Wannabe Writer ☆

You rose unsteadily, boots pressing into blood-soaked grass. Slender fingers - slicked in warm scarlet - reached toward pale skin.

Had he always been so pale?

You could imagine it already, his beautiful visage filled with life and love, dappled in summer sunlight.

Your lips parted, but words crumbled like ash against your tongue. Speech had never been your weapon of choice.

Action served you better.

With a faint shake of your head, vermillion-streaked fingers wrapped around iron about his neck, wrists, and ankles. Your expression tightened - a fleeting wince - as metal bent beneath your will. Your magic. The metal groaned, yielded, and collapsed to the forest floor with a dull and final thud.

"Don't run," you whispered. Soft as falling dusk. Firm as binding thread.

Your hands found his face.

The world slowed.

Your fingers - still warm with someone else’s blood - cradled the gaunt curve of his cheek, and beneath the carnage, beneath the adrenaline and the copper-thick air and the heat of the burning carriage at your back, your mind began to catch up to what you’d done.

You had killed a man.

You had killed a man and it had taken less than a minute.

The trail of mana had led you here, that faint flicker in the air that you felt while checking the western wards, a tremble that felt like sunlight shivering across running water. It had been warm. Inviting. The particular warmth of fae magic bleeding from a body that could not contain it, leaking through wounds both physical and arcane. You had followed it the way you always did - without hesitation, staff in hand, the same path your grandmother had walked before you.

What you had found was the carriage. The whip. The blood. A man, heavy and sweating and pleased with himself, drawing red lines across a back that seemed more scar than skin.

The rest had been simple. You did not relish violence, but you did not dread it either. It was a tool, the same as your magic, the same as your herbs and your silver needles and your stitching thread. Sometimes the infection had to be cut out before the wound could close. You had made peace with that philosophy long, long ago.

Three breaths. That is what you would allow for the grief you felt. It was a practised grief, not for the dead man. It was never for the dead man, but for the necessity of it. It was a grief for the fact that the world continued to require you. That you could stitch a thousand wounds and there would always be another hand holding another whip.

Three breaths before you allowed yourself to do what you did best.

Up close, the damage was worse than you’d estimated from a distance. The lash marks were superficial, painful certainly, but not dangerous, but beneath them lay the archaeology of this fairy’s torment. Layers of scarring so dense it formed a topography, ridges and valleys of tissue that had been torn, then meticulously mended to leave as little of a mark as possible, then torn again so many times that the skin seemed to have forgotten its original texture.

You could feel his ribs pressing too sharply against his skin, just a fraction of muscle and fat away from being visible. His wrists and ankles bore the raw, blistered signature of iron left against fae flesh, the insignia of the family burned in where the flesh did not rash and burn, not left in this case over hours or days or years.

Instead it was decades. It had to be based on the ruin of the skin. The burns had scarred and re-scarred in overlapping patterns, each layer a different household’s brand or symbol modified by heirs seared into the same ruined skin.

One wing, a single, solitary thing, curled weakly against his side.

One wing.

Your jaw tightened. The sight of it tightened something in your chest that you did not permit to surface. You had treated freed fae before. Dozens. You had already stopped counting because the number only fed the fury you felt and that fury would do nothing but make your hands less steady. You had seen starvation, mutilation, the deliberate dismantling of personhood carried out with the casual efficiency of animal husbandry.

The particular amputation was carried out not as a punishment, but as permanence. A brand deeper than iron. A fae rendered asymmetrical, their very biology becoming a reminder that they were now owned.

Your grandmother had told you once that a fae’s wings were more than flight. They were the fairy’s rhythm, the symmetry woven into their magic like marrow in bone, a balance that kept them tethered to the natural world. To lose one was to lose half of the song that was their existence. To have it taken and kept was to have the remaining half held hostage. To twist and pull and mutilate the severed wing was to harm deeper than the body, to harm that very essence of the person beneath, their mana, their soul.

This was the worst case you had ever seen.

You tilted his face toward you and looked into those blue eyes, and what you found was worse than anything written in his body. He was present and profoundly absent all at once. He had the gaze of a mind that had retreated so far inward it operated on surface protocols alone. Threat assessment. Compliance calculation. The mechanical process of survival that stripped everything of what made that survival worth living at all.

He looked at you the way a man might check the weather. He registered the conditions, seemed to be thinking about the appropriate response, and felt nothing about either.

He didn’t flinch at your touch.

That was the detail that settled the heaviest. Not fear, not gratitude, not confusion. Simply the absence of a reaction from a body so accustomed to being handled that a new pair of hands suddenly touching him registered as nothing remarkable at all.

Then he leaned into your palm.

It was barely perceptible. A fraction of weight shifting, a tilting so slight that anyone less attuned than you were might have missed it entirely. Your hands though had cradled a thousand different broken things, and you felt it with the same instincts you had in feeling another’s pulse in their touch. Instincts so refined you felt that involuntary seeking of warmth from the first touch that was not a prelude to pain.

It wasn’t trust. Not yet, you knew well that that was something that may never quite come and nowhere near it now. It was something more… animal than that. It was the body remembering before the mind could intervene, that contact did not always have to hurt.

Your throat tightened. You swallowed past it.

Magic flowed from your palms. Not the measured, precise kind of healing you might use on a villager’s broken bone, but something instinctive. It was a flood of mana, not a managed reservoir like a dam but more akin to the water you held flowing naturally downhill. It was generous, abundant, not guided by technique but by need. Your grandmother had healed this way. Briar of the Autumn Court, the woman whose magic moved through a room the way moonlight scattered through glass.

You were different though. You were not your grandmother.

No, you were cursed. When it’d been too long from their wounds being mended that the judgement and hate of their peers bled into them again, people would call you such with hisses and howls.

The Unseeled One. That was what they named you.

Humans were foolish.

