Ninny

For the vampire, a hundred years seemed only like a year. But the twelve months of your absence felt like a thousand moons. Each day he was left with the lingering taste of your kisses, the yearning need for your touch and the whispered promises of a mortal forever. It lingered with him, the loneliness. The bitter guilt he refused to name and claim and accept. 

And yet, it was now that same guilt that seemed to drown him. It was the sound of his frantic steps and his racing heart that filled his ears as he descended the dark staircase that led to his underground palace. His long robes brushed the stairs, the fabric swishing at his ankles as he walked–ran–toward what he believed would be safety. 

You lay cradled against him. Kept in the cage of his arms in a limp form that made his dead heart pound with a strange fear. His hands were strong beneath your body, his grip would’ve been painful had you been awake. Your long and wet skirts draped over his forearm, your hair trailed down his hand, strands catching in the gentle embroidery of his robe. Your head rested against his shoulder, your eyes closed. 

Gwi arrived at the throne room and quickly took the right passage down the hallway that led to what had once been a beautiful room with a beautiful cherry blossom tree belonging to a beautiful lady that governed his heart. 

But as he entered the chamber, the pink petals were almost gone from the branches that stretched to the ceiling like black fingers of death. The candles shivered as he passed them and he knelt under the tree where the cushions of the bed were. His hands tightened around your body for a second, savouring your warmth, the weight of your body in his arms before he lay you down with tremendous gentleness for hands that had ended life in seconds. 

His palm cradled the side of your face, eyes searching for something–anything–that would tell his raging mind you were still with him. Still alive. His eyes were dark as he looked down at you, they were soft in their intimacy yet profoundly sad. 

“Petal…”

Your nickname escaped his lips in a tight murmur. A word he once chanted in his mind yet had not spoken out loud in months. It was your word. The nature of your existence within his life. 

A precious flower he cherished and protected and watched as it bloomed. 

A poisonous rose that had killed his mercy once. 

But magnificent in its absence. 

He missed the perfume of his flower despite the thorns of the stem. He missed the sweet sound of your voice, the gentle caress of your fingers. The kisses, the dance of love, the passion and the laughs. 

He missed you. 

All because he casted you away. 

“Wake up, my flower.”

Gwi remained kneeling next to you, hovering over your body with disgusting anxiousness. His large hand never left your cheek, his thumb caressing the skin beneath. His other palm rested on top of your head, his fingers tangled in the damp strands of hair as he played with it absentmindedly. 

The silence of the underground palace was killing him. No servant crossed the corridors, no fireplace cracked. But the sound that would stab his chest was the sound of your own slowed heartbeat. It resonated like a drum played too deep yet too late. 

Off beat. 

Odd against the symphony he had memorised when in your presence. 

And while there were a thousand words the vampire wished to say, only a simple sentence escaped his lips. A sentence spoken in a soft murmur, deep against the chamber, low for only your heart to hear. 

“Come back to me.”

It was a battle of love. The hand that had tangled in your hair now wrapped around your wrist. Feeling the bone density and the weak pulse beneath his fingertips. The slightly bulging veins of darker blood could be felt under his careful touch. Where once your skin had been healthy, it now felt dry and thin and horribly cold. 

He remembered holding you. Your hands, your cheeks, your lips between his own. You had always been warm against him. Always alive where he was simply dead yet breathing. Now you coldness mirrored his own in a fatal cruelty that made a knot string under his ribs. 

You were beautiful yet as cold as a painting. Soft silk draped over rigid stillness. Lifeless fingers still holding traces of his warmth between your palms. 

Loved and missed. 

Gwi pulled you against him, needing to feel you, to hold you to keep you within his arms. To guard your life from the cold fingers of death that threatened to take you from his embrace. His back rested against the dark wood of the cherry blossom tree, your head fit perfectly beneath his chin. He kept you upright, his arms around you, his hands fisting the worn fabric of your dress. 

Something stung in his eyes. His throat tightened upon feeling you. If his hands weren’t fisted in your robes they’d be shaking. The mighty vampire was now reduced to the heartfelt man he had been centuries ago. Just a man. Just a human capable of love. Of emotions. Of grief and guilt and remorse so profound it was drowning in its silence. 

“Forgive me.” 

He spoke so quietly, so intimate that even if you had been awake you wouldn’t have heard him. Your skirts pooled over his legs, his dark long hair fell over his face as he buried it in your neck. Inhaling your scent. A scent of rain and pain. Of crushed petals and a sweetness carried by the wind. 

