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A single streetlamp buzzed overhead, its weak light stuttering against the darkness, painting the cracked pavement in sickly yellow flashes. The air carried the ghost of rain that had come and gone while they were out on the mission, when the team stepped outside they were met with the damp scent of wet asphalt and gun oil mingling with the faint metallic tang in the air.

Boots scuffed against concrete, the sound dull and heavy, swallowed by the puddles of water.

Chris checked his gun, the metallic click of the safety echoing too loud in the silent space. Economos muttered curses under his breath, the soft clatter of keys on his laptop punctuating every frustrated sigh. Harcourt lingered near the van, arms crossed, her silhouette sharp in the half-light.

Even Adrian was silent, something rare.

He crouched by the curb, running a rag along the edge of one of his knives. Normally, he’d be talking — spinning some weird story, asking a question no one wanted to answer, or giving a play-by-play of the mission with every ounce of gore the English language could conjure — but tonight, the air was too heavy for jokes.

The silence pressed on his chest, strange and thick, like the world was holding its breath.

He smiled faintly to himself anyway, the corner of his mouth quirking as he thought about the next mission — him and Chris side by side again, doing what they did best. The thought was warm, familiar, almost comforting. He wanted to say something about it, to share the spark of excitement the way he always did.

But one glance at the others stopped him.

Chris’s jaw was locked tight, the muscle ticking beneath his skin. Harcourt’s eyes kept sweeping the shadows, sharp and unblinking, as if she expected the darkness itself to lunge. The pale glow from Economos’s laptop flickered across his face, washing him ghost-white, the reflection stuttering with every nervous tap of his fingers. Even Leota had gone silent, her usual warmth drained to tension.

So Adrian stayed silent.

He slid the knife back into its sheath, the sound of steel against leather sharp and final in the night. The quiet settled again, thick as smoke, until it was all he could hear—his breath, the hum of the light, the distant rustle of the city beyond the alley walls.

Then the air split.

It started with a high-pitched crack. The temperature dropped, breath fogging in the cold, and the smell hit next — copper and ozone, iron sharp as a blade pressed against the tongue.

Leota froze. “Uh… guys?”

A ripple spread across the far wall like glass beneath pressure, the surface bending inward as if the world itself was being pulled inside out. The reflection in a puddle nearby shivered — then bled upward, tearing free of its surface.

The edges of the tear hissed and sparked, threads of crimson mist spilling from it like smoke from a dying fire. Reality tried to stitch itself closed before she could enter the new reality — but her presence refused to be contained.

A hand slipped through first, slick with blood. Then another. The arms bent at angles that shouldn’t exist, joints twisting backward as she dragged herself out of the tear. Her body followed in disjointed movements, shoulders popping, spine arching, every motion wrong — like a marionette tugged by invisible strings.

Her bare feet hit the ground with a wet slap. For a heartbeat she stayed crouched, hair hanging over her face, breath coming slow and steady. Then she straightened, vertebrae clicking into place one by one, until she was standing, the glow in her eyes cutting through the haze like embers behind glass.

Her clothes were torn to ribbons, soaked dark and sticky. Her hair clung to her face in matted strands, streaked red. Blood dripped from her chin, smeared her throat, painted her arms like war paint. It wasn’t just stains — she looked drenched in it.

But she didn’t stumble. She didn’t waver. She walked slowly, steadily, each wet step leaving a crimson print on the pavement. And her eyes — faintly glowing, pulsing with unnatural light — locked onto Adrian the moment she appeared. She didn’t blink. She didn’t even look at the others.

“Jesus Christ,” Economos whispered. His laptop slipped from his hands, clattering against the ground.

Chris snapped his gun up instantly, finger on the trigger. “What the fuck? Who the fuck are you?”

She didn’t answer. She kept walking, dead set on Adrian.

Chris shouted louder, sharper. “Hey! I’m talking to you! Who the hell are you? What did you do?!”

Finally, she turned her head toward him. Slowly. Deliberately. Her smile was soft, wrong, her voice lilting like a lullaby.

“If we’re going to be friends, Chris…” She tilted her head, eyes flaring bright crimson. “…you need to stop asking so many questions.”

The mist unfurled from her fingertips, curling red and alive across the ground. It coiled toward him, tendrils writhing like snakes, humming with power.

Chris froze, eyes wide. “What the — how the hell do you know my name?”

The fog rose higher, licking at his boots. Harcourt shifted her gun, jaw clenched. Leota hissed, “She knows us. She knows us—”

“HEY!”

Adrian stepped forward, voice cutting sharp through the chaos. He lifted one hand, the other already bringing his gun up in a clean, practiced motion. The barrel tracked her center mass, steady despite the red haze coiling through the air.

“Okay, time out,” he said, tone firm but even, the one he used when trying to sound like he had control of a situation. “You don’t just show up looking like Carrie on prom night and start threatening my best friend.”

His mask was tipped back, glasses catching the crimson light, turning his lenses into two flickering mirrors of her glow. For a heartbeat, they just stared at each other — gun aimed, mist curling, the world shrinking until it was only them.

Something shifted then.

It wasn’t dramatic, just a flicker behind his eyes — recognition where there shouldn’t have been any, an ache in his chest he couldn’t name. Her gaze was wild, but beneath it there was grief, something that felt like longing pressed too long against the edge of madness.

His grip faltered. The barrel dipped an inch.

When he spoke again, his voice was quieter.

“So how about you tell us what the hell you’re doing here.”

The mist hesitated mid-air, as if waiting for her next command. Her eyes softened, all that burning red shrinking into something tender, aching.

“I’m here for you,” she whispered.

The team froze.

Adrian blinked. “…Me?”