You had decided that as a child - and yet you had given your life to binding their wounds. Perhaps some small and fragile part of you had hoped that if you stitched enough broken things whole, they might one day open their arms and welcome you into them.

Acceptance was a rare mercy.

The kind of mercy your grandmother would give.

You always thought of your grandmother when you healed. That, you knew, was part of the secret to its warmth and effectiveness. You’d never seen the point in rationing it anyway or being economical when that magic replenished itself like breath inside you.

His skin knit together beneath your hands. The lash marks closed, raw edges of flesh remembering their original shape and drawing together with a strange reluctance, like the tissue still did not trust the process after this had happened to it too many times. Scars remained, pale constellations across porcelain that you could not erase here, not with a single session. They silvered across his back, the permanent record of a suffering too deeply written to be wiped clean in one sitting.

Perhaps they would never heal. Either way, he did not react.

Not a flinch, not a gasp. Not the sharp intake of breath that even the most stoic of patients gave when magic moved through damaged tissue. He simply sat beneath your hands like a stone letting the rain fall on it, letting nature run its course.

The only indication that he registered the healing at all was the faintest easing of tension in his shoulders. It was marginal, probably involuntary, a body releasing pain it had held on to for so long that it became structural.

That would suffice for now.

You straightened and unclasped the blood-stained cloak from your shoulders, draping the heavy, fur-lined fabric across him. The green colour - which you didn’t think of as sickly until it was on his shoulders - made him seem smaller, more fragile, and that made something uncomfortable twist in your stomach.

He was tall. You could tell even with him kneeling. He was tall and built narrow, the frame of someone who should have carried lean muscle whittled down to sinew and bone. His hair, impossibly white and impossibly long, was pinned up in a style that had clearly been chosen for him, the arrangement too deliberate, too ornamental to be functional, yet he likely had to work with it anyway.

A guilt tugged in your heart when you found him beautiful. Even now, even like this.

It was the kind of beauty that was maintained rather than natural. Porcelain skin kept flawless by years of enforced indoor confinement, features so symmetrical they edged past elegance into something almost painful to look at, and of course the perfect hair and maintained skin anywhere that wasn’t covered the way his back was. He did have a flowery robe - dark blue in colour probably to bring out his eyes - that he had stripped down to his waist to accept the beating.

He was beautiful not like a person, but more like a display piece. A living ornament, polished and preserved for someone else’s pleasure.

Everyone knew what that pleasure was when the slave was pretty.

You rose and crossed back to the corpse. You knelt over the dead man, gripping the iron cord that hung around his fattened throat. You winced, sharp and bitten back by the metal, before the metal sang against your palm and was pulled until snapping. Within your hand rested the carefully wrapped package no larger than your fist. It was warm with latent magic that hummed softly, mournfully, like a song that had lost all of its orchestra and was left with the accompaniment alone.

It was his wing. His freedom. Kept as a trophy on the neck of the man who owned him, like some hunter wearing the teeth of his biggest kills.

You returned it to him and sank to your knees. Your fingers brushed against his - thin, cold, the bones far too prominent - before pressing the parcel into his hands without any ceremony. You did not explain. He would know. The connection between a fae and their severed wing was not something that required words.

Something changed in his hands when they closed around it. Not visibly - his expression remained that same terrible blankness - but the quality of his grip shifted. His fingers, which had accepted everything offered to him with the passive compliance of a man accustomed to receiving objects he would not be permitted to keep, suddenly held. Tightened. Pulled the small parcel against his chest and clutched it there with a fierceness that contradicted every other signal his body had given.

It was the first voluntary action you had seen him take.

"Can you walk?" you asked quietly. No mention of what you had just returned to him. No lingering on the enormity of it.

You rose and retrieved your staff from where it rested among embers and shadow. The moonstone embedded at its crown caught the failing light and held it, a pale glow that would brighten as darkness deepened.

"I live not far from here. You need food - and clothes."

You paused. Your shoulders remained tight, drawn up as though bracing against a world that struck without warning.

"You are not fully healed. You were the worst case I had ever seen." Your tone was even. Almost clinical. Though something gentler flickered beneath, visible only in the way your gaze lingered on him a moment longer than efficiency required. "You are free now. You have a choice, but if you want it, if you’d let whatever pride you want allow it, I can help."

He spoke then. It was the first time you had heard his voice, and it startled you - not the sound of it, which was quiet and deeper than his narrow frame suggested, but the content.

"I can walk. I can clean. I can cook."

A resume. An inventory of function. As though he were being assessed for purchase and needed to establish his value before a price was set.

Your fingers tightened around your staff until the wood creaked.

“You do not need to work for me, I will not be your master.” Your staff tapped the grass a few times before you let out a breath. “If you are to come with me, what is your name?”

The fairy bowed, a slow and intentional motion that was drawn from rehearsals and meetings from several lifetimes ago before any of this began, "I am called Darling. I am physically capable and skilled, I will be of use wherever I am put."

He saw it then, a look of confusion, concern, and sympathy. The man could only blink, his expression still flat but something in his voice had the slightest enthusiasm. Any mannerism seemed dulled to near imperceptible levels, but instinct more than actually hearing it made you swear that was the case. Perhaps there was some kind of interest in his life, an interest in himself that he’d long thought was dead.

"I would… accompany you if you would allow it, Mistress. I have no possessions to worry over. I will be of use, I swear it.”

All you could do was stare at him, a wash of complicated feelings in your chest.

“I will not call you that.”

Your voice cut sharp through the hum of evening as you glanced over your shoulder. Your pale eyes held pity - but it was a hard thing, structured and unyielding. You would not coddle him.

“You have a name. Not the one your slavers called you - that is not your name, no matter what years of human cruelty have forced you to believe.”

Darling.

The word curdled in your stomach like sour milk. It was obscene - syrupy and false. How could a man carved from starlight and sky be reduced to something so diminutive? That he had introduced himself as such made your jaw tighten, anger simmering just beneath your skin.

A possession to himself - not a person.

