Slay

Your heart was pounding in your chest, pulse fluttering erratically beneath the thin layer of skin covering your throat.

Your dagger slid into mangled tissue, the only resistance it encountered the bones you sometimes hit, causing a sharp pain to tear through your wrist.

You didn't notice.

You barely noticed anything beyond this. Your knife in flesh. Warm blood pouring over your hands. The mist rising into the cold night air from the heat of it. Hunger gnawing at your insides, whispering in your ear, urging you on. Moremoremore, it crooned, and you answered each aching demand with another stab, another slice, another act of unforgivable violence.

Titus watched you with nothing short of perverse fascination. 

You were a fucking work of art. 

You were everything he had been craving his entire life without even realising, but it was so startlingly obvious now that he stood next to you - there was a gaping, bleeding wound in his existence, and you- you were what he needed to stop himself from bleeding out.

And he wondered how it could be that you didn’t see it. That you could be so calm, so nonchalant around him when Titus felt like he was fucking vibrating.

This was- this was monumental. You meeting, finding each other. It was meant to be.

You’d left your father. You walked away from your him, ignoring his demand, his order - to be with Titus.

Titus told himself it was because of him, and him alone.

Not the hunt.

Not the prey.

Not the consuming bloodlust you were a mere victim of.

He watched you stumble, pushing yourself up off the soft, blood-soaked forest ground, your legs unsteady beneath you. A doe who had not quite mastered control of its long legs yet. Fresh and dried blood stuck to your skin. Your bare knees were scraped and bruised after the violent chase. Titus imagined doing something completely different to ruin them...

You wiped your dagger on your skirt - a futile mission. Your skirt was ruined. Your hand was soaked. The handle of the dagger was all but glued to your hand with drying blood. All you achieved was smearing the blood around.

You looked up, finding Titus staring at you. A thin blush spread across your cheeks, and you lowered your head.

"What?"

"You're beautiful."

Your eyes flicked from the mangled corpse to your feet up to Titus. A crease formed between your brows.

"I mean it." Titus made a step towards you. You didn't back away. "It's maddening."

"It makes you mad that you find me pretty?"

He took another step. "It drives me to madness how a single being can be this beautiful." His skin prickled under your gaze, inquisitive, sweet, so fucking sweet. Confused, but curious.

The most delicious, tainted innocence.

Blood dripped from your fingertips to run down the side of your dagger and return to its former owner.

"I don't understand." You whispered, just before the snap of a twig in the distance caught your attention. Your eyes lit up. You were moving deeper into the woods before Titus could stop you. You were still waiting for your last kill...

You paused, listening, waiting for the woods around you to reveal another hint. Titus stepped up behind you. You didn't notice how close he stood until his body's warmth lapped at the back of your legs, forcing you to realise you were trembling. His breath brushed your ear, making goosebumps erupt across your neck and arms, and your insides tighten. Your body's reaction made you frown.

“No… I reckon divinity would not understand the mortal suffering of those beneath her.” The tip of Titus’ nose grazed your hair. He was already growing addicted to the scent of it. He wanted nothing more than to bury himself in it and never resurface again. He’d crack open your ribcage and crawl inside if it were at all possible.

You truly were driving him mad.

He was seconds away from falling to his knees and begging Mr Le Bail to let him keep you, to keep away those who’d try to take you from him, to be rid of Richard and your overbearing brothers, of his own father and his sister too, if need be. He’d abandon it all, leave it all behind, the empire his family had crafted for generations, the wealth, the power - everything if only he could keep you, call you his own…

“I’m not divinity.” You were still scanning the forest with your eyes, waiting for any, however small, change that would give away your prey.

Titus traced your waist in a feather-light touch, his fingertips barely even touching you. “Perhaps not. You were created by our… demonic benefactor after all. It is just a saying anyway. A metaphor.”

The crease between your brows deepened. “I was not created by Mr Le Bail. He can’t create life. Only God has that power. Mr Le Bail just influenced whether my father passes on an X or a Y chromosome to me.”

“I don’t believe in God.”

You twisted your head back. Titus was startled by you suddenly staring up at him, seemingly realising just now how close he had actually gotten to you.

You had yet to pick up on the physical proximity.

“We literally have evidence the devil exists, but you don’t believe in God?”

Titus shrugged. He wasn’t interested in this conversation. Not with your body pressed against his front.

“That doesn’t make sense. One can’t exist without the other. They represent the two sides of humanity, good and evil. There can be no evil without good, otherwise how would we even know what good looks like? That’s- that’s like saying you don’t believe in daytime in the middle of the fucking night. Or- or-”

Titus barely listened to you. You were so beautiful, and worked up, frustrated and irked, you were so sweet.

“And- and divinity is the opposite of humanity, it’s in the name. Men can’t touch or behold divinity for it is beyond us, beyond what we are and what we are capable of handling - it’s in the Bible. And I am the furthest from divinity one can be while still remaining human. I was touched by demonic darkness when I was just a lump of cells, before I was even born. If anything, I'm profanity!”

“I never read the Bible, sweetheart. I was born into a devil-worshipping cult.”

“I read it." You mumured, your voice lacking any and all intonation. "Had a boring weekend…”

“You read the whole Bible in a weekend?”

You nodded. "Annotated it too. Put taps in every time someone was killed, raped, sacrificed, for slavery and misogyny. It's a really messed-up book people are worshipping-”

A startled squeal slipped off your tongue when Titus grabbed your waist and turned you around, pushing you backwards against a tree. He towered over you, his piercing hazel eyes trained on you with such focus that it made you shiver.

Your lips parted in silent confusion, and something about the slight motion was somehow enough to dictate his attention, to summon it down to your lips like a powerful magnet would tear a nail from a piece of lumber.

“You are a very literal person, aren’t you?” Titus’ voice had fallen in pitch, turning it into a deep, rumbling rasp that scratched your nerves in the most delicious, tantalising way, and you didn’t understand why.

Nor why you didn’t push him off you.

You’d never let someone corner you like this, push you back against a tree and cage your head in with his hands braced against the trunk on either side of it.

You couldn't understand why it didn't frighten you...

The moonlight played across his silver curls and the scruff at his cheek and jaw. His ascot, a piece of luxurious burgundy silk, hugged his neck softly, and you wondered how your blood-stained hand would look around it… but to your own surprise, you did not feel the desire to see his blood or to watch the life fade from his eyes.

They were pretty eyes.

Too pretty to ruin with something as permanent as death.

He was big. You didn’t quite understand why you noticed this now or why your brain seemed to be under the misguided notion that it was important information, but there the thought was, and it was persistent.

His chest was broad, his arms thick, very thick. He looked so unlike the men in your life. Your brothers were all on the lithe, athletic side. Titus was solid. Massive and unshrinking, a little like the tree digging into your back.

Leaves rustled in the distance. Your head whipped around, the spell you’d found yourself under for a few startled breaths evaporating in the cool night air. Your senses honed down to the hunt, the scents, the sounds, the need burning in your veins, the hunger ripping into you with sharp claws, that little voice urging you on-

Moremoremore-

Titus whispered your name. He said it in a way you were sure it had never been said before, even if you could not quite discern how he said it. Just… different. You never realised it could be said that way...

Titus traced his thumb over a cut on your cheek, his touch achingly tender. You didn’t take your eyes off the shadows beyond the looming trees.

Titus said your name again, almost pleading. The edge of his thumb touched the corner of your mouth, slid down your chin to graze your jaw. A rush of goosebumps rippled down along your back, starting at your nape and not stopping until it reached your tailbone, where it dissipated into something else, something… different. A seething, squirming warmth that pooled in your lower abdomen and between your thighs, swelling, unfurling, spreading.

Pressure built with it, and the pressure made you restless, shifting beneath Titus’ burning gaze boring into your cheek, trying so desperately to catch your gaze.

"Look at me."

You don't know why you obeyed his whispered words. Perhaps because they were more plea than demand. Perhaps because you were confused that a man known for such ruthless, unapologetic violence could speak words so soft.

Perhaps because you had never handled unanswered curiosity well, and nobody had ever been a bigger riddle to you than the man looming above you right now, staring down at your blood-stained figure as though you were his personal revelation and deliverance, both at once.

The second you turned your head, abandoning your lookout for the prey still eluding you, Titus was on you.

His lips slammed against yours in a starved, violent explosion of need. They pressed against yours hard, making it difficult to breathe. He clutched your face in his hands, fingertips digging into your flesh as he pulled you closer. The hard line of his strong body pushed you into the tree. Your arms hung limply and uselessly down your sides. You peered at him, vision blurred from trying to focus on something far too close. Titus had closed his eyes, all but squeezed them shut. His nose dug into your cheek, and you felt the hungry huffs of hot air he expelled brush against your cool skin. His tongue traced the seam of your lips, and because you were too confused by the entire situation and taken aback by the startling pace of his attack, and perhaps a tiny bit because you were curious to see what he was intending to do, you did not stop him when he slid his tongue into your mouth.

Titus groaned like a starving man finding sustenance at the last, fleeting moment, one foot already nudging the line between this life and the beyond. He could taste the blood of your kill on your lips. The metallic notes curled lightly around your very own, unique taste. Titus hadn't much experience kissing, and for once in his long life, he did not bemoan his lack of experience. For once, it was not frustration he felt at the reminder of his own blundering inadequacies, but vindication.

Because of course Titus had been set on a path of forced abstinence and deprivations when you had been waiting for him here, in the future, all along.

What a shame it would have been to waste a single thought on any woman who was not you. None of the women he'd encountered over the years could ever even dream of living up to you.

You, Mr Le Bail's creation or favourite or disciple or whatever the fuck you'd want to call it.

You deserved only the best, only the deepest reverence, only the purest worship - not hands already stained with the lust of undeserving, lesser women. 

You did not deserve to be subjected to the experiences gathered from the bodies of others, should not have to endure what they preferred or favoured and taught a man who had always and only ever been meant to be yours.

Yours to claim. 

Yours to bend and mould to your body’s desires and needs without having to undo lessons imparted by unworthy creatures.

Titus’ whole body protested against the notion of ever separating from you, but the inane drive towards survival - and the lack of oxygen spurring them on - forced him to. He pulled back, just enough to draw desperate, gasping breaths into his burning lungs.

A manic grin tugged on his lips, and a chuckle climbed up his throat. If this was what it all had been for, then fucking hell - he’d go fifty years without you in his life again and again if it only meant he’d get to keep you once he finally found you, get to kiss you like this, to feel like this. 

To think… all the years he could have had with you already, had your mother only asked Mr Le Bail for help sooner…

You blinked up at Titus, slowly, processing. Your lips were swollen and blood-smeared, glistening with his saliva in the moonlight.

“The prey is getting away.” You whispered just before twisting out of his grasp and walking away, leaving behind a stunned Titus.

Had he done it wrong? Come on too strong? You were skittish and nervous, despite your confidence in the moments where your brutal bloodthirst took over.

Titus followed you through the dense undergrowth, mesmerised by how smooth and fast you moved without making a sound. You remained entirely unaffected.

It couldn’t be him. He was a Danforth!

It must be you. Yes. It was you. You weren’t used to the attention of a man. Your father had kept you locked away on your family’s estate your whole life, and with six brothers hovering overprotectively around you at all times, when would you have had the chance to realise you were utterly stunning?

A force of such maddening beauty, it made a man like Titus lose himself entirely in you?

You didn’t know how to respond to his advances - of course you didn’t!

You said your brain made you afraid of things you had no reason to fear, that your fears didn’t make sense. Poor thing… you were probably so overwhelmed. A strange new surrounding, unsated hunger, meeting your fated…

He'd teach you that you had no reason to be afraid of him.

Titus traced the pad of his finger across his bottom lip. He could still taste you on his tongue, still feel the soft press of your lips against his… He’d need to keep himself under control, give you space, time. You’d come to realise the magnitude of all this in your own time.

You had to.

Titus had even forgotten about the hunt. He’d been itching to get his own hands dirty all day, but now, here with you, none of that mattered. He was content to watch you follow the tracks your prey left behind in their careless scramble for survival.

It would not.

What lowly creature could ever hope to survive you?

Panic kept snapping at his heels, following his every step like a hound sent from the very depths of hell to demand the payment for Mr Le Bail’s favour early.

He couldn’t give you time.

Your father disapproved of him, or if he hadn’t before, he would certainly now. Not that your father would deny Chester Danforth anything he wanted, but that was the second problem.

Titus had never expressed any desire to settle down and continue the bloodline, partially because he was never allowed to pursue something as trivial as romance, and he despised the thought of asking his father to arrange something for him, even if Titus had always known that was the only way he would have a marriage his father approved of.

Could he convince Chester that you were worthy of marrying into the Danforth family? To be the Mrs Danforth?

The mere fact that the words would come from Titus’ lips would be enough to make the old man deny him this. Purely out of spite.

There may be a slight chance if they came from Ursula, but Ursula had been spending all night telling Titus to stay away from you.

Could he convince Ursula to let him have this? Maybe. Ah, but there was still another option. The missing rule. The rule that should be in the bylaws but wasn’t.

Titus could kill Chester and take the High Seat for himself.

Nobody would deny him anything ever again if he did…

Titus watched you slip out behind a tree and descend upon your unsuspecting victim, crouching in the undergrowth to catch his breath. He didn’t notice you, but even if he had, it was already too late for him. You had picked up his scent and predestined him as your next kill, and you would not stop until his blood was coating your hands.

He tried to fight you, but even the strength of raw, naked survival was not enough to best Mr Le Bail’s favourite.

After a short scramble, you pushed your prey into the dirt and straddled his waist. He tried to reach for you, to pull you off or punch you - Titus couldn’t tell from this angle, but he heard the snap of his bones when you broke his wrist. His scream rose above the trees and echoed through the quiet night. Several forest critters were startled by the sound, and for a moment, the leaves all around you rustled as they fled. Then silence fell over you.

“You broke my- Get off me! Fucking whore! What the fuck is happening-”

Titus gritted his teeth. His body moved towards you before his mind could catch up with the motion - but you did not need a saviour.

“I was going to be nice to you, but now I don’t think I feel like it.” You purred. Titus drew closer until he could see the manic glint in your eyes.

“You know… I've been fascinated with English gangs of the 1920s for some time now. Yes, because of that TV series, but that’s neither here nor there. The brutality… truly fascinating. The Billy Boys with their whole military thing, dress code, marching, composing songs. The Birmingham Boys, the Sabini Gang, and my personal favourite of course, the Forty Elephants - girls gotta support girls, right? Bloody wars in the streets, killing and maiming with razor blades and knives, bottles and blunt weapons, like fucking animals, and for what? Racetracks, money… and simply for violence’s sake.”

You bent down to your victim until your lips were almost touching his nose, your hair falling around you, matted and drenched in blood.

“My benefactor loved that era. Crime has gotten so… tame since. It’s all online now. The organ trade, human trafficking, child sexual abuse material, bitcoins and NFTs, and all that bullshit. I should know all about that.” You chuckled. “My family made it big in the business. But it’s all so bloody boring, isn’t it? Nobody goes out in the street anymore to cut someone with a razor blade because they said something to piss them off.”

Something about the way you so casually mentioned Mr Le Bail, and a detail you could only know if he had told you, made a pleasant, prickling shiver run down Titus’ spine.

“Gangs in Glasgow had this neat, little practice I’ve always wanted to try for myself.” The man beneath you held his broken wrist to his chest as he stared up at you, forced to cling to your every word by a mixture of shock, surrender and a fear-drenched inability to look away from you.

You cupped his cheek in your hand ever so softly, running your thumb along a cut a thorn must have left there during his attempt to flee from her.

“Let’s hope for your sake this goes better than my attempts to find out whether a blood eagle is actually possible to perform.”

Your grinned. A flat, metallic card appeared between your lips.

A razor blade, Titus realised, breath getting stuck in his throat. 

Did you keep a fucking razor blade under your tongue?!

You plucked it out from between your lips and caressed your prey's jaw with it, gently enough to not cut. He was trembling pathetically.

“It’s called the Glasgow smile… I’m sure you’ll figure out what that's all about pretty soon.”

He watched you cut the corners of your prey’s mouth with the razor blade before sliding down and ripping open his shirt to start cutting small chunks of skin out of his chest with your dagger. Your prey's scream lit up the night. Your previous two kills during the hunt had been quick, bloody, but quick. It seemed, now that the promised number of kills was about to be fulfilled, you found the calm to truly savour your craft.

Your prey screamed, thrashing beneath you, but every scream only tore the wounds at the corners of his mouth deeper. You were making him quite literally tear his face open - all while wearing a smile.

Titus shifted from his crouch into a sitting position, a tree at his back, and watched you.

Soon, the ground around you was soaked in crimson, lapping at your bare knees, buried in the soft mulch.

Eventually, the prey lost consciousness, but that didn’t stop you. Titus wasn't sure whether he was even still alive, not that he would stop you. You looked so pretty, cutting away at your toy with that manic expression of dark contentment. Why should he ruin your fun?

But of course, this easy bliss could not last.

“Fucking hell.”

Followed by the sun’s lazy first stretches dissolving the shadows surrounding Titus and you, Caspian and two more of your brothers appeared between the trees.

“How long has she been-” Caspian seemingly decided he didn’t care for Titus’ answer, or didn’t trust it. He crouched down next to you and said your name. You didn’t respond. He tried to reach for your wrist and stop you from burying your dagger in the now cold, unmoving body beneath you. You whirled on him, grabbing his wrist instead and bringing your blood-soaked dagger to his throat, an animalistic snarl etched onto your face.

“You need to stop.” Caspian spoke softly, keeping his voice quiet but firm. Titus didn’t appreciate him talking to you like a child. “Is what you are doing healthy for you?" He continued.

You didn't reply. Neither did you lower your dagger.

"These clothes are not suitable for being out in the forest at night. You’re ice cold. Staying up all night is not healthy. You’re exhausted. You know what happens when you don't sleep enough. You haven't eaten. Haven’t rested. It’s been hours since the trial first started, and you are still out here. Is that a good choice you’ve made?”

“He said fifteen.” You whispered, voice hoarse. “He said fifteen. You know he said fifteen. I had to- I needed-”

“I know.” Caspian tucked a strand of hair behind your ear. “And now I need you to stop, or I’ll have to force you. For your own good.”

“You will do no such thing.” Titus said coldly. The mere insinuation that someone might do something to you against your will was enough to have his blood run hot.

“Oh, shut the fuck up, Danforth. This does not concern you.”

“This is still my family’s estate. And she is my guest. If she wants to exhaust herself by stabbing a corpse until she grows bored of it, she can do so.”

“This is a family matter.” Caspian hissed between clenched teeth.

Titus glanced at you. “Do you want to stop, sweetheart?”

You looked from Caspian to Titus to your victim. Your expression changed the second you did. Your eyes roamed over the bloody, mangled mess of shredded flesh and torn skin. The Glasgow smile you gave your prey had reached his ears before he fainted. You admired your handiwork in silence. Your lips twitched into a smile.

“No.” You whispered and let go of your brother’s wrist to sink your dagger into the bloody mess that was once a human chest again.

Caspian sighed.

Before Titus could react, he drew a syringe out of his pocket and jabbed the needle into your throat. “I’m sorry, but this is for your own good.” He caught your chin and forced your lips apart to dig the razor blade out from under your tongue. He tossed it at the corpse and hoisted you up into his arms.

“What the fuck-?” Titus stared at him in disbelief. He couldn’t believe what he just saw.

Was this how they dealt with you?

How they treated you?

They got you all worked up and let you do their dirty work when it benefited them, and as soon as you served your purpose, as soon as you stepped out of line, they tranquillised you?

“You’ve done enough damage, Danforth. You’re lucky I can’t kill you anymore without dooming her too. Stay the fuck away from my sister!”

Next Chapter

It was a special occasion, a very special occasion. An event that had not happened in Titus’ lifetime, and only once in his father’s when he was still a young man barely into adulthood. To say this shit was rare would be an understatement.

A high council family had been wiped off the face of the earth.

