#romanceweek2026d2

Xaden Riorson

You have loved Xaden Riorson since you were twelve years old. He was slightly older, charming and absolutely handsome. You spent every waking moment chasing his adventures, returning home drenched from rains and muddy from puddles close to midnight. You wrote letters back and forth when the apostasy happened and you were all put into foster care all over the country. You lost contact when he entered Basgiath, but now two years later you were only moments from seeing him again.

Xaden wasn’t just the man of your dreams, he was the strongest constant in your life when everything else was turning into nightmares. He comforted you, empowered you, always pushed you to be stronger and braver. That surely couldn’t change with just two years of college. When you crossed the parapet he was there, muscled, tall, and devastatingly ethereal. You quickly fell back into your friend group, comfortable amongst the other marked kids.

You tried to get your relationship back on track, but it seemed he was always too busy and occupied now. He trained you for the challenges and gauntlet, instructed you on what to say in battle brief and history, but the loving moments, stolen touches and longing stares when he thought you weren’t looking weren’t there anymore. The final nail in the coffin was threshing day, when Violet Sorrengail bonded Tairn and the last remnants of your connection shattered.

“He hoped Tairn would bond you, they’re mated,” Imogen explained to you with a heavy heart.

You spent that night weeping for the relationship you won’t have now, the possibilities that didn’t come. Grieving wishes that will never be answered anymore. Maybe you could still try, still be the girl Xaden will fall in love with. But every time you looked his way, every time you asked for help or came up with suggestions, there was another girl he was paying attention to now. He gravitated towards her, protected her out of reflex.

“I’m sorry. I can’t do this,” he apologized at night, restless shadows covering the courtyard.

“Why not?” You demanded, voice thickened with tears. “Why can’t you love me still?”

“Things are different now,” Xaden stated. “I’m not the man you loved anymore.”

“So she gets to have you and I don’t?” You furiously shake your head. “You promised not to leave me! You promised to always protect me!”

“She needs my protection now,” he didn’t even sound sorry.

He left you alone and broken to pick up the pieces he shattered. The words he gave you meant nothing anymore, all his promises were broken, torn up as if they were just a piece of paper. There was no solution that could save you from this, no medicine from the infirmary for broken heart. Not all childhood loves were meant to last forever, no matter how innocent and strong they used to be, and no matter how desperately you hung onto them.

Garrick Tavis

You met Garrick about five minutes after you crossed the parapet to the rider’s quadrant, only thirty minutes after him. It was hard not to notice him with the way his broad shoulders warned everyone to keep away from his personal space and crooked smile that provoked any smart mouth to have a go at him and see what happens. You didn’t want to be another number amongst the cadets who didn’t trust each other, so you cheerfully introduced yourself.

He was the distrustful one in this case, but over the weeks and months you gave him no reason to keep his distance. You both bonded dragons, lived through challenges, passed tests, and at no point were you dangerous to him. You created a routine where you checked on each other after too long training sessions and supported each other on hard days. Sometimes he told you stories about his home and in exchange you shared facts about your family.

With more marked cadets coming in in your second year, you expected him to get busy training them, but not too busy for you. But it seemed every free minute of his day was taken up doing one thing or the other for the marked kids, and a certain pink haired girl in particular. You saw how his eyes traveled towards her when you were talking to him. Saw the lengths he went to just to make her smile.

“Do you even care anymore?” You question him after a week of not even being able to talk to him.

“I’m just busy,” Garrick defended.

“Yeah, busy trying to get into pink-freak’s bed,” you deadpan with jealousy. “I thought we had something… special. But I see I was just a placeholder for your actual girlfriend.”

“There’s just more for me to do now,” he shrugs. “I can’t cater to all your whims. Grow up. We weren’t special, we were just convenient.”

“Oh fuck you Tavis,” you shake your head already turning away.

“Nah you won’t get that chance anymore,” he calls after you.

Anything you might have felt for him shatters in that moment, and you leave the pieces of your heart under his crushing boots. Your relationship seemed as natural as the bond to your dragon, but you saw now you were just a distraction until his actual point of interest came back. You might have borrowed him for a year, but she had him hooked for much longer than that.

Bodhi Durran

You and Bodhi fell into step as naturally as the season changed. In the rider’s quadrant there wasn’t time for niceties and feelings, but you worked together without words and supported each other without asking. When you had trouble nailing flight maneuvers, he spent hours teaching you until his own fingers went frozen. When he had to trained the new marked cadets, you divided half his students as yours and followed every method he prepared.

You didn’t need grand gestures and declarations of love, you were just there. Quiet, supportive, useful. He used to say how grateful he was for the silent strength you gave him, until he started taking it for granted. Stopped thanking you for the meals you remembered to bring him or the notes you took in classes he fell asleep half way through due to his own exhaustion.

You had no doubt you’d be coming into the third year as strong as ever, but you should have known better than to expect anything at Basgiath, where every day carried the danger of death and tomorrow was never promised. Suddenly you were only valuable when you could take things off his leadership plate of clearly his responsibilities for the evening. You had no problem doing these things for him at first, but they were never met with reciprocity or even gratitude anymore.

“Hey, I thought we