deal. Non-negotiable. Signed in ink. No take-backs."

He stared at you over your finger, and his eyes were bright, and his lips curved against your hand, and he kissed your fingertip.

"You are the most terrifying creature I have ever met," he said.

"You already said that."

"It bears repeating."

He opened his palm, and you saw what he had been holding.

A stone. Small, smooth, ordinary—the kind of stone you would walk past without a second glance. But this one had been washed, carefully, lovingly, and the pale surface was marked with a faint trace of Noble Bell courtyard dust, and it fit perfectly in the groove of your palm where the old one had been.

"I went back," he said quietly. "After I brought you to the infirmary. I went back to the courtyard and I—I looked for them. Your stones. Most of them were gone—scattered, buried in the rubble, lost. But I found this one." He held it out to you. "I recognized it because I have seen you hold it. On the roof, when you think I am not looking. You turn it over in your palm when you are worried about something, and you hum, and the stone turns, and I think—"

He stopped, and his voice was rough, and his eyes were wet.

"I think that is what proof looks like. Not grand gestures. Not ancient magic. A small stone in a pocket. A hum in the dark. The evidence that someone was here, and mattered, and was real." He placed the stone in your hand, and his fingers closed around yours, and the pendant at your throat pulsed once, warmly. "You are not empty. You are not nothing. You are the person who collects the world in her pockets because she is afraid of forgetting it, and I am the person who sits on rooftops because he is afraid of the dark, and between the two of us—"

"Between the two of us," you said, and you closed your fingers around the stone, "we might almost be a whole person."

He smiled. The real one. The one that was just for you.

"I believe," he said, "that we already are."

In the morning, Rollo Flamme stood at his brother's grave and wept.

The morning was kind, and the sun was warm, and somewhere in the city, a bell stood silent in its tower. Rollo pressed his palm to the cold stone, and he did not ask for forgiveness, because he was not yet ready to earn it. But he asked for time.

And as he knelt there, a thought came to him unbidden—the image of a magicless girl, screaming not for herself but for the gargoyles. For the stone guardians that he had never considered alive, never considered worth considering, because they were constructs, they were lesser magic, they were nothing.

And she had wept for them. As though they were real. As though their deaths mattered.

It challenged something in him—not his conviction, not his grief, but the architecture of his certainty, the way he had divided the world into magic and non-magic and drawn a line between the living and the not-living and placed himself on the only side that counted. A magicless girl had mourned the loss of magical constructs more deeply than he had ever mourned anything except his brother, and the fact of her grief sat in his chest like a stone he couldn't swallow and couldn't spit out.

He did not know what to do with it. But he did not throw it away.

He stood up, and he walked into the light, and the stone remained.

In the morning, Azul Ashengrotto sat in the guest quarters and wrote three letters. One was to his business associate, outlining the potential market for resonance-shielding enchantments. One was to the Mostro Lounge's supply chain, requesting a restock. And the third was a short, handwritten note that he sealed with blue wax and addressed to no one:

Azul—

You survived today without a single contract or clause to your name. The odds were not in your favor, and you survived anyway. You stood at a window and tried to negotiate with gravity, and gravity refused, and the universe refused, and every deal you had ever made was worthless against the simple fact of a girl falling. And yet—she was caught. Not by you. Not by anything you could have arranged. By something that operates outside the logic of contracts and leverage and mutually beneficial exchange.

Perhaps there is something to be said for showing up without a plan. Perhaps there is a kind of power in being present that cannot be captured in a spreadsheet. Perhaps—and this is the part that frightens you—you do not need to be useful in order to matter.

Consider this a contract with yourself. Terms to be determined. Penalty clause: you must feel one thing today that cannot be quantified.

—A.

He read the note twice, locked it in the bottom drawer of his desk, and went to find breakfast, because the world continued, and Azul Ashengrotto had always been very good at continuing.

In the morning, Idia Shroud posted a 10,000-word analysis of the resonance frequency on an obscure magical theory forum. It received exactly three upvotes, and two were from his own alt accounts, but one was from a user called anonymouse_987 who left a comment that just said "huh, cool," and Idia considered this a rousing success.

He also placed the gargoyle fragment on his windowsill, where the morning light could reach it. It was just a piece of stone—chipped, weathered, half a face with one remaining eye that stared out at nothing. But Idia looked at it while he ate his breakfast, and he thought about the things that magic made and the things it destroyed, and he thought about the sound that Malleus's chest had made, and he thought about his own reflection in the mirror at Styx, and he said, out loud, to the gargoyle:

"Yeah, I know. It's a lot. Tell me about it."