She nodded once. “I lost you. In my world. I tried everything — bringing you back from the dead, turning back time, breaking reality itself for you to come back to me. Nothing worked. So I came here.”

Harcourt’s voice cut through the silence like ice. “The fuck is she talking about?”

Her smile trembled, fragile and desperate, but her eyes never left Adrian. “This world’s me… she didn’t even know you. And now she never will.” Her tone softened, almost reverent. “I killed her. I made sure there was only me. Only us.”

Leota gasped, horrified. Economos stumbled back, muttering a string of curses that barely made it past his throat. Chris’s voice cracked, raw disbelief twisting his face. “You—you killed yourself?!”

Her glow flared, red light washing over the stone walls. The mist flickered, alive and restless. “No.” Her gaze flicked to Chris for the briefest second, then snapped back to Adrian, her voice lowering to something intimate, almost tender. “I killed her — that pathetic thing that dared to wear my face, to carry my name. I killed her so she’d never stand in my way.”

She took a step closer, blood glinting on her skin like glass shards under the streetlight. “So I could be here. With you. And nothing is going to stop me.”

The mist surged, wrapping around Harcourt’s arms, binding Leota’s wrists, gagging Economos mid-curse. Chris fought as scarlet coils yanked his gun away, locking him in place. Their muffled protests echoed through the alley.

She didn’t look at them. She only looked at Adrian. “They don’t understand. They’ll try to keep you from me just like before in my world. I won’t let them.”

Adrian’s chest heaved. His eyes darted from his struggling teammates back to her. “No — no, wait, listen. Stop. Let them go.”

Her head tilted, eyes narrowing. “They want to take you from me.”

“They don’t!” His voice cracked, but he stepped closer anyway, boots sinking into the mist. “They’re my friends. They’re worried about me, that’s all. Please. Trust me.”

Her gaze wavered. For a long, tense beat, the bindings held. Then, slowly, reluctantly, the red tendrils melted back into the pavement, releasing their captives. The team stumbled free, shaken, wide-eyed.

But the mist didn’t vanish. It rose again — this time curling around Adrian’s legs, brushing up his calves, slow and deliberate. She trembled, voice dropping to a whisper. “If you’re afraid… I’ll keep you. I’ll hold you until you understand. Until you see.”

Adrian’s breath caught. For a heartbeat he braced, waiting for fear to hit him — the kind of gut-level horror anyone else would feel.

But it didn’t come.

Instead he laughed. Low at first, then louder, breathless, shaking his head like he couldn’t believe it. “Holy shit. You killed yourself… just to be with me?”

Her lips parted, relief flooding her face. “Yes.”

The mist around his boots quivered once, then slipped away, curling into nothing.

Adrian stared at her, a grin spreading slow and wild. “That’s — goddamn — that’s crazy.” His voice dropped, softer, almost awed. “I mean—beautiful crazy. The kind that actually makes sense.”

The others stared in horror.

Leota looked like she was about to scream. Harcourt wished she could say that wasn’t the most Adrian thing to ever happen — but she couldn’t. Chris just muttered under his breath, “I never thought I’d meet someone as crazy as Adrian.” Economos, still coughing from where the mist had nearly strangled him, rasped, “Me either.”

Adrian took a step closer to her, eyes catching the red light still burning in hers. He grinned, wide and manic.

“If I’d lost someone like that? Oh yeah, I’d do the same thing. Maybe worse. I’d find every version of me and shoot the ones that didn’t try hard enough. Survival of the most obsessed, right?”

He tipped his head, eyes gleaming. “Guess that means you and me are the last two standing.”

For a second, silence hung between them, thick and strange. His grin faltered just a little, the wildness in his eyes softening into something smaller, uncertain.

“You… really did all that for me?” he asked, voice quieter now, almost disbelieving. “Like — for me me? Not some cooler version, or the me you thought I was?”

He laughed once, a shaky sound that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “People don’t usually do things like that for me. Hell, people don’t even like me half the time.”

She drew in a trembling breath, voice low but steady.

“I did it because I love you, Adrian. Every version of you. I love the way you talk too much when everyone else stays quiet, the way you laugh after things no one else finds funny, the way you look at the world like it’s a fight you’re dying to win. You’re… real, and terrible, and beautiful in a way nothing else ever was.”

Her words cracked, but she kept going, desperate to make him understand.

“When you were gone, everything was wrong. Every sound, every breath — it all felt like static. The world kept spinning and I stayed stuck in the same moment where you were still breathing beside me.”

Her throat tightened, tears stinging her eyes. “You weren’t just someone who made me feel alive. You were the only thing that was alive. Everything else just stopped.”

She took one unsteady step closer, her bloodied hand hovering near his chest but not touching.

“So I found you. I tore through everything that tried to keep me away because I couldn’t stand a world that didn’t have you in it.”

He stared at her for a long moment. The words settled between them, heavy and electric, and for once Adrian didn’t fill the silence with a joke. His throat felt tight. He’d spent his whole life being too loud, too much — something people tolerated, never something they needed.

But she was looking at him like he was the only real thing left in a collapsing world.

His grin came back slowly, uncertain at first, then genuine in its own crooked way, and stepped closer until he could smell the iron on her skin and the faint ozone of her power.

“Okay,” he said quietly, a rough laugh catching in his throat. “You win. You found me.”

He reached up, brushed a streak of blood from her cheek with his thumb. The contact left a smear of red across his glove.

“You’re mine now,” he murmured, voice low enough that only she could hear it.

It didn’t sound like a threat. It sounded like recognition—two broken pieces finally snapping into place.

It all started with Ashley.