An entire family, gone within the blink of an eye because one of them broke one of Mr Le Bail’s rules - like a fucking idiot.

The bylaws stated there had to be six families in the High Council at any given moment, and so they had all gathered to see which of the lower families under Mr Le Bail’s contract would win tonight’s hunt and enter the inner circle.

The heads of the lower families were already frothing at their mouths at the prospect of all that power. Titus let his gaze travel over the people gathered in the reception room of the Danforth lodge. Since his father held the High Seat, it fell to him to host, and Chester would never pass up an opportunity to flaunt his wealth and power in front of the other families.

Titus watched the families and their entourage like a shark would its next meal.

High Council families were not permitted to kill each other, but such rules did not apply to the lower families. Tonight, one member from each of the sixteen families eligible for a seat on the High Council would be chosen by the head of the family to represent them in a deadly game of Hide and Seek, since that was the ancestral initiation rite of the Le Domas family. One last game of Hide and Seek before that family fell into collective forgottenness.

The last one standing would bring the ultimate honour to their family.

Titus wondered who’d be chosen.

The High Council families were already placing their bets, a way to pass the time and soothe the disappointment that their hands would see no blood tonight.

It irked Titus that he would not get to participate. He did not enjoy sitting idle while others got to have all the fun, and he never passed up a chance for some fun.

“The Covingtons have arrived, Sir.” The butler announced in his haughty tone of voice that never failed to make Titus’ eye twitch.

“They are late.” Chester sniffed, visibly affronted by the tardiness of a guest who, according to him - no doubt - should have fallen to their knees and licked his boots in gratitude for the honour of being permitted to exist near him.

“There was a problem with the youngest child, I heard. The daughter is… troubled, they say.”

“Troubled?” Ursula raised a brow. Her perfectly manicured fingers wrapped around the thin stem of a wine glass, she looked past the butler to catch a glimpse of the group entering the reception room. A man, broad-shouldered, grey-haired with a steely expression that gave away not a single glimpse into his inner workings, led a group of men of varying ages, six total, each one with the same eyes as him - his sons, no doubt.

The head of the Covington family was a stern, cut-throat business man, a tech mogul renowned for supplying the military institutions of the world with state of the art cyber security systems. Titus was pretty sure they guarded the Danforth’s online activity as well. Not that his father trusted him enough to ever involve him in the finer details of business. No, that was a place always and forever reserved for Ursula.

Titus’ grip tightened around his cigar, and he had to use a considerable amount of willpower to force his fingers to relax again before it crumbled in his hand and drew the attention of his father.

Richard Covington did not fidget like the other heads of the lower families. He did not exude an ounce of nervous energy, not because he was any better at hiding it than the others - Titus would have noticed, nobody hid from Titus - apparently, Richard simply did not fear tonight. He acted like a man who was already sure of his victory, and the only reason he was not yet drinking to it was that he had been raised with manners.

He glanced over his shoulder, as though responding to something one of his sons said, and in doing so, he revealed a glimpse of a girl. 

A woman no older than mid-twenties, encompassed in the throng of strong young men. 

You were the smallest of the bunch, a good head shorter than the smallest of your brothers. Next to them, you looked like a wisp. A joke made by the universe to taunt a proud, tall man after gifting him one strong heir after another. Deep, dark shadows clung to the bottom of your eyes, giving you a sickly, haunted appearance that was oddly alluring, a cacophony of darkness and grace, angelic beauty defaced by hell’s enticing touch.

Your hair was braided into two pigtails, the ends resting gently against your collarbones. You wore a simple, short black dress, the skirt falling down your thighs in soft folds that shifted with every step you took. The top was made out of a rose-embroidered mesh fabric that melted into long sleeves curling tightly around your arms, hanging down stiff and unmoving at your sides. Titus almost mourned the sight of the layer of black fabric preserving your modesty - if only just barely. See-through black tights covered your legs that ended in tightly laced, perfectly polished combat boots.

You stood out among your brothers, each the picture-perfect rich, posh heir of a multimillion-dollar company. 

You, you were a black sheep, an anomaly, a chip in grandma’s perfect china.

But instead of casting you out, like Titus’ father had thought about many times and didn’t do only because he feared the hit his reputation might take if he did, your family seemed to coalesce around you. The protectiveness your brothers felt towards you was evident in every tensed muscle in their backs, in every sneering glare directed at any and all men who dared as much as glance towards you.

Your father offered you his arm, and after a brief moment of hesitation, you stepped out of the protective cocoon of brothers and into the crystal-filtered light the chandeliers cast down upon them. Your hair gleamed like molten, precious metal beneath the shine, and Titus could not help but wonder how it would look in his fist, torn from your scalp in fleshy chunks, covered in your blood.

You leaned into your father, tipping your head back when he lowered his to whisper something to you.

Titus thought, sucking on his cigar while his eyes followed your every step, that you looked deliciously like a doe faced with the hunter’s rifle. Young, obviously terrified, clinging to your father’s arm so hard your knuckles went white against the expensive, navy fabric of his suit.

“Don’t even think about it.” Ursula hissed in his direction, souring his fun before Titus had a chance to think about what even that fun was.

He scowled at her. “Think about what, dear sister?”

“Her.”

“I am observing potential new allies.”

“Covington has been father’s business partner for years. The only reason he is not on the High Council yet is that new families don’t usually join! He and Father have been asking Mr Le Bail for this opportunity! The entire family adores that girl. And she’s sick, apparently, so you will stay away from her! Try not to fuck this up for Father, Titus.”

Titus’ lips rolled back in a barely concealed snarl. “Stop treating me like a fucking child! I haven’t done anything."

“Yet.” His sister muttered into her wine glass. Titus’ jaw tensed.

Yet.

That was the thing. The tiny little detail his family never let him forget. They all believed Titus Danforth was, at any given moment, only seconds away from fucking something up. Always. And no matter how often he didn’t fuck up, how often he won hunts or struck advantageous business deals, he knew he was doomed to mess up sooner or later. They knew, and they never let him forget it. 

No matter how long he managed to not fuck up, they only ever saw him when he did.

“Chester.” Richard shook the Danforth patriarch's hand, you still clinging to his arm, practically glued to his side. Your eyes flicked nervously between the three Danforths. “Do forgive our tardiness. It was more difficult than I had anticipated to get this one to leave the car.” He spoke with the easy charm of old British aristocracy. You frowned at his words and attacked your bottom lip with your teeth. A displeased whine slipped from your tongue, but Richard either didn’t hear it or didn’t care to.

“Your youngest?” Chester looked at you as he looked at everything he had not yet appraised the worth of. You did not weather his attention well. You crumpled like a dried leaf under his shoes, pressing your slight body into your father’s side.

“Indeed.” Richard smirked. He lifted his free hand to pet the top of your head, a gesture that exuded both tenderness and condescension at once, all the while never once taking his eyes off Chester. “Why don’t you go with Caspian to find a drink, darling?”

“Daddy, I mustn’t drink.”

Richard’s nostrils flared ever so slightly, but his arrogant smirk remained plastered onto his lips. “I think we can make an exception on such a momentous occasion, no?”

“But, daddy, my doctor said, with my meds, if I drink I could-”

His head snapped towards you, all fatherly affection evaporated, there one second and gone the next. His brows pulled together in a glare that Titus expected to have you cowering at your father’s side - but you didn’t. Your fear was still there, palpable, permeating the air around you with a sweetness Titus would like to lap off your skin, but your father was not the source of it.

Interesting.

“I don’t care if you get wine or fucking apple juice, yeah? The important part of that sentence was go with your brother.”

You pouted. “Just say that then. You know I can’t have-” You were cut off by your father’s hand against your back, shoving you gently towards one of your brothers.

“She takes everything far too literally sometimes.” Richard huffed in a painfully transparent attempt to smooth over the rough edges of losing his composure in front of someone he clearly deemed an important ally. You were still pouting, eyes treacherously wet, when your brother - Caspian, the oldest of the bunch, thirty-two if Titus remembered correctly - closed his hand around your upper arm to steer you away.

Richard sighed. “And now she’ll pout for the rest of the evening because I raised my voice at her. I swear, all the sensitivity my boys lack got concentrated into her. One slightly too harsh criticism and she is a weepy mess. I can only presume that is the cross one has to carry when raising a daughter. Ah, but then again, perhaps it simply does not do someone of her disposition well to grow up in a house with seven men and no mother.”

“Ursula never cried, not even as a baby. Titus, on the other hand… well.” 

Titus gritted his teeth. His nails dug into the velvet-padded armrest of his chair.

“It goes to show how different children are, and how weakness sneaks in despite our best efforts as parents. I don’t believe I have met your daughter before.” Chester continued.

“She does not get out of the house much.” Richard shrugged. “Company does not suit her and, to be quite frank, these things tend to overwhelm her. Not that I mind how easy she makes it for me to keep her away from the wrong kind of male attention." His eyes lingered on Titus for a moment, who merely smirked around his cigar, before resuming to look in your direction again, all but staring.

You were standing next to your brother, stiff, eyes flitting across the whole room as though looking for a threat, flicking up to the ceilings where a heavy chandelier hung every once in a while. Caspian was deep in conversation with a group of heirs. Some of the men tried to catch your attention now and then, seemingly oblivious to the iron grip with which you clung to your glass - indeed apple juice, judging by the colour and earlier comment your father made.

You did not engage with them.

When they talked to you directly, your attention shifted to them for a brief second before flitting back to your brother, who would answer in your stead.

Titus could not quite decide whether you were just incredibly sheltered and shy - or that deep under your family’s thumb, you did not even dare answer some small talk without their approval.

“You never said what exactly is… wrong… with her, I think.” Chester made a vague gesture towards you. Richard’s expression hardened. Titus could have sworn the temperature around them dropped several degrees.

“Nothing is wrong with her.” Your father said calmly, the type of calm that was wrought from murderous hunger and shameless bloodlust. “She is simply wired a little… differently.” 

“I must say, I find it curious you brought her along. Tonight’s festivities won’t hurt her disposition?”

“Oh, I doubt that will be a problem.” Richard clasped his hands behind his back. His winning smile returned. “Well, it was delightful as ever to see you again, Chester. I have a few more greetings to get through before this evening commences. I am greatly looking forward to it.” His smile shifted into a crooked grin that revealed a single, too-sharp canine.

“I am looking forward to finding out which of your sons you’re sending into the hunt, dear friend.” Chester’s arrogant smile only lasted as long as it took your father to disappear into the excited crowd, trailed by three of his sons. Two split off the group to join the oldest and you, flocking to you like a horde of overprotective geese.

“Wired differently.” Chester scoffed into his whiskey. “She’s a fucking nutjob if you believe the help.”

Titus was sure the help called him a fucking nutjob too, and they could not be further from the truth. What did the help know anyway, aside from envy and resentment?

You were a pretty thing, Titus could not deny it, not that he cared to try. You had that air of innocence wrapped around you like a shawl that would drive any hungry man up the walls. Your big doe eyes would make a more composed, more controlled man salivate, and the way you so desperately clung to the men in your life, as though you placed your entire life into their hands, all your trust that they’d provide for you and keep you safe had his slacks feeling just a little too tight. 

He pictured those big, teary eyes seeking assurance and protection, peering up at him while you knelt between his feet. He pictured how soft your hair must feel, how warm those pouty lips would be… how pliable your body…

Not that Titus ever got much further than those pictures, he thought bitterly and took another drag from his cigar, trying not to scowl. Ursula would notice, and he did not need his twin sister in his head while fantasising about a far too young, pretty little thing like you.

Your dress was just long enough to not be indecent, but with the way you wore it and carried yourself, Titus doubted you could look indecent even if you tore all your clothes off your body right then and there and showed the world every inch of your bare skin.

What a little angel you were…

Titus grew up on a short leash, to the point he now barely felt it. His father had made sure to teach Titus young what happened when he did something old Chester Danforth would disapprove of. Fooling around in boarding school was out of the question - there had been no boarding school for Titus. Just endless, gruesome hours locked in the library with personal tutors and barely a break to catch his breath while Ursula got to go abroad. She could be trusted with freedom for some reason, and Titus was not even permitted to prove he could be too.

He wasn’t as intelligent as her, nor as cunning as his father, and for some reason that had been enough for both of them to decide Titus was good for nothing but his hunger for brutality and bloodshed.

They were the brains, and he the fists - and attack dogs who did not listen were put down.

Titus learnt this lesson young.

It was beaten into him with the same ferocity his tutors tried to make him smarter, just with the difference that Chester had been more successful.

On his sixteenth birthday, Chester introduced Titus to the most gorgeous woman Titus had ever seen up until that moment. She had long, dark hair, full lashes and a smile as sweet as it was wicked. It was embarrassing how long it took Titus to figure out she had been paid by his father to be there. None of the secret whispers and sly touches had been real. She crawled into his bed, not because she found him charming or handsome, as she claimed; no, she did it for the money Chester had promised her. 

Money in exchange for making Titus a man.

The few times Titus managed to get out from under his father’s and sister’s thumb long enough to meet a pretty woman, he either fumbled it all up by embarrassing himself or accidentally offending her - or he heard their voices, telling him how worthless and inadequate he was and who could get hard with their sister whispering in his ear?

To claim Titus was frustrated would be an understatement.

A leashed, castrated dog never allowed to be his own man, to be more than Ursula's untrustworthy twin, Chester's fuck up of a son, the family disappointment…

Titus thought about life without them more and more these days, a life in which nobody told him what to do, where nobody spoke down to him, struck him, or made him feel like he was even less than dog shit under their shoe.

There was no rule against killing a family member.

He checked the bylaws. 

He’d checked them many times, caressing the empty space where such a clause should be written, but wasn’t. Mr Le Bail would not punish or stop Titus from tearing free of his leash, but the simple truth was… Titus was too much of a coward to do it.

Ursula and his father were all Titus had.

The only people who would ever see an ounce of goodness in him, or at least usefulness. Yeah, he wasn’t the smartest or most composed, he wasn’t all that good with the business, but he never lost a hunt. That, and the Danforth blood running in his veins, alone gave him worth. And he clung to it as desperately as a little boy to the bloodied, disfigured body of the mother that dared love him too much, that dared make the great Chester Danforth's heir weak.

The gathered guests fell silent at the first chime of the bell.

The High Council families gathered at the head of the room, by the lectern where the Lawyer placed the ancient tomb holding all their contracts and bylaws since… honestly, Titus had no idea. The old, faded pictures preserving the history of the High Council showed glimpses of the Lawyer throughout the centuries. He always looked the same, exactly as he did today, opening his ancient tomb and addressing the room.

You waved at him from where you stood, hiding behind your father. For the first time all evening, you smiled. Something hot and volatile and gastly flared in Titus' chest at the sight of it. He could not make sense of it.

The Lawyer smiled back at you, eyes crinkling at the corners, and he winked.

How did you, the most guarded secret of your father's legacy, know a being like the Lawyer?

“We have gathered here today to fill the empty spot on the High Council. Sixteen of the lower bloodlines have been chosen by Mr Le Bail to be given the chance to prove themselves worthy of a seat on the High Council. The Heads of your families will now announce the proxy they have chosen to represent their blood on today’s hunt. Choose well, ladies and gentlemen, for only one will survive the night.”

Konstantin Von Arco was first in line. He appointed his third-born son, a brawny, twenty-nine-year-old who looked as if he had more muscle than brains. It continued down the line of prospective families, each chosen proxy was the strongest, biggest fighter the family had to offer, and likely trained for this very day for as long as they had lived.

Titus could not help the urge to find you, pick you out of the crowd of heirs. You were surrounded by your brothers once again. The glass you held for most of the evening but never actually drank from had disappeared from your stiff clutch, leaving you no choice but to fidget with your fingers, digging your long nails into the sensitive flesh around your nails and tearing at the skin until you bled.

You were staring at the ground to your feet, as though desperately trying to forget where you were, forget the people surrounding you.

Titus wanted you to look at him.

You didn't, and his hands curled into fists from the inexplicable rage your silent refusal poured into his body. 

One of your brothers - Tobias, Titus believed to remember his name was, the second-born - placed his hand over yours, effectively stopping your attempts at self-mutilation. You looked up, an air of surprise cutting across your face, just to make room for a gentle smile.

Your father stepped forward.

“I - Richard Covington - appoint as my proxy to represent me and my bloodline-” The gathered guests held their breaths. On which of his sons his choice would fall had been the topic of the evening. High Council family members exchanged glances, some already grinning, believing their wagers to come true any moment now- “-my beloved daughter.”

The uproar was immediate and violent.

A barrage of confusion and disbelief so loud Titus felt it punch against his eardrum.

It drowned out your name on your father’s tongue. You flinched at the sudden clamour, which only seemed to add fuel to the fire.

“What foul game are you playing, Covington?!” The head of another lower family shouted across the room. Richard’s smug expression did not waver once. “If you believe our heirs would hesitate to kill a little girl, you are sorely mistaken!”

“I have chosen a proxy, Declan, as is demanded by the rules.” Richard turned towards the lawyer ever so slightly. “I am permitted to choose anyone who shares my blood, am I not?”

“That is correct.” The Lawyer smirked as though he'd known all along the choice would fall on you and found the room's reaction amusing. Wasn't that curious?

“Then I choose my daughter.”

You were still standing in the circle of your brothers, unmoving aside from the tiniest tremble shaking the tips of your fingers. Richard’s hand clamped down on your shoulder, a little rougher than necessary, and dragged you forward, forcing you to stand in front of your families just as the other chosen proxies were already doing.

You looked even smaller, so exposed, served up to the hungry leering of starving predators on a silver platter. A few fine hairs had fallen from your braids and now framed your terrified, pretty face.

Titus mourned his exclusion from the hunt even more now. It would be nothing short of delectable to chase you through the woods, hearing your whimpers and tasting your tears before feeling his war pick shatter your skull.

“If you didn’t want the seat, you could have just said so.” Another patriarch jeered after announcing his choice - his oldest son, another brute about twice your size who was already sizing you up.

Titus’ jaw tensed at the way the man’s eyes raked over you, as if you were someone he had any right to look at that way.

“A shame.” He tutted. “To waste such a nice piece of ass on a game rigged against her…”

Your eyes flicked towards him, gaze sharpening, posture shifting out of the meek cower terror held you trapped in, tensing, morphing into something deadly - there and gone again so fast Titus wondered if he had truly seen it, or just imagined it.

He must have.

Nothing about the way you behaved tonight screamed, even whispered, ‘killer’. He was loath to agree with an oaf like Svetlitskiy’s son, but you did have a very nice ass, and it was a shame to waste you on a game you could not possibly win. What was your father doing?

“There are easier ways to get rid of a disappointing child.” Von Arco chuckled. Richard’s posture tensed, but before he could say or do something, your voice rose over the excited clamour, quiet and soft, but clear, bright like nothing in this room, this life of theirs, could ever be.

You turned, just your upper body, feet remaining firmly planted against the ground, and tipped your head to the side. “You want me to kill these people, daddy?”

Something about your casual tone choked off the guests’ laughter. The question was phrased too lightly, too unbothered to come from lips like yours, your voice far too sweet for the meaning of your words.

“I want you-” Your father stepped forward. He put his arm around your shoulders to catch your chin. He pushed your head back towards the Lawyer, making you look at him before speaking again, lips brushing the shell of your ear. “-to listen to the Lawyer, and follow his rules. You will follow his rules like you follow your doctor’s rules, hm? As if they were daddy’s rules, is that clear?”

“Yes, sir.” Something changed in your eyes and smile then. The corner of your mouth curled. Your gaze sharpened, leaving innocent curiosity behind for something far more sinister. Titus watched these minuscule changes with parted lips, hunger and greed swirling aimlessly through his insides until it required all of his fragile composure not to break rank to grab you and lay claim over you right then and there. 

Ursula shot him a warning look from the side that he missed entirely.

You listened with rapt attention, clinging to the Lawyer's lips and every word as he explained the rules, nodding every once in a while. Your body practically vibrated with excitement the room mistook for anxiety, but Titus saw the difference.

He watched your anxiety all day; this was different.