The gargoyle did not respond. But Idia felt, somehow, that it was listening.

In the morning, Grim demanded tuna and pretended he hadn't spent the entire night curled on your pillow. He did not say he was glad you were alive—Grim would never say something so embarrassingly sentimental—but he sat closer than usual while you ate breakfast, and his purring was louder, and when you scratched behind his ears, he leaned into your hand.

"Next time you decide to fall out of a tower," he said between bites, "take me with you. I'd at least make the landing more dramatic."

"There won't be a next time," you said.

"Good. Because I'm not sharing my fish plushie with anyone, and if you die, someone's going to try to take it."

You kissed the top of his head, and he yowled in protest, and you smiled.

And Malleus—

Malleus walked you back to your room in the early light, his hand in yours. The corridor was empty, and the castle was waking, and the world was ordinary and extraordinary all at once.

"Same time tonight?" he asked, pausing at your door. "The roof, I mean. I believe we have a tradition to maintain."

"You and your traditions."

"They are important to me. Especially the ones that involve you."

You squeezed his hand. He squeezed back. And then you opened your door, and Grim launched into a detailed complaint about the quality of the room service tuna, and you laughed, and Malleus watched you laugh with an expression of quiet, overwhelming tenderness.

He turned and walked down the corridor toward his own room, and the pendant at your throat pulsed once in response to his departure. You pressed your hand against it, and the warmth was there—his fire, his light, his darkness, his love, all of it, mixed together and settled against the white branching scar on your chest, and the two frequencies hummed together, not in perfect harmony, but in the fumbling, imperfect harmony of two things that had no right to fit together and had chosen to try.

The stone in your pocket pressed against your thigh. One stone, where there had been many. But one was enough. One was proof.

You were here. You were real. You were not empty—you were a vessel, and the vessel was full.

And somewhere in the castle, a dragon prince was smiling to himself in the morning light, and the dark pattern on his heart had receded just enough for him to breathe, and the fire that he had given away was burning steady and sure against the chest of a girl who had fallen out of a tower and survived, and the smile was real, and it was yours, and it was staying.

====================================================================================================

Author's note:

Some stories are about heroes who save the world. Some are about villains who try to destroy it. And some—the quiet ones, the ones that happen between the battles—are about the people who choose to stay, and the stones they carry to prove they were there, and the frequencies they find when two impossible existences try to occupy the same space.

     “Are you certain of this? Everything you have worked towards- your goal since you’ve came to this land, has been to return home. And now, we are so close- nearly at the finish line.” Crowley said. His voice sounded like he pitied her- and even through he was commiserating with her new set of circumstances, it did little to make her feel better. 

     Because the truth was; she wasnt sure of her decision. Every single day, she teetered on the edge of wondering if she was doing what she felt was right or if she was making a mistake. More often than not, in the back of her head, she was close to changing her mind. Just him asking her that, reminding her of her home- the life she had left behind- made a lump form in her throat- words unsaid that were urging to leave her mouth. She breathed in deeply- calming her nerves as she composed herself, swallowing down the lump. It would do no good to doubt everything now that it was all said and done. She couldnt change what has happened. 

     So- she decided to hear out what her options were now. It was all she could do…  “And… if I do decide I want to go home? What then?” She pursed her lips- thinking about adding more onto her question- clarifying her worry- but it was unneeded as Crowley gave her a small, but sad smile.  

     “Well… your child will be part of this world. It will have no place in your past life.” Crowley replied. “In short; it will be impossible for the child to accompany you back to your world- if you choose to return still.” 

     She knew this- knew this would be his response, had expected it- and yet still; she had held out hope. Hope that she would be wrong… but it was foolish for her to think that she could take one last reminiscence of this world. A world she had come to love just as deeply as the one she had came from. How long had it been since she had come here? 6 years? Almost 7? After she had graduated from Night Raven College, she had stopped keeping track.

     And then… she had made a mistake- Well, really, three mistakes. In hindsight, who would have ever predicted this is what would happen? Her mother, certainly- who had warned her against having unprotected sex. And now, she would deal with the consequence- for she knew, even if her mind went back and forth, she could never abandon her child here. 