You never would’ve met the others if you hadn’t met her during a last minute assignment in your first semester of college, when two strangers reach for the same battered copy of Dracula in the library and knock each other's notebooks to the floor like clumsy foreshadowing.

“Sorry–”

“Sorry–”

You both said it at once, voices overlapping like accidental harmony. A breath of silence followed – uncertain, then broken by laughter. Soft at first, shy. Then another chuckle, overlapping again, because saying the same thing at the same thing at the same time somehow made it funny, like the difficult life of a college student had cracked open a little to let something gentle slip through.

It felt like the beginning of something. Small, almost forgettable if you weren’t paying attention. But you were and you felt it. The way you might feel a breeze shift before the season changes. The kind of beginning that doesn’t announce itself, but settles in quietly, like roots growing just beneath the surface.

And Ashley… Ashley was easy to like.

She wasn’t loud or flashy. She didn’t try to win people over with charm or noise. The red haired girl who didn’t talk to fill silences and moved gently through the world, like she didn’t want to disturb it.

You were quiet, too. Not the kind of quiet that begged to be broken, but the kind that settled in like fog – soft, unobtrusive, and often overlooked. You didn’t like drawing attention, didn’t see the point in trying to fill rooms you didn’t ask to be in. With Ashley, that quietness didn’t feel like something to apologize for. It just existed, was accepted, even shared. You didn’t have to explain the silences or shrink beneath them. With her, you could simply be – two people who spoke more with glances than words, who didn’t mind if a whole hours passed without conversation, as long as you were near each other.

When you started to hang out more and more you realized there was something comforting about your study sessions – the way they always seemed to stretch longer than planned, how the scratching of pens and the turning of pages began to feel like a shared rhythm. The occasional sigh, the tapping of her pencil, the rustle of a sleeve as she flipped to the next chapter. Time passed differently around Ashley. It slowed down, softened at the edges.

Sometimes you’d meet at a quiet corner table in the coffee shop near campus, the one with those dusty windows and the mismatched chairs that cracked when you sat in them. The place where the barista knew her name. The place Ashley always ordered the same drink - something with cinnamon you never remembered the name – and she always asked how your week was going before you’d even take your coat off.

It wasn’t about what Ashley said that drew you in. It was the ease of it all, the small, reliable rituals. Sitting across from her with your notebooks open, smiling at the little doodles the other had done on the edge of a page. Rolling your eyes at a professor’s confusing assignment.

And somewhere in the middle of all that – between quiet library corners and the steam rising from shared coffee cups – Ashley began to tell you things.

Little things at first.

A childhood story. A place she used to go when she needed to think. A song that always made her feel calm.

And then, eventually, she told you about her other friends.

The friends she had since high school.

And that’s when you first heard the name Josh Washington.

It wasn’t how she said his name that caught your attention. It was how she didn’t. That small pause before it. Careful, like walking around broken glass in the dark, like maybe if Ashley said it the wrong way, the wrong thing, something sharp might cut through.

But when she talked about the twins – about Hannah and Beth Washington – she smiled.

“They’d love you,” she said once, over hot chocolate after watching a movie at your place, the sleeves of her sweater pulled down over her hands. “You’re… You’re their kind of person, I really want you to meet them.”

You hadn’t really believed that. Not at first. From what you heard, the Washingtons liked to party. Ashley would talk about those parties sometimes during late-night study sessions, smiling into her tea, eyes going far away. Bonfires. Lake houses. Cheap beers lifted from someone’s older sibling’s garage fridge. The kind of wild stories that belonged to people with more confidence and better clothes than you.

You weren’t the life-of-the-party type of person. Never had been. Parties made your skin feel too small, like wearing someone else’s jacket – stiff and unfamiliar. Books were safer than people. Words behaved better on the page than they did spilling out of people’s mouths. And strangers? Strangers were harder to read than the complicated plots you liked to lose yourself in, with their jagged motivations and sharp smiles.

So when Ashley said, “they’d love you,’’ you thought it was just kindness. A nice thing to say to someone quiet and a little awkward, the kind of gentle lie friends tell to make you feel like you belong in a room you’d never ask to enter.

But then, the following week, when she asked if you wanted to grab a coffee – saying she had a surprise for you – you had a feeling. A quiet certainty. Ashley was going to introduce you to one of her friends.

Shocking even yourself, you said yes.

Maybe it was loneliness – quiet, persistent – the kind that settles in on slow evenings when the sky turns dark too early, your phone sits silently face-up, and the television hums with old reruns of shows that once meant something but now only remind you of who you used to be.

Or maybe it was curiosity. That tug in your chest to finally meet the people Ashley always brought to life in her stories – voices you’d only heard secondhand, names wrapped in laughter, in nostalgia, in the kind of warmth that made her eyes light up every time she mentioned them. You wanted to understand what made them shine so brightly when she was in her own world, inside her memories.

Maybe it was something softer, dumber – the quiet hope of learning what sat behind that careful pause when Ashley spoke that name.

By the time the next week rolled around, you’d been living with the thought of Ashley’s “surprise” like it was some half-feral thing pacing just outside your door. You tried to busy yourself that morning with laundry, dishes, scrolling aimlessly through your phone but the hours seemed to be frozen in place, you felt like it was taking an eternity for just a couple minutes to pass. Every time you thought you’d stopped wondering, your mind looped back to the same question: Who?

Who would you meet today? Which one of Ashley’s dear friends would you actually see for the first time? Would it be Chris, the crush she mentioned so many times you could almost sketch his face from memory? Or Emily, the one Ashley said could be a little too blunt for her own good? Maybe Hannah? Or Beth? Or – God – was it Josh?