There was no greater evil upon this earth than humans.

You resumed walking and the forest swallowed you both completely.

The fairy followed you in silence across the stones of the stream crossing. His bare feet found each one with a careful, practised balance - not grace, not anymore, but the mechanical surety of a body trained to move without inconveniencing others.

The last embers of sunset filtered through the canopy in fractured ribbons of gold and wine, catching in the silver of your staff and in the faint shimmer of dust motes that were not quite dust.

The air grew cooler, thick with moss and loam and the faint sweetness of night-blooming flowers beginning to unfurl.

A strange sensation stirred within you when you heard his footsteps behind you - soft, measured, obedient. Trained.

You had known he would follow.

He had nowhere else to go - no hearth waiting for him, no name spoken with affection.

The path beneath your feet shifted from packed earth to roots that coiled like sleeping serpents. Mushrooms clustered along fallen logs, their caps faintly luminescent - pale blues and ghostly violets casting low glows along the forest floor.When you passed, some tilted subtly toward you, as though drawn by gravity that was not gravity at all. It was the same for the leaves and blossoms that drifted in the whispers of the wind, and the fireflies that sparked around you like drifting embers.

Greenery brushed your skirts as you moved with controlled familiarity along a path you had walked a hundred times before.

There was comfort in repetition.

You had trod this path so many times that even blind you could have found your way, each bend held memory, each stone, each crooked oak root, known to you.

It was your home.

And yet - he was here now.

A change in the current.

Your grandmother had once said that two souls destined to meet were like stars - hurtling through darkness until collision birthed a supernova. That the universe itself bent to ensure their meeting.

You did not know why that memory surfaced now.

But it made something inside you soften.

You said your name to him at last, glancing back at him.

“My name - I mean. Do not call me mistress. I will not be your master.”

You adjusted your grip on your staff. “But feel free to call me whatever you like.”

The moonstone embedded at its crown glowed softly, silver light spilling outward to brighten the forest as true night fell around you both.

“You have your wing - therefore you have your freedom. If you remain with me, it will be by choice and nothing else.”

The brush thickened as you approached the clearing, shrubs giving way to tall grass threaded with wildflowers - poppies like spilled drops of red, asters pale and trembling in the dark.

Beyond the final curtain of trees stood your home.

It was no humble cottage.

Grey brick and cob formed sturdy walls, the roof steep and thatched high. Broad windows promised sunlight by day. Pink camellias spiralled lovingly around the front door, their blossoms bright even in dim light. A stream cut across the clearing, smooth stones rising from its current to form a careful crossing.

You stepped from stone to stone until gravel crunched beneath your boots.

Home.

You stopped a few metres from the door and turned, hands braced firmly upon your hips. Your white gaze swept over him - over the blankness upon his face.

You hated that expression. Hated the possibility that he had been hollowed so completely he no longer knew how to want - or worse, that he performed obedience as an instinct for survival.

Your eyes closed.

You counted to ten.

Only the faint tremor of your fingers betrayed your fraying composure.

“I need you to understand,” you said, voice steady though quiet, “You are not a slave any more. You do not have to do anything you do not wish to do.”

Your hand wrapped around the silver door knob.

“If you wish to leave, I will not stop you. If you wish to stay, you may. You will not work unless you desire to, and if you do desire something to occupy your time - then I will find you something worthy.”

Your grip tightened slightly, “This is not a cage, it’s my home and it will be yours too for as long as you desire.”

The door opened with a tired groan of old wood - well loved and used.

The warmth and smells of herbs greeted you first.

It was not the sharp heat of flame, but the comforting warmth of a hearth that hadn’t gone out just yet, the warmth of a home that had been a home for many years.

The set-in wooden entry led into the main room, dark beams crossing the ceiling, dried herbs and half-dyed fabrics hanging from the rafters.

The large stone hearth at the centre - its mantle lined with mismatched trinkets and magical items, a kettle set on the worn stone next to the flame.

The wall beside the stairs was lined with books you’d finished and some you’d never begin, placed above a large table.

It wasn’t pristine - not curated for display - but full. Overflowing in places. Bundles of lavender, rosemary, and sage hung upside down from jar-lined shelves, drying in careful clusters, twine tied them together in uneven knots.

Your desk was scarred by knife marks, stained by tinctures, polished smooth by years of hands pressing into it.

There was a kitchen as well - set just beyond the main room through a wide open archway of exposed timber.

Unlike the organised chaos of the healer’s space, the kitchen was neat. Intentional.

Every pot and pan had its place upon sturdy wooden shelves fixed into the brick, copper bottoms gleamed faintly in firelight, polished by habit rather than vanity, hooks along the wall held ladles and silver spoons, their handles worn smooth by years of use.

The stove dominated the far wall - red brick darkened to near black around its mouth from decades of steady flame. The iron door bore scratches and soot that no scrubbing had ever fully erased. It was not ugly - it was seasoned, the kind of hearth that had boiled broths for fevers, simmered tonics for aching bones, and baked bread when winter had pressed too hard against the windows.

A long counter of thick oak ran beneath a small window. A bowl of apples sat in a shallow bowl, a loaf of bread rested beneath a cloth, knives hung in careful alignment, their edges maintained and well looked after.

There was comfort in its order - in the way everything suggested routine.

“This is home,” you said, stepping inside fully.

The fae paused at the threshold of your home.

His foot hovered above the stone and it looked like something tightened in his chest. Not pain. Not exactly. You recognized it as any who was not entirely human did, the feeling of standing at the edge of something that could not be taken back.

A threshold was never merely a threshold to the fae.

Finally, he stepped through.

“This is your home,” you emphasized this time, committing to closing the door after he finally entered.

You bent to tug off your boots, leaving them heavy and mud-caked upon the stone inset by the door - a problem for tomorrow. Your bare feet made no sound against the wood as you straightened.

“Home for as long as you would like it to be, anyway.”