The Lawyer closed the book, and a chime sounded in the distance. Half the proxies rushed out, abandoning the room and the weapon’s stand in the middle of the circle, choosing to win ground and distance over joining the no doubt bloody fight about to erupt for the array of weapons to choose from - well, to choose from for those who reached it alive.

Von Arco’s son and Collett’s daughter decided to go for the weapons at the same time and were soon locked in a bloody fist fight.

Two more proxies chose to run instead of fight.

You remained right where you were. Svetlitskiy’s son was still watching you, hunger ablaze in his eyes, licking his lips. There were no rules dictating that he could not hurt you before killing you. No rules to keep him from sating his hunger before letting your blood soak into his hands, and Titus didn't know what he'd do if Svetlitskiy’s son attempted any of it.

“May I kill them now, daddy?” You spoke without taking your eyes off the fight, waiting patiently for permission even when your fingers twitched at your side. The other High Council members laughed, chuckling at the naive, silly little girl. Even Ursula grinned.

Titus didn’t. 

Instead, a cold shudder ran down his back.

He remained perfectly still, hazel eyes trained on you, unmoving.

He saw something none of them saw, he realised then. He saw your darkness where your pretty, young face and peculiar behaviour still fooled the rest.

You were a monster, tamed, obedient only to your father's word, yet still wild, longing, yearning to sink your teeth into warm flesh and taste blood.

“Yes, darling.”

You moved the second your father was done speaking. In a single, fluid motion, you shifted from standing to lunging. You took down Svetlitskiy’s son with three precise, hard hits - the heel of your hand slamming upwards into his nose, your knee sinking hard into his stomach when he toppled over, blood spouting from his nose, and at last, tackling him to the ground with all the force of a rabid bear.

It did not matter that Svetlitskiy was twice your size. It did not matter that he was older, that he was nothing but sheer muscle, with hands as big as your head.

You took him down with bared teeth and bare hands as though you’d been born for this.

“What did you say about my ass, hm? Why don’t you fucking say that again?!” You cupped Svetlitskiy's cheeks and slammed the back of his head into the parquet. The crunch of shattering bone was sickening, echoing through the suddenly quiet reception hall. Deafening. Again and again.

Titus found himself enthralled, utterly enthralled, by the sight of you.

“I can’t fucking hear you, you pathetic piece of shit!” Your fist came down on his face, shattering what remained intact of his nose, driving bone fragments into his brain, pulverising his cheekbones, every last part of his facial structure, until the parquet was covered in a crimson puddle and your knuckles split. Blood splattered through the air, drizzling your face in a red mist that ran down your neck in a narrow trickle and left your teeth covered in a pink sheen.

You wore blood well, Titus thought, and a picture of you wearing nothing but the blood of your enemies popped into his head, unbidden and so very persistent.

You put your thumbs over his eyes and pressed, squeezing soft tissue until it popped under your manicured nails. A deranged grin cut across your face, distorting your pretty face into something not quite human, a mutilated appropriation of human delight. Titus found himself unable to look away. The room around him faded away. He wasn’t even watching the blood pouring forth from the eye sockets to drown your thumbs and pale yellow nail polish. 

He watched your face. 

The way the corners of your mouth twitched. The intense focus tensing your facial features, that feverish, edging on deranged expression gleaming in your eyes.

Titus almost forgot himself, almost forgot the people surrounding him - and you - almost forgot his sister and father and their scathing disapproval for everything he did and all the potential he lacked.

You looked up at that moment, hungry eyes finding Titus among the crowd of stunned High Council families. The tip of your tongue darted out between your plush lips, swiping away some of the blood clinging to them.

Titus’ heart stuttered in his chest, a feeling so very foreign to him, it startled him.

You tipped your head to the side, like a puppy trying to understand the world it had been tossed into without any instructions. Your thumbs still pressed down on your prey, the pale, innocent yellow of your nails now entirely swallowed up by the gory eyesockets.

If Titus were more of a man, if Titus were the man his father had tried to raise him to be, he’d abandon his position at his family's side and go to you. He was a Danforth, and Danforths did not ask permission to own what they desired, and Titus could not remember a time in his life when he had ever wanted something as much as his wicked soul craved you in that exact moment. 

He pictured it, stepping through the bloody puddle your hunger tore into your victim, now staining the vintage wood, grabbing you, hoisting you up and into his arms… he pictured taking you right there and then, the blood of your kill still warm beneath your bodies as he claimed you as his-

“Fourteen more to go, sweetie. Don't get distracted.” Your father’s voice cut through Titus’ quickly escalating fantasy, and as much as it soured the sweet pictures Titus’ mind conjured - it soured the satisfaction you’d found in carnage even more.

Your head whipped around, eyes locking in on your father, the snarl meant for Svetlitskiy still stretching across your lips. Your father tutted. Your snarl fell away. A chided dog remembering who its master was. You got to your feet after another second of hesitation, clearly unwilling to leave behind your prey. 

How cruel to make you.

How utterly cruel.

Titus would never force you to abandon your meal, especially when you looked so beautiful while devouring it…

You sucked your thumb into your mouth, licking off blood soaking your skin as you sauntered over to the weapon's stand. Collett stared at you from where she was cowering next to her kill, wide-eyed. She scampered backwards over the ground, her blood-stained hands slipping helplessly over the ground in her desperate attempt to get away from you.

Blood shone wetly on your dress and tights, covered your hands and ran down your arms. Your braids rested innocently against your collarbone, the ends dipped in blood.

You hummed as you observed the weapons.

Titus had no words to describe you, no words to make sense of what he was seeing - angelic was far too tame, and demonic did not give your sweet beauty the praise it was owed. Was this how Lucifer had looked? In the hour of his banishment? God’s brightest and most beautiful now cloaked in the deepest, darkest shadows of creation?

“I can take whatever I want?” You tipped your head to the side again, looking up at the Lawyer for answers. He inclined his head in a nod, a smile curling around his lips.

Titus half expected you to choose a firearm. 

It was easy. Clean. Anyone could learn to be a good shot, and most women he’d encountered during these kinds of hunts preferred the long-range weapons. Less personal.

You didn't.

You picked up a battle axe that looked too heavy as that you should be able to wield it with such smooth ease as you did when you wandered over to Collett and brought the sharp edge down on her fear-drenched face. Blood hit the ground with sickening, loud smacks. Collett’s father stifled a shocked scream.

Your grin widened, edging onto mania.

You cocked your head at the split skull beneath you and the brain matter smeared across the axe blade. You set your boot against Collett’s unmoving shoulder to pull your axe free. The blade slid free with a wet smacking sound, followed by the dull thud of the unmoving body hitting the ground.

As soon as you left the reception room behind, the gathered guests flocked towards the TV screens showcasing the different angles of the extensive CCTV system. The other contenders had been forgotten, wiped from the collective conscience of the invited guest by your gruesome display of startling competency and ruthless bloodlust.

Your father wore a smug, pleased expression at the excited chatter rising all around him. Caspian scowled and turned away, taking two of his brothers with him to move towards the refreshments. Titus followed. He stayed at a distance, enough to conceal his intention but not so much that the audience's excitement at the hunt picking up would drown out their conversation. Always the hunter.

“This is a fucking mistake.” Caspian hissed at one of the hors d'oeuvres as though the smoked salmon had just insulted his mother.

“I don’t know.” Sebastian hummed as he popped a grape into his mouth. “This seems right up her alley. No restrictions, no rules? That’s much more to her taste than the morsels father feeds her to keep her compulsions fed and her compliant.”

“She’s happiest when people don’t interfere with her kills, brother.” Tobias added.

“Exactly.” Caspian crossed his arms in front of his chest. “She isn’t used to her prey killing each other, or to them fighting back! This is reckless and short-sighted. What if she gets hurt? We have no idea how she’s going to react to that.”

“Do I detect a flicker of jealousy in your voice, Caspian?” Sebastian grinned. “Because father chose her, and not you?”

“Please.” Caspian sniffed and adjusted the cuff of his dress shirt. “This kind of… event is much more to your taste than it is mine. Besides, Father is simply seizing the opportunity that, for once, his deranged daughter is useful for something. He is making her pay for the years he’s been protecting her, for ‘allowing’ her to sate her hunger.”

“What has you scowling then? Our sister gets to live out her dark side, and Father gets his seat on the High Council. Seems like everyone wins to me.” Tobias observed his brother. “Isn’t it a good thing she gets to let loose for once? Father’s rules can be suffocating, you’ve said so yourself.”

Caspian glanced over his shoulder towards their father. One of the cameras was following your movement down the east wing. You were dragging the axe behind you, leaving a trail of blood in your wake. 

“And I stand by that. But what do you think happens when she realises she does not get the fifteen kills she was promised? One proxy has already been killed by someone who wasn’t her. And how do you think she’ll react when Father tries to force her back into her cage after letting her act out her bloodlust to her heart’s content? Do you think she’ll accept everything going back to the way it was before? She isn’t twelve anymore!”

Titus slipped away towards the bar before his presence could be noticed by the brothers. A fresh drink in hand, he made his way across the room once more, pulled towards his family by the force of loyalty instilled in him and the lack of other options.

Who did he have in this life besides them?

On the screen, Titus watched you sneak up on another proxy, a woman about twice your age cowering behind the bar in the small ballroom - whether to stalk another proxy or in an ill-advised attempt to hide, Titus couldn’t tell. Not that it mattered. Not with you there. You grabbed her hair, yanked her head back in a violent tug and cut her throat with a dagger, wide and deep, so deep you hit bone, leaving the woman’s throat a gaping, blood-spouting mess.

“She’s just mowing through them all, isn’t she?” Ursula hummed, eyes glued to the screen, clearly trying to decide how much of a threat you were.

“Unexpected.” Chester Danforth was not a man who appreciated unexpected things, but he did not show his displeasure outwardly, especially not when Richard joined him, whistling a playful tune to himself.

“Quite something, isn’t she?” Your father folded his hands behind his back. His lips curled into a sardonic grin as he watched you smash Von Arco’s face into the bar top, reducing it to a bloody pulp. “Though, of course, I’ve heard your children are quite - ah - skilled as well. One must defend their assets, no? Your father certainly knew that.” He glanced at the ring on Chester’s finger. The ultimate sigil of power.

Chester ignored the obvious dig at his position as keeper of the High Seat, a position he inherited from his father, rather than earned himself, something that had always been a sore subject for Chester. Only the slight jump of the muscle in his jaw gave his emotions away.

“I certainly see now why you’ve chosen her.”

“I didn’t want another child.” Richard mused, swirling the glass he'd picked off a server's tablet in his hand, watching the dark red wine slosh around. “Much less a daughter. What use do I have for a daughter? But my late wife… ah, she wanted one so badly. I confess that is the only reason we have so many sons. She was not willing to give up. She grew so desperate that she asked Mr Le Bail to bless her with a daughter. Well… one should be careful what they ask Mr Le Bail for, no?” He grinned. “She got her daughter, but she was never quite… right.” Richard’s grin widened. “She was eight when she killed her mother. Said the man in the chair at the head of the table told her to do it.” At that, your father laughed, actually laughed. “Every time she talks to him, I wonder whether she actually sees him or is simply crazy. Oh well… I got everything I could ever want from my wife, no great loss there, and my daughter… I'll freely admit that I enjoy being a girl dad, as the young folk today say, more than I ever thought I would.”

Titus could not quite decipher the way your father looked at you. It was a mixture of a businessman watching one of his long-term investments finally paying off and that of a doting old man looking at the single most precious thing of his whole life.

Titus looked back at the screen, at you.

Every little detail Titus learnt about you only made him crave you more.

He had to have you. In what way, he could not quite tell yet.

It was almost a shame you would soon be part of a Council family - after all, which of the other proxies would possess the power to best you? Especially if Mr Le Bail’s favour was with you, as your father seemed to insinuate - for killing you would surely be one of the most delectable indulgences Titus in his lavish, privileged life had ever partaken in.

But another, increasingly growing in strength, part of him revolted against the mere notion of any harm coming unto you, ever.

Hunger prickled under his skin, squirming like maggots devouring his flesh. It was almost unbearable to know he had to wait. Wait for you to finish your hunt. Wait for the watchful eyes of your brothers to be clouded by fatigue and alcohol. Wait for your father to be busy celebrating his victory. Wait for him and his own father to be distracted by instructing Richard on the privileges and obligations of his new position.

Wait.

Wait until he could find you - what he’d do when he had you alone… Titus wasn’t sure. He just knew that he had to get closer to you.

Next Chapter

For a singular moment, you let yourself pretend. That this meant something. That he stayed. That he chose you in the daylight the same way he reached for you in the dark.

His breathing shifted. It was small, barely there, but you felt it – the exact second he came back to himself. The quiet recalculation. The tension settling back into his body like it never left. 

You didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Just stared at the ceiling like it might give you an answer. His arm tightened briefly around your waist before slipping away. Cold air rushing in where his warmth had been. He sat up at the edge of the bed. You turned towards the wall. A pause.

“You okay?”

Your throat tightened. His tone was the same as always, like last night didn’t change anything. 

“Yeah.” Voice sounding far away even to your own ears.

For a second you thought he might say something else. Acknowledge what happened. Instead, “You hungry?” 

The question sat wrong. Too normal, too easy. Finger curling tighter into the sheets, you closed your eyes, “No.” 

You could feel his eyes on you. The weight of it steady against your back. Your skin still exposed above the blanket lying at your waist.

Then he stood. The quiet rustle of clothes as he dressed. The soft creak of the floor as he walked to the door. Back to routine, like every other morning. Like this was no different from the nights he slept here and left before the sun came up. You almost said something. Almost asked him to stay. Instead, you pulled the blanket up over your shoulder.

The door opened. Then stopped. Your breath caught as he whispered, “Hey.” 

You didn’t turn right away. Just opened your eyes, staring at the wall for a second before looking over your shoulder. He stood there with his back to you, head turned slightly, like he hadn’t meant to stop but couldn’t quite leave yet.

Your heartrate picked up. “Yeah?”

“You – “ 

He cut himself off. Your heart thundered against your chest. Waiting. But whatever it was, he didn’t say it. His jaw clenched like he’d changed his mind before the words could even form.

“I’ll see you later.” And then he was gone.

~~~

Voices carried down the hallway before you even reached the kitchen. Loud laughter from Craig at something Deran had said. You paused in the hallway for a second, damp hair clinging to the back of your neck, and skin still stinging from the shower. You’d scrubbed harder than you needed to, like it might fix something. It didn’t.

You pushed into the kitchen anyway. The TV showing Saturday morning cartoons as Deran and Craig wrestled on the couch, arguing over something that didn’t matter. A small smile tugged at your mouth. Smurf stood at the stove, flipping pancakes with one hand, cigarette balanced between the fingers of the other. 

No one looked at you twice.  Just another normal day.

“Morning,” Julia appeared at your side. Hair a mess, eyes bright, energy spilling out of her like she’d been awake for hours. “You disappeared last night,” grabbing your wrist, she pulled you further into the kitchen. “Where’d you go?”

You shrugged, keeping your voice light, “Wasn’t feeling it so I read in my room for a while.”

She squinted at you, not buying it, but not pushing it either. “Whatever,” she said after a second, waving it off. Then just as quickly, her grin came back.  “You’re coming out tonight.”

You blinked, “What?”

“Beach party down by the pier,” she said like it was obvious. “Everyone’s gonna be there.”

Your stomach tightened instinctively. “I don’t know, Jules…”

“You do,” she cut in, grinning like a cat. “Because I’ve already told people you’d be there.”

You let out a small laugh. Half annoyed, half humoured. “That’s not how that works.” 

“It is tonight,” she shot back easily, smile plastered across her face. “Ty Dawson’s gonna be there.”

You frowned, ‘Who?”

She let out a dramatic sigh and stared at you like you’d said something embarrassing. “Are you serious?” You just stared right back at her. 

“Surfer. Older. Hot,” she said, ticking it off like a checklist on her fingers. “Drives that stupid, beat up campervan that looks like it should have died ten years ago.”

“Oh,” you said like that cleared anything up. “Okay…”

Julia’s smile turned sharp, “He saw at the beach a few weeks ago. Asked about you.” She wiggled her eyebrows suggestively. “He said you were –“ she dragged it out, clearly enjoying this, “superrrr sexy.”

You groaned, dragging a hand over your face. “Julia…” you sighed.

“You’re going,” she cut in. “And you’re not wearing…that” she gestured to your oversized t shirt and jeans, screwing her face up.

You didn’t want to go. Didn’t want the noise, the people, the way everything felt too close. But staying didn’t sound any better. Anything was better than sitting alone with your thoughts.

“…Fine,” you said finally. 

Julia lit up instantly. “Yes,” she grabbed your hand, pulling you towards her room. “We’re finding you something slutty.”

You snorted despite yourself. “Absolutely not.”

“Absolutely YES!” she shot back. “Something tiny and tight!”

~~~

Her room was already a mess. Drawers open, clothes everywhere.

“You’re not going out looking like that,” Julia said with a disgusted look on her face as she dug through a drawer.

“Looking like what?” you asked, leaning against the doorframe.

She didn’t answer right away, just pulled out a top, squinted at it, then tossed it onto the bed with the others. “Like you’re trying to disappear.”

The words hit you like a brick. You didn’t respond.

“Here,” she said suddenly, throwing something at you before you could argue. “Try that.”

You looked down. A fitted cropped tank. White. Paired with the tiniest pair of denim shorts you’d ever seen.

You raised your eyebrows. “You’re joking.”

“I’m not.”

“This is barely clothing.”

“It’s enough,” she said, already pushing you towards the bathroom. “Go.”

You hesitated for a second, grip tightening around the fabric. Your mind flickered back to a hand on your waist. The weight of him on top of you. The way he’d almost said something this morning. You shook your head and padded into the bathroom. You told yourself you needed this. Need the attention from someone else. You wanted to be seen.

You stepped into the bathroom.

~~~

The beach was already alive by the time you got there.

Music thumped across the sand, bass so heavy you could feel it in your chest. Bonfires burned in uneven circles, smoke drifting into the night air, mixing with salt and beer and something sweet you couldn’t quite place. People moved everywhere – laughing, shouting, grinding, kissing.

Julia disappeared almost immediately. Of course she did.

“Drink,” Baz said, suddenly there, shoving a red cup into your hand before you could even get your bearings.

You blinked at it. “What is this?”

“Don’t ask questions,” he grinned. 

You gave a shy smile back, then took a sip. Immediate regret. You coughed, turning your head slightly as it burned its way down, threatening to come back up. “Jesus! What is that?”

Baz just laughed. “Good, right?”

You wiped your mouth with the back of your hand, shaking your head. “You’re trying to kill me.”

“Relax,” Baz said. “The second will go down easier.”

It didn’t. But you forced yourself to swallow it anyway.

By the third, the world felt softer around the edges. By the fourth, you stopped caring.

The music felt louder. Warmer. Like it was pulling you in instead of pressing against you. Your body moved easier, like something inside you had finally unclenched.

Julia found you again, grabbing your hands and dragging you closer to the speakers. “Yes,” she laughed, spinning you once. “There she is.”

You laughed too. Really laughed this time, letting her pull you into the crowd. And for a while, it worked. You didn’t think about him. Didn’t think about the morning. About the almost-words. About the way he left. You just moved.

~~~

“That’s her?”

The voice came from somewhere to your right. You turned, slower than you meant to. A guy stood there – tall, tanned, hair messy like he’d just come out of the ocean. There was something off about his smile, like he was a little too sure of himself.

Julia leaned into your shoulder slightly. “Told you,” she said under her breath.

“Ty,” he said, stepping closer like he already knew you wouldn’t step back. “I’ve been looking for you.”

You let out a small, breathy laugh. “Have you?”

“Yeah,” he said, eyes dragging over you in a way that made your skin prickle. “Was beginning to think Julia hiding you from me.”

Julia snorted. “You’re welcome.”

You should’ve pulled away. You didn’t. The alcohol sat warm in your chest, dulling the sharp edges of instinct. Making everything feel… easier. Lighter.

“Dance with me,” Ty said, already reaching for your hand.