Three hours before you were even supposed to leave, you were already pulling on a coat. Your bedroom had started to feel airless, like the walls were listening in on your restless thoughts. So you walked through the streets, aimlessly, until your feet carried you to the coffee shop, as if they’d been planning it all along, far earlier than planned.

You slid into the corner booth with a sigh, your back to the wall so you could watch the door. The air inside was warm, thick with the smell of roasted beans and the faintest thread of vanilla syrup. You looked out the window for a moment at the sky, sagged and grey, winter pressing its weight against the windows. You turned towards the table once again and tried to read the notes in your notebook, pen balanced between your fingers, but the words blurred into nothing.

The bell over the door chimed, and your head snapped up before you even thought about it. Ashley walked in first, her scarf pulled loose, cheeks flushed from the cold. Two girls followed her inside, two girls that shared the same face, but clearly not the same personality. One moved quickly, words already spilling before she’d even stepped fully into the room, voice warm but confident.

The other one though was the exact opposite. She trailed half a step behind, sleeves tugged over her knuckles, her dark hair fell loose, a soft curtain she seemed to glance through rather than around, and her eyes – wide and curious – landed on you for a second too long before darting away, you weren’t sure if the light pink on her cheeks were because of that ot the cold outside.

Ashley slid into the booth across from you as if it were any other day.

“Hey! So I figured it’d be fun to introduce you to a couple of my friends from before college,” she said casually – too casually, as if she hadn’t just tilted your entire week, maybe your whole life, onto a new axis.

“This is Beth and Hannah,” she continued. “I told you about them before. They’re awesome! You’ll get along in no time.”

Beth flopped into the seat next to Ashley with a loud sigh, dropping her heavy bag on the floor like she owned the place. “I swear to God, if their espresso tastes like watered-down dirt again, I’m filing a complaint with the International Coffee Court."

The words tumbled out of her like she’d been waiting to say that for a while, and you startled out a laugh before you could stop yourself.

That’s when you noticed that Hannah was still standing, shifting slightly on her feet as though unsure whether she should squeeze in with her sister and Ashley or next to you. Her dark eyes flickered up and caught yours once again, seemingly making a decision based on that, and smiled – a small, tentative, almost hidden smile.

She sat next to you slowly, carefully, as if you would tell her to sit somewhere else, you gave her a small smile to ease her worries.

“It’s not that bad” Hannah murmured glancing at Beth, her voice soft and comforting.

“Oh, please!” her sister groaned. “I’ve tasted better coffee made by vending machines with rust inside.”

“I think I’m going to join your class-action lawsuit,” you heard yourself say, siding with Beth before you even realized it. Truth was, you only ever came to this coffee shop because Ashley loved it. You’d never actually ordered coffee here – always hot chocolate or lemonade – anything to avoid the bitter, burnt taste you couldn’t stand.

Beth’s face up with your words. “Finally! Someone that gets me!”

You didn’t know it but that was it.

That as the start.

And just like that, the awkwardness was gone, as if it had slipped out the door without anyone noticing.

Beth took control of the conversation with her dramatic hand gestures, theatrical rants, every word sharpened with humor but softened by affection.

But Hannah.

Hannah was the reason you stayed. Her humor didn’t arrive with fanfare – it slipped in quietly, steady, the kind that lingered long after the moment passed. She had her own way of making jokes, soft and a little unexpected, but she also laughed at you and Beth when you ganged up on Ashley – especially over her atrocious taste in coffee. Her laugh always seemed to catch her off guard, quick and almost startled, like she hadn’t meant to let it out. And every time, it made you want to try again, just to bring it back. That smile – wide, a little crooked, she at the corners – shifted the air around you in a way you couldn’t quite name, but you felt it all the same.

And you found yourself leaning in towards her without meaning to.

Somehow, without either of you steering it, the conversation drifted toward books – safe ground for two unapologetic bookworms. It didn’t matter that your shelves might as well have been from different worlds. In fact, it made things better.

You admitted your love for unreliable narrators, tragic characters doomed by the narrative, stories that left you gutted in the best-worst way. Hannah countered with her devotion to oft romances, the kind where you knew the ending from the start, you knew that those two characters would end up together but you wanted to watch it unfold anyway. Every time you disagreed, something warm uncurled in your chest. The back-and-forth wasn’t a wall between you – it was a thread pulling you closer.

You offered your favorites, Hannah offered hers in return. You poked fun at them, just enough to make her eyes go wide. She’s gasped – half scandal, half laughter – pressing a hand to her chest like you’d insulted her first born.

“You can’t be serious!”

And then started defending them, quick words tumbling over each other, her voice carrying just enough heat to make you push again, to see what other sparks you could set off.

And Ashley? Ashley just watched you both with a knowing curve to her mouth, like she’d been pulling the strings all along and was now seeing the scene play out exactly the way she had imagined.

By the time you all stood to leave, Beth was already making production out of it, insisting – loudly, theatrically – that you join them next week for lunch, like your presence was non-negotiable.

Hannah’s invitation was different, just like everything about her, it was softer. She glanced at you, then away, then back again, as if deciding whether she’d regret saying it.

“If you wanted… We could maybe do a little book club? Just us? You know, nothing formal. Unless you hate that idea –”

“I’d love that,” you said, before she could talk herself into silence.

Hannah looked at you then – really looked – and her whole face lit up.

For a second, the noise of the coffee shop faded – the clink of cups, Beth still chatting in the background, the hum of the winter wind outside – and there was just the warmth between you, steady and unhurried. You found yourself wishing the moment could stretch, that you could stand there with her a little longer, watching the light play across her face.

“You’re one of us now,”Beth declared, looping an arm around your shoulders while you walked to the exit like you’d been adopted.