Your voice lacked ceremony. It was not a grand declaration - merely truth.

The stone inset beneath the threshold glimmered faintly in the low light. It was a good thing, it meant they were working, detecting something new. Tiny runes had been etched directly into the surface - some sharp and newly carved, others softened by time and countless crossings.

They threaded across the stone in delicate arcs and intersecting sigils, silver lines faintly luminous.

Protection.

Permission.

Boundaries.

No one entered unless you willed it, no one crossed that threshold uninvited.

And he stood directly upon it.

“You can give me your true name if you wish,” you said, already walking towards the kitchen, your hands dipping inside a bucket of water as you scrubbed away the drying blood that lacquered your skin. “If you don’t want to, I can pick something for you. A fresh start.”

He exhaled - a careful, measured breath.

"You would not be able to pronounce it," he said quietly, and there was something in the way the words left him that was not quite humour but not quite emptiness either. A sliver of something lodged between the cracks.

A pause.

"That was a lie. Forgive me. I am not ready to hear it spoken aloud." His voice dropped lower, not in submission but in a rawness that surprised even him.

His gaze fell to the stone beneath his feet - the threshold he had already crossed. The runes pulsed faintly, as though acknowledging his presence.

"You may call me what you wish, My lady. Something that is yours - not theirs."

He bowed slightly, that same kind of exaggerated bow that spoke of flamboyance that had once been enjoyed, but scratched out under layers upon layers of pain.

"I apologise for the inconvenience."

You didn’t scold him for the lie. You did not press him, nor did you feel the need to demand something of him that he was not ready to give.

Instead, you simply carried on the task of washing dried blood from your hands, a slow methodical process.Water darkened in the bowl as crimson unwound from your fingers in thin ribbons. You scrubbed beneath your nails. Over your knuckles. Across the faint scars lining your palms.

It was a ritual you had performed countless times.

To commit violence.

To cleanse after.

“It’s fine,” you said quietly, as though you were discussing something far smaller than identity. “Names hold power. For now, I will call you Clemantis.”

The name was less ornamental, less rooted. A flower - not a term of endearment.

You knew there was a power imbalance between you.

A rescuer and rescued.

A healer and the wounded.

The broken and the mender.

You were steady and he was barely held together.

You hated it.

Your shoulders straightened as you turned to face him. Golden light from the hearth flickered across your skin, catching along the soft curve of your cheekbone as you dried your hands on the skirt of your dress.

“Arianhod.”

You watched him blink.

Once.

Then twice.

You smiled then, faint but real.

“My true name,” you said. “A fae’s true name holds power, you know.”

There it was. Your cards were on the table, bright and laid out, each one folded for him to see.

Perhaps he could see it now - what survival had not allowed him to see before, the way your ears curved to a subtle point rather than rounding like a human’s.

You were fae too.

He breathed - deeper than he had in the main room, deeper than he had outside - and something inside him seemed to stir, faint and fragile, like a coal given the barest breath of wind.

Yet he did not speak your name aloud. He only nodded quietly in response.

You did not often tell the ones you saved.

Not at first.

Many did not need to know. Many did not stay.

Only those broken enough to follow you home - only those who needed sanctuary behind your walls - learned that truth.

It had been over thirty years since you had spoken your true name aloud. You would have offered it the moment he gave you his. It was an offer of trust.

But he needed to hear it first - to know you were not merely another wielder of power standing over him, that you were like him in some fractured, distant way. You were not human.

You knew that it was not within his mind to assume, to think beyond survival and to please.

You crossed the room in a few steady strides and reached for him, your touch firm but not forceful as you guided him deeper past that threshold he had been terrified to cross.

“Come. I have spare clothes in this room.”

There was work to be done.

Pain to be soothed.

Mana to be restored.

He allowed himself to be guided. Your hand was firm - not forceful, a guiding force.

You led him past the kitchen and through a narrow doorway toward the back of the house.

The room beyond opened wide and unexpected, a room he had not seen from the front of the house.

There were no solid walls - only vast windows framed in silver and steel, panes stretching from floor to ceiling. Moonlight poured in unrestrained, spilling across an ornate mosaic of tiled stone that mirrored patterns seen in the Autumn Court - spiralling leaves, curling branches, stars embedded between them in shards of amber and gold.

The air in here felt different. Denser - the sweet taste of magic in the air.

Stacks of books towered in uneven columns against the edges of the room - leather spines cracked with age, parchment markers sticking out at odd angles. Strange instruments rested upon side tables - brass contraptions with rotating arms meant to map constellations, delicate glass spheres suspended in metal rings, a crystal ball abandoned casually at the centre of a low table as though it were nothing more than decoration.

It was a room for studying, for weaving and restoration.

You guided him toward one of two worn leather chairs near the centre and gestured for him to sit. You knelt before him without hesitation, releasing a slow breath through your nose.

It was a humble position, one that showed sincerity.

“The mana is thicker in here,” you hummed. “It’ll help restore your reserves.” Your eyes were unreadable for a moment, edged with the sharp blade of honesty. “When I said you were the worst case I have ever seen, I meant it. I have never encountered a fae with so little mana remaining. You perhaps have a flicker of an ember -”

You paused, discomfort flicking across your feline-like features.

“Without that ember you will die.”

Your words were not cruel, nor was your tone clinical. It was laced with a gentleness that belied your earlier composure.

Seeing him in the light of your study made your chest ache.

“I am glad you followed me.” Your voice softened further, your tightly knit brow easing slightly, you could feel your eyes start to sting, but you wouldn’t cry now.

Right now, you had to be strong.

“I can restore your mana enough for you to leave within a week. Perhaps two. But that would only bring you to stability. It would not return your ability to cast.” Your gaze was steady on him, trying to keep any the harshness you’d needed to adopt from the day out of your expression, “With more time I believe I can heal you fully. But that requires trust, and it would require you to stay longer, and I cannot say how long - healing is not linear.”