You hesitated. Just for a second. Then you let him pull you in. You knew it wasn’t what you wanted. But it wasn’t Andrew. And right now, that was enough.

His hands settled at your hips quickly as he pulled your back to his front. It was too familiar for someone you’d just met, but you were too drunk to notice. He ground his hips into yours to the sound of the music. Stumbling slightly, you laughed and grabbed his arm to steady yourself. 

“That’s it,” he said, lips on the shell of your ear. “Relax.”

His lips dropped to your neck, leaving open mouth kisses. Your eyes shot open, thinking back to Pope’s lips on your neck the night before. On instinct, you looked across the beach and saw him standing there. Staring at you. Fingers twitching at his side as if he was holding himself back.

Pulling yourself away, you spun around so you couldn’t see him anymore. Pushing Andrew out of your head, you looked at Ty. He raked his eyes over your body and bit his lip.

“Your tits look amazing in that,” he said moving forward to grab you again. He leaned in to kiss you, and you let him. Even though you didn’t really want to. He forced his tongue into your mouth, and you could feel yourself start to gag at the taste of him. You almost pulled away. You didn’t. You didn’t know why.

His hand slid down your side until he was cupping your ass. You wretched yourself away from him but he pulled you back by the forearm.

“No,” you slurred when his hand dropped low again.

“Come on, baby. We’re just having fun,” he said before his lips found yours again. You let him touch you this time. The alcohol dulling your senses.

Across the beach, Andrew watched. Told himself it didn’t matter. You weren’t his. Then Ty’s hand slid lower and stayed there. Something snapped in him.

You barely registered the shift at first. Just the sudden absence of Ty against you. Then – shouting. The music didn’t stop but everything around you blurred. You could hear Baz yelling Pope’s name and felt Julia pull you towards her. You turned just in time to see Andrew’s fist connect. It was brutal. Ty’s head snapped sideways as he hit the ground. Andrew didn’t stop. 

Another punch. And another. No hesitation. No restraint.

Your heart dropped. Baz was grabbing at Andrew, trying to pull him back. Andrew shoved Baz off him. Like he couldn’t see past his own rage.

“ANDREW,” you screamed, clutching the back of his shirt.

At the sound of your voice, he began to falter. Fists slowing down. Breathing ragged.

“Andrew, please,’ you sobbed and he pulled back. Let you heave him off. Ty groaned on the ground, blood running from his nose and lips, staining the sand below. You dragged Andrew back, away from everyone.

“What the FUCK is wrong with you?!”

Your voice came out louder than you meant and Andrew turned towards you immediately. Whatever was left of his anger faded the second he saw you.

“You were –“ he started.

“I was what?” you cut in, stepping closer, unsteady but furious. “Dancing?”

“He had his hands all over you.”

“So?”

The word hit harder than anything else. Andrew blinked, like he hadn’t expected that.

“So?” he repeated, disbelief bleeding through.

You laughed, but there was no humour in it. “You don’t get to do that.”

“Do what?” he asked, small frown forming on his face.

“This,” you gestured wildly between him and the mess behind him. “Act like you have some kind of claim.”

His jaw tightened. “I don’t—”

“You don’t,” you cut in again, sharper now. “You don’t get to show up, lose your mind, and act like I’m yours when you can’t even –“

You stopped yourself. Too late. The words hung there anyway. Andrew’s expression softened.

“Can’t even what?” he asked, quieter now. 

Your throat tightened.

You shook your head once, like you could undo it. “Nothing.”

“Say it.”

You let out a broken laugh. “You don’t want me.”

That landed. You could see it in the way he flinched like you’d struck him. But you were already past the point of stopping.

“You don’t stay –“ your voice broke, “you never stay. You don’t get to care now.”

Silence stretched between you. Heavy. Thick. Andrew stared at you like he didn’t have an answer. Like maybe there wasn’t one. You swallowed hard, stepping back slightly as the world tilted again.

“Don’t do that again,” you said, quieter now. “Don’t act like I belong to you.”

Then you turned before he could say anything. Before he could fix it or make it worse.

And this time, you didn’t look back.

Parker scoffed a chuckle at that, the rest of the crew seemed to be thinking the same, furrowed brows as you stood out under the harsh fluorescent hospital lights .

“Team, just wanted to introduce our newest recruit with legal. She’ll be working closely with the ER—handling complaints, risk management, patient disputes,” Gloria said, as the early morning day shift hovered around the nurses’ station. “She’ll be reviewing incident reports, advising on liability, and stepping in when anything escalates.”

A couple of them groaned quietly at that. Gloria ignored it.

“She’s your first point of contact for anything legal or ethical. Reports to the head office, but she’s based upstairs. Available during the day—and on nights if needed.”

You stood beside her, posture straight, hands clasped neatly in front of you—fingers fidgeting just slightly against each other, like you’re holding them there on purpose. Hair slightly messy in a way that felt unintentional, Mary Jane heels, peppered with pink and off-whites, skirt and all. Bright eyes. A smile that was just a touch too careful.

“Really nice to meet you all,” you said, well rehearsed, polite as ever. “I’ve interned at VA hospitals, children’s hospitals, so I’ve dealt with a... diverse range of people” You paused, a small, self-aware breath. “I’m just, you know, here to help keep things from turning into lawsuits, basically.”

That got a few more looks.

Gloria continued—something about OFIs—but most of them had checked out. Some nodded politely, some looked half-dead from night shift, others clung to their coffee like it was life support.

PTMC has a... somewhat sliming legal team. The budget is already parsed through to not be given to nurses and other staff.

Your eyes moved across the group, taking them in, assessing.

They landed on Jack. Just a second longer. Then moved on.

He frowned faintly, not thinking much of it as he leaned toward Ellis.

“Think she’ll last?” he murmured.

Parker shrugged, zipping her bag. “Maybe. Looks a bit uptight.”

“Probably why Gloria likes her,” he muttered.

He glanced back—caught you looking again.

You looked away quickly this time, your smile slipping for half a second before it reset, a little tighter.

★★★

He didn’t see you again for a few weeks.

He heard about you, though.

From both shifts. Little things.

You’d diffused a situation with a patient’s family threatening legal action. Sat in on a complaint review and apparently tore apart the timeline in ten minutes. Got someone to rewrite an incident report because, according to a nurse, “it read like a drunk text.”

He heard about you, though.

From both shifts. Little things.

You, in fact, had not been eaten alive. Despite the carefully put-together, polite, slightly squirrelly exterior, you were apparently… well-suited for PTMC.

Robby had filled him in one morning, leaning back in his chair with his coffee, eyes wide as if he were still in disbelief. “It’s ridiculous,” he said. “Some guy comes in complaining I nearly got his wife killed over the flu. He wants to sue for millions. I go up to her office—he’s there, she’s there—and twenty minutes later, it’s sorted. I even get to go back with time off because she noticed I’d been on sixteen hours. Nothing to hold against me, nothing to hold against the hospital.”

Jack furrowed his brows, amused, impressed, confused all at once. “Seriously?”

“Yup,” Robby said, leaning back further. “All my years here, I don’t think I’ve worked with a lawyer this young who can actually handle the shit we put up with without even cracking. Gotten used to... ambulance chasers and Gloria's pitbulls.”

Parker quickly changed her attitude on you when she'd come right up to your shared office, solely with the intent of trying to figure out where she could change her contract. You managed to negotiate her a pay rise with Gloria after a figuring out she'd had a particularly rough shift.

You existed somewhere in the building. Just not in the Pitt, not usually.

Until one night.

Sometime past 3AM, he's finishing a report when he hears you before he sees you. The soft, precise tap of heels against linoleum.

“Hey, sorry—um, I’m looking for Doctor Abbot?”

A nurse pointed across the floor. “Right over there, sweets.”

“Thanks!" You say quickly, already heading his way.

He straightened slightly as you approached.

“What can I do for you?” he asks, closing out his tab.

You smile, a little breathless but contained. “Hi—sorry, I don’t think we’ve properly met.” 

You hold your hand out.

He hesitates—not long, just enough to take you in properly this time.

Your hair’s come a little loose now—flyaways catching the light, a hint of frizz where it’s fallen out of whatever you did to tame it hours ago. There’s pen ink smudged across your fingers, even faintly along your forearm, like you’ve been working faster than you can keep up with.

Still neat. Still put-together. Maybe not quite holding as the night ticked away.

Your skirt sits just right, tailored and careful, and your button-up—something soft, a little too pretty for this place—has its sleeves pushed up to your elbows. Practical, but not by design. Like you didn’t plan to be here this long.

He shakes your hand. You give your full name, your title, crisp and practiced.

“Yeah,” he nods. “Know who you are.” He stepped around you, already moving. You followed immediately, hot on his heels. “Heard plenty.”

“Great,” you say, a small laugh. “Good things, I hope.”

“Bit late for you, isn’t it?” he mentions, stopping at a screen.

You nearly walk into him.

He glances down as you caught yourself, just a fraction too close before you stepped neatly to his side, smoothing your skirt like it didn’t happen.

“Right, uh—” you mutter, then recover. “Well. Sleep’s for losers.”

“That’s what I keep telling the day shift,” he remarks.

That got a real smile out of you. He couldn’t help but think of it as a win. This close, he can smell your perfume. It's far from the smell of sanitiser and every kind of bodily fluid of the ER. It's sweet, something with strawberries maybe. Whatever it is, it's made him want you around longer.

“Anyway,” you continue, reining yourself back in, “I realised we hadn’t actually met. You know, properly. I’ve been working mostly with Dr. Robinvatich—reviewing incident reports, flagging potential liability issues, sitting in on complaint escalations—so I thought it made sense to acquaint myself with the night attending as well. I've heard a lot about you as well.”

“Good things, I hope,” he echoes, scanning the screen, arms crossed over his chest.

Then he looks at you. You're already looking at him—open, curious, intent. He holds your gaze a second longer than necessary. A precise beat passes as his own curiosity gets the best of him. Bright eyed, seemingly angelic young lawyer... at PTMC.

“How old are you?”

You blink, caught off guard. “Sorry?”

“You mentioned you interned around. Don’t know many lawyers who do that unless they’re fresh out.”

“Right—yeah. I’m 24,” you answer. “I went straight into law school, then did about a year of hospital placements. I do want to specialise further—medical law, likely. I actually enjoy working with doctors, mostly, they can be… an acquired taste, but—” you gave a quick, self-conscious smile, remembering who you were speaking too. “—I think I’ve got the stomach for it.”

You stop, eventually, maybe a beat too late. "I didn't... I'm 24, is the point. Qualified, I swear it."

"I don't doubt it." He nods.

He watches it happen again—the shift. The way your confidence dips when you realise you’ve said too much.

Amused, he bites back a smile.

“You?” you add quickly. “I mean—how old are you? I heard you were military, so—”

“Guess.”

You let out a small laugh. “Older than me.”

“By a bit.”

"...40?" You try.

"Flattery will get you far, kid. 45." He corrects, chuckling at that. "But I'm not qualified for this. Just put on gloves and they let me at it."

You grin and nod. "'Course. You've got the look down. Could've convinced me."

He tilts his head a bit at that. He opens his mouth to respond, before he's interrupted.

“Abbot! Need you over here. Kid’s got some… centipede or some shit in his ear,” Parker calls out from Central 4.

Parker's face relaxes when she sees you, she calls your name out and gives a small wave. You give a polite wave back.

He exhales through his nose, already halfway moving. “Alright, be right there.”

He looks back at you, like a kid he’s been stuck with supervising.

“You’re welcome to… hang around,” he adds, a little rough around the edges. “Nurses won’t bite. Unless you ask ‘em to.”

There’s the faintest hint of something in his tone—dry, but not entirely joking.

You nod, a little too quickly. “Cool. Yep. I’ll just be… around here. I did actually need to speak to you about something, so, whenever you have the chance."

He gives you a once-over—quick, but not careless—then heads off, already scrubbing sanitiser into his hands. "I wouldn't wait up, sweetheart." He tells over his shoulder to you.

Your hand tightens slightly around the notebook in your hands at the petname.

It takes a while till you get the chance to chat with him again.

A call comes in, barely minutes later—car accident, five people, a few blocks out—and suddenly the whole floor shifts. People moving faster, voices sharper, stretchers rolling in before you’ve even fully registered what’s happening.

You stay. You tell yourself it’s observational. Useful. Context for your job. You probably should've just ditched for your own office at some point, leave the doctors to do their work. But it’s quiet in your office. You share it with two other people, and they aren’t exactly staying back till 3AM. 

You keep out of the way, mostly. Hover near the station, ask the occasional question, get a few curious looks in return.

At one point Shen ends up next to you, mid-charting, clearly thinking out loud.

“So if a patient refuses treatment but they’re being, like… objectively stupid about it—”

“That would not legally be discrimination,” you tell him, glancing up from the notes you’re pretending to read. “But it would be rude to tell them that they're being stupid... even if they are.”

He snorts. “Great. Good to know.”

“Also,” you add, a little primly, “document this. You’d be shocked how often ‘we told them’ doesn’t actually appear anywhere.”

“Got it, thanks,” he mutters, typing faster.

Across the room, Jack catches that.

Just a flash of it—your posture, the way you tilt your head when you’re explaining something, hands clasped like you’re holding yourself in place. Eventually, once the worst has passed, as it reaches 5AM, he manages to find his way back over to you.

Inbetween the flashes of bodies around you, people quickly going between patients, bandages, surgeons coming down to move patients.

"What did you wanna talk to me about, again?" He recalls to you as he's filling out a chart.

"Patient, three days, Ronny Jones. Remember him?" You ask quickly with this second of spare time he seems to have, notebook out.

"...Broken arm?" he tries.

"Yes. And..." You trail off as you try to translate your own handwriting.

He looks over at your notebook, squinting at your scrawl. You might not be a doctor but you have the handwriting of one, he notes. “...Compound fracture of the distal radius, open reduction internal fixation yesterday. Why? Something off with the chart?”

“Yep,” you say, flipping a few pages. “I was reviewing the incident report. It says he was discharged yesterday afternoon, but the orthopedic note says he needs post-op neurovascular checks every four hours. The discharge paperwork doesn’t reflect that. Liability risk if he comes back with... compartment syndrome or some sort of nerve compromise. I just need clarification—was the follow-up actually ordered, or did someone skip it?”

Jack straightens his back slightly, clearing his throat, tapping his pen onto his palm quickly. “Uh, the ortho team documented it in their EMR, but it didn’t make it onto the discharge instructions for nursing. That’s on me for not double-checking before signing out... Not ideal.”

You scribble quickly, biting your lip. “Right, okay. So legally, if Ronny returns with a preventable complication and the discharge instructions didn’t match the physician orders… technically, that’s a risk. Could be framed as a deviation from standard of care. I just want to make sure we document the corrective steps. Maybe an addendum or clarification note?”

Jack pauses, glancing at you, then back at the chart. He can’t really argue with that.

“Yeah, that’ll—” he nods once. “Sounds right. You need me to… sign anything, or—?”

“Yeah, once I draft it,” you say, already halfway through another note. “I’ll bring it down. I just—” you hesitate for a second, then add, almost as an afterthought, “I use my favourite printer. The formatting comes out cleaner.”

There’s a beat.

“…You have a favourite printer?”

You pause, pen hovering, like you’ve just realised how that sounds.

“…Mhm.”

Another beat. Jack exhales a quiet, amused breath, shaking his head. “Yeah. ‘Course you do," He says. "Good catch on the Ronny guy. Slipped my mind entirely."

You smile at that. "Thanks"

He shakes his head slightly, looking around the ER, seeing he is very much needed away from this conversation, as Emery calls out a code for their stroke patient past Central Six.

“Alright. I’ll put in the clarification note, and send an updated discharge instruction to nursing. That way, if he comes back with any problems, documentation's all straight.” He tells.

You relax a fraction, but only a fraction. “Perfect. Thanks, Doctor Abbot. I… I just want to make sure nobody gets blindsided.”

Jack smirks, stepping back into the flow of the ER. “Yeah, yeah. You’ve got that covered, kid.”

You watch him move through the chaos, sharp and efficient, and scribble a few more notes. Even in the middle of an ER storm, he’s methodical. Impressive. And exhausting.

You end up just finishing your work in a space set up for you at the nurses' station, making conversation whilst you write up documentation templates. You had to keep your head down at points to stop seeing people be brought in with their leg half off, crying and panic from people. Hearing doctors call out a million different solutions.

By the time it slows, it’s morning.

Not properly morning—grey light bleeding through the windows, fluorescent lights still doing most of the work—but enough that the edge comes off everything.

7AM creeps in quietly, Day Shift enters with ease.

People start peeling off.

Handovers. Half-finished coffees abandoned. The kind of tiredness that settles into bones.

Jack finishes his last chart, shoulders heavier now that he’s standing still. When he finally steps away from the computer, he spots you again. Still here.

Perched on the edge of a chair, one leg crossed over the other, heels dangling slightly off your foot now like you’ve given up on pretending to be fully put together. Your hair’s loose in places. There’s a crease in your skirt you probably don’t know about. You’ve managed to move most of your work down here, laptop out as you scramble something in your notebook.

You look… exhausted.

He walks over.

“You always stay this early,” he asks, voice low, “or am I just lucky?”

You look up, a second slower than before, like your brain has to catch up.

“Oh—hi.” A small blink. Then you straighten a bit, reflexively. “No, I—this is not standard practice. I promise I don’t just linger.”

“Shame,” he says.

If you had another brain cell available after being up for too long, you’d think that was a flirt. You hesitate, then huff a quiet laugh, rubbing at your eye before you remember you’re wearing makeup and stop halfway through.

“Yeah, well,” you murmur, “I got a bit sidetracked.”

He nods, glancing out over the floor.

“You saw the fun part.”

“That’s one word for it,” you say. Your voice is softer now, a little less tightly wound. “I think I prefer reading about it, actually.”

“Give it time,” he replies. “You’ll start missing it.”

You look at him like he’s insane. “I sincerely hope not. That looked stressful as fuck. Excuse my language.”

That gets a faint smile out of him.

A beat passes.

You shift slightly, slipping your heels back on properly, smoothing your skirt like you’re putting yourself back together piece by piece.

“I should probably head out,” you say. “Before I fall asleep on one of these chairs and become a liability issue.”

“Mhm,” he nods. “Paperwork on that’d be a nightmare.”

You smile—small, but sincere. “It was nice meeting you. Thanks for letting me… you know. Linger.”

“Any time,” he shrugs. “You alright to get home?”

“Uh-huh,” you say, standing, gathering your things. “Bus is always late, so.”

He nods, slowly. Watches you for a second too long—hair a little out of place now, smudged ink still on your wrist.

He speaks before he can overthink it.

“I’ll give you a lift.”

You blink. “No, really, I don’t—”

“—It’s no trouble. I insist,” he cuts in, not harsh, just firm. “Grab your things. I’ll be right outside.”

You hesitate.

It’s subtle—just a second. Fingers fidgeting with the edge of your notebook, your teeth catching your lower lip like you’re weighing it properly.

He notices that. Of course he does.

“…Fine,” you say finally, a little quieter. “Sure. Thank you, I mean.”

He gives a short nod, like it’s already settled, and turns to head out.

★★★

The morning air is colder than it looks.

He waits outside, sitting on a bench, arms folded, watching the automatic doors slide open and shut. Staff trickling out. Shift changes. The usual.

Then you.

You step out, messenger bag slung over your shoulder, pausing for half a second when you spot him—like you weren’t entirely convinced he’d actually be there.

He stays seated on the bench..

“You always take this long,” he asks, “or just keeping me waiting for fun?”

You huff a quiet laugh, walking over. “I was considering making a run for it, actually.” 

“Yeah?” he pushes himself up, a slight hitch in the movement, subtle, but there.

You notice it without really thinking, hand coming out instinctively, light on his arm for a second. “Oh—sorry, I—”

He steadies, more out of habit than need, glancing down at your hand briefly before looking back at you. “You wouldn’t get far in those shoes anyway.”

You pull your hand back, smoothing it over your skirt like you didn’t just do that. The two of you start toward his truck.