And somehow… it felt true.

Not because of Beth.

Not because of Ashley.

Because of Hannah.

Right from the start, you belonged to her – and she belonged to you – in that quiet, undeniable way certain people just fit in the empty space in your life.

You hadn’t realized how rare that was.

Not yet.

But you would.

The library was cloaked in a sacred hush - not merely quiet, but a reverent, almost holy stillness as though the very air recognized that something fragile and precious was unfolding within its walls, and dared not interrupt, a silence so gentle that pressed delicately against your chest and settles over your skin like fine dust clinging to old vellum.

After Aemond’s departure, you and Helaena remained at the table, your gazes drifting across the pages he had so thoughtfully helped you select, the memory stirred something warm within you and before you could stop it, a soft smile found its way to your lips. The open books lay between you like scattered petals of knowledge, their inked words catching the light with a quiet kind of magic. But time had worn away the ease of your posture - the chairs beneath you had grown stiff and unforgiving, and the carved edge of the table pressed into your arms with unkind persistence.

Candlelight danced restlessly across the pages, casting wavering shadows that made the letters shimmer and blur. Helaena shifted beside you, the faintest crease in her brow betraying the same slow-growing discomfort. Without a word, you rose from your seat, gathering your skirts in your hands, the fabric whispering against the stone floor as you drifted away from the table. Helaena looked up, puzzled, watching your steps with a tilted head as if unsure whether to follow.

You wandered between the, now familiar, heavy wooden shelves and stone columns, until you found it - a quiet little alcove. No grand chairs or carved tables, only a scattering of worn pillows atop a richly woven rug, their colors faded by time and sunlight. It felt like a place meant for a child to sit quietly and listen, out of the way while the grown world discussed crowns and conquests. The air here was softer somehow, untouched by the weight of politics that haunted the rest of the Keep.

Turning back, you beckoned Helaena with a glance, understanding bloomed on her face as she crossed the room to join you. When the princess caught sight of the alcove, her eyes lit with childlike delight, the discomfort melting from her features, she met your gaze with a soft smile, already beginning to understand. Without a word, you both retraced your steps to the table where the books still lay open. Gently, you closed each one with care, as if tucking them in for a quiet sleep, while Helaena gathered the quills and ink pots with delicacy.

A scroll unraveled as you picked it up, the parchment curling like a sigh in your hands before you rolled it tight again and tied it with a fraying ribbon. You stacked the books in your arms - heavy tomes with softened corners and gilded lettering dulled by time - and together you made your way back to the alcove.

The quiet space welcomed you like a breath held too long finally being released. You set the books gently down on a folded woolen blanket, placing the scrolls and pens neatly beside them. Then, at last, you lowered yourself into the nest of cushions, the rug beneath you worn smooth by years of small footsteps. Helaena joined you with a sigh of quiet contentment, folding herself down beside you.

The princess’s presence had always been a quiet sort of comfort - like a familiar song hummed just under the breath. But here, in the hush of the alcove, that comfort deepened into something more rare, more intimate. A sacred stillness seemed to settle between you, woven from parchment and candlelight.

The tip of her finger moved slowly, reverently, tracing the faded lines of text as though she could breathe life back into the past simply by touching it. There was a tenderness in the gesture - a quiet communion with the voices long gone, inked into the fragile parchment centuries before.

Now and then, the soft scratch of a quill meeting paper echoed faintly between you, the sound crisp and purposeful. A page turned with a gentle rustle, its edges worn thin by time, and the parchment exhaled a weary sigh, as if grateful to be seen again. These small, sacred noises threaded through the silence like stitches - delicate, precise, holding the moment together.

Time seemed to slow down in this corner of the palace. Outside, life might have marched on - the sharp clang of swords echoing from the training ward, the soft murmur of maids drifting through the hallway, the muffled echo of boots pacing the stone corridors as guards change shifts, the distant whinny of horses being led through the stables, hooves clopping against damp earth - but here, in the hush of the library it felt as though the world had paused just for you.

Before you lay a hefty tome with a fraying spine: The Art and Science of Insect Preservation, its pages were weighty, yellowed with age and love, ink faded in places the margins were now crowded with delicate sketches and slanting notes written by you. Across the open spread were vivid illustrations: butterflies pinned with almost reverent precision, beetles preserved beneath bell jars, and cicadas trapped mid-scream in clear amber resin.

Your voice, a little rough from disuse, rose into the silence as you read aloud.

“Step one: capture gently. Avoid bruising the wings or crushing the abdomen.” Your eyes skimmed downward, finding a section where the ink had worn thin. “Specimens must be relaxed before positioning - dried too swiftly, they will become brittle and shatter at the first touch. Patience is the soul of preservation.”

Beside you, Helaena turned a page with reverent care, her fingers ghosting over a delicate sketch of a dragonfly - its translucent wings captured mid-flight, as if it might rise from the parchment and dart away at any moment. The golden light spilling through the high window caught in her hair, turning the fine silver strands into a cascade of moonlight and mist. She looked almost ethereal, otherworldly in her stillness. Her brow was faintly furrowed in concentration, lips parted ever so slightly, and her eyes - bright, wide, lost somewhere just beyond the page - held that faraway, dreamlike intensity that often led people to mistake her for fragile.

You leaned back, rubbing your eyes, fatigue pooling at the base of your skull.

“Helaena,” you murmured, your voice low and drowsy, “I need to rest my eyes for a moment. Could you… could you tell me what we’ve learned so far?”

She looked up, blinking as though surfacing from some distant world. A thoughtful pause followed, then the faintest smile curved her lips - quiet and knowing.

“Of course,” she said, her voice lilting and soft, no louder than a moth’s wing brushing silk.