     “I… I cant then.” Yuu said with finality, the last of her doubt and hope leaving her mind. It was as if letting go of it all- and now, being able to mourn her old life- that she was able to have much more clarity. She could breath, she could truly now live and accept the world around her as hers now- because it wouldnt just be her world, but her childs home. She looked to Crowley, at peace with it. “Thank you… for atleast trying… I suppose now, all I can do is make the best life I can for myself and my child.” she looked down at her stomach- which concealed her fate, and would only grow over the next couple of months.

     The next question in her mind was where she would even go. She had resided on Sage’s island ever since she had been brought to this world- knowing no other home. But it wasnt like she could raise a child on a school campus.

     There was a pause of silence before Criowley asked: “And what of the father? Would I be overcrossing a boundary to ask weather the child's father is present?” 

     That was a difficult question- where would she even start with that. “No…” She replied. “The father will not be involved.” It wouldnt be fair- especially when she didnt even know who the father was. But she wouldnt admit that- especially not to Crowley! She had not even told Grim the truth… He didnt need to know anything other than that she wouldnt be returning home because she was pregnant. That was it.   

     “Well, luckily for you- My generosity know’s no bounds! And because of all of the assistance and dedication you’ve offered the school over the years you have been here, I will grant another gift.” Yuu frowned- confused on what he was referring to. She knew she had stopped a multitude of disasters over the past couple of years she had been here- especially in her first year when she had stopped seven overblots- but what gift could he give her that would make a difference?

    She decided to take the bait. “Oh yeah? And what is that?”

     “Well, the school owns a couple of buildings within town- some of which we rent out. Now- I know you do not have the funds currently to rent, however perhaps we could come up with another compromise?” A compromise…? “There is currently a storefront for a cafe, which closed down around a decade ago and hasnt reopened since. Well… its been popular demand that it be brought back- however, I was never able to find someone to manage the store… until now. How would you like to run the cafe?” Yuu was speechless- her mouth opening and closing as she tried to figure out what to say. “I would grant you funds for food and necessities ofcourse- and there is an apartment above the storefront that you can board in… I ask that you just consider it.” 

     There wasnt much to consider through. It was the best option she had heard in a long time; she would live in a familiar place, relatively safe- she would be able to have a job, a place to live, a stead source of income… it was all she could ask for really. So- she didnt need time to consider it- she knew what her answer was. “I accept.” 

────•⋅⊰༻ 9 years later ༺⊱⋅•────

     “Yume- you’re gonna be late!” Yuu called upstairs- receiving no reply back. 

     In a month, it will have been 10 years since her daughter had been born. 10 years of living on Sage’s Island and running the coffee shop for Crowley. 10 years of ups and lows- and coming to grieve, mourn and unteather herself from her old world. It had been easier than she imagined when Yuu not only had herself but her daughter and Grim to think of now. “Grim-” Yuu’s companion poked his head up from the blanket where he rested on one of the many booths in the coffee shop area downstairs. He blinked grogily and let out a yawm- as she pointed up. “Please go get Yume- she is going to be late for school if she isnt down in the next two minutes.” 

     “Yume! You’re gonna be late!” Grim repeated, yelling upstairs as well, and Yuu put her hands on her hips with a look of irritation. 

     “Thanks Grim- I could have done tha-” But then there was the sound of small footsteps on the stairs, the sound of a child running down the stairs. 

     “Im coming!” A high pitched voice called out, and sure enough, in entered her daughter- dressed with her backpack on her back. She had dressed herself, and though she was a little younger than 10 years old, she looked neatly put together. “Im ready to go.”

     “Good! Say goodbye to Grim and lets go-” Yuu said as she rushed towards the door. Yume took her time though as she approached their companion. 

     “Bye Grim!” Yume reached down and gave a big hug to Grim- who accepted it graciously and patted her back the best he could with his paws. 

     “Bye kid- go and learn something.” He gave another yawn, stretching his back in a similar manner to a cats after Yume let him go. 

     “I will!” She chirped and ran towards Yuu, running out the door. Yuu pointed at Grim, expectantly. 

     “Im taking her to school. When I get back, you better be awake and the machines better be running. We open in less than an hour and they need atleast 30 minutes to get hot and going.” She reminded him, but he squashed her worries as he leaped down and walked towards the kitchen. 

     “Im going, im going.” He grumbled. Yuu smiled, closing the door behind her. She knew he didnt like to wake up early, and yet, without fail for the last few years, he has woken up early to help her set up the shop- even if with a few complaints every now and again. Yuu walked up ahead, finally catching up to Yume, who’s short legs had made it such a far distance without her. Once she finally caught up, Yume held out her hand to Yuu, to hold her hand as they walked- which Yuu took.