You glance down at your heels, then back at him.

“Watch it. These are Louboutin,” you point out as he opens the passenger door for you.

“My point stands.”

You roll your eyes, but there’s a hint of a smile as you slide into the seat. He shuts the door behind you, walks around, gets in.

The car’s quiet when it starts. Low hum of the engine, early morning stillness bleeding in through the windows.

You give him your address—quick, efficient. He nods, pulls out.

The car’s quiet when it starts. Low hum of the engine, early morning stillness bleeding in through the windows.

A few minutes pass. You aren’t too far from the hospital. It’s not uncomfortable, exactly. Just… new. All your time working around doctors, and not one of them has ever offered to drive you home.

You sit a little straighter than you need to. Hands folded in your lap, then not, then back again—like you can’t quite decide how you’re meant to exist in this space.

"You don't seem forty five." You remark, seemingly out of nowhere.

He glances at you briefly, then back to the road, slowing at a red light.

“Is that right?” he hums.

“My dad hit fifty the other day,” you add. “He’s way grumpier.”

A beat.

“You’re a ray of sunshine in comparison.”

That gets something out of him—barely there, but real. The corner of his mouth pulls, just slightly.

He hums. “Give it time.”

You smile faintly at that, glancing over.

Up close like this, it’s different. You notice things you didn’t before—grey through his hair, not just at the sides. The lines around his eyes. The way he sits, solid, like he’s used to holding himself together through long hours. His arms. Just... he has nice arms, you note.

Your gaze drops—brief, unintentional—to his hands on the wheel.

You look back out the window quickly.

“You don’t act like it either,” you add, a little softer, like you’re correcting yourself.

“Act like what?”

“Forty five,” you say. “I mean—” you huff a small breath, already backtracking, “not that forty five is old, obviously, I just—”

He glances at you again, something almost amused there.

“No, really, go 'head,” he insists.

You press your lips together, trying not to smile. “I’m saying that… you know, you’re… I don’t know, a person. I’ve met a lot of doctors your age, they lose a lot of that humanity as they…”

“Get old as shit?” He finished as you trailed off.

“Yeah, that,” You sigh.

He nods, actually appreciative of that. “Never a met a lawyer who hangs around the Pitt willingly.”

You shrug. “It's lonely upstairs.” You say simply.

The light turns green. He pulls forward.

You shift slightly in your seat, tucking a piece of hair behind your ear, then immediately smoothing your skirt again like you’ve remembered yourself.

You go on, a little stiff. “Besides, it’s part of the job. I should understand what actually happens down there. Not just what ends up in reports.”

“Mm.”

“I mean, if I’m going to defend you people,” you add, a little more animated now, “I should probably know what I’m defending.”

“You people,” he repeats.

You wince slightly. “That came out wrong.”

“Did it?”

You look over at him, trying to read if he’s serious. He’s not giving you much.

“I just mean—doctors,” you say. “Not… you specifically.”

“You don't wanna defend me?” he wonders, teasing.

You snicker at that. You look at him properly this time. There’s something in your expression, curious, a little thrown, interested.

“Are you always this charming at seven in the morning?” You ask, sarcastic.

“Only when I haven’t slept,” he says.

“Ah. So this is you at your worst.”

“Pretty much.”

You nod, like you’re filing that away. “Good to know.”

A small silence settles again, but it’s lighter now. Easier.

The car slows as he pulls up outside your place. You unbuckle, but linger for half a second, fingers still on the seatbelt.

“Thank you,” you say. “Really, Doctor Abbot, I appreciate it. The lift, I mean.”

He nods. “Get some sleep. And just… Jack’s fine, sweetheart.”

“Alright. Thanks, Jack.”

You step out, shutting the door behind you.

He watches you briefly, making sure you get into the apartment building before driving off, your perfume lingering around his car.

a/n: omg hi first the pitt fic… girls i truly finna be in the pitt, like put me in coach !! okay so havent seen season 2 yet. ANY of yall spoil shit for me i'm throwing a fit. i'm rewatching s1 now w my friend who hasnt seen, then we doing s2 together. i dont know much except that robby got a motorbike for whatever reason. anyway. this is just a lil cute thing, workshopping this. def wanna do like a little series of this or somethin like. idk. if yall are feeling it cool, if not.. im probably gonna do it regardless. i def wanna make a little moodboard for this lawyer girly reader, i fuck w her vibe heavy. im also in law school so manifesting this. except i dont wanna do health law that shit is messy. ok anyway ! have a good day/night :3

The south was disgustingly hot.

It had a completely different feel to your home, the weather at Winterfell felt sure and sturdy and yet Kings Landing air felt as though it held to many secrets and spread itself too thin. The Red Keep towered over you as you approached, most would be relieved to see their destination after months of long travel on horseback and carriage, and yet it felt as though it was about to swallow you open and keep you in its belly for the rest of your life.

Your grey mare snorted as you stared up at the intimidating structure before you, as though she was letting you know she felt your thoughts through your thighs on her sides. And that she agreed.

You lay a hand on top her neck, calming yourself or her - you weren't sure.

The knights and banner men surrounding you pull to a stop in front of the large, carved wooden gates, and you pull your mare up with them, running a hand down the back of your neck so lessen the damp of sweat from falling down the back of your gown. The mid morning sun had been beating down on your neck since you left your final camp in the early hours.

You hear men shout, then the load groan of the carved wood as the great gates begin to open before you.

Ahead, you watch your father shift in the saddle of his large black stallion, straightening his back and raising his head. Like a man about to enter the battlefield.

Lord Alaric Stark had faced many foes, and yet the dragons den was ahead of him and he seemed more nervous riding in than facing a fleet of armed men thirsting for his blood.

You straighten your own back to follow suit of your fathers posture, raising your chin and kicking your mare forward to follow your father as the gates of the Red Keep opened before you.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The inner courtyard was busy, too busy.

Baelor stands beside Maekar, whose hands fiddled with a gemmed dagger through boredom, watching the servants and Kingsguard scatter about the courtyard in preparation for the arrival of Lord Stark and his company.

His Father, the King Daeron, stands above him on the curved steps, dressed in a deep red with the Targaryen house symbol stitched in black on his chest, the golden crown that has been passed down throughout their household upon his head. He looked every part the king.

Lord Stark means to strengthen his household.

Baelor has heard the whispers. A son has finally been born to Winterfell after 22 summers since the young Lady's Stark birth. That she is no longer the heir to Winterfell.

He spins the ring on his pinky finger out of habit, not nerves. Although his chest felt tight, not worryingly tight, but subtle enough that he noticed.

His attention then snaps up at the groan of the carved oak doors, the metal surrounding them creek in a way that he knows too well. Moments later, the thundering on hooves enters the courtyard and he straightens his posture to greet his guests.

Among the first is Lord Alaric Stark upon a massive black stallion whose large hooves thundered on the ground and nostrils flared as the beast snorted to make its entrance known. Much like his ride, Lord Stark was a large man, board and proud. Dressed in dark grey with a dark metalled sword strapped to his waist. The Stark Direwolf stitched to his chest in a subtle but strong way. The mans face, solid and proud, was creased with years of responsibility of his position as warden of the north evident.

He pulls his massive beast to the bottom of the steps in which Baelor stands below his father and next to his youngest brother, the stallion stomps his two front legs at the command of being stop, almost in a slight rear, and yet Lord Stark ignores him.

"Lord Stark, we welcome you to Kings Landing." The King greets, moving down the steps to stand beside his heir.

Lord Stark swings from his horse as a stable boy holds the reins, landing sturdy on his feet despite his showing age.

"Your grace," He bows, "We are grateful for your hospitality."

We.

Baelor looks to the gate then, watching as a grey mare with a flowing white mane and tail trots into the courtyard. Riding the beautiful creature, sits the Lady Stark he has heard so many whispers about in the last few weeks.

You sit tall, chin raised high and sure. You look undisturbed, unwaveringly against the bustle of the Red Keeps courtyard. You pull your mare up a few metres away from where your father stood, eyes scanning the high walls of the courtyard.

To the naked eye, you are composed and proper.

But Baelor, he saw your eyes. The way they flickered just slightly too quickly around, the slight shudder in your shoulders despite the southern heat.

You swing your leg over your mares rump before a stable hand has the chance to grip the reins for you. Instead, you hold your mare yourself, running a gloved hand down her neck and standing close to her but making sure that your back was not turned from the strangers around you.

He watched as you whispered things to the mare, and waved off the stable hand reaching for her reins. As thought you didn't want to part with the mare, like she was grounding you in this uncomfortable situation.

He tuned out the conversation between Lord Stark and his father, until you were called over and he watched your steps as you walked toward them, mare loosely held in your hands by the woven leather reins.

"May I introduce you to my daughter," Lord Stark gestured to you, "Lady (Y/N) Stark of Winterfell."

You look up from your mare then, curtsying before the king and the princes.

Your eyes meet with Baelor's.

"It is a pleasure to meet you at last, Your Grace." You speak to the King, although you look longer at Baelor than the King, "My Father has spoken of you in great detail, and with great kindness."

You spoke smoothly, practised although it was not rehearsed and did not feel ungenuine. You spoke like a true warden of the north.

"Congratulations on the birth of your son, Lord Stark." The Queen said, her face showing a gentle kindness, "I'm sure you are overjoyed."

The Lord Stark grins, letting out a huffy chuckle, "It has been a long time coming, I believe Winterfell is still celebrating Bearon's birth as we speak."

Bealor offers a courteous smile, his miss matched eyes floating back toward you. He noticed the strain in your smile, how it didn't quite reach your eyes at the mention of the birth of your younger brother.

It was well known that over the course of your life, being your fathers only offspring and his brothers dead, that you were to be your fathers heir. That on the day of his death, you would take the seat at Winterfell as Lady Stark and warden of the north.

However, with the recent birth of your brother, whispers started about the line of succession. It was well known that a son would and always will over take the eldest daughter as heir.

Baelor's own family destroyed each other over the very same situation.

"Lady Stark," The King speaks, moving down the steps to stand in front of you, "Allow my stable boys to take care of your horse, and the ladies maid's to take you to your chamber they have prepared for you. I'm sure your journey has been long on that horse of yours. I'm surprised you did not travel in the comfort of the carriage."

You offer a formal smile as the king stands two steps above you, "I have always preferred the back of a horse to a carriage, your Grace." You say.

Then, a young boy appears and leads your mare toward the stables. You watch your mare go, feeling as though your link to home was walking away before your eyes. Beside you, a young woman offers a small curtsy to you and the Royal Family, before guiding you up the stairs.

You spare a glance to your left as you pass the heir to the Iron Throne, to find him watching you out of the corner of his mismatched eyes. His gaze is soft, despite his formal posture with his hands held behind his back.

You move your gaze away, following the maid up the stairs and into the red keep.

Baelor watches you go.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The heat in the hall was insulting.

Despite the hustle of the hall, and being surrounded by servants darting around filling cups and bringing out plates heaped with flavoured foods, King's Landing did not whisper like Winterfell did. It does not echo with the wind through the corridors. It swelters. It gleams blindingly.

Bright colours, rich smells of winds and foods and boisterous laughter fills your senses. Silks surround your vision, jewels flash at every throat and wrist. The South was loud and obnoxious.

You sat to your father's side, who sat beside the king and they spoke loudly like old friends, running your finger over the tongs of the fork that laid next to your empty plate, dressed in your house hold grey with your hair half braided away from your features while the rest travelled down your back. You looked every part the heir of Winterfell.

You could feel the weight of the stares from noblemen around you, their eyes hungry with desire for the power you held. After all, you were the Northern girl, ice made flesh, the daughter of a Lord who rarely leaves his snow.

You clock the exits, noting where each Kingsgaurd stands, where the servants came from and what they carried, and noted who allied with who in this great feast.

It is the noise around her that subtly shifts that she notices before she hears him.

"Lady Stark." The voice is calm, even. Not loud - but it carried.

You turned.

Prince Baelor stood before you without herald or spectacle.

His was taller now you see him properly. Broad shoulder, built like a knight rather than a court ornament Princes are so known for. His dark hair touched by silver, but not from the famous Targaryen colour, from age. His eye - gods - his eyes are not the pale violet of songs you've heard.

One dark, one light. Both thoughtful and assessing, yet gentle. They take you in, not the gown you were, or the way your hair is knotted together. But you.

You take a quick stand, curtsying before him, precisely and respectfully but not fawning like so many other Lady's have done before him.

"Your Grace," You greet, standing before him now with your hands held politely in front you of, "This is a pleasant feast your father has held in our honour."

He studied the depth of the curtsey, his eyes never leaving your own, but you note how he spins the ring on his finger in front of him - not out of anxiety but out of habit.

"I hope King's Landing has not proved too overwhelming, my Lady." Bealor speaks, even and strong, a polite opening.

A Southern test you came to learn on your teachings with the maester of your home.

"It is...very bright." You said, lifting your chin.

There is a flicker that touches his mouth, one that would go unnoticed to others who had not be taught in the way you were taught.

"Brightness offends you?" He countered, a slight lightless on his tone this time.

"No," You said evenly, "But it reveals things one might prefer remain hidden."

There is a pause. A breath.

A flicker of amusement, of a man intrigued, darts across his face.

"And what has it revealed tonight?" He asks, his hands moving to link behind his back, his body language opening toward you.

You had a chance to retreat, offer a milder answer that would be the dutiful response, to not test the kindness that the Targaryens have offered your household so far.

"That the South confuses comfort for strength."

It was a dangerous thing to say. To challenge the strength of the strongest household in the seven kingdoms. Not rude, but sharp.

You feel your father quieten his conversation with the king, leaning in to listen to your conversation with the crown prince.

But Baelor does not bristle, in fact, his posture eases. As though the raw truth is a comfort for him to hear.

"And the North?" He counters, leaning fractionally forward, "What does it confuse?"

"Isolation for safety."

The honesty in your response surprises even you. And for the first time, something shifts behind his eyes. Respect, maybe even relief.

"You speak plainly." He states, a soft smile on his lips.

You drop your head, overly aware of how bold you have been speaking, noting your father watching you out of the corner of his vision.

"Apologies, Your Grace," You say, looking down at the ground, "I was taught not to waste words."

"No," He agrees softly, "I do not think you were." There is no mockery in his words, only observation, "It is...a relief to be spoken to as though we are the same. Not to have words hidden from me."

You meet his gaze again this time, seeing a man in front of you, not the crown prince of Westeros.

"I have read of Winterfell," He says, continuing the conversation, "Hot springs beneath stone. Snow that never fully leaves."

"You have read correctly, your grace." You offer a smile, reminiscent of your home.

Baelor offers you his arm then, aware of the listening ears from the table around you. You accept, holding the bend of his arm with your hand and he begins to lead you away, toward the outskirts of the room where colourful tapestries hand from the stone walls.

"I would like to see it one day." He speaks only once you are far enough away from your fathers.

"And I would like to see the remains of the Dragon Pit." You reply before you can stop yourself.

The words hang between you. Bold.

Bealor doente not laugh.

"Would you?" He asks quietly, stopping at the open doors to the large decorated balcony on the far side of the room, the evening air gently blow through you, and you almost sigh at the smell of fresh air.

"I would your Grace." You nod, moving to stand in front of him.

"Why?" His tone is not aggressive, not defensive, but naturally curious.

"Because if something so terrible could have existed," You say, referring to the beasts that used to rule the sky, meeting his mismatched gaze fully now, tiling your head up, "then perhaps so can something truly magnificent."

The hall fades around you as Baelor looks upon you.

He sees you differently in that moment, not as a lord looks at a daughter of another house or as a prince looking at a potential alliance. But as a man confronted with something unexpected.

"It would not scare you?" He asks.

You share your head, "I fear many things, your Grace, but dragons were honest about what they are."

A heartbeat passes between the two of you. He studies you as though he is committing this moment to his memories.

"And, Lady Stark," He takes a small step forward, illuminated by the moonlight from the clear night sky, "What are you honest about?"

The question, it landed deeper than was intended. You hold his gaze, not moving as he steps closer.

"I endure."

Baelor stills, he understands that word. Of course he does.

Music sweeps around the both of you, the court noise although loud, feels distant now, as thought the two of you stand inside a circle carved from the chaos.

He inclines his head, lower than necessity demands.

"It is a rare thing," He speaks lowly, "to find someone who does not bend at court."

You raise a brow, a small teasing smirk dancing on your mouth, " Stone should remain stone, Your Grace."

His own mouth curves, not into a polite court smile, but a real one.

"Even stone," His voice is gentle, "can be shaped."

"Only by something stronger." You return quickly.

Silence.

Something unnamed passes between you, not desire yet. But recognition. Dangerous recognition.

Across the hall, Lord Stark watches the crown prince and his daughter. Not frowning, not smiling. Just watching.

Baelor then steps back at last, the space between you widening by inches that feel like miles.

"I hope you find you stay in King's Landing to be...englighting." He speaks, his voice all crown prince with the softest touch to it.

"And I hope Your Grace finds the North as unyielding as its reputation." You counter.

"I have no doubt of it."

Baelor lingers a fraction too long before turning away.

You tell yourself that the warmth in you chest is nothing more than the effect of the packed hall you are in. That it is causing your shortness of breath. That the way he listened to you, truly listened, means nothing more than a prince being polite to his fathers guest.

But, as he reaches the seat beside his father at the head table, he looks back toward you.

Just once.

To find you already looking.

The coach broke a wheel three miles out and you walked the rest of it, which meant you arrived at the Targaryen keep with aching feet and a fine coating of road dust and absolutely no patience left for being intimidated by architecture. You looked at it coming up the drive, the towers, the iron-spiked walls, the yew trees grown so tall and dense overhead that the light inside their canopy had gone green and strange.

You lifted the iron knocker, which was shaped like a dragon's head and heavier than it had any right to be, and let it fall.

The sound it made went somewhere deep into the house and kept going.

The woman who opened the door was perhaps sixty, with a face that had aged from gracefulness into something considerably more formidable, dark eyes that missed nothing, and a ring of iron keys at her hip. She opened the door slightly and looked at you and stopped.

Not her feet. She was still standing, still holding the door. But something in her simply stopped, her expression, which had been arranged in the careful neutral of professional appraisal, went through something she couldn't quite contain, a flinch that wasn't quite a flinch, there for two seconds and then locked down behind her eyes and gone.

She looked at your collar. Then your hands. She looked anywhere but your face.

"You're the new girl," she said. Her voice gave nothing at all away.

"Yes, ma'am." You say softly, as she opens the door wider to let you inside.

"Come in. Mind the step."

The entrance hall was vast and dim, the ceiling swallowed in shadow, the walls hung with tapestries so old their colours had bled into a single dark richness. Between two of the torches on the far wall hung a portrait of a dark-haired man painted with the careful attention of someone who expected the portrait to outlast everything around it. He was looking slightly past the viewer, and there was something about the stillness of his expression, the weight behind his eyes, that made it difficult to look at directly.

Every torch in the entrance hall bent sideways at once.

All of them, the same direction, the same moment the flames nearly went out and the shadows went wild across the walls and the tapestries rippled like something had moved through the room very fast. Then the flames straightened once more and the light resettled. Everything was exactly as it had been.

You stood very still.

"The draught," said the woman behind you, not looking up from the small ledger she'd produced. "When the doors open. You'll get used to it."

The doors were closed. You had heard them close behind you.

"Yes, ma'am," you said.

Her name, she told you as she walked you through the house, was Mrs. Calla. She walked through the corridors with her chin held up, her back rigorously straight, and hands clasped in front of her. She walked purposefully, as she showed you the west quarters, where staff slept, the kitchens which were enormous, smelling of that evening’s stew. The laundry, the linen rooms, the great hall under its Holland cloth. She offered nothing the whole time, didn’t ask if you had any questions about the place, the history of its owners, or why people cursed this keep, and the history it came with it.

As she brought you to the east corridor, your footsteps slowed as she slowed her own ahead of you. She stopped at its mouth without entering. The torches were left unlit. The cold coming from it was several degrees below the rest of the house it seemed, and at the far end the darkness was very complete.