Your pulse resonated in his ears. So loud yet so slow. A resonance that carved through him. A broken symphony. 

He rested his chin on top of your head, about to take a deep breath where something smooth and hard and pointy poked at the pale skin of his throat. The vampire frowned gently, a soft crease of his brows as he looked down at your (h/c) and still damp hair. 

Your hairpin was still tangled in your locks. His hairpin, the one he had given you what seemed to be a lifetime ago. 

“I have something for you.”

His words made you look at him once more through the mirror, curiosity swarmed in your eyes as you watched him untangle his hands from behind his back only for you to see a beautiful hairpin in his hold. It was brown with delicate red flowers on it and two tear pearls hung from a small silver chain that sparkled in the dimly lit room. 

Your lips parted at the beauty of the jewel he was gifting you. You were no stranger to luxury, your life had always been filled with jewels and precious things with great value but this gift, even though it was as elegant and equally luxurious as your other hairpins, held something special within. Something unique. 

“A flower for my flower.”

He murmured as his fingers grabbed a piece of your hair. Gwi marvelled at the softness of your hair, silky in its nature, shiny in its complexity. It almost felt sinful to touch it like this, with such intimacy, with such delicacy. You watched in contemplation, in admiration to the man who kept you close to him as he twirled a strand of your hair between his fingers before he wrapped it in the hairpin that was now yours. 

The memory flashed like lightning before his eyes. Back when life was simple, when gifts meant devotion and glances meant love. Back when having you was a pleasure while now, with you laying in his arms, it was the worst torture he had experienced in his eternal years of youth. 

Your heart kept skipping beats, your breathing kept slowing and your skin did not regain any warmth despite the dryness of the underground prison he called a palace. Gwi took the hairpin, his fingers feeling the smoothness of it, the remaining dew it had left and he slid it off your hair. 

The red jewel caught the flames of the candlelight and he fisted it in anger and sadness and mourning. His jaw tightened and his eyes kept stinging with salty grief he refused to let go. 

Until he heard it. 

A soft exhale. A lingering heartbeat that took too long to pump again. The hairpin in his hand slipped his fingers, it clattered onto the ground before he was grabbing you with desperate force. He turned you against him, laying horizontally, your skirts puffing out around you both like dried dead petals that once held a lovely scent now lost to time. 

“Petal…”

The nickname died in his throat as it felt as if a cord was strangling him. A cord of guilt and love and devotion so fierce it burned through his cold touch. His left hand gripped your shoulder and kept you upright, your hair fell over his arm, your throat exposed. 

A tear fell from his eyes, trailing down his chin and dripping onto the fabric of your dress. Your skin was ice as his right hand cupped your cheek, pressing your head against his chest in a way to keep you with him. To warm you. To command death to not claim his precious flower. 

You weren’t waking up. 

It was a truth he knew yet refused to accept. A fact woven into the dark tapestry that was his fate.

You wouldn’t wake up. 

And in the density of his love and passion and immortality, a clenching fist of agony wrapped around his heart. A soul that was not meant to feel, a heart that was not meant to beat, a mind that was not meant to remember, belonged to you. A rose in a dead garden. A honey drop in bitter water. The petal of his love. 

His rose. 

Gwi looked down at you. At your unmoving lashes, at the beauty he was about to lose. The smile he’d never see, the voice he wouldn’t hear and the laughs he’d miss. His dark eyes moved from your face to the blue veins under his skin. Veins with blood so strong it was nearly black. Veins that held power. 

A curse. 

The punishment of his immortality. The pain of centuries. 

Salvation. 

The word came into his mind like a whisper, it resonated like a scream.

The vampire’s touch left your cheek as he lifted his wrist up to his lips. His eyes turned red with tears and his ancient curse. His fangs –those sharp weapons– graced his lips. He waited a heartbeat, a second of hesitation before he bit into his own inner wrist. The sting was nothing compared to the thought, the idea, of losing his beloved. 

Blood filled his mouth, the taste sour and dry to his own tongue. It trailed down his forearm in beautiful rivers of crimson life. Thick and iron smelling. 

With his left arm he shifted you closer against him, your head lolling back, your lips parting ever so slightly in unconsciousness. 

Gwi placed his open wrist against your mouth, your lips tainting with his red cursed ink. He couldn’t see you, only a blurry painting of your true self as he refused to let more tears fall. 

“Please, petal. Please, please, please… just drink…”

He begged like a penitent, knelt like a sinner and begged for heaven to spare you. His power was reduced to a prayer only meant for your ears, his lips saying nothing else but your name. 

His blood slowly filled your mouth and out of reflex you swallowed. A deep gasp escaped him the moment you did. His soul tangled with yours as he became a part of you. 

What kind of cruelty bestowed such ownership on him? General of armies, king of kings and master of masters. 

The symphony of your heart drummed once more, synced with his own slow beats. Almost dead yet strong. Alive in its cursed lament. 

“Just drink, love.”

And you did. Once, twice, three times before a gentle sigh escaped your lips. His right hand shook as a drowning realisation of what he had just done came to him in burning waves. 

His heart, often as cold as ice and rigid as stone clenched so painfully the vampire sobbed as he embraced you. His bloodied hand cradled the back of your head, his fingers tangling in your locks. His eyes squeezed shut and the tears finally fell. 

Your skin warmed under his touch. 

Your breathing stirred against his throat. 

And your lashes trembled ever so slightly with how tightly he held you yet he couldn’t help himself. He had tied your soul to his own without completely knowing. You had once belonged to the vampire lord, owner of kingdoms and master of the night. Now it was you who owned his immortal soul. 

The curse of eternity lay now cradled in the soft petals of a love that was meant to end in ashes long ago. 

Ashes of pink petals and rose thorns and gentle lies.

The first thing you were aware of the moment your senses returned was the soft, almost forgotten smell of distant cherry blossom petals. Almost as if they belonged in a dream.

You swallowed, your brows furrowing at the sudden bitterness at the back of your throat. Your fingers flexed, touching gentle silk with embroidered vine leaves in golden thread. Your lashes fluttered and then your eyes opened only to see the blurry image of skeleton fingers stretching toward the ceiling in a gentle caress. 

You felt warmth. Strength where your body could no longer hold itself. A sensation of smoke through your bones. A ghost of a touch that once burned you alive. Your breath hitched, you blinked and your vision cleared. 

The cotton that filled your ears evaporated and you were suddenly aware of your own heartbeat pounding in your mind. Yet another rhythm synchronised with it. It was slower, deeper. 

Sacred even. 

“...life is a cruel thief,

A liar who speaks and smiles without words. 

Death is a cruel judge, 

Carrying burdens that were never her own.”

A whimper came from the back of your throat at the sound of that voice. That voice of poisonous beauty. The echo in your dreams, the rhythm of his words only made you frown in estranged melancholy. 

“You are awake…”

The whisper was said with such disbelief it forced your gaze upwards. Only to see the source of your greatest love as well as the man who had killed your heart. 

You were in his arms. He held you with a force that made you wince when you tried to leave his magnificent prison.

“You killed me…”

The words barely left your lips. They made him frown deeply at you. The sound of parchment falling reached your ears and then his right hand came up to cup your face. His wrist was bandaged, the material was rough against your jaw. 

You flinched the moment he touched you yet it was simply a featherlike grace of his fingertips against your skin. You became suddenly aware of how deep he was breathing, the sound of candles flickering reached your ears and the drumming, over and over, of his heart beneath your ear was suffocating you. 

His cold skin burned you where he touched you, the feeling of your dress around your body became heavy, your head was pounding and you suddenly felt nauseous at so many sounds and feelings and emotions you couldn’t process. 

“I had to save you, petal.”

Tears filled your eyes. Eyes you hid as you closed them yet your lips trembled. You shook your head, your fingers flexed with the want –the need– to leave. To stand up and walk and run away from a place of such spoiled memories. 

“Why did you bring me back?”

He suddenly pulled you closer, his arms encircled you and that’s when you realised he was sitting under the cherry blossom tree while you lay draped across from him. One of his hands held the back of your head and his lips brushed your ear as he spoke in a gentle whisper. For the sanctity of those words couldn’t have been uttered any louder.

“Because I could not survive your death.”

Your heart stopped for a second. You heard the silence. Those words, those sinful words opened a wound you spent months trying to stitch back only for it to bleed again. His grip was crushing you yet it became suddenly disgusting to be in his arms, or perhaps too painful for you to remain in the place that had once been safe for now to turn into the burning flames of hell itself. 

Your hands rested against his chest, your fingers fisted the dark fabric of his robes. It was still slightly damp from the rain that you could still listen to. Maybe the skies were mourning alongside your heart, maybe the echo of your pain was perturbing you once more.

A bitterness rose from your chest to your lips so quickly you felt nauseous once more. An anger, a disappointment so profound your eyes darkened yet a hollow laugh escaped you. 

“And yet… you survived my leaving.”

You looked up, meeting his gaze. Yours was burning, his was melted. And those words hurt more than sunlight upon his skin. Angry tears filled your eyes, tears of frustration and a hurt so deep your body betrayed you in the form of salty pearls. 

He remained silent for a while, for once there was no godly justification, no romantic poetry meant for your heart to flutter, no perfectly crafted lie. 

Just his silence. The weight of his actions against your eyes. 

“There was not a single night I survived it.”

But you shook your head at his words. Words said between his teeth as the hand at the back of your head tightened with desperation. Your palms itched to push him away, to get up and run and hide from his poisonous love. 

“Yet here you sit.”

Why couldn’t you just scream at him? Demand him an explanation? This silence was worse. This calm was hell. Those tears in your eyes were daggers to a dead heart. Gwi, in all his power and immortality, felt just how humanly your anger was. Like an ocean of grief and each wave threatened to drown his corpse. 

“Breathing. Speaking. Existing.”

You hissed those words, your vision blurring. 

“While I spent a year learning how to live without you. Trying to hate you, trying to forget you.”

His lips tightened over words he didn’t know how to say. The master of kingdoms had fallen at your feet. Your fingers tightened once more over his robes with surprising strength, yet you hated how much your tips recognised the embroidery. How familiar it was to be in his arms, how memories stirred with the simple sound of his deep voice you loved so much. 

“I left a part of me behind. A part of me died. You killed me.”

His throat bobbed as he swallowed, whispering to you words of supplication. 

“Don’t say that, petal.”

“Stop it. How can I be your petal when you killed the rose? How?!”

Tears sprung to his eyes, his grip crushing and that’s when your emotions spilled. Your palms pushed at his chest.

“Let go, let me go!”

“No.”

He mumbled, trapping you against your struggle. Caging you in once more. 

“Let me go.”

You sobbed, the tears falling. Your heart breaking, your hands shaking. 

“I will not let you go! I cannot!”

A drowned scream tore from your throat as you pushed and pushed until you escaped from his arms. Gwi sat against the tree, you sat in front of him, your palms on the ground and your left hand fisted the sheet of parchment he had let go the moment you woke up. Ink stained your fingers of his forgotten poem. 

“You already did it once.”

He sat there staring at you with eyes full of hurt. The strings that held his pride snapped and his back suddenly collapsed against the trunk of sweet smelling wood. The ugly sounds of your sobs filled the bedroom, your chest was heaving with stilling breaths. Beneath your palm sat his crushed poetry while your hairpin rested near his knee. 

Gwi watched you with rotten tenderness. You, the woman he loved. The petal of his precious flower. His heart had once been surrounded by your love, your petals. Now those petals had darkened with the stain of his actions. 

And before him, the crumbled pieces of his garden lay bare before him. 

The vampire looked at you like a broken relic he had destroyed with his own bloodied hands. His chest ached with a love so deep yet so rotten it was damnation itself. But sometimes poison is sweet. Sometimes pain is warm. He sighed, looking at you with those dark eyes full of guilt and love and regret he almost expected you to crawl back into his embrace. 

“Let me go.”

You whispered once more. A plea between sobs. One last hope within you, like a candle amidst a storm. Gwi shook his head. He couldn’t, he wouldn’t lose you again. And you cried once more. The tears slid down your cheeks, they dripped from your chin onto the fabric of your dress. The remaining cherry blossom petals fell between you both. Tiny, pink and wrinkled, carried by the wind of his sins and the weight of your love. 

With a heaving breath you managed to stand up, your stance was unstable. As if you stood among clouds of nightmares. Gwi mirrored your actions, standing up as well beneath the tree. His feet itched to walk over to you and hold you and keep you. But it was those tears of yours that kept him away from your heart. 

His unfinished poem lay in the miles between you two. Miles he could cross in five steps. Words you couldn’t care what they said. For they were lies. Gentle and sweet lies you had once swallowed with a smile. 

You took a step back, he didn’t move but his gaze filled with sorrow. 

“If you ever loved me, if your words and poems for me were ever true… you’ll let me go.” 

Your voice was a distant echo of the laughs that had once filled his underground palace. The candle that never extinguished, the melody that never stopped. 

“They were true.”

He said in a deep resonance that shook the iron walls around the pieces of your heart.

“They have always been true. Each word, each touch, petal please…”

But you shook your head this time, taking another step away from him. However, Gwi took one forward as well. Unable to bear the distance, the shrinking love that once burned so passionately. 

“Please, (y/n) —”

“No.”

Your hands were shaking, the word came out low. Whispered like a blade afraid to cut silk. You swallowed against the knot in your throat and spoke words that felt like thorns. 

“I spent a year mourning our love. I buried our memories and grieved for the life we dreamed of. A year.”

You lifted your chin, keeping the dignity in your next words. Seeing him in a blurry painting of red passion broken with black guilt and blue tears. 

“You cannot ask me to come back to you.”

“I am not asking anymore.”

The words settled heavy and cold and iron into the stillness of the room. Your heart skipped a beat. Not out of love or hope or tenderness but of fear. He took a step forward and you took one back. Wishing the miles of time between you to either drown you or separate you forever. 

Before you stood no longer your lover. Your man. Gwi who once dedicated entire pieces of poetry to your sacred ears, Gwi who once treasured your laughs and smiles and kisses like a pirate loves treasure. Gwi who touched you with careful hands, who undressed you between candlelight and made love to you with silken words and fire kisses. 

That man was gone. Before you stood the ruler. The king of kings. The tyrant of your nation. The monster scholars feared, the predator of flowers. The general of generals and the owner of the night, master of the palace. 

Your king.

The distance between you felt different now. Moments ago it had been the distance between two lovers. Now it was the distance between a wilting flower and a cruel gardener. 

Five steps. 

Five impossible steps. For he could cross them in the blink of an eye. And you had spent an entire year trying to escape them.

Your heartbeat slowed at the agonising realization that he now owned you in more ways you could understand. You heard the beats slowing and something in his gaze, that you could have swore turned red for a second, felt as if he could hear it too. 

“I want to go.”

He took those five steps. Suddenly and without time for you to put distance in between. Your words were oil to his kindling flame of desperation. You weren’t demanding anymore, you begged. Just as he had done. But the plea had caused him to come to you and cage you in the prison of his hold once more. 

“But I don’t. You are not leaving, you can’t.”

One of his arms wrapped around your waist, like iron bars wrapped in silk. He pressed you against his chest harshly while his other hand cupped your wet cheek and forced you to meet his eyes. Your head tilted back and through wide and blurry eyes, you watched as he observed you. He saw the tears, the trembling of your lips, the tightness of your beauty under his palm. 

“I lost you once, petal. I will not lose you again.”

Your hands tried to push him away, your face jerked far from his hand but he only held you tighter. Harshly as if you couldn’t break when you were already in pieces. You pushed and sobbed and even hit at his chest until his hand grabbed the back of your neck and forced your head back. Black danced with (e/c) as he looked you directly in the eye. His voice, once velvety and soothing, was now rough with a command wrapped in cotton delight. 

“You may hate me now, perhaps forever. I can survive your hate, I won’t survive your death, do you understand? Do you?”

Gwi spoke with daggers in his words. Daggers that had once protected you were now held against your throat by his hand. You sobbed, crumbling into his arms. He sank down onto the ground with you, never letting you go, embracing you with enough strength you felt the irony of his sweetness. His chin rested on your shoulder and your mind, poisoned, exhausted and tied to him in a way only your soul understood, surrendered. You kept crying, sobbing and whimpering but you embraced him back in hate, in forgotten memories, in love. In the only familiar thing in a room of strange shadows. 

“I’ll keep you safe, I promise you.”

He shushed you, one of his hands running though your hair and your eyes closed. Realising that his love was not beauty, was not poems and certainly not his gentle touch. 

It was ownership. 

You belonged to the vampire lord. 

You had always been his. 

But it was now that you realised how much of you actually belonged to him. 

His darling.

His dearest. 

His dead flower.

May/31/2026

A/N: Want to be tagged? Let me know in the comments!

Thoughts? O.O

My inbox is open, darlings Or feel free to leave a comment! I'd love to hear your thoughts and inputs for the story! Take care, love 🫶

Your feet ached. Your heart was hollow with the empty sentiment of dead love. You had been walking for hours, days, weeks and months. Lost and forgotten, empty and soulless. Trying to escape your own heart, or trying to find pieces of it left behind. 

Your hands were limp as they hung by your sides, the hem of your dress was ripped and dirty from the miles you had navigated on your feet alone. Your skin was paler than the healthy glow your lover had once admired, your lips were colourless, your voice gone. 

But it had been your heart that had carried you back to the Imperial City. It was bliss. It was torture. To relive memories that had once been sweet but now they only tasted rotten with the sourness of his dismissal and the bitterness of your pain. 

The rain had begun to fall over the city that evening, the streets made puddles of murky water, the shops closed early that day as the heavens were angry or sad. Either way, they were punishing Joseon with their thunder and lightning and torrential waters. 

Your dress, that once beautiful burgundy gown had gotten soaked in seconds. Your hair plastered to your cheeks. It was no longer braided down your back, the silken bow you had used to tie it together had been blown by the wind many days ago. 

Oh, how it hurt. To walk where he has walked, to exist where he had lived. And to know he could still parade these streets through the night. Your mind was lost to your pain, your heart hardened by loss and pain and a love that had been so beautiful but had been destroyed by secrets. By lies. By words left unsaid and tears left to dry. 

The sound of the rain hitting the stone pavement filled your ears, yet it wasn’t louder than the slow rhythm of your own heart. And it was the shroud of the night that embraced you with forgotten loneliness. With cold fingers that wrapped around your shoulders, the darkness swallowed your form as you glided over the empty city. 

Your eyes were empty, your steps slow. Lost. You walked past a lamp post with a single flickering candle cradled in a glass cage, your skirts brushed the ones of a tall stranger who walked without destination. 

It was a moment that pulled your mind from the drowning thoughts that kept you under a numbness too great for it to manifest. You blinked, water clung to your lashes. Ahead, the road was like a wolf’s mouth. Dark and uncertain. However, your life has been just like that throughout the last year. 

Don’t think,

The thought rang through your head as loud as if someone had spoken the words to you. Thinking about it made you cry, thinking about it made your heart ache and the hatred and sadness and heartbreak to all pour down like a waterfall you couldn’t stop. So you kept walking. You kept going forward to a place you didn’t know, hoping you’d find something you didn’t know you were searching for. 

Or perhaps it was a place you didn’t want to admit to yourself you missed terribly. Maybe it was not a place but a person who still kept that safe corner of the world in his arms. But you could no longer walk with him, you could no longer go to him in your distressed hours. You could no longer count on him. 

He had abandoned you, left you, broken your heart with his bare hands as if it had meant nothing. The truth didn’t matter anymore. Time had blurred the lines of hatred and love and all it was left behind was an ache so profound your heart hurt every single time you thought about it. About him. His eyes, his voice, his touch. His sweet poems he used to read to you. His name was only whispered in your mind, it had never left your lips and it never will. Doing it would be crueler than stabbing yourself with a dagger and ending it all. 

But something halted your steps. A name. A voice. It pierced through your mind like a sword did on ice. 

“Petal.”

You swallowed, your eyes filled with tears, the rain kept falling, your hands began trembling but you stopped walking. You stopped yourself from advancing to the unknown as you obeyed the command of the chain in your heart. 

Your lips parted and for a heartbeat, you were scared. You knew that voice anywhere, had loved it and cherished it and praised it. For it was the voice of the man who had broken your heart. And it was the word he used to call for you when life had been pink and framed with scented roses. 

“(y/n),”

At the sound of your name, you turned around, facing the man who had left you. He, who had discarded you, broken you, lied to you. You faced him again with an iron heart and empty eyes. 

The rain fell, hiding the gentle tears that rolled down your cheeks at the sight of him. Gwi. The lord of the palace. The lord of your heart. Whatever words you had once planned to say to him died in your tongue like petals falling from a rose. 

His eyes, those dark eyes of his that had once looked at you with softness and tenderness, with love were now filled with surprise and something deeper; something darker you couldn’t see through the blur of your own tears. 

“You still wear it.”

Your hand instinctively went up to your hair, fingertips gracing the red flowers of the hairpin he had gifted you what seemed to be a lifetime ago. 

“I never took it off.”

Was your response. Hoarse and breathless, a gentle whisper carried away by the wind. He took a step toward you, you took one back. Thunder flashed at the distance, the sky rumbling with its strength and it flashed in his eyes, revealing the hint of hurt in those dark galaxies of his. 

“I… I’ve been searching for you.”

You took a deep breath at his words. Taking in the scent of damp stone and the heaviness of a bitter encounter you had long since stopped wishing for. 

“I don’t believe you.”

The vampire lord frowned, taking two steps toward you but this time, you didn’t back away. You only titled your chin to keep eye contact with him. To never let him out of your sight. And he released you looking at him as if he were a dream. An illusion. An image in a mirror that did not exist. 

Gwi noticed the heartbreak, the longing, the anger in those (e/c) eyes he once loved dearly. But now, those eyes hardened with the weight of all the time apart. Of the cruel words that had been exchanged, the accusations and the pain that had tainted what had been a pure love between a rose and death itself. 

“I can’t believe you anymore.”

You lifted your chin slightly. Even now, despite everything, you hold your ground and grace. Your dignity as a lady and noble daughter never left your soul. 

“Petal-”

“Don’t.”

His lips pressed together at the finality of that single word. As if you were slapping a book shut and never wanted to read its pages again. 

“Don’t talk to me with your sweet poetry. It no longer works, you will not sugar my ear with whatever lies you want to speak now.”

His eyes burned with bitter tears, fists clenching under the long sleeves of his robes. 

“You no longer command my heart. You made that pretty clear the last time we saw each other, so please, do not follow me. I can’t go back to that pain…”

The vampire lord moved the second you blinked. You felt his hand, rough and large and strong gripping your shoulders with a ferocity that made your breath hitch. You looked up at him in surprise, in fear and want. 

“I may not command your heart anymore but you do command mine. I have wronged you, you who was the only thing holy in my darkness. Come with me, come to my palace –our palace– I will not let you go again. I cannot lose you again.”

Your eyes locked with his and you shook your head. Despite the tears and the pain in your heart at rejecting him. A pain that had lived in your chest since he first dismissed you from his side. Like a thorn on flesh, you had learned to live with that pain, that anger and disappointment and hurt. You weren’t about to injure your soul again. 

Not for the sake of old memories. 

Or the sake of the whispers from intimate touches. 

The lingering memory of his passionate kisses grazed your lips like silk on glass. 

The memory of his eyes, softening as he looked at you crossed the eye of your mind. 

Thunder flashed in the distance and those gentle eyes from your memories turned into the pleading and desperate look which he now gave you without a filter whatsoever. 

You saw his pain, his longing, his regret. But those weren’t going to heal the scars of his wounding words and dismissive heart. His words would not make your scars go away. 

“I loved you.”

He frowned at your confession. His eyes widening under the shadows of his lashes. 

“I loved you so much. And you… you broke my heart. You-you broke me! How can you ask me to… how do you expect me to go back, to surrender to you as I did. I trusted you. I wanted you!”

“You do not want me anymore, petal?”

The hurt in his voice made you flinch. The tears came, unbidden and merciless. Rolling down your cheeks as the pain intensifies. You didn’t know that seeing him would be like this. All your hurt and pain and loneliness had been locked in a chest that was hidden in the chambers of your heart and it only took a word from his lips to bring it out into the light, to unlock it and let everything out. 

“Petal-”

“NO!”

You took a step back, forcing his hands to leave your shoulders. Putting a distance between you and him that killed you yet let you breathe for a second. A tortuous yet glorious second. 

“Please! Listen to me-”

But you shook your head again, the rain kept falling and lightning broke the heavens once more. 

“You cannot mend something that’s broken. You cannot fix me! You don’t know what I’ve been through! You don’t know what I had to endure for-”

Your teeth bit your tongue, swallowing the words that were about to be blurted into the welcoming night. 

“I have wronged you in a way that should not be forgiven yet I ask you… (y/n) I-”

You let out a shuddering breath, your lips trembled and your eyes closed. 

“Don’t. You provided a false heaven. That’s what you are. A garden of dead roses and I was fooled by its lingering perfume. You call me “petal”, you call me “your beloved” but love it’s not supposed to hurt like this!”

The emotions of your words carried your whispered truth. He took a step forward and you just sighed. Tired of his circling words and this eternal ache in your heart that wouldn’t go away. 

“I am a prideful man,”

Gwi began, reaching for your hand. His long fingers warped around it and you nearly flinched at how cold his skin was. 

“I rule over this kingdom but you could rule it all if you just come with me.”

You stared into his eyes, the rain clouded your vision. The pain intensified, tears couldn’t stop falling. 

“I don’t want to rule. I have never wanted that.”

His eyes softened, your breath quickened. Your whispered words pierced his heart with the innocence woven between them. 

“You don’t even know what I want.”

Your voice broke like splintering glass. His grip on your hand tightened as he yanked you forward. You collided into his chest, his arms encircling your wait, trapping you against him. 

“I do know.”

His voice was deep, the words growled out. Thunder struck the distance and you flinched at how loud it sounded but the vampire lord didn’t even blink at the noise. 

“You want to be cradled like a rose, you want to be cherished like a queen. Come with me and I’ll give you everything you ever had and more. (y/n), please…”

Your hands fisted his robe, the wet silk slick under your palms. 

“Let me go.”

His grip tightened around you. His heart pounded in his ears. That dead heart that only beats for you. 

“I won’t.”

He shook his head. His grip was almost painful. You tried to shove him away, to pry free of his iron grip. 

“Let me go!”

“I am not letting you go!”

You sobbed, why must he hurt you like this? Is he trying to tear your soul apart once more? To kill you this time with his cruel games? One of his hands came up to cup the back of your head, his fingers tangling in your soaked locks. He forced you to meet his eyes, those intense dark eyes that had once burned your soul now only scared you in those painful nightmares you were still trying to run from. 

Gwi frowned. His hand resting on the back of your neck. The tip of his fingers rested on your pulse point and he felt the erratic beating of your mortal heart and the unbearable heat of your skin. 

It wasn’t that you felt his skin cold but that yours was burning. 

“You’re sick.”

He whispered. His deep voice mixing with the distant thunder and furious rain. His eyes ran all over your race, from the redness in your eyes due to your tears to the sickening tint of your skin, your lips had no colour and you trembled against him. 

“Let me go… please, just let me–”

A gasp parted your lips, your eyes screwed shut as an unbearable pain in your heart stole your breath like a thief at night. Your knees buckled and his hold on your tightened. 

“Petal!”

The vampire shook you, his hand cradling your cheek as you sagged against him. Your eyes opened, your vision blurry with rain and tears and pain. You saw his face, carved of marble and with eyes as dark as obsidian. There was worry in those eyes. Fear. 

“I’m taking you back to the palace, you need care.”

Your hand weakly clutched his robe once more, just where his heart was hidden as you shook your head. 

“I don’t want to go back… please, I dont-”

“I’m not asking you.”

He gritted out. The hand that cradled your cheek pressed your head against his shoulder before he bent down, his arm sliding behind your knees before he hauled you up into his strong embrace. You whimpered, the pain in your chest intensified, your hand slipped from where it gripped his robe, hanging loosely at your side. 

The vampire lord clutched you tighter against him, his silk robes clinging to your trembling flame as if the storm itself sought to peel you from his arms. The rain drummed against his gat, against your hair, against his shoulders; like the beating of war drums chasing him through the night. 

“Petal, stay awake.”

His voice, usually silken and mocking to others, now cracked like porcelain strained under heat. It not only commanded you but pleaded for you to obey him. 

“Don’t close your eyes, I have you now.”

Your lashes fluttered, heavy with rain and tears. Each breath you took rattled, shallow, like it hurt you to even exist. 

“You… you will only cage me once more…”

You whispered, your voice so faint he had to bend his ear to your lips to catch the words the wind threatened to carry away. 

His jaw tightened. The words stung worse than any blade or poison or ray of sun on his pale skin. He walked, moving as fast as he could, boots splashing through the muddy puddles for every step was a violent oath against fate. 

“Then I will build you a cage of gold, a cage of silk and petals—anything but the grave that calls you now.”

You stirred weakly as he adjusted you in his hold, your head lolling against his shoulder. 

“I don’t… want your palace. I don’t want your throne… I just wanted… you.”

Those words stopped him, his steps haltered, his dead heart seized within him. For centuries he had bent kings and destroyed dynasties, he had ruled through the shadows of the night a kingdom that should have fallen ages ago. And yet it was your confession, so simple and innocent in its nature that brought him to his knees before your throne of dead petals. 

His body trembled under the weight of your spoken truth, of your deepest longing and forgotten desire. His eyes softened as he looked down at you and for a moment, a heartbeat, a second he forgot the storm, the kingdome, his immortality—everything. 

“I am yours,”

Gwi whispered to you. His confession a sin, his hold on you as heavy as iron chains. But you didn’t hear him anymore. Your head had slumped against his shoulder, your body limp in his hold and though your chest still rose and fell faintly, though he could still hear your shallow breaths and weak heartbeat, fear clawed through him like fire. 

A flash of light broke the sky once more and his grip tightened on you, grounding you to him. As if his strength alone could keep you with him. His lips pressed against your damp hair as if the kiss could anchor your soul to his. 

“Always yours, my flower. My precious petal.”

September/06/2025

A/N: Want to be tagged? Let me know in the comments!

Thoughts? O.O

My inbox is open, darlings Or feel free to leave a comment! I'd love to hear your thoughts and inputs for the story! Take care, love 🫶