     “Mama-” Yume started, and Yuu let out a hum that she was listening as they walked the quiet streets. It was early enough in the morning that there was hardly anyone else out and about- especially students from the nearby schools- but not so early that there was no sun. The only people who occupied the streets were the locals and other store owners who were setting up before opening. “My birthday is coming up!” 

     “Yes it is dear.” Yuu replied. A dog crossed their path, with its owner following behind with a leash. They halted before continuing their walk. 

     “I know what I want for my birthday…” Yume’s voice drifted off- unsure of herself. Yuu looked down to her daughter, now intrigued. 

     “And what would that be?” 

     “I want to know who my father is. I want him to come to this birthday…” Yume asked, and Yuu stopped in her tracks- startled. She knew this would come one day, the day her daughter grew up and would understand the difference between her peers having a two parent household, compared to her own household of just Yuu and Grim. Maybe when she was 5, that was enough, but now… and Yuu could not fault her for it either.

     “Well, that is…” she didnt even know where to start, or how to respond. “Your father… loves you very much- but wont be able to come.” Yuu lied- because she couldnt admit just yet that her father- whoever he was- did not know she existed. But Yume wouldnt just leave it at that- she pressed the issue, her own curiosity now outgrowing the answers that Yuu had always supplied her daughter with. That her father was ‘a busy person’, or that ‘he would meet her one day’. But it was no longer good enough. 

     “But why not? Why cant he come? And dont say its because he is busy- how can he be so busy he cant make time for me?” Yuu pursed her lips. She could see how distraught her daughter was about this- and so, this time, she decided to tell her something equivalent to a truth. 

     Yuu stopped, pulling her daughter off to the side of the sidewalk, as she crouched down to look her in her eyes. Eyes that looked exactly like her own. Perhaps if Yume even had a hint of her father’s features in her, Yuu would have been able to determine who he was, but fate would have it that she looked like a replica of her mother. “He is a very, very important person Yume. Many people look to him, depend on him, and… well, we need him a little less than other’s do.” It wasnt a lie- it was the truth no matter who she thought of. “Besides, dont be too bummed. Uncle Ace and Deuce are making a special trip to come and celebrate with us!” She could see the disappointment still evident on her child’s face- so she rubbed her shoulders up and down to soothe her. “Im sorry- Is that okay?”

     Yume was quiet for a short while, before breathing out and nodding. “Its okay, Mama.” She said. “I understand…” 

────•⋅⊰༻♥༺⊱⋅•────

     However, there is the thing about children: though they might say one thing, they dont mean it. And with Yume- even though she had told her mother she understood- she did not. In her mind, what could be more important that a birthday? Especially her 10th birthday. There was nothing more important than that- and so, she decided that if her mother would not treat this with the urgency is required, then she would. 

     At first, she was faced with the biggest problem; who was her father? Her mother had never given her a name, a homeland, anything that hinted at who he was exactly to narrow down the search. So, Yume turned to the next best thing after the internet- her mothers private journals. It was brilliant really- and if her mother wouldnt be angry at her for snooping through her belongings, she might have been proud of Yume for being so smart.

     Yume opened a box with dust that had gathered on it that had been sitting in the storage room for as long as she could remember. It was a box of belongings that her mother had stored away years ago- things from her years at Night Raven College. On top of the box, in black marker, was a list of things that were tucked away; uniforms, old books, and journals. Journals that possibly contained all the answers to her neverending list of questions that had accumulated since she was 5. 

     There were only three journals really- not a lot- and there was little written in each of them. The first was written like a fantasy book- perhaps a story her mother had written when she was younger. A story about someone being tossed into a world where they did not belong, and defeating magic that corrupted a persons being- things of fiction. It was then in the next journal, after her mother had graduated from school that Yume found something more tangible in terms of answers; she found names. She recognized some of the names; her uncle Deuce and Ace, her uncles Epel, Jack and Sebek… and then there were some names she didnt recognize. Three names in particular that came up multiple times. 

     The first was Vil Schoenheit- a name that was very familiar to Yume. He was in some of her favorite movies- and appeared on Television more times than she could count. If he was her father, it would make sense what her mother had said about him being an important person- and Vil Schoenheit most certainly was a very big and important person.