"The eastern wing is not for you," she said.

You looked down it. You couldn't see where it ended.

"Not for any of the staff. His Grace keeps his own hours and requires nothing from the household." The keys at her hip went perfectly still. "You will do your work in the rooms I've shown you. You will not come to this side of the house. You will not linger here when you're passing. Is that understood."

"Yes, ma'am." And then, because you had never quite learned to leave things alone: "Does His Grace come through the main house often?"

The pause this time was different from the others.

"His Grace is always in the house," she said. "You will likely never see him. That is how things are meant to be." She turned from the corridor. "Come. I'll show you to your room."

You turned to follow her. And from the far dark end of that passage, something happened to the silence– it changed. It was as though something at the other end of that long dark hall, in some way you couldn't name, become aware that you were there. You walked quickly after Mrs. Calla and didn't look back, ignoring the feeling of being watched.

“Why am I never to see him?” you asked, hurrying to keep pace with her brisk steps.

She did not answer. Whether she had not heard or simply did not care to respond, you could not tell. Her silence felt deliberate.

Your chamber was small and clean with a narrow bed and a window overlooking the kitchen garden. The other bed belonged to a girl named Myrtle, who you met properly the next morning over the basin.

She was pretty in a sharp-featured way, and she smiled readily and showed you the things Mrs. Calla hadn’t covered– which cupboards held the extra cleaning cloths, how Mrs. Calla liked her tea, where the back passage was which would cut ten minutes off the upstairs rounds. SHe was generous with all of it, and you thanked her for it, and she smiled wider, and the whole time something in the back of your mind sat quietly and watched the particular brightness of her attention whenever she asked you a question.

The other maids were much the same, in their different ways. Bessa kept to herself with a bluntness that wasn't quite rude but left no room for warmth either. Ellen watched you from across the room at mealtimes with the flat curiosity of someone waiting to see what you'd do wrong. The rest acknowledged you when courtesy required it and otherwise moved around you doing they're own chores. It wasn't hostile, exactly, just utterly indifferent.

You had been in worse places. You kept your head down and did your work well and told yourself it would ease in time.

Though it didn't ease. But you stopped expecting it to, which amounted to the same thing.

“What’s he like,” you asked Myrtle one evening, when you’d been there long enough that asking didn’t feel too strange. You were both in the chamber, end of the day, and the question came out lighter than it felt, as if you hadn’t been turning it over since your first night. “His Grace. Nobody ever mentions him.” 

Myrtle was brushing out her hair. She met your eyes in the small mirror above the basin, and for a moment something moved in her expression, though once it was there it was gone in an instant.

"He keeps to himself," she said.

"Yes, but what's he—"

"There's nothing to tell." Her voice had flattened in a way it hadn't before, the easy brightness gone out of it. "He's the lord of the house and he keeps to his wing and that's that." She looked back at her own reflection. "I wouldn't go asking the others either. Nobody likes questions about him."

You looked at the back of her head for a moment.

"All right, sorry," you said, not exactly knowing what you even were apologising for, but it felt awkward not too. So you dropped it. But that night you lay awake in the dark and listened to the house settle and thought about the look that had moved through Myrtle's face, quick and unguarded, before she'd shut it away. Not the expression of someone who found the question boring.

The expression of someone who found the question dangerous.

The footsteps started the third night.

You woke for no reason, the way you sometimes did, snapping up out of sleep as though your name had been called, though you would only wake up to find the room dark and quiet and Myrtle a still shape in the other bed.

Then, from directly overhead, footsteps.

Slow and perfectly even, moving from one end of the upper corridor to the other. They had the wrong quality for a person's footsteps. Too light, for one thing, they made no sound on the boards, no creak, no shift of weight. They moved the way sound moves through water, constant and unhurried, and they went to the far end of the corridor and came back, and went again, and came back again, back and forth in their tireless circuit, and you lay in the dark and listened to them with your eyes open and your heart doing something quiet and strange.

You fell asleep to the footsteps eventually. You didn't tell anyone in the morning, you hadn't had a reason to.

A week later you saw him coincidentally.

You were up in the small hours for water, and the corridor outside your room was dark, and at the far end of it near the main staircase there was a figure. Tall, dressed in dark that made him almost part of the shadow behind him. Dark hair, his jaw was unshaven, flecks of grey brushing along the sides like soft scars from time itself. He stood with a quiet strength, not the rigid stillness of someone frozen in place, but the deep calm of a man who had walked long and carried far too much for far too long.

He wasn't looking at you. His face was turned toward the stairs, or toward something above it, or toward nothing at all. He gave no sign that he knew you were there, and yet some part of you was absolutely certain that he did.

Then he moved sideways, unhurried, toward the east corridor, and rounded the corner and was gone.

You stood in the dark with your cup in your hand and your heart doing whatever it was doing, and then you got your water and went back to bed.

You didn't sleep for a long time after.

It was Myrtle who found you the following week, cheerful, arms full of fresh linen, smile already in place.

"Mrs. Calla wants the library in His Grace's wing seen to," she said. "She asked me to pass it on– only I've got my hands full this morning." A small, practised shift of the linens. "You don't mind, do you? East corridor, last door on the left. It'll be unlocked."

You looked at her. The smile. The ready, bright eyes.

You thought about the quality of her face the evening you'd asked about him. The flatness that had come down over it.

"Mrs. Calla asked specifically for me?" you said, your brows drawn together in confusion.

"She said whoever was free." A slight tilt of the head. "You're free, aren't you?"

You stood there for a moment and turned the situation over once in your mind.

Then you thought: you have no proof of anything, only a feeling, and feelings aren't grounds for refusing work.

"All right," you said.

Myrtle's smile got wider. "You're a love."

She went. You watched her go. Then you picked up your cleaning things and turned toward the east corridor and reminded yourself firmly that it was just a library, and went.

You found that the corridor was different when you were walking into it with purpose. It felt less oppressive, or so you told yourself. The darkness at the far end was just a wall and a door, the cold was just a passage that got no sun. You moved through it steadily and didn’t let yourself hesitate.

You passed the portraits on the walls without looking closely. Figures in the clothing of other centuries, some figures with pale blonde-like hair, very few had dark coloured hair. They were the same strong bones repeated across numerous different faces and different eras. Generations of them.

The library door opened easily under your hand.

You stopped in the doorway for a moment because you couldn't help it.

The room was enormous, the walls lined floor to ceiling with books whose spines had cracked and faded into something richer than their original colours. The smell of old paper and leather was thick enough to be almost a taste. Two tall windows let the pale morning light in, though it were still dark as the curtains were drawn slightly closed. There was a wingback chair angled toward the cold fireplace with a book left open on the arm, not placed there carefully, just abandoned, as though whoever had been reading it had stood up mid-thought and hadn't come back.

You stepped inside and got to work.

You were careful with everything. The books you only dusted at their edges, barely touching them. The table you cleared and wiped slowly. The rug you swept with long, gentle strokes. The room had a quality that made you want to move quietly in it, not the imposed quiet of formal rooms but something else, the specific hush of a place that has held a great deal of feeling over a very long time. You moved through it and the work was almost peaceful, and the pale light shifted and the dust moved in it, and you were bent over the far side of the table working at a watermark near the edge when the room changed.

Not a sound. Not anything you could point to. Only that the room had been empty and then it wasn't, a shift in the air or the light or something beneath both, and you straightened and turned.

He was in the doorway.

You hadn't heard anything. Not the door, not footsteps in the corridor, nothing. He was simply there, and the stillness of him had a physical weight to it, like the stillness of things that have been still for a very long time. Tall, dark-haired, unshaven, dressed in clothing that seemed to take the light from around it rather than give any back. His nose had been broken, you noticed, the bridge of it slightly off-true. His hands, loose at his sides, were large and scarred in the particular way of a man who had spent his life in armour. 

His eyes were mismatched. One a dark, earthly brown, the other a blue, and they were looking at you. They had something in them that made the breath go out of you very quietly. He looked the same from when you had saw him coincidentally days ago, though this time it didn't stop the flutter in your chest when you looked at him properly, only to find him looking directly at you.

It was the look of a man confronted with something impossible. He wasn't frightened, it was something much larger than frightened, something that had too much in it to fit into any single expression. His gaze moved over your face, following the lines of it the way you follow something known by memory so long that the memory has worn grooves, and the rawness in it, the private and completely unguarded rawness, was the most unsettling thing you’d seen since you arrived.

He didn’t breathe, at least it seemed like he didn’t. 

The silence of the library made it very clear that he didn’t breathe, and you noticed this, and the noticing of it moved through you cold and slow and you didn’t look at it too directly.

"What are you doing here."

Not a question. The shape of one, gutted out.

"I was told–"

He moved.

You didn't see it. He was in the doorway and then the next second the distance between you had halved and you were looking up at him and your mind was still trying to find the steps that had crossed that distance and couldn't. He was close enough that you had to tilt your chin to hold his eyes, and the quality of his looking had changed– had become something that pressed, that had several hundred years behind it pushing forward all at once.

"Are you her?"

The words barely had sound in them.

"Did the gods send you back."

Your mouth had gone dry. Your heart was in your throat doing something undignified. You opened your mouth to answer and found the beginning of no sentence at all, confusion swarming your head.

"Your Grace, I—"

"Answer me."

His hand came up. It wasn't a decision– you could see that it wasn't, could see the motion happening without his permission, his body acting on something older and more insistent than intention. His fingers stopped just short of your jaw. Close enough that you felt the cold coming off them, the specific cold of things that haven't been warm in a very long time.

"You—" he started, something breaking open at the back of his voice.

"Your Grace." Mrs. Calla's voice from the doorway cut through everything clean.

His hand dropped. Something moved behind his face– not a flinch, he was far too composed for flinching, but a shift inside the composure, like watching something huge quietly absorb a blow. His eyes went carefully, deliberately still.

You turned. Mrs. Calla stood in the doorway with her keys motionless at her hip, looking at you with the expression of someone whose worst suspicion has just been confirmed.

She didn't look at him. Only at you.

"She isn't permitted in this wing," she said. Perfectly even. "I'll see to it that it doesn't happen again."

She crossed the room and took your arm and steered you toward the door, and you went, because there was nothing else to do but get dragged away from him. Your cleaning equipment were still on the table, it stayed completely forgotten.

“I was sent,” you said, the words tumbling out too quickly. “One of the girls told me you asked for the library to be clean, I was merely just doing what I was told.”

Mrs. Calla turned then, slowly. Her eyes moved over you with the same measured distance she gave dirt or to hard to get rid of stains in the walls of the ancient castle. But when her gaze reached your face, it lingered too long.

"You will not come to this side of the castle again," she said. "Under any instruction, from any person in this household other than me. No reason is good enough. Do you hear me girl?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Go."

You went.

You were thirty feet down the corridor when his voice came through the closed door, low and barely carrying, rougher than it had been in the library.

"She looks like–"

Mrs. Calla's voice over it immediately, flat and final as a door swung shut.

"It is mere coincidence, Your Grace. She is nothing but a maid."

Silence then followed, and you can just imagine him creasing his eyebrows together in thought.

You kept walking and did not stop, because stopping meant standing in the corridor with those words settling around you, nothing but a maid, mere coincidence, and thinking about the look on his face. About the way his hand had risen without him deciding to raise it. About the rawness in his voice when he'd said did the gods send you back, like a question he had stopped letting himself ask a long time ago and had asked anyway.

You walked back to the west quarters and you didn't think about any of it.

You were mostly successful.

You were still awake when the scream came.

It tore through the house without warning– high, full, with all the breath behind it a person had, and was swallowed by the walls before it could finish itself, cut off in the specific way sounds are cut off when something stops them rather than when they simply end.

You were sitting up before you'd finished being asleep.

The room came together around you. Ceiling, walls, curtain, the candelabra on the table between the beds.

Though oddly enough you found that Myrtle's bed was empty, which was unusual, as the girl loved sleep, and followed a strict bed-time routine.

Her blanket seemed to have been shoved back sharply, the pillow still dented. Her nightgown still on the chair beside the bed, which meant she hadn't just gone down the corridor. The window was dark. The house was silent.

Your stomach said what it said and you didn't argue with it.

You lit the candelabra with hands that weren't quite steady, pulled your shawl around your shoulders, and went to the door.

You stood there with your hand on the latch and you thought about Mrs. Calla's voice. You will not come to this side of the house. No reason is good enough.

Then you thought about Myrtle's nightgown on the chair and the sound that had come through the walls. Even though she had tried getting you in trouble with Mrs. Calla, you still were quite fond of her.

The keep at half past two was a different house.

Not only darker, nut the corridors also felt longer, the distances between doors stretched somehow, the shadows in the corners heavier than shadows had any right to be, as though they had been there long enough to acquire substance. You moved through the main hall with your candelabra making its small warm circle and your footsteps too loud on the stone, and you stood in the centre of it and listened.

From upstairs, on the east side, a sound followed the dead of the night again.

It wasn't a scream, it was worse than a scream. Lower, wetter, the sound a body makes past the point of screaming, when screaming has been used up and something more fundamental takes over. It hit you in the stomach and lodged there.

Then it stopped.

The silence after it was enormous.

You stood at the bottom of the staircase and you were afraid in the plain, physical way that operates below thought, in the stomach and the knees and the back of the throat. You stood in it and let it be what it was.

You climbed up the stairs without thinking straight of what you would even do when you find the source of the sound. You noticed that the upper east corridor was cold enough at night that your breath showed. You silently confirmed to yourself that you preferred being in the east corridors in the morning.

Portraits lined the walls, the same figures that all had similar features, from downstairs’ portraits, the same bones repeated across generations, the same set of the jaw in different arrangements. Your candelabra made them shift and live as you passed, and you moved through them without slowing.

Aerion, read one brass plate. The face beneath it was beautiful and wrong around the eyes, the kind of wrongness that sits in the arrangement rather than any single feature. Maekar, it looked like they were somehow related, he had a scar along his jaw, something locked-down in his expression that made him look like a man perpetually expecting the worst. And as you walked down the hall you passed others you didn't know, names that meant nothing to you, faces that shared their architecture across centuries.

You moved through them and didn't linger, following the corridor to its slight bend, and turned the corner.

Though your how body turned to cold, the candelabra nearly left your hand.

She was looking back at you.

Not at you– the painted gaze went past you, fixed on some middle distance that no longer existed. But her face. The line of her jaw. The particular shape of her mouth, the way her brows sat, the specific arrangement of features that you had looked at in the glass every single day of your life and knew the way you knew your own handwriting, the way you knew the backs of your own hands.

It was your face.

Your face. In oil paint. In a frame aged dark at the corners, on a woman dressed in clothing of another century, in a portrait that had been hanging on this wall for far longer than your grandmother's grandmother had been alive.

You stood there and your mind did something strange– it simply refused, at first. You stood there and looked and your mind said no very quietly and then said it again, and then the painting kept being what it was and the brass plate beneath it kept reading the date it read, centuries ago, so far back the number looked abstract, and your mind ran out of no's and had to let the thoughts in.

Your hand came up. You didn't decide to raise it. Your fingers moved toward the canvas as though they already knew the way, toward the painted jaw that was your jaw, the painted mouth that was your mouth, and you were thinking– if thinking was even the word for the static hum taking up residence behind your eyes, that you were losing your mind. That this was what losing your mind felt like, this specific and terrible clarity, this moment of standing in a corridor in the dark and recognising yourself in a painting made before anyone you had ever known had been born. You though to yourself that you should leave. That you should turn around right now and go back down the corridor and down the stairs and out of this house and never come back, position or no position, because whatever this was it was not something you were equipped for, it was not something any person was equipped for—

Beside her in the portrait, a man. Dark hair, dark eyes, one hand resting near hers with the care of someone who has learned not to take that nearness for granted. His expression in paint was the quietest thing in the whole corridor– not the locked-down grimness of Maekar, not the beautiful wrongness of Aerion. Just a man looking at something he loved, captured at the exact moment he forgot anyone was watching.

Your fingers nearly reached the canvas.

"I wouldn't touch that."

You spun so fast the flames nearly went out.

He was at the bend of the corridor, and the candlelight found him almost immediately. His hair was slightly disheveled, he seemed the same as when you had saw him in the library, though much different in ways you couldn't name.

His hands were at his sides. His hands, which seemed dark in the shadow, but not shadow-dark, the reddish-brown dark of something dried into the creases of his knuckles, worked into the lines of his fingers, under his nails. At the corner of his mouth, the same stain, smeared like an attempt had been made at wiping it away.

You knew what it was. The knowledge settled into your body before your mind had finished finding words for it, heavy and certain and cold, and everything in you that had any sense at all took a very large step backward inside your own chest.

"Those sounds," you said. Your voice was someone else's, thin and unsteady. "Earlier. The yelling. What–"

"It's done." Quiet. The deliberate, careful quiet of someone managing something. "It has nothing to do with you."

"Where is Myrtle." The question came straight out of you, no preamble. "Her bed is empty. I heard a woman–"

"She's alive."

The flatness of it. The indifference threaded through it, not cruelty exactly but the absence of any particular concern, and the absence was worse than cruelty would have been.

"That isn't—"

"That's all I'm going to tell you."

He stepped toward you.

One step, slow and deliberate, and you stepped back without deciding to, and then again when he took another, until your back found the wall of the corridor and your hand tightened on the candelabra until your knuckles ached. He stopped. He was close enough now that you could see his chest wasn't moving, not the stillness of a man holding his breath, the stillness of a man who had simply stopped needing to. You watched for it and it didn't come and the cold moved through you slow and deep.

"You're frightened," he said. Observing it. Not apologising for it.

"You have blood on your hands." Your voice shook on the last word and you hated it. "On your mouth. I don't know what happened in this castle tonight and you won't tell me and yes, I am frightened, I think that's a reasonable—"

"Look at me."

You looked at him instantly. You couldn't stop looking at him, that was half the problem.

"I mean really look." Something shifted in his voice, underneath the quiet of it. "Not at my hands. At me."

You looked. The mismatched eyes, the grey specks across his beard, the face of a man who had been a soldier once and carried it still in the way he stood, in the particular way his grief sat in his expression, not worn on the surface the way fresh grief is worn, but settled deep, the grief of something that has had a very long time to become part of the bone.

He reached up, slowly, and you went rigid, and he stopped. His hand suspended in the air between you, not touching you, giving you every opportunity to move or speak or refuse.

You didn't move.

He reached out slowly and pushed a loose strand of hair from your face, one careful motion, and his fingers didn't linger and his eyes didn't leave yours.

"I have been in this house," he said quietly, "since before anyone alive can remember. I have watched every person I knew and loved so dearly become dust.” His eyes were very steady as his voice calmly said it. "I stopped wanting things a long time ago. I stopped letting myself. It was the only way to get through the years without–" He stopped. Something worked in his jaw. "And then you walked through my door."

"Don't," you said softly.

"You bent every flame in this house toward you when you crossed the threshold." His voice had dropped lower, something private in it now, something that had not been said to anyone before this corridor, this dark, this moment. "I felt you arrive. In three hundred years I have never felt a person arrive, nor did i care that someone had arrived."

"Your Grace." Your voice was barely above a whisper.

"She used to stand exactly the way you were standing in the library." The words came out like they cost him something. "Her head at that angle. The way you turned when you heard me." You watched his adams apple bobble, as he fought to say the words. "I have not seen that in three hundred years and you did it without knowing, and I—" He stopped himself. Breathed in slowly. "I know you're not her. I am not a fool and I am not so far gone that I cannot tell the difference between a ghost and a living woman." His eyes moved across your face, that slow and aching attention. "But you are something. And I find I cannot make myself believe that it is nothing."

You were pressed against the wall and your heart was doing something unreasonable and you were still terrified, the blood on his hands still dark at the edges of your vision, and underneath the terror was something else entirely that you had absolutely no intention of examining.

"I'm afraid of you," you said. Plain and quiet. The only honest thing you had left was said.

Something in his face changed when you said it. Not surprise, something more like pain, the private kind, the kind a person absorbs and doesn't show except in the split second before they manage to hide it.