Your voice did not waver, it was as steady as you could manage. “The choice is yours and will always be yours. I will even swear it in blood, with my very being.”

Everything returned to blood.

Destruction.

Binding.

Life.

Death.

You extended your hand toward him, a spell pattern blooming across your skin - delicate lines of silver light weaving into a sigil in the centre of your palm, the air around you both humming in response.

A binding vow meant equal ground, and you knew that he knew that.

“I want nothing from you,” you whispered, your eyes painfully gentle, “Only to save you if you will allow it, Clemantis,”

Thin fingers - scarred at the wrists where iron had lived for generations - reached forward and hovered above your open palm.

The sigil’s light caught in the blue of his eyes, the first time anything had reflected there with any real luminance.

"Clemantis," he repeated quietly, tasting the shape of it on his tongue. He finally nodded slowly, "I will stay."

His hand lowered into yours, "I will trust you with this ember, Arianhod."

Your true name - spoken with the deliberate care of a rare person who understood the gravity of holding it.

Not weaponised.

Not leveraged.

Simply returned.

The energy flowed from you into him with a winding sensation like water entering a parched throat, cooling the body.

There was a strange relief.

By nature, a binding vow in this form was something made between two equals. Such was the law of the promises of fae, that this vow was not one made from a superior to a lesser. You felt it the moment the magic sealed - a deep, resonant hum threading through bone and marrow. It sank into your chest like an anchor dropped into churning waves, heavy and certain.

Unbreakable.

You stared at the man above you.

He looked fragile in the moonlight - pale skin drawn tight over sharp lines, trust flickering in his eyes like something unused to being held.

Weary.

Cautious.

You would protect him. What was the point in power if you couldn’t use it to protect? To hoard it was wasteful. To wield it without mercy was monstrous - a sin.

You remained on your knees. Slowly, reverently, you lifted his hand and brought his knuckles to your forehead.

The gesture was intimate - deeply so.

Not submission nor worship.

An act of devotion.

Trust given and returned.

You would keep your word.

“Thank you.” Your words were quiet and sincere.

You rose at last, your palm lingering in his for a heartbeat longer before your gaze dropped to the blood-soaked cloak still draped across his shoulders. He needed proper clothes. The robes beneath were not enough. Those robes were thin, decorative, almost translucent in places.

Your jaw tightened - no proper trousers, bare skin where there should have been dignity.

You knew what garments like that were for.

A pretty distraction for a dark reality.

“I will get you proper clothes,” you said evenly. “In the morning you can bathe in the stream and wash everything away.” You crossed the room and knelt before an old cedar chest. The lid groaned as you opened it, releasing the scent of aged fabric and dried lavender tucked between folded garments.

You rummaged through layers of wool and linen in muted greens, russets, creams.

At last you drew out a simple white tunic - soft but sturdy - tailored with a careful slit along the back seam to accommodate wings, and loose black woollen trousers.

Shoes would require a trip to the market come morning. Leather. Durable - something for comfort rather than to look pretty. Fabric for a proper cloak too, but right now your focus was getting Clemantis out of those robes.

He deserved his dignity.

You returned and offered the clothes to him, your fingers brushing - a small contact that spread warmth through your skin.

“I will be in the kitchen,” you added. “I am hungry - and I am assuming you are too.”

You did not linger this time.

The door remained open, warm light spilling through the frame, illuminating the sunroom with gentle light.

In the kitchen you paused briefly, unsure what to make.

Did he eat meat? Some fae ate meat and others did not. You nearly called out to ask - but hesitated. Privacy felt more important.

You chose stew, hearty and grounding. Filling.

You chopped carrots, potatoes, onions with steady hands, sliding them into the old copper cauldron already hanging over the flame. After a moment’s consideration, you added beef - small chunks that would soften in the broth, salt, some thyme and a bayleaf. It would give him important nutrients to recover.

The house slowly filled with the scent of simmering vegetables and rich stock.

You did not notice him at first - only feeling the shift in the air, your mana from the vow already attuned to him,your gaze flickered up and you smiled.

“It suits you. Much better than those robes,” you said quietly, stirring the pot, your movements calm and steady, as if you had not just made a life-changing vow, “I’ll make you clothes in colours you like. It’s simply what I had on hand for the time being.”

When he emerged into the kitchen, the scent hit him before anything else. He stood sheepishly by the door until you made a gesture towards the kitchen table.

It was old oak, worn smooth by years of use. In the corners were faint carvings - childish doodles etched long ago with a knife tip. Leaves. Stars. A poorly shaped fox.

He sat where you gestured, and watched.

“My grandmother,” you began, leaning back against the stone counter as the stew simmered, “was from the Autumn Court,” your voice steady and even - but soft. “She was enslaved, like you, and my grandfather was the man who freed her and nursed her back to health.”

A faint exhale left your nose.

“They had my father around five hundred years ago. He was born like me, with magic and no wings.”Your fingers drummed against your bicep a few times. “My father fell in love with a human woman. They had me one hundred and thirteen years ago. My mother died in childbirth. My father died shortly after from heartbreak.”

You did not dramatise it, it was the simple facts of your existence.

The foundation of your life.

“I was raised by my grandmother, Briar of the Autumn Court, one of the moon-blessed healers, the same as me.”

Strange - to have never known your parents, stranger still that you had never felt the absence keenly, your grandmother had filled every hollow space.

“She returned to the Autumn Court some years ago. A plague ran through it. Her healing magic was needed.”

A pause.

“She remains there now. It is safer.”

It was always safer for fae to remain in the courts.

The thought struck you quietly - that the house had been yours alone for decades.

You cleared your throat and turned back to the fire, ladling stew into two wooden bowls, steam curled upward in fragrant spirals. You sliced thick pieces of bread, spreading butter generously while it melted into the crust. You placed a bowl before him and sat opposite, a silver spoon already resting inside.