     The next was Leona Kingscholar. She did not recognize him, and so she did what everyone did; she looked up his name. There, she found he was the second prince of the sunset savannah. She gasped, giggling excitedly at the idea. That would also make him an ideal candidate- another important person who would hypothetically be too busy to make it to her birthday party. And if he was her father- that could make her a princess! Another loud giggle, as she clutched her tablet- 

     “Hey, whats all the laughter about?” Grim asked, causing Yume to let out a yelp and cover her tablet and the journal with a nearby pillow.

     “Nothing!” She answered quickly. ‘Im just… watching a funny video!” 

     Grim looked at her, suspicious of her answer, before shrugging and walking into the kitchen. After she could hear his footsteps become further and further, she let out a sigh of relief. She grabbed the journal from underneath the pillow once more and opened it, continuing to read until she found the last name. 

     Malleus or ‘Hornton’- No last name, and when she looked up the first two names, nothing for Malleus or ‘Hornton’ was found. The closest thing she could find was that the name Malleus came from Briar Valley- an area with little known about it, and therefore, her search was limited. But even so… it was a start. 

     At the end of the journal, after some passages of her mothers experience at being pregnant with Yume- was three letters. They were unsealed, dusty as well with some of the ink being faded- but still legible. Yume opened each letter, reading the contents. All three contained the same exact message- just with the names swapped out between Vil, Leona and Malleus’s. Each being confessions- the confession that Yume existed. 

     Suddenly, Yume didnt feel too good. These letters… it made it seem like her dad didnt know she existed… and maybe thats why he never came to anything, never visited, was not around… because the truth was that he didnt know she was alive. 

     Well- no longer would that be the case! He needed to know, whoever which one of them he was. She sprang up, running to her room and taking out all of her art supplies. She grabbed three empty invitation cards, and started working. Each one, she decorated with a careful hand- placing stickers and drawing with her markers animals and party balloons. On each one, she wrote a message- 

     “You are invited to Yume’s 10th birthday party! Please come, I would love to meet you. Love, Yume.” She spoke outloud as she wrote. She shoved her creations into the already written envelopes- and sealed them closed with tape. The addresses that were written on them were from 10 years ago- so hopefully they would receive it. And when all three were finished and closed, she looked at them with a huge grin. “There! Now he will have to come and meet me!” She said victoruously. 

     She ran downstairs, putting on her shoes as Grim sat nearby, loafed on the couch. “Where you off to kid?” 

     “To the postbox- I have a few letters to deliver-” She said, however left out who they were for. 

     “Okay- sounds good. Just be careful..” And Grim laid his head back down. He had grown to love home life with Yume and Yuu- especially on their days off of work or when it wasnt busy in the cafe. 

     “I will be.” She assured him and ran out the door quickly. A couple of streets down and she made it to the postbox, slipping the letters in. Now, there was no turning back. But Yume was ecstatic as she skipped back to her home- thinking about herself in a princess dress and not having to attend school anymore because she would be too important as well… 

 ────•⋅⊰༻♥༺⊱⋅•────

     “Happy Birthday Yume!” Yuu exclaimed as her daughter walked downstairs, and she engulfed the girl into a huge hug, placing kisses on her forehead and anywhere else on her face she could. “Awww, my baby is 10 years old- you are getting too old!” 

     “Mama-” Yume giggled, pushing her mom off of her, but failing. “Come on- youre heavy!”

     Yuu laughed, letting up off her daughter and backing up. “Well, thats not very nice- especially since Im the one who got you a surprise… One I think you’ll really enjoy-” Yume perked up at that- as she remembered what she had done.     “I also have a surprise for you!” She said, bouncing up and towards the kitchen as she followed Yuu. 

     “For me? But its your birthday Yume- you didnt need to get me anything…” Her mother replied, and Yume shook her head. 

     “Its a surprise for the both of us- but I think its one you’ll really like.” The girl said, as she watched her mother start to get out some of the decorations. “Here, let me help!”

     Yuu smiled, looking down as she handed Yume some deflated balloons. “Do you think you can blow some of these up and hang them on the fence?” 

     “You can count on me!” The girl took the balloon pack and ran outside without her shoes on. Yuu thought to call out and correct her, but instead, just scoffed and gave a small grin as she shook her head. Sure she might get dirt and mud on her, but it could all be washed away- it was all temporary, but making sure her birthday was an enjoyable one was her priority.