"I know," he said. "I know you are."

He moved closer.

You pressed harder into the wall. "Don't—"

"I am not going to hurt you." He said almost instantly, his voice dropping to almost nothing. "I need you to understand that the way you understand that you are breathing. Whatever you have heard. Whatever you think you have seen tonight." His jaw tightened. "I would sooner end three hundred more years in this house than put a single bruise on you. Do you hear me."

Not a question.

"I have hurt the only person I—" He stopped. Started again, quieter. "I could not keep her. Whatever happened, I could not keep her, and there is not a night in three centuries I haven't stood somewhere in this house and known that." His voice was the quietest thing in the corridor. "I would not survive doing it twice."

The silence was enormous.

Your heart was very loud in it.

His head bent.

Slowly, with the full awareness of what he was doing, he pressed his lips to the side of your throat. Barely any pressure– just the cool fact of his mouth against your skin, cool the way stone is cool in winter, cool the way things are that have not been warm in a very long time. You felt it land and you felt your own pulse jump against it and you heard the smallest sound leave him.

"You're here," he said against your skin. The words barely words at all. "You're here and I can hear your heart."

His jaw dragged slowly upward, the grey-stubbled roughness of it catching the soft skin beneath your ear, and the sound you made was very quiet and deeply, entirely honest.

"Please." Your voice had nothing left to steady it. "Please, you have to stop." Though you didn't want him to stop.

His teeth grazed your pulse. Gentle. So gentle. A question, not a demand, the most careful thing in the world.

You made a sound that answered it completely against your will.

He went still.

Absolutely still, his mouth resting against your pulse, and the corridor was silent and you were breathless and your hands were flat against the wall behind you and you were not pulling away, you were not pulling away, and you hated yourself for it in the most breathless and unconvincing way.

He lifted his head.

He stepped back. Letting the cold in.

He looked at you and you looked back at him and his face was barely contained- the grief and the three hundred years of it and something else pressing right up against the surface, his mismatched eyes very bright in the candlelight.

"Go," he said. Low and rough, stripped bare.

He turned toward the portrait. Toward her face. Toward your face.

"Go back to your room." His hands at his sides, very still, the dried blood dark against his skin. "Before I do something that I won't be sorry for. And you will."

And so you went.

Down the corridor and down the stairs and through the main hall and back to your room, and you didn't look back once, though you felt his gaze on you the entire length of it– unblinking, steady, like light that has been traveling so long it no longer remembers what it left behind, only that it was always meant to find you.

Myrtle's bed was still empty when you returned to your chambers, though you couldn't bring yourself to care, if she hadn't disappeared then you wouldn't have had the interaction with Baelor in the hall. But you wouldn't let yourself admit that. Gods forgive you.

You sat on the edge of yours and let your fingers graze the side of your throat. To the place where his lips had been, still feeling the scratch of his beard against your neck. Your pulse was still going too fast, still loud, still embarrassingly honest.

You told yourself what you felt was relief.

The almost was the problem.

The almost was going to be the problem for a very long time you thought to yourself.

Two weeks passed and Myrtle did not come back.

Nobody said anything about it. That was the part that sat strangest, not the absence itself but the silence around it, the way the other maids moved around the empty bed in your chamber like it was something they all privately agreed not to see.

When you had asked Mrs. Calla, and said that Myrtle appeared to be missing, she looked at you for a long moment and said that she had left to attend to a family matter and would not be returning, and the way she said it left absolutely no room for a follow-up.

So you let it close. You went back to your work. You kept your head down and did your rounds and ate your meals in the kitchen with the other girls who did not speak to you, and every night you lay in the room that was now entirely yours and stared at the ceiling and tried not to think about the east corridor.

You mostly failed.

The dreams were the worst of it. They came every few nights, never quite the same but always connected to each other somehow. It started with the corridor, the candlelight, his lips against your throat. Though in the dreams it didn’t stop where it had stopped. In the dreams his teeth found your pulse point and broke it open, and the feeling of it was not what you expected, it was not pain, it was something else entirely. You woke from those dreams with your hand pressed to the side of your neck and your heart going too fast and a feeling in your chest you refused to name. 

You thought about the way he had pushed the hair from your face. One careful motion. Like he already knew the weight of it.

You thought about I would sooner end three hundred more years in this house than put a single bruise on you, said in a voice so quiet it barely existed.

You thought about the sound he had made when his lips touched your throat– barely anything, barely a sound, the sound of a man setting something down that he had been holding for three hundred years.

You thought about all of it more than you should, and you stayed well away from the east corridor, and you told yourself that was the end of it, that it was for the best.

But it wasn't the end of it. You knew it wasn't the end of it. But you could pretend, in the daylight, while you worked, and pretending was something you were good at.

The curiosity was what undid you.

It had been building since the night you’d seen the portrait. Who was she? Not what she was to him, you knew what she was to him, it was written plainly in every line of his face in that painting. But who? What had she been like before she became a grief that had lasted three centuries and showed no sign of ending. 

You wanted to see the portrait again. You told yourself that firmly, several times over the course of the evening. Just the portrait. You were not going to the east wing because of him. You were going in spite of him, because you had a right to understand whose face you were carrying through someone else's history.

The portrait corridor received you the same way it always did– cold, still, the unlit torches casting nothing, the painted faces watching you pass. You moved through them steadily. You were getting used to them, which felt like its own kind of warning that you were spending too much time here.

You stood infront of her for a long while. Long enough that the candles burned lower. You looked at the differences this time, all the small ones. From the particular fall of her hair, the way her hands were folded, whether the line of her jaw was truly identical or only close. You still didn’t find what you were looking for. 

You looked at him beside her. The man he had been before he knew what was coming.

Then, from somewhere further down the wing, further than you had ever gone– a sound.

You went still, deja-vu haunting you.

It was low. Almost nothing. The kind of sound that a house makes settling, or pipes, or wind finding its way through old stone. You told yourself all of those things in quick succession and stood very still and listened and the sound came again, and it was not the house settling. It was a voice. Two voices, maybe, though one of them had a quality that made it difficult to be certain. The voice were low and rhythmic, almost soothing, the way you'd talk to a frightened animal. The other was a girl's voice, high and soft and fading.

You should have gone back to bed, though you followed the sound.

You walked further in the corridor than you'd ever had before, past the portraits, past the library door, into a part of the wing that had no light at all except yours. The doors here were heavy and dark and closed, and the sound was coming from behind one of them, the third on the left, a thin line of dim light at its base.

You stood outside it.

The girl's voice had stopped.

You put your hand on the door and opened it, not thinking twice of it.

The room beyond was a sitting room, or had been once. Heavy furniture pushed to the walls. A low fire in the grate throwing red light across the floor, across the dark shape of a man kneeling, across the still white arm of a girl lying beneath him, her hair fanned out across the floorboards, her face turned to the side and very, very pale.

He had his mouth at her throat.

You understood what you were looking at and what you were looking at did not stop being what it was no matter how long you stood in the doorway. The firelight caught the dark of his hair, the breadth of his shoulders, the way his hand was braced on the floor beside her, and the sound he made was very quiet and very complete, the sound of something entirely focused on what it was doing.

Your hand opened.

The candelabra hit the floor.

The sound it made was enormous in the silence, brass on stone, the clatter of it ricocheting off the walls, and the flames went out and the room was nothing but firelight, and he stopped.

He went completely still, crouched over her, and the stillness had a different quality than his usual stillness. This was the stillness of something interrupted. Of something that had been very far inside itself and had been pulled out suddenly.

He already knew it was you. You understood that even before he moved. He had known the moment the candelabra left your hand, maybe before, he had known the particular sound of your heartbeat in the corridor, had felt you standing outside the door.

He rose.

Slowly and unhurried, with the complete and terrible composure, unfolding to his full height with his back still to you, and you instinctively took a step backward into the doorframe and your hand found the wood of it and held on it. The girl on the floor did not move. Her chest rose barely, she was alive, you told yourself, her chest was moving, but she had not moved.

He turned then. The firelight hit his face and you made a sound, small and involuntary, and pressed yourself back further.

The blood was not like the night with Myrtle, not dried, not old. It was fresh, dark at his mouth, a streak along his throat where it had run. His mismatched eyes found you immediately, across the room, and the expression in them was not guilt, not shame. It was something far more complicated than either of those things, something that had you in it, specifically you, the way his expressions always had you in them now, like you had become the fixed point everything else organised itself around.

You ran.

You turned and you ran, down the dark corridor the way you'd come, your hands out in front of you because the candelabra was behind you and there was nothing but the thin far light of the portrait corridor ahead, and your feet were loud on the stone and your breath was loud and your heart was—

His hand closed around your wrist.

He hadn't made a sound. He was simply suddenly there, at the bend of the corridor, and his hand was around your wrist and your momentum swung you almost into him and you wrenched back and he let you, he let you try to pull back as if his touch burned you, but he did not let go of your wrist.

"Stop," he said.

It wasn’t a command exactly, it was something more careful than a command, something that was asking as much as it was telling. 

You pulled against his grip again. It didn't move. It was not painful, not tight, just utterly immovable, the grip of something that was not going to be dislodged by anything you could do and knew it, and was choosing, regardless, to be gentle about it.

"Look at me."

"Let go of me," you said. Your voice was barely a voice. "Let go, please, I won't — I'm not going to say anything, I swear to you I'm not going to say a word to anyone, just let me—"

"I'm not holding you because I think you'll speak." Still that quiet. Still that careful, deliberate calm. "I'm holding you because you're frightened and I need you to hear me before you go."

"I saw—" Your voice cracked. "That girl, she was—"

"Alive." Firm. "She is alive. She will wake in the morning and remember very little and she will be unharmed." A pause. "I do not kill them. I have not killed anyone in a very long time. What you saw tonight was not— I would not have you think it was what happened to Myrtle."

You stopped pulling. Not because you believed him, or not entirely, because something in the specific plainness of the way he said it landed differently than a reassurance would have.

"Then what happened to Myrtle," you said eyes squinting at him.

"Myrtle," he said carefully, "made a choice to come to that part of the house alone in the middle of the night having been told very clearly not to, and she did so because she had been paid to do so by someone who wished you harm. She encountered something in this wing that was not me and was not gentle." His voice stayed level. "I did not touch Myrtle."

You stood in the dark corridor and looked at him and your wrist was still in his hand and the firelight from the room behind you caught the blood on his face, and you felt very many things simultaneously and could not sort them into any useful order. You didn't understand what he said to you mere seconds ago, it was as if he spoke the words in a riddle.

He moved.

Slowly, giving you every opportunity to understand what was happening, he walked you backward until your back met the wall of the corridor, and he stopped there, close, one hand still around your wrist and the other braced on the stone beside your head. Not trapping you, or not only that. Something else in it. The same quality as every time he had been close to you, the specific focused quality of his attention, like the rest of the world had gone slightly out of his consideration and there was only this.

"I need this to survive." The words came out very quietly, and there was nothing performative in them, no attempt to make them easier to hear than they were. "That is the plain truth of it. I need it the way you need food and water and sleep– not as a want, as a requirement. I did not choose what I am. I have done my best to do it without causing lasting harm." His mismatched eyes were steady on yours. "I need you to understand that before you decide what I am."

You looked at his face. The blood at his jaw. The grey threading through the dark of his beard. The eyes, one darker than the other, both entirely fixed on you.

"I'm afraid of you," you said. It came out smaller than the last time you'd said it.

"I know." His thumb moved, once, across the inside of your wrist. Not quite a caress. Something more like a reflex, like his hands had their own ideas about what to do in proximity to you. "I know you are. You are also still here."

You were. You were still here, back against the wall, heart going at a pace he could certainly hear, and you were not screaming and you were not clawing at his hand and the honest reason for that, the one you were least proud of, was standing approximately twelve inches from your face looking at you like you were the only fixed point in three hundred years of motion.

"Don't,"' you said quietly.

"Don't what."

"Look at me like that."

Something shifted at the corner of his mouth. The barest thing. "I'm not certain I know how to stop."

The silence held.

Then suddenly breaking the moment of solace, "Did she send you?"

His voice had changed, dropped into a tone which was more lower and more private, the careful evenness giving way to something rawer underneath. His eyes moved over your face, aching attention that never seemed to be able to get enough of what it found there.

"Did she send you to haunt me." Not accusatory. Something far more broken than accusatory. A question asked into the dark by a man who had been asking versions of it for three hundred years and had never gotten an answer. "Because if she did, I would like to know. I would like to understand if this is a punishment or a mercy. I cannot tell, from where I am standing."

"Your Grace—" you started.

"Baelor."

The word came out quietly but with a weight behind it, a firmness. His eyes had not moved from yours.

"Call me Baelor. I have not heard my own name said by a voice that—" He stopped. "Please."

You looked at him. The blood drying at his jaw. The grey at his beard. The ruined, patient, ancient expression on his face.

"Baelor," you said softly.

Something happened in his face when you had said it. Something that had been held very tightly for a very long time loosened, just slightly, it was painful to witness, not because it was ugly but because it was so clearly involuntary, so clearly a thing that had happened to him rather than something he had chosen.

"I don't know what you're talking about," you said. "I don't know anything about why I look the way I look or what it means. I'm sorry for coming into this part of the house. I'm sorry for opening that door. I wasn't– I was going to the portrait, that was all, and I heard something and I–" You stopped. "I'm sorry. I should not have come. I won't tell anyone. I swear to you I won't tell a living soul."

He was quiet for a moment.

"You think I'm angry about the snooping."

The word snooping, in his voice, with the faintest possible inflection, not quite amusement, though it was something drier than amusement, and was unexpected that it punctured something in the tension between you.

"Aren't you?"

"No." He said it simply. "You could take up residence in this wing and I find I would not manage to mind it very much." His eyes moved over your face again, that slow and helpless inventory. "That is the problem, if you want to know. That is the thing I have been standing in this house with for two weeks. You are not supposed to be here and every time you are I find that I cannot make myself want you to leave."

Your heart was doing something your ribs felt inadequate to contain.

"Baelor–"

"You look exactly like her." He said it very quietly, like a confession. "Every angle of you. Every—" He lifted his free hand and his fingers brushed your jaw, just barely, the backs of them, a touch so light it barely registered except that it registered everywhere. "I have spent years with her face in my memory and you are standing in front of me and I cannot– my memory and my eyes cannot be reconciled and it is–" He stopped. His jaw was tight. "It is a very specific kind of madness."

You were not breathing correctly.

His thumb was still on the inside of your wrist, over your pulse, and the touch was so light and so still and so entirely focused that it felt like the loudest thing in the room.

"I look at you," he said, lower, "and I wonder."

"Wonder what," you said, barely sound.

His eyes dropped to your mouth.

"She looked the same as you." His voice was the quietest thing in the corridor. "Every feature, every—" His gaze came back up to yours slowly. 

“Yet I wonder if you taste the same.”

The words landed and stayed.

You should have said something sensible. You were aware, distantly, that a sensible thing existed to be said– some response that involved the girl in the other room, or the blood still drying at his jaw, or the very reasonable fear that had driven you out of that room and down this corridor not ten minutes ago.

You didn't find it in time.

His head bent and his mouth found yours and the first thing you tasted was the blood. Copper-dark, faint but unmistakable, spreading across your tongue before you could decide what to do about it. You made a sound against his mouth that was not dignified. He went still, pulling back a fraction, giving you every opportunity to use the space.

You closed it again.

He made a sound low in his chest when you did, something that had been held in for a very long time coming loose at a single point, and then his hand was at your jaw, tilting your face up, and he kissed you the way a man kisses something he has been trying not to want– with the full weight of the trying in it, three hundred years of restraint collapsed into this, messy and graceless and real. All tongue and the faint scrape of his teeth and his beard rough against your mouth and the copper taste of him that you could not stop chasing.

His other hand found your waist pressing you in, and you felt the full weight of him and pulled at the front of his shirt because your hands needed something to do with themselves. He let you. He let you pull and he came willingly and his thigh pressed between yours against the wall and you gasped into his mouth and he swallowed it.

"Baelor—"

"I know." His lips dragged to your jaw. "I know."

He was not rushing. That was the thing– the absolute, devastating patience of him, like he had all the time there was and intended to use it. His mouth moved down the side of your throat and you let your head fall back against the stone because there was nothing else to do with it, because the alternative was watching his face and you were not certain you could survive that right now.

His teeth grazed your pulse point.

Not breaking the skin. A question. The same question he had asked before, in this same corridor, against this same pulse, and the answer you gave now was the same one you had given then, the sharp catch of your breath, the way your fingers twisted in his shirt, your hips pressing forward against the thigh he had put between yours without entirely meaning to.

He groaned against your throat. A quiet thing, rough, and it unmade you completely.

"You don't taste the same," he said, into your neck. The words dragged warm against your skin. "You taste like yourself." His hands were at your waist, your ribs, deliberate and slow, learning the shape of you through the thin fabric of your nightgown. "I have been trying to decide if that is worse or better."

"And?" you managed, though your voice had lost any pretence of composure.

He lifted his head, and looked at you.

The firelight from the open room behind you caught the blood on his mouth, on yours, smeared now and shared, and his mismatched eyes were dark and entirely certain and fixed on your face with an attention that felt like pressure, like standing too close to a fire.

"Better," he said. Simply. "Considerably."

He kissed you again and this time it was different,  less careful, something under the patience finally surfacing, his hands moving with more intent and yours in his hair and your back arching off the wall toward him. His mouth was at your throat again and you said his name in a way that was not a sentence and he answered it, mouth open against your pulse, the faint graze of his teeth and the warmth of his breath and the specific focused quality of his attention that made you feel like the only thing in the world that existed.

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

You didn't.

His hands moved and you made a sound that echoed in the corridor, a sound that had no pretence in it whatsoever, and he pressed his forehead to your temple and breathed you in and you felt the three hundred years of him in how still he went, like he was committing this to a memory that had been keeping things for centuries.

"Tell me to stop," he said again, quieter. More ragged.

"I don't want you to stop," you said. Honest. No qualifier, no apology for the honesty.

Something moved through his face that was almost painful to witness.

He pressed one long, deliberate kiss to the side of your throat, open-mouthed, his teeth just grazing the skin without breaking it, and the sound that left you was embarrassingly frank about what it was. His hands were still, suddenly, firmly, holding you rather than exploring, and he lifted his head and looked at you and his jaw was tight with the effort of something.

"Not here," he said. Low, rough, the composure in pieces. "Not in this corridor with her—" He stopped. His eyes moved briefly to the portrait behind you. Back to your face. "Not like this. Not the first time."

You looked at him. Breathing hard. The blood on both your mouths. His hands at your waist, not releasing you.

"The first time?" You repeated softly, cheekily almost.

Something in his expression shifted, the tightness giving way, fractionally, to something that was almost wry if wry could coexist with three centuries of grief.

"I am attempting," he said carefully, "to be honourable."

"How is it going?"

"Poorly," he said. "But I am attempting it."

You laughed. Small and unsteady, and he went still when you did it in that way he always went still, the ghost of her moving through the space between you, and you felt it and you let it be there and you held his gaze anyway.

You reached up and wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth with your thumb. He watched you do it, very still, his eyes on your face.

"First time," you said quietly. "So there's a second."

It was not a question.

He turned his face slightly into your hand, just barely, his jaw against your palm.

"If you'll have it," he said.

You walk closer. The floor underfoot whispers softly, worn stone protesting beneath your boots. He must hear you, but he doesn’t shift. His hands rest on the window ledge, fingers spread, knuckles pale where the skin stretches over bone.

“Did they?” you ponder absently. “Grow shy.”

A breath that almost wants to be a laugh huffs out of him. “No. They multiplied.”

Up close, he looks worse. Not in any way that will set the court whispering; they only see the careful surface. You see the exhaustion soldered into the set of his mouth, the fine cracks at the corners of his eyes, the way his breath sits high in his chest. His shoulders are doing that thing they do when he’s worn the prince too long—held a touch too square, like armour he forgot to take off. There’s ink on his thumb, and a faint tremor in the hand braced on stone.