The princess straightened, the manuscript still open before her, and folded her hands neatly atop it. When she began to speak, it was with the calm cadence of ritual, as though reciting a sacred text she had committed to memory not just with her mind, but with her soul.

“To preserve insects properly, one must first catch them gently - not by force. Then they must be calmed with smoke or wrapped in a soft cloth, too much fear makes their bodies rigid. Once quieted, place the insect in a sealed jar, with no airflow, it’s an easy and quiet death with no visible damage, then they must be covered in dry leaves such as rosemary or thyme, charcoal can also be used, to reduce moisture and repel insects. Only after that pins can be used, but depending on the insect the placement can change, on butterflies and moths the pin location must be through the center of the thorax, slightly to the right of the centerline to avoid damaging vital structures, the reasoning is that since the thorax is sturdy and centrally located it allows proper wing spreading, on beetles the pin must enter through the right elytron near the front, just off-center since it avoids damage to the central body and legs, keeping the wing accessible.” She tilted her head delicately “The wings must be spread as if in flight, but without tension - the illusion of life without the burden of it.”

You smiled at her, warm and fond despite the exhaustion dragging at your limbs.

“At this rate, Helaena, you’ll be the realm’s first royal expert in insect preservation.”

The white-haired girl smiled, slow and luminous.

“Not just me,” she murmured “we’ll both be professionals. Side by side.”

Your smile widened, and you reached for a slice of cake a mais had brought earlier - golden, soft, with a delicate dusting of powdered sugar and petals. The sweetness bloomed on your tongue as you stood and wandered toward the window, curtain brushing softly against your arm.

Outside, the gardens lay in drowsy peace beneath the sinking sun, its golden rays catching on the edges of trimmed hedges and the glossy leaves of fruit-heavy trees.

Peach blossoms perfumed the breeze, their sweet fragrance mingling with the green scent of freshly cut grass and the faint chorus of birdsong drifting lazily from the orchard.

And there was Prince Aegon Targaryen.

He sat alone beneath the old weeping willow in the royal gardens, its pale, silken tendrils swaying gently in the evening breeze like a living curtain drawn between him and the world. The branches dipped low, trailing the earth as though the tree itself sought to shield him - not only from prying eyes, but from the weight of expectation that hung thick in the summer air. Dappled light filtered through the cascading leaves, painting his face in shifting patterns of gold and green.

Your hand stilled mid-bite.

He was the perfect blend of his siblings - that was the first thing you noticed.

There was something of Helaena in him - the gentle slope of his mouth, the quiet wistfulness in the tilt of his eyes, shaped like rain waiting to fall. A gaze that wandered without truly landing, as though always half-lost in thought or dream. His features held a softness rarely granted to men, let alone princes. Something almost otherworldly. Almost sorrowful.

But then the light shifted, and you saw it - the echo of Aemond, sharp and undeniable. It lived in the chiseled set of his jaw, in the blade-like cut of his cheekbones, and in the tension that simmered just beneath his skin, coiled tight in his shoulders like a bow drawn and never loosened. A quiet storm waiting for wind.

The prince wasn’t doing anything. Not drinking, not laughing, not charming the gardener with that silver tongue they said he wielded like a blade. He was simply there - legs stretched out, back resting against the bark, arms draped lazily over his thighs.

You had always known Aegon was not the golden heir sung of in stories - not the wise king with a steady hand and a shining crown. And yet - there he was.

Golden.

In every sense of the word.

But not golden like polished armor or the gleam of royalty. No. He was golden like the noonday sun - too bright, too sharp, too wild to be touched without consequence. Beautiful in the way fire is beautiful, just before it consumes everything.

Sunlight filtered through the willow’s trailing leaves, dappled across his silver hair and caught in the hollows of his collarbone, in the soft curve of his throat. The prince tilted his head back, lashes brushing his cheekbones, eyes closed to the warmth as if trying to melt into it.

And there - in that single, unguarded moment - you saw it.

Sorrow.

It clung to him like a second skin, settled in the furrow of his brow, in the slow rise and fall of his breath. His lips parted slightly, as if on the verge of speaking - but no words came. Behind his closed lids, the light flickered like a lantern running low - too stubborn to extinguish, too tired to burn steady.

There was something painfully still about him.

Not peaceful.

Stilled.

Like a man long resigned to watching his life unfold without him, a ghost in the wings of his own play - never invited to step onstage.

Your throat tightened.

You’d always been a watcher. Since you were a child, you’d found people’s words untrustworthy, slippery things that changed depending on the moment and the mood. They’d speak the vilest things behind someone’s back, but to their face, only sweet words would spill - though the cold, hardened eyes always gave them away for those who paid attention. Faces never lied. A flicked of guilt, a twist of longing, the way someone would look at a person when they thought no one would notice.

You saw it all.

And you wrote it all down.

Even when your parents told you it was a waste. That stories and scribbles were vanity, every time they saw you with a writing quill and a piece of paper in hand they reminded you that writing wouldn’t earn you any favor or security.

But what else could you do when people held entire universes behind their eyes and no one ever stopped to see?

Aegon was such a universe.

Vast.

Heavy.

Cracked.

You wondered what had broken him. Or if he’s always been like this - half here, half longing for a place no one could name.

You heard a soft rustle beside you.

Helaena was also watching her brother from behind the veil of willow branches, her voice was a whisper, but it held the weight of something deeper.

“The sun is deceiving, you know,” she murmured as if reading your thoughts. “It gives warmth… but it also burns. And it always casts shadows, no matter how bright it shines.”

You didn’t answer. Not because you didn’t want to, but because some truths demanded silence in return.

Instead, you studied the prince beneath the tree.