“It’s silver. The only iron in the house is the door to the stove,” you hummed, already shovelling a spoonful of salty broth into your mouth. It was precisely what you needed, what he would need to. Something salty, rich, filling, and most of all, grounding.

He watched the spoon with such careful consideration, his sharp eyes examining the home again, recounting each piece of metal he’d seen before returning his eyes to the stew. He lifted the silverware, weighing the feeling of it in his hands for a few slow seconds of thoughtfulness before finally sipping the broth.

Finally, seeing him have something at least, a part of your being that couldn’t relax from simply a good meal seemed to relax. A faint smile naturally found itself on your lips, another bite of the rich meal wetting your throat before you swallowed and continued, ““I have strawberries for dessert,” you added after he had taken a few bites. “Or honey cakes.”

You blinked, remembering a treat you’d almost forgotten completely.

“Oh. I have chocolate too - if that is what you prefer.”

He was prompt with his response, never delaying what could be given easily, what was expected to be given easily by those he’d known for whatever heartbreaking stretch of time he’d been owned.

Thankfully the words themselves, and the tone they took, were almost sweet to hear, soft.

"I would take anything, but… strawberries would be my preference," he said, and the word came softer than he intended. "They grew in the gardens of the Summer Court. I remember liking them once."

So he was a summer fairy. While you were processing the fact, it seemed he as well suddenly realised something you’d said. He’d mentioned the strawberries, which meant that the face he pulled - the subtle twitch upward of his brow, his ear even flicking just barely, followed quickly by heavily subdued embarrassment - was either about honey buns, his admission he knew the summer courts, or…what you guessed he’d actually been pleased to hear about.

That thought made you laugh. A soft, warm giggle bubbled out of you, the tension remaining in your chest vanishing in an instant. Even after everything.

After the iron.

After the pain.

Excitement still lived within him.

You rose without another word and crossed back into the kitchen, dragging over an old wooden stool with the scrape of legs against stone. Climbing onto it, you reached for the highest shelf above the cabinets - a place rarely disturbed, your tongue poking out slightly as you focused.

Your fingers brushed past dust you were too small to reach, and then they found paper.

After a moment more of blind rummaging, you pulled it free - a heart-shaped box wrapped in dark vermillion paper, the edges slightly dulled by time. A faint layer of dust clung to the surface.

It was expensive - far more indulgent than anything you would have purchased for yourself, and it had sat untouched for years.

“I am not the biggest fan of sweets,” you admitted as you stepped down carefully, returning to the table, “Anything beyond honey cake is usually too much for me. Even then, I can manage only a slice at a time.”

You set the box down beside him - directly over the childish carving of the fox. The coloured paper caught the firelight, shimmering faintly.

“All yours. I honestly have been looking for an excuse to get rid of them for a couple of years. They were given to me by a man who tried to court me.”

Your tone quickly dried from the warmth as you remembered him., “But he gave up after realising I have little interest in that kind of thing.”

You returned to your seat and your stew, dipping bread into the broth and bringing it to your mouth with a quiet hum of approval.

Clemantis stared at the box you placed before him.

It must have been absurd.

Heart-shaped and a deep vermillion, dusty from years of neglect on a shelf too high for you to reach comfortably, now resting in front of a person who was seemingly beaten half to death regularly by the whims of masters for however many dozens of years. It must seem impossible, or a joke. Across the table, you could see the hesitation. The careful restraint in him.

You reached across, bridging the space between you, and laid your hand gently over his. Your thumb gave a small, reassuring squeeze, your skin so warm against his, so full of life and mana.

“I mean it, they’re yours now,” you said softly, smiling. “You live here with me, and part of living with me means eating what I don’t want to eat or what I do not like.”

Hearing that, he finally let out a long breath. That was enough of an answer, you brought your hand back to your spoon and continued to watch.

He opened the box slowly like it was the most precious of jewels in the world he was looking at. The chocolates inside were nestled in small paper cups - dark, rich, some dusted with cocoa powder, others with flecks of sea salt or dried berry pressed into their surface. They were beautiful in the way that corners of a room had wallpaper and perfect trims and elegant rugs despite being covered by furniture - unnecessary, pointless ultimately, crafted for no purpose, yet crafted and made presentable nonetheless.

Hopefully the spell-weaving you did over the home properly maintained the chocolate as well as it did your produce.

He selected one carefully - dark, unadorned - and placed it on his tongue. His eyes closed. Just for a moment. Just to savour the sensation that he was finally able to enjoy once more. For someone who was less broken, you’d expect tears. You’d seen tears many, many times in this same sort of scenario playing before you now.

For him though, that moment to enjoy a luxury like he did now was likely the most he’d let himself feel properly in a long, long time.

When his eyes opened, he set the lid back on the box with deliberate care.

"Thank you," he said quietly, "For the chocolate. And the stew."

A pause - barely perceptible.

"And…thank you for laughing."

“You’re welcome.”

There was little more to add. He seemed lighter somehow - not whole, not yet - but less hollow, happier, perhaps? Or simply bewildered by gentleness. Gentleness he would hopefully come to get used to.

That confusion he seemed to be shrouded in though, pricked at your chest.

Your smile tilted crookedly, your head canting slightly to one side. The thin braids woven along your temples slipped forward, brushing your cheek.

“Well, eat as much as you’d like once you’ve had your fill of stew.”

A long breath left him before he dipped the spoon in deeper and took out a proper bite of the meat and vegetables and ate it.

“I will be going tomorrow to get you boots. And fabric for a proper cloak,” you said, glancing at his still worried face. “It would not be a great detour to pick up more chocolate if you ever want more.”

When he finished chewing, he looked up, the look rather like a very well-trained dog showing confusion at their master’s behaviour: a slight head tilt, the wide eyes of the fae squinting slightly in question.

After a moment to consider, he nodded, "Essentials first, if it is not rude to delay the offer. I… think I would enjoy appreciating this chocolate as it is for a while longer, keeping it special."