“Baelor,” you say, soft but steady.

He closes his eyes for a heartbeat, lashes a dark fan against his cheek. When he opens them again and looks at you over his shoulder, one pale eye, one dark, are rimmed red with tiredness.

“You should be abed,” he tells you. “You have your own wolves to worry about, without fretting over tired dragons.”

“Unfortunately for you,” you reply steadily, “I’m very bad at leaving things I care about unattended.”

Something flickers in his gaze. His mouth almost curves. Almost. Then it falters, the attempt dying before it can become a smile. “I’m fine,” he says instead. “It’s just—” His jaw locks around the rest.

You hate that word in his mouth. Fine. As if he isn’t already halfway drowned. You step into his reach, into his heat. Up this close, you can smell the day on him: parchment and wax and the faint sting of wine, overlaid with leather and steel and the warm, familiar note that’s simply him.

“Turn around,” you murmur.

His brow creases. Habit makes him hesitate; you can see the reflexive refusal, the protest that he has work, that there are letters, that he shouldn’t—can’t—stop. Then some stubborn shard of your stubbornness catches in him. Slowly, as if wading through his own instincts, Baelor turns.

Now you see all of it: the fine fatigue around his eyes, the careful way he’s holding himself together, like glass soldered at the seams. He’s still braced, as if waiting for the next blow—a message, an argument, a war.

You don’t offer words. You just open your arms. It’s not a grand gesture. Your hands simply lift, palms bare, a quiet invitation drawn in the small space between you. For a breath, he only gazes at you. Duty and pride and a lifetime’s habit of standing alone all fight in his eyes. The Crown Prince of the Seven Kingdoms does not sag into anyone’s arms like a tired boy.

Then something in his face loosens. It’s small: the easing of a line between his brows, the way his mouth softens, the brief, almost frightened flash in those mismatched eyes.

He steps forward.

The first touch is careful. His hands come up to your upper arms, fingers light, as if you’re fragile and he’s not sure he remembers how to hold anything that won’t break under him. You close the distance the rest of the way, rising onto your toes, and wrap yourself around him—arms sliding around his ribs, hands linking at his back. You press your cheek to his chest.

He folds.

There’s no princely grace in the gesture. It’s like watching a tree finally admit to the wind. All that height, all that iron composure, just… gives.

His head tips forward until his brow rests against the crown of your hair. His arms come around you properly this time, sweeping low and sure, banding across your back. He drags you in with a small, helpless sound, something half-swallowed and raw. It rumbles in his chest beneath your ear.

You feel the exact moment he stops holding himself up and starts letting you do it with him. His weight settles, not crushing but real, the full truth of him—broad shoulders, tired spine, all those invisible crowns stacked along it—leaning into you. His fingers fist in the wool at your back, knuckles digging in as if he needs the anchor. One hand slides higher, palm spreading between your shoulder blades, warm and large and shaking just a little.

He breathes.

Not the shallow, measured breath he uses in council, all tight control and careful distance. A real breath. In, slow and ragged, drawing in the scent of your hair—winter air, smoke, the faint clean sting of your soap. Out, hot across the side of your neck where his mouth has ended up, the exhale shuddering like a thawing river.

You feel each one, every breath a long, dragging pull, as if he’s been living on half-measures and suddenly remembers what it is to fill his lungs. With every exhale, his shoulders drop a little, as if something heavy is being unhooked, link by link, from his bones.

“Gods,” he mutters, barely audible, the word a warm vibration against your skin. “I didn’t know I was that tired.”

“That’s because you’re an idiot,” you announce fondly into his collar. Your voice comes out softer than the words despite it. “Hold on properly, Baelor.”

He makes a noise that might be a laugh, ragged around the edges. Then he obeys.

His grip tightens. One arm wraps fully around your waist, hauling you flush against him until there’s no polite distance left at all. The other curls higher, forearm braced along your shoulders, his hand cupping the back of your head, fingers threading into your hair with careful, trembling reverence. He cradles you to him like something precious and irreplaceable—or like he is the one being cradled and hasn’t realised it yet.

You can feel his heart hammering under your cheek, too fast at first, like a caged bird. Slowly, inexorably, it steadies. Yours calms to match it, two rhythms folding into one.

“You smell like home,” he says suddenly, rough and bewildered.

“Like wet dog and pine pitch?” you suggest mirthfully.

“Like cold air,” he corrects, breath catching. “And stone that doesn’t move. Like… quiet.” His fingers flex at the back of your head, as if to make sure you’re real. “I forget what quiet feels like.”

“So remember,” you tell him. You shift, settling more comfortably into his chest. “Right now. Here. This is quiet.”

He huffs another small sound, somewhere between agreement and disbelief. His nose buries a little deeper in your hair, tracing a slow, soothing arc, like a man who has just discovered how to rest and is terrified someone will take it from him.

For a while, that’s all there is. The fire pops; the city mutters beyond the stone. His breath fans warm and steady against your neck. His hands stay on you like a promise he doesn’t know how to phrase—clinging without clutching, possessive without pressure. Every time you shift, even a fraction, his arms tighten instinctively, as if his body has decided on its own that letting go is no longer an option.

“Am I crushing you?” he asks at last, words muffled against your shoulder.

“Yes,” you lie. “Stay where you are anyway.”

He laughs then, properly, low and disbelieving and utterly undone. It shakes through both of you. You feel his mouth curve against your skin. His arms, impossibly, pull you closer.

“All right,” he murmurs. “I’ll stay.”

He could hardly use his limbs for a time, let alone rule the Seven Kingdoms, so Maekar relieved his brother of his duties. You did not return to your home in King’s Landing when you left Ashford. Instead, you made a new one in Sunspear, on a piece of far-off farmland, not far from where his mother grew up in Dorne. The warmth and the golden yellow sun brought the color back to his face, and made Baelor nostalgic for a time he can no longer remember now.

“Tell me again,” the man says with his head tipped back. He looks up at you as you stand beside his chair, raking the thin blade down the length of his neck. Heavy soap cakes onto the white cloth around his neck, along with the fine scruff you shave off his pale skin.

“I’ve already told you a thousand times,” you laugh. “I think I could recite the Dance of the Dragons better than most maesters at this point.”

The sound of your pretty giggling mixes with that of the rolling waves from the bright blue sea about a furlong away from the porch, and the distant bleating of goats being shooed away from the grape vineyard a mile or so up the hill. Everything smells like sea salt and citrus and soap and you.

Baelor knows he has a hard time remembering his home back in King’s Landing, but he can’t understand why he should care about anything other than the one he shares with you now.

“I should know it, I know…” Baelor hums in a soft voice that borders on melancholic.

He smiles softly to himself as his mismatched eyes dart over your face — memorizing the shape of your eyes, the curve of your nose, and the dip in your cupid’s bow — lest the merciless Gods take that memory away from him, too. He fights back a shiver while you sculpt his greying beard with a blade in your expert hand, taking care of him like you were made to do it, though he struggles to recall why.

“I just… I don’t understand why I don’t remember…” he confesses quietly.

You smile through the pang of grief in your chest and repeat the reminder you have to tell him most days. “Because you got hurt, my love. And the maester said it affected your memory.”

“I got hurt…” Baelor echoes, not quite a question, but not quite a firm statement either.

“Yes,” you nod, smoothing the edge of the blade down the milky white tendons of his neck. “You were defending Ser Duncan’s honor at the trial of seven—”

“Trial of seven?” the older man repeats with a furrow to his dark brows. “There hasn’t been one of those in over a century.”

The statement of fact makes you perk.

“Do you remember the last one?” you press gently, parting from his side to wash the blade off in the basin of warm water beside you.

Baelor thinks for a moment, blue-brown irises tracing the fluffy white clouds overhead as he fights to recall a deeply held memory. “It was… Maegor the Cruel,” he mumbles some moments later. “And Ser Damon from House Morrigen— They called him Damon the Devout…”

He turns his head to the side to flash you a soft smile, full of a quiet pride, as if he himself were shocked at having remembered. You meet his sheepish grin with a wider beam, “Aye, my love,” you nod as you return to his side, brushing the blade gently over his jaw. “That’s right.”

“Pity…” he hums in a monotone, folding his weathered hands across his stomach. “I can remember every battle recorded in the citadel, but not my own…”

“Ser Duncan was accused of hurting Aerion, your nephew, who opted for a trial of seven rather than trial by combat,” you explain, soft eyes flitting from Baelor’s attentive gaze to where you shape the edges of his grey beard. “And when Ser Duncan couldn’t find seven fighters, you stood up for him — like a true knight. And you fought gallantly—”

Baelor makes a noise of protest in the back of his throat.

“A gallant knight would remember fighting gallantly,” he protests. “And I can hardly remember what happened to me.”

“Perhaps it’s best you don’t,” you murmur warmly and turn away. “It was a brutal fight.”

Baelor’s soft voice follows you the short distance to the basin, where you drop the blade and rinse your hands. “Tell me,” he says with an audible, sad sort of smile in his voice. “Of how gallantly I fought, I mean.”

Even with your back facing him, he can see the way your shoulders tense, as if his simple plea were enough to take your breath away.

You swallow hard and fight back the distant nausea that always accompanies the bitter memories. You blink, and suddenly the basin of soapy water becomes bright crimson blood — and the white suds turn into the shards of Baelor’s bone and brain, from where you’d cradled his wound to keep his skull from falling apart. Even now, the scent of a salty sea and dewy grass washes away to the stench of copper you’d smelled in the barracks that day — when the blood was so thick in the air you could taste it.

You shake your head to physically remove the memory from your brain. Your answer is the repeated monotone you find yourself reciting most days. “You protected your men. All of them.” You clear your throat when your voice cracks. “It wasn’t until after it was over, when Aerion yielded from his injuries, that Maekar hit you with his mace whilst trying to get to his son. Hard enough to put you in a coma for a moon’s turn.”

“Of course he did,” Baelor hums with a strange fondness in his voice as he plucks the towel from around his neck, wiping the remnants of shaving cream from his skin. “My brother was always stronger than he realized… Even when we were boys…”

Baelor smiles at you and waits for you to look back at him. You never do.

You just keep dipping your hands into the water, like you’re trying to wipe something from your already clean skin. You’d gained a habit of that since the day you nearly lost Baelor — when you rubbed your hands raw in scalding water because you felt like his blood was still clinging to your skin there, long after it had washed away.

“Forgive me,” he says. “If my words pain you— I mean no offense.”

“Stop that,” you scold, features twisting in offense as your head snaps in the man’s direction. You close the brief distance between you to snatch the towel from his fingers, drying off your hands with a quiet smile. “I know you don’t, Baelor. You’re too kind for any of that.”

You sit gingerly across his thighs and dab diligently at the soapy spots he’d missed on his neck. Your soft lavender scent mixes with the spiced oils he’d bathed in that morning.

Baelor’s mismatched eyes soften with affection as he cradles your waist in a pair of wide, sturdy hands. “If only I could remember… Then you wouldn’t have to carry it all… And I wouldn’t be such a burden to you.”

You flinch, as if his words have found you like a physical blow to the stomach.

“You’re the furthest thing from a burden, my love,” you tell him, stern but no less soft with him. “I wouldn’t want you to remember any of it, anyway. I’ll happily hold the memories for the two of us…”

“You were there, yes?” he wonders then.

You nod wordlessly, not trusting yourself to speak.

“And you saw it?”

“I saw all of it,” you answer, slightly strangled by the burning tears you fight hard to blink away. Your glassy eyes remain on the towel in your grasp, lacking the strength to meet Baelor’s gaze. “I ran to you in the barracks when it was over… I didn’t let go of you for two days— they had to transport both of us to the infirmary together…”

You exhale a sharp exhale through your nose, as if you mean to laugh, though the smile doesn’t quite match the sadness in your eyes.

“Eventually, my body gave out from exhaustion, and Maekar carried me out,” you sigh. “I’m pretty sure I slapped him for it when I woke up, but… That might’ve just been a dream— I’m not sure.”

Baelor’s lip twitches in a faint smile, half-hidden beneath the cloth you press to his cheek. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs beneath it.

“For what?”

“You shouldn’t have had to see that— You shouldn’t have had to see me like that.”

“Perhaps not,” you shrug. “But you’re here now. And you’re getting better every day. And that’s all I really care about now.”

You drop the towel into your lap and cup Baelor’s bearded jaw in your soft palms, brushing the trimmed edges with your thumb. There’s a distinct sort of tenderness in the way you hold him, like you’re savoring the way he feels against you — his coarse scruff in your delicate palms, the warmth beneath his pale skin, the way his chest rises and falls beneath you with even breaths. Alive.

“Any word from my brother?” he asks, the third time that morning.

“Not yet,” you smile. “He was here three days ago to check in on you, remember?”

Baelor’s brown-blue eyes dart back and forth between yours, going glassy as he struggles to recollect the not-so-distant memory. He swallows hard, half-embarrassed, and shakes his head. “I… I think I’m having some trouble remembering…”

“That’s okay,” you tell him, scratching gently at his scruff. “That’s why I’m here. To help you remember.”

“And we’re…” he trails off, brows lowered in curiosity. “We’re married, yes?”

Your smile widens. You nod once, proud and visibly giddy. “We are.”

“You poor thing,” he scoffs a quiet laugh that mixes with your lighter giggling. “What did you do to the Gods to end up cursed with an old man like me?”

“Must’ve been something nice, I’m sure,” you lilt and curl your arms around his shoulders. Your fingers rake through his short grey hair, tracing lightly over the healed wound at the top of his neck, where the base of his skull dips in. “Considering they saved you for me… I wouldn’t exactly call that cursed…”

Your words trail off as the tip of your nose traces the bridge of his. You close the minimal space between you to press a chaste kiss to his mouth. When you pull away, you catch a flicker of something flashing across his face — like he’s seeing you for the very first time.

That was, perhaps, the only good thing to come out of all this, watching Baelor fall in love with you again every day.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” you giggle.

“Have I told you that I love you today?” Baelor wonders, for the hundredth or so time that day.

“You tell me every day, Baelor,” you grin. “But I wouldn’t mind hearing it a few more times…”

You lean in to kiss him again — a longer and more languid thing this time. Baelor exhales a heavy sigh against you that fans across your cupid’s bow. He prays your kiss leaves a mark on him, like hot sealing wax on a love letter. He wants you to mark him with your touch — to burn him, to stamp him, to brand him — so that he’ll have something to remember this moment by, before it’s gone again forever.

blackout | ⚡︎ ❀

⤷ a power outage strands you and reid in the basement records room. his flashlight is useless, your lighter keeps flickering out, and you’re pretty sure you said too much — but somehow, he never makes you regret it.

bullseye | ❀

⤷ you didn’t plan on staying late at the bar, hustling reid at darts, or flirting with him after trivia. you definitely didn’t plan on the coffee waiting on your desk the next morning, either.

hot topic | ❀⚡︎ᢉ𐭩

⤷ after an injury in the field, you patch spencer up with a skull-print bandage. he gets a little jealous, you get a little deflective, and a quiet moment passes at 30,000 feet where you both admit more than you mean to.

fever dream | ꩜ ❀

⤷ you don’t get sick. you don’t let coworkers into your apartment. and you definitely don’t have vivid, full-body sex dreams about spencer reid. except today, apparently, you do all three. 18+ MDNI

night watch | ❀ ⚡︎

⤷ ever since he showed up at your apartment (and ever since that fever dream you’re pretending didn’t happen), you’ve avoided being alone with reid. unfortunately, hotch has another plan: assigning the two of you to an overnight stakeout.

liquid courage | ❀

⤷ you never call anyone when you’re drunk — except tonight, you do. margaritas, glitter, and one reckless drunk dial later, you’re in spencer reid’s car at 1am, wearing his coat and trying not to notice how good he smells.

head rush | ❀ ⚡︎

⤷ dayton, ohio. one asshole cop, one concussion, six hours of stay-awake poker, and a kiss that makes you see stars — right up until you slam on the brakes.

lies | ⚡︎

⤷ after ohio, you rebuild your armor and pretend the kiss didn’t happen. two weeks of awkward distance, a charged moment at the gun range, and a stairwell conversation later, you tell spencer the cruelest lie you can think of. it should end there — but then he finds the only evidence that can prove you wrong.

truths | ⚡︎ ❀ ᢉ𐭩

⤷ spencer shows up at your door with irrefutable proof you’ve been lying — to him and to yourself — but that doesn’t stop you from trying to deny it anyway. what follows is a late-night reckoning: small truths, careful boundaries, and the soft kind of honesty you usually run from.

adagio | ❀

⤷ at work, you and spencer try out adagio tempo until a hotel room debrief tests just how slow you can go.

heart eyes | ❀

⤷ spencer tries to focus on the case, but watching you translate grief into gentleness ruins his concentration until morgan snaps him out of it. // written as part of my whisper week 1k celebration event!

extras

⟢ headcanons 1 | 2 | 3 | 4

⟢ apartment moodboard

⟢ text messages 📱💬 | text messages pt 2

⟢ hotch & emily’s relationship w/ reader

⟢ hey tumblr user whisperedmeg, why won’t greenaway!reader just go for spencer if he clearly likes her?

⟢ why greenaway!reader not have black cat if greenaway!reader have black cat energy? 🐈‍⬛

⟢ spencer said he “notices things” about reader. what does he notice?

⟢ is it really a slow burn if they’ve clearly been into each other from the start? 🤔

⟢ why is greenaway!reader so avoidant/afraid of relationships?

⟢ greenaway!reader 🤝 meg from hercules

⟢ greenaway!reader’s complex relationship with her sister Elle

⟢ ever wonder how spencer sees greenaway!reader through his pov? read the heart eyes ficlet!

Sukuna watched as his cloaked friend stepped inside the dining hall, curiosity starting to ebb in his psyche when he noticed their delighted disposition. Uraume’s timid steps ate up the space between them until they took their spot at the low-lying table. In front of them, Sukuna sat silently on the floor. He gave his auxiliary an unimpressed look before sighing, one that he couldn’t suppress once he saw their grin, for he knew then that whatever they had to say was going to ruin his meal.

“How was the surface?” he asked, pulling apart the grisly meat in front of him. With Uraume spending a few days on the surface, there was no one at the shrine with adequate culinary skills to prepare his meals; therefore, the god of the dead was forced to eat near slop.

“Wonderful. I come bearing glorious word of something magnificent.”

Sukuna raised a brow, not interested in the slightest. Today had been rather dreary for the king of the underworld, for it had not stopped raining all day, and the mortals who attended his hearings had been a bit boring. 

“And what of this word is so glorious and magnificent?”

“A compeer of mine is with child,” they answered with excitement.

Sukuna frowned as he swallowed the rigid flesh in his mouth. “So, a compeer is with child–where is the glory you speak of?”

“The glory, my king, lies in my plan. Everything is coming together so nicely.” Sukuna hummed at that, turning his attention back to his dinner. That is, until Uraume continued with their spiel. “In 18 years, you will begin to romance their offspring!”

The meat he’d been holding fell into a small dish of seasonings. “I beg your pardon?”

Uraume’s eyes widened again, an even brighter smile taking over their mouth as they exclaimed, “You will take a wife!”

“I will not!” he countered with disgust.

“You will! This child has been created just for you. Crafted in the underworld and planted in utero.” 

Uraume leaned forward to fish the flesh out of the seasonings before it soaked up too much flavor and was rendered inedible. All the while, Sukuna regarded them with anger, shock, and perhaps a bit of incredulity. 

They continued, “My presence by your side is not forever guaranteed, Sukuna, and you’ll need someone who matches your strength and brutality should I ever perish. In my stead, I’ve prepared a way for you to continue on with your power and lineage. You’re welcome.”

“I did not ask for this Uraume-”

“Correct, but your legacy must live on, lest you wish to be buried underneath the ones who rise in the pantheon.”

“I do not need a wife.”

Uraume sighed and pushed themselves to their feet. “Fine. Let’s see how long you resist the connection once you finally lay eyes on her.” 

Sukuna groaned as they stepped toward the exit of the dining hall. “You are a meddlesome servant.”

“No, I am a clever servant.”