His eyes opened, pale violet rimmed in exhaustion, and he looked up at the leaves like it might answer some question only he had asked. The light caught on his lashes. His lips curved - not quite a smile. Closer to a sigh. A breath held too long.

Aegon looked like a man weighed down by things no one else could carry.

And maybe that was what drew you most of all.

Not his beauty, which was undeniable.

Not his blood, though it gleamed with dragonfire.

There was something about him that called to you - not merely as a woman, but as an observer, as someone who notices things others dismissed. The oldest prince wasn’t just handsome, he was interesting. A conundrum in human form. The way he slouched with elegant disregard made your fingers twitch with the need to write.

Everything about Aegon was a contradiction - a fallen prince born of a long and burning line, draped in sunbeams and sloth. He carried himself with the languid ease of someone who had stopped trying, all heavy limbs and half-lidded eyes, but behind the drunken gaze and careless smiles, there was something restless. Something coiled.

You didn’t understand it entirely - not then. Only that something in him had reached into something in you, quiet and unseen, and turned it over.

Aegon shifted the way your thoughts moved, like a river carving a new path through familiar terrain. He altered the pace of your heartbeat without ever touching you. He changed the way the light looked when it fell through leaves, the way silence felt in your bones, the way the world tilted - just slightly - when he was near.

He was not a man you were meant to notice.

And you suddenly knew: whether for a moment or a lifetime, Aegon Targaryen would find his way into your words.

Because he already had.

There’s something strange about being surrounded by people who have known each other forever.

You can be right there with them — laughing when they laugh, sitting shoulder to shoulder in the warm halo of the fire, part of the conversation — and still feel like a guest in someone else’s memory. Like slipping into a dream halfway through and pretending you belong in the story.

It wasn’t that they were unkind. If anything, they had gone out of their way to make you feel included. Offering you the last can of soda. Making space on the worn old couch without a word. Leaning over their knees to catch you up when someone mentioned a story that clearly had history behind it.

But there was weight to their closeness — a kind of gravity you could feel even in the spaces between words. Invisible threads stretched between them, stitching summers and breakups and bad grades and cheap beers into the fabric of every conversation, every glance. Entire arguments were settled in the arch of an eyebrow. Whole stories were told in the way one person nudged another’s shoulder. They didn’t have to say it out loud. They already knew.

And you… you were the add-on. The guest star in a show already halfway through its final season. The bonus track no one asked for, but no one skipped either. It wasn’t supposed to bother you. But sometimes, it did anyway.

Especially here.

Especially now.

The old Washington lodge sat like a forgotten heirloom at the crest of Blackwood Mountain, isolated from the rest of the world by distance and weather and the slow, stubborn passage of time. It was the kind of place that felt like it could remember things even if no one else did.

Heavy carpets softened your footsteps into nothing, like the house was swallowing your presence. Mismatched wooden chairs stood around the fireplace, worn smooth by careless elbows and too many drinks spilled by drunk teenagers laughing too hard to hold it steady. The long walls were lined with books nobody read anymore, their spines bowed like tired old men huddled against the cold.

And the smell… it was everywhere. Smoke and cinnamon. Pine and wax. Old houses had their own perfumes, mixtures of everything that had ever happened inside them — and maybe some of what hadn’t happened yet.

You sat curled up in one of the armchairs by the fire, legs drawn under yourself, palms stretched toward the warmth, pretending you couldn’t hear how their laughter echoed above you, moving through the old bones of the house. The place almost felt like it was listening — like it was holding its breath, just a little, as if afraid to interrupt them.

Even with the storm clawing at the windows, the place was full of warmth. Full of life.

Except you didn’t feel alive. You felt like a photograph taped to the wall, curling at the corners, not really part of the room anymore.

You shifted in the chair, adjusting your weight like that might settle the restlessness pressing against your ribs. The mug on the table next to you had gone lukewarm. Maybe it had been that way for a while.

Your mind drifted — not by choice, but the way thoughts do when they find cracks in your guard.

You hadn’t been invited because you were one of them.

You weren’t part of the group, not really. Maybe you never had been.

You were here because Ashley sent you that goddamn email.

Polite. Careful. Like she was offering a bandage for a wound she helped cause.

“I thought maybe you should come. For Josh. For all of us. I think it would be good. We all can heal together.”

For Josh.

And that was the moment you knew.

Josh hadn’t invited you.

Not to this.

Not to this thing they still had the nerve to call tradition, like it was sacred, like it still meant something.

Like playing board games and drinking too much in a house full of ghosts could stitch over the cracks.

Like pretending nothing had happened could fix anything.

You weren’t part of that healing. You weren’t even in the picture.

You were the name left off the group text.

The absence no one pointed out.

The afterthought.

It stung in a way you didn’t even want to name.

Because you hadn’t been here for them in a long time. You’d never really been here for them in the first place. The only reason you’d ever been drawn into their orbit was Hannah. The only person that made you feel like you actually belong in this group was sweet, soft-spoken Hannah, with her hopeful smiles and nervous fingers twisting bracelets around her wrist, like she could keep herself steady if she just kept her hands busy. You and Hannah — that had been the real friendship. Quiet, steady, safe. You never had to fight for her attention. She never made you feel like a guest.

And Beth, too, with her quiet protectiveness. The three of you in the background while the loud ones filled the center of the room.

But Ashley… Ashley had been your doorway into the rest of them. The link between you and the glittering, sharp-edged friendships everyone else seemed to fall into naturally. You’d let yourself believe Ashley actually wanted you around. That maybe this was becoming real.

And then the prank happened.

Ashley stood there. Laughing.

Filming.

Pretending it was funny.