“Are there any colours you prefer on those essentials?” you asked. “Or any you would rather I avoid? I will buy plain fabrics and dye them myself. You may even choose from the ones drying around the house - I make them to sell or trade when I am not healing.”

You rose as you spoke, a yawn slipping free before you could stop it, your arms stretched high above your head, your spine arching slightly as the true weight of the day settled deep into your bones.

You had killed again.

Your skirts were starting to grow stiff with drying blood.

The knowledge did not sit heavy in your thoughts. It rarely did anymore.

One life taken to free another.

It was a puzzle you had long ago worked out.

It was a cost you would pay again and again in the name of freedom.

Your gaze drifted to him briefly before you waved a lazy hand and wandered back toward the kitchen.Tiny motes of light gathered at your fingertips. At your silent command, one of the knives lifted itself from its block.. A small basket swayed and strawberries floated free, trailing behind you like obedient little butterflies.

The rhythmic sound of slicing filled the house, even though you yourself were no longer in the kitchen.

Instead, you moved toward the main room, fingers tugging at the ties of your overskirt, the blood-soaked fabric peeled away with a faint, unpleasant sound before you stepped free of it, left in your simple low-cut tunic and loose bloomers.

“I hope you do not mind,” you called lightly, barefoot now as you carried the ruined fabric toward a waiting bucket. “I should soak these overnight if I want any hope of salvaging them. I like this skirt a lot, it took me forever to dye.”

You dropped the garments into water, watching it pink and then deepen toward red.

“Blood is the most stubborn stain,” you added with tired familiarity.

In response, he nodded, observing the technique with lessons on good washing burnt into his eyes, as if this was a lesson he had to learn.

A small pouch drifted from the apothecary shelves into your waiting hand. You loosened the tie and poured powdered herbs and crushed bark into the bucket. The water hissed faintly as the mixture activated, bubbles forming along the surface.

Magic was a tool of convenience, not just of violence. It was easy to forget, even as a healer.

After a short while of scrubbing, you heard the knife stop and realized the task was done. You thought of the sugar in its glass canister and it moved to pour onto the strawberries in their bowl, and finally the floating knife slid its length back and forth along a cloth to remove the residue of the fruit, ran itself down a leather strip to stay honed, and finally returned to its place. A wooden bowl of freshly cut strawberries settled gently upon the table beside Clemantis, glistening with juice and a sprinkling of sugar.

He was taking things as well as he could of course. It was a strange thing to life with someone who used magic as flippantly as you did, but the dessert readying itself was more of a surprise. Still, after an awe filled few seconds - you could only assume that is what the expression that vacantly watched at the movement with what must have been with its less than a millimeter of change in his eyes opening at the sight was - he grabbed a strawberry and took a bite.

He seemed to like it, in his way that you would slowly adapt to learning. Sugar clung to his fingertips and he studied the red of it against his skin - a different red than what had painted both of you hours ago.

You passed beside him once more, you felt more at ease now, as if the weight of your outer clothes had been the remainder of that cold and clinical persona you wore earlier - or perhaps the shock had finally worn off.

“I will be upstairs preparing the guest room,” you said. “Come up whenever you are ready to rest.”

You paused only briefly in the doorway, a thought about the nature of the room suddenly coming to you as something worth mentioning, “It has a lock if you wish to use it, and you may decorate it however you wish.”

Then you disappeared up the narrow staircase, your footsteps light despite the long and blood-soaked day, leaving behind the scent of stew, strawberries, and the steady warmth of a house that no longer held only one solitary heartbeat.

There were only a few stray things in the room to prepare. It was meant to be a guest room but was often relegated to extra storage for things that you were still finding a place for. Thankfully you’d recently organised and let simple magic do the work of getting new sheets onto the bed and pillows.

After confirming for no mistakes, a practice that was drilled into you to check and double check what you made happen with magic to be sure of quality despite it being decades since a mistake was made, you nodded to yourself and went to your room.

There, you began dressing down for the night and switching to a simple gown to sleep in. You had nearly been ready to sleep when a knock on your door came a few minutes later, and of course your guest was on the other side. It hadn’t been closed, you’d been expecting him despite the time he took in enjoying the berries, yet he knocked anyway. "Excuse me. I was hoping to be shown the way to the room. I did not want to intrude anywhere I shouldn't." He bowed slightly, looking back up at you, and you could tell he was trying not to let his eyes wander into your room. "I… also considered your question. It's purple. Dark purples, if not then white and blues," he said quietly, low enough that you would not have heard it if you had not been close enough to the door already. "I think I would like purple."

“Purple, I can do purple,” you called easily over your shoulder. He seemed to want to look to you to meet your eyes or respond in ways that were appropriate, but the nature of your room made difficult. You knew your own bedroom could be… overwhelming.

Eclectic was the kindest word for it.

Every surface held something, jewellery you would never wear hung from small hooks hammered into the beams. Faded ribbons and charms tangled together like captured wishes. Old paintings leaned against the walls, layered half atop one another, Childish drawings - some barely more than crayon scratches - were pinned carefully between pressed flowers. Crystals caught the candlelight in fractured rainbows. Polished stones, bits of bone, carved wooden animals, dried herbs tied in bundles from the rafters.

Your room was an accumulation of the people who had passed through your life.

A tapestry of gratitude, of lives you had brushed against, of people you had saved, of people who had moved on.

None of it matched, but that didn’t matter to you.

You stood then and stepped back into the hallway, motioning gently for him to follow. The floorboards creaked softly beneath your feet as you guided him to the next door and pushed it open.

“This one is yours.”

The room inside was simple.

Clean.

Quiet.

A bed stood against the far wall, dressed in white and soft green sheets embroidered with small flowers along the edges. The stitching wasn’t merely decorative; faint threads of magic shimmered within it, subtle protection woven into every seam.

A small wooden desk sat beneath the window. A washbasin rested on a sturdy stand.