     It wasnt until later on in the day that Yuu was fussing over her daughters appearance- after the decorations were set up, and almost all of the food was finished, Yuu started getting herself and Yume dressed. Her daughter had picked out a pretty turquoise dress, and had been the one to decide what her hair style would be- and Yuu, well, all she could do was obey her daughters request. 

     Just as they were wrapping up getting ready, there was a knock on the door, and Yume got up. “I got it!” Yuu watched as her daughter opened the front door, jumping up and down. “Uncle Ace! Uncle Juice!” In the doorway were her old classmates and friends. The past ten years had significantly changed the both of them, as they had gotten taller and their boyish features had filled out into more sturdy looking ones- stronger jawlines, and both were much more sure of their own magical abilities. 

     In both of their arms were boxes- presents with colorful paper and beautiful ribbons- wrapped so nicely that she doubted that the both of them had decorated them as so. “Hey kid- Happy Birthday!!!” Ace said, and Yume jumped to hug both him and Deuce. “You’ve grown a lot- how long has it been since we last seen you- a couple months now?” 

     “Its Uncle Deuce-” Deuce said exasperatedly. When Yume was two and still learning words and who people were- Ace had made a one off joke and referred to Deuce as ‘Uncle Juice’- and ever since then, it had stuck. Yume now knew his name was Deuce- but still lovingly referred to him as Uncle Juice occasionally. “And, I believe its been nine months since we last seen each other-”

     “Almost a year now?!” Yuu asked. “It felt like its only been two or three months- not nine- wow… we are getting old…” Yuu laughed- and Ace and Deuce joined in. 

     “Not that old- but we certainly are aging… And you too Yume, youre 10 now!” Deuce said. 

     Yume nodded her head. “Yup- Im getting older too!” She said. “Oh! Uncle Ace, Uncle Deuce- I helped decorate!” 

     Ace looked around and nodded- “Yeah I can tell- I like what you did with the place-” 

     “The decorations are outside, idiot.” Deuce side eyed Ace- and the red head looked shocked. 

     “Y-Yeah I knew that! I was just complimenting Yuu and Yume’s interior decoration skills as well!” Yume laughed, and Yuu beamed at the sight. Seeing all of her loved ones here, and ready to havea good time made her feel like everything that had happened had been worth it.

     “Thank you, Ace. Now, how about we all go outside to admire Yume’s decoration skills and start this party?” Yuu asked- and they all agreed.

────•⋅⊰༻♥༺⊱⋅•────     

          It was about an hour later- when the party truly started- that the food was brought out. Ace had some things on the grill after insisting he could barbeque the best out of the three of them, however was slowly regretting it as smoke rose from the grill. 

     “Is it supposed to be smoking that much?” Deuce asked- though he knew the answer to that- it probably shouldnt be. 

     “Yeah! Yeah- thats what gives the meat all the flavor- dont you know?” Ace asked- poking at one of the steaks that were grilling. Yume rubbed her eyes and shook her head. 

     “The smoke is hurting my eyes Uncle Ace-” She whinned- and he quickly closed the grill. 

     “Well- lets just close that and let it cook then, huh?” He asked hypothetically, as he decided to just leave the meat to cook. As he did so, Yuu came back out with a bowl that had lettuce and other ingredients in one hand, and another bowl in the other that was already prepared. 

     “Here-” She set down the premade bowl. “Here is the macaroni salad I made last night. And- I still need to put the salad together-” She set down the second bowl filled with the uncut lettuce head and other things. “Aaannnddd- I have your surprise inside! Let me go get it.” And Yuu went back inside. 

     Ace looked to Deuce and Yume- “Suprise? Dont we do presents after cake?” He asked, and Deuce and Yume nodded.

     “Yeah- but this isnt a present- its a surprise.” Deuce stated- and it didnt help with Ace’s confusion. It wasnt until Yuu came outside with a giant cake box in her hands that it clicked into place for Ace and Deuce. 

     “Well… my surprise for you was that I got you an ice cream cake- Your favorite!” She opened the box. “We cant eat it until later- but I couldnt wait to show you it- and look! It has your favorite animal on it- a bunny!” Yuu pointed. Sure enough, there was rabbits drawn in gray frosting on the borders of the cake, that was lined with purple frosting.   

     “Oh wow! I love ice cream cake and bunnies- im so excited!!!” Yume looked- standing on her tiptoes to see the cake better. Before she could say anything esle though, there was a knock at the front door- a knock that was unexpected. Yuu looked around, confused. Everyone who was invited was there already- could it be Crowley? He had never popped in unannounced before- not without telling her atleast. “Who could that be?” She muttered under her breath and sat the cake down gently on the table. She wiped her hands on her pants, and got ready to go get the door before she was stopped.

     “I-I’ll go get it!” Yume shot up, raising her hand as she volunteered.  

     Yuu raised an eyebrow, now suspicious. “Did you invite someone?” She asked her daughter, as she sprinted from her chair to the porch back door to head back inside. 

     “You could say that… Its your surprise!” She exclaimed, and without waiting, ran inside. Before opening the front door, she breathed in a deep breath, preparing herself. This was something she had been waiting for for years now- all culminating to this one moment. This would change her life forever- and so, she unlocked the front door and opened it.

     Standing in front of her were three individuals. The three she had been expecting… “You came! You all came! I wasnt sure if you would get my letter, but im so happy-” She gasped- stars practically in her eyes as she looked up to all three of them. 

     They all looked down at her- as if they could not believe she existed as well- like she was an alien or something odd but interesting nonetheless. “Your letter? So, your the one who wrote out this invitation and sent it to us?” One of the men’s ears twitched as he held up her the invitation she had written out, as well as the letter with her mothers handwriting behind it. 

     “Yeah! I invited you- but the letter is from my mom.” She explained.   

     “You are Yume then? Correct?” The tall man with black hair asked. He was the tallest of the three of them- black hair with green on the tips. He wore a black coat with a royal purple waist tie- it was a fancy outfit, but hardly fit the occasion. His ears were pointed- a trait she had seen on only a few people- mainly, a few students from the nearby schools. He must be fae- she concluded. Yume nodded exuberantly at his question- excited he had remembered her name. 

     “Thats right! I’m Yume-” She extended her hand out as much as she could- but with all of them being rather taller than her, they had to bend down in order to properly grasp her hand and shake it. “Its nice to meet all of you.” 

     “Where is Yu-” The brown haired man stopped and hesitated, before clearing his throat. “Your mother?” She looked at his appearance- His hair wasnt exactly combed, but it wasnt messy either- with braids throughout. He wore a leather jacket with a lose shirt underneath that was a golden color. Beaded jewlery decorated his neck in bright colors- she recognized it and her eyes brightened. 

     “You must be Leona Kingscholar- Second Prince of the Sunset Savvanah.” She replied, not answering his question. She then turned to the tall, blonde man that was combed back. He was impeccably dressed- a silk shirt, black pants, gold braclets and necklaces- a true super star. He even seemed to sparkle like he did in all his movies- it was almost blinding. “And you- you are Vil Schoenheit! You were in ‘Moonlight Horizons- one of my favorite movies!”

     “You have immaculate taste then.” Vil smiled and folded his arms over one another. “But I also must wonder- where is your mother?” Vil pulled from his inner pocket her invitation as well that didnt have even a fold- kept perfectly flat. “And does she know about this?” 

     Yume looked at the invitation, and gave a sheepish grin. “Yeah- she knows about the letter- she’s the one who wrote it after all.” She replied. She left out though that her mother had written that letter more than a decade ago- and that she had not sent it, but Yume had. “Yeah, she knows. Please- come in! She’s in the backyard and would love to see you.”

     They looked to one another, as if they were only then questioning if they were going to listen and follow a child into her house. However, it seemed their curiosity won out, as they followed her, through her apartment and into the backyard just as she said. 

     Yuu’s back was turned, as she prepared a salad for the table before the party started. She was just placing the ingredients into the bowl before she was interrupted.      

     “Umm- Yuu?” Ace turned to his friend nervously. She looked up from the task at hand.

     “Yeah? What is it?” When she did look up finally, she saw the terrified and perplexed faces of not only Ace, but Deuce and Grim as well- as they pointed towards the apartment door. She spun and looked- and immediately wished she had not. 

     In front of her stood three figures from her past that she had not seen in a decade- all following behind her daughter- or rather… the daughter she had had with one of them. They all looked to her, expectantly- and looking almost as they had all those years ago. 

     Malleus was the first to speak; “Child of man, it is good to see you.” 

     “Long time no see, Herbivore.” Leona nodded- though he looked less pleased.  

     And Vil- he held onto a letter- her letter that she had written, and held it up to her, waving it. “Potato- we have much to discuss.”

     They knew. And they knew she knew….