As if Hannah wasn’t her friend too.

As if they hadn’t sat together in her bedroom whispering about stupid crushes, trading secrets like candy, talking about college plans and summer jobs and how everything was going to be different when they finally got out of this place.

As if none of it meant anything.

Ashley laughed as if she wasn’t standing there holding the camera, recording every second while Hannah’s world cracked open. While her face crumpled in real time — mascara bleeding into the soft skin beneath her eyes, her lip trembling as she tried to hold herself together in a room full of people who had never meant to let her.

As if she wasn’t part of the reason Hannah ran out into the snowy night — barefoot, humiliated, her heart in pieces, tripping over the words they all laughed at behind her back.

As if she wasn’t part of the reason Beth followed her — loyal to a fault, calling her sister’s name into the dark like it could keep her safe, like love was enough to undo what cruelty had done.

As if she wasn’t part of the reason neither of them came back.

Ashley smiled.

Laughed.

Giggled, even, behind the lens of that fucking camera.

And when Hannah disappeared into the trees, no one chased her.

Not fast enough.

Not like they meant it.

Some of them stayed inside.

Some called out a little, like that was enough.

Like shouting her name from the porch made them innocent.

But no one found them.

The search parties came later, after the snow had buried every real clue.

They combed the woods for days, and came back with nothing.

Well—

not nothing.

They found someone.

Not Hannah.

Not Beth.

Someone else.

And Ashley? She cried later. She apologized later. She texted you later with words like “I didn’t know—”, “I didn’t mean—”, “I’m so sorry—”

Something else.

But by then, what did it matter? The damage was already done.

When Hannah and Beth were gone, something in you went with them.

You didn’t want to try and be part of them anymore.

You couldn’t.

Not when every time you looked at their faces, all you could see was how easily they’d kept going. How quickly they smoothed over the cracks. How they laughed too loud and too soon. How they handled the twins’ disappearance like a passing storm — tragic, yes, but temporary.

They mourned in hashtags and group chats. They held their breath just long enough to say they cared, and then exhaled and kept living.

And you —

you couldn’t do it.

You couldn’t unsee it.

So you stopped answering their calls.

Let their messages pile up, unread.

Watched their names blur together into silence.

You cut yourself away from the whole thing like a rotting branch, before the sickness could spread further.

And in the quiet that followed, you didn’t miss them.

Not really.

Only Hannah.

Only Beth.

But Josh...

You couldn’t let go of him.

Josh, who had nothing to do with the prank.

Who didn’t laugh.

Who didn’t plan it.

Who didn’t know.

And who — in the end — suffered more than any of them.

While they whispered their regrets behind closed doors, while they posted photos and tried to pretend nothing had happened, while they apologized just enough to feel clean again…

Josh unraveled.

He lost not one, but both of them. His sisters. His heart.

And while the others drifted back to their lives,

you…

You stayed.

You were the one who came over every other day in those first brutal weeks, standing awkwardly in his doorway with a bag of greasy fast food and too much hope clenched in your fists. You cleaned his kitchen when the dishes started to rot. You changed his sheets when the smell of sweat and nightmares soaked through them. You took his car to get the oil changed when he forgot how to care.

You were the one who called Dr. Hill’s office, sat through being put on hold again and again, lying to bored receptionists just to get an emergency appointment scheduled. You fought with the insurance company. You sat with Josh through those first brutal sessions, listening to him fall apart in forty-five-minute increments, curling your fingernails into your palms to stop yourself from reaching for him.

When the appointments were done, you’d take him to that grimy fast-food place down the street — the one with sticky tabletops and flickering lightbulbs — and buy him the same thing every time: double cheeseburger, no onions, no tomatoes, extra pickles, large fries, vanilla shake. Not because he loved the food, but because you wanted to show him that every hard thing deserved something good at the end of it, even if the good thing was small and pathetic and smelled like fryer grease.

You knew his favorite movies, the ones that didn’t trigger bad memories. You brought him cheap DVDs when he wouldn’t leave his room. You picked out the ones with commentary tracks because he liked listening to other people talk when he couldn’t fill the silence himself.

You were the one who stayed when everyone else vanished behind awkward apologies and pitying looks.

You stayed because you loved him. Not out of guilt. Not because you wanted to feel like a good person. You stayed because you couldn’t imagine doing anything else.

And for a while… it worked. You saw flickers of the old Josh, the one who used to make you laugh until your ribs ached, the one who used to sit beside you with his shoulder brushing yours like it was natural.

But then something changed. Slowly. Quietly.

It started with missed calls. Then unopened doors. Excuses that sounded thinner and thinner each time. And then nothing at all. Just silence. Just you standing outside in the freezing air with a bag of his favorite food going cold in your shaking hands.

Sometimes you thought you saw him watching from the upstairs window. A flicker of movement. A breath. But he never came down.

He pushed you out. Shut you out. Locked you out.

And now here he was, surrounded by the people who hadn’t stayed. Who hadn’t called. Who hadn’t fought for him. And yet they were the ones invited to this sacred, stupid “tradition.”

Not you.

You said yes to Ashley’s email because you wanted to see Josh. Because if this ridiculous winter getaway was going to somehow help him pull himself back together, you had to be here. Not for them. For him. And maybe — selfishly, stupidly — because you wanted answers. You wanted to ask him why. Why after everything you’d done for him, you were the one left behind. Why he’d chosen them over you.

Above you, their laughter drifted down through the beams of the house, sweet and sharp and unbothered.

They belonged to each other, still. Even after everything. Even after death.

And you — you were just the echo that wouldn’t stop haunting the edges of their story.

But you weren’t leaving yet.

Not this time.

Not without answers.