Nothing cluttered the space.

It was ready for him.

To be lived in.

To be a home.

A safe space.

When shown the room, he understood how you had prepared it so quickly. His eyes wandered to the lock, notably inside the room, and his fingers went to it and tested it before nodding approvingly, "Thank you, this will do perfectly. It's more than enough."

He didn’t smile. Maybe he wouldn’t ever quite smile the same way he must have before his life was the way you’d found him, but his face did soften at the gesture.

"Is there anything you need done? Tasks you've been putting off I could assist with?"

It was simple to not get annoyed, yet repeating yourself was something you weren’t fond of. The man would hopefully not stay this insistent on looking for ways to repay a debt he didn’t owe. You set your hand on your hip, a brow lifting as you answered. “No,” you said plainly, “There are no tasks. I can do whatever needs doing by myself.”

You paused, your tone softening just a fraction as you looked at him properly. “The only task I have for you is to rest. You need to recover from everything. I know you are trying your best to seem as if you’re alright, but I have two eyes, and I can see that you are not.”

The words were direct, perhaps sharper than necessary, but you had never seen the use in pretending otherwise.

“It is almost midnight,” you added more gently. “And I need to sleep as well.”

You offered him a small smile then, tighter than before, touched with something tired, and stepped back into the hall, pulling the door closed with a soft click.

The moment you were out of sight, the strength drained from your posture.Your shoulders sagged, your ears dipping low in unconscious mimicry of the motion. The day came crashing down all at once - the killing, the healing, the offering of home, the careful patience, the quiet vigilance you always carried.

It settled deep into your bones like cold.

You rubbed a hand over your face and let out a slow breath.

Sleep would help.

And in the morning you would walk to the stream. A long bath in cold running water would wash away the blood, the magic, the weight of it all - if only for a few quiet minutes.

Your own room felt different when you entered it alone. The door shut with a soft wooden thud behind you, sealing in the faint scent of dried herbs and old paper.

You did not bother lighting another candle, the moonlight slipping through the uneven panes of glass was enough, washing your cluttered sanctuary in silver and shadow.

You stared at your bed for a few moments before sliding beneath the worn quilt, the mattress dipping familiarly beneath your weight.

For a moment you lay on your back, staring up at the ceiling beams strung with trinkets that swayed faintly in the night air.

Within minutes your breathing deepened, exhaustion pulling you under into heavy, dreamless sleep.

You had been asleep for maybe two hours before you roused.

The waking was slow at first, your body heavy and warm beneath the quilt, your thoughts drifting upward through the quiet of the night.

Your sleep had been dreamless.

Dreams.

They usually came whether you wished for them or not - shapeless things and muffled voices, fragments of memories you did not recognise as your own.

You could never make out a single presence clearly.

Faces blurred together into an indistinct amalgamation of feeling rather than form.

Warmth.

That feeling was always warmth.

Sometimes the warmth was faint and flickering, like a candle guttering in the wind. Other times it felt as though something was being pulled from your very soul, stripped away piece by fragile piece, leaving you waking with tears cooling on your cheeks and your fingers trembling against the sheets.

Even without the dreams tonight, you felt that warmth now.

Clemantis.

Clemantis?

Your lashes fluttered as you blinked yourself fully awake, moonlight painted your room in pale silver as your gaze shifted downward.

There he was, curled at your side.

He had dragged the vanity chair across the floor and set it beside your bed, his body folded awkwardly into its narrow frame, his head resting near your open palm as though drawn there even in sleep.

You felt it then.

The weight on your sternum.

His freedom.

The small, tightly wrapped bundle containing his wing had been looped around your neck while you slept. It rested directly over your heart, warm from your skin.

The realisation struck you hard enough that your breath stuttered, for a moment you thought you might truly weep.

The tightness in your chest was almost unbearable.

Instead, you forced yourself upright.

Your fingers curled around the sealed wing, and you closed your eyes briefly, feeling the faint pulse of latent magic still humming within it.

“Clemantis,” you murmured softly.

Your free hand came to rest atop his head, fingers gentle as you gave him a small shake.

You did not want this. Clemantis should have it, it was his.

It always should have been his.

But…he required patience.

Kindness.

Right now, he required sleep.

The gnarled wood of your vanity chair would do nothing for his recovery, and clearly his anxiety would not allow him to rest alone.

You understood that too well.

You had never slept alone until your grandmother returned to the Autumn Court. It had taken you years to grow accustomed to the silence, to the adjusted knowledge that you were the only heartbeat within your walls.

The weight of emptiness had once pressed in from all sides. You could only wonder what exactly that emptiness felt like to him, what the darkness whispered.

When Clemantis stirred at last, blinking up at you with a flicker of worry, you let out a quiet sigh and tilted your head slightly.

“I will not scold you,” you began, catching the anxiety before it could root too deeply. “I will hold it until you want it back. I still will not be your master, though. I will also not suffer you to sleep in that old chair. If you must be in here,” you sighed, reaching for spare bedding that you kept stored under the bed’s frame. You handed it to him, “Be on the bed, it will be better for your recovery.

He seemed less attentive in the tired state. There was an honesty to him, more of those cracks that were left in the hardened figure that he had to become. In this state, perhaps also having the weight of the day wash over him the way it had for you - all at once when it was finally done - tired him too much.

Clemantis rose from the chair slowly, his body stiff from the awkward fold of it, and lowered himself onto the far edge of the mattress with the careful deliberation of someone learning a new language of trust one syllable at a time.

He took the blanket and laid on his side, facing you, the space between you just wide enough to breathe in.

"Thank you," he said, barely above a whisper. "I am sorry for the trouble."

His eyes closed before you could tell him it wasn’t any.

And your eyes closed too, falling into the gentle lull of slumber.

AN: thank you for reading, this is a very personal story to me as someone who is a victim of SA, I wanted to write a story that made me feel seen & hopefully make other people feel scene as we recover from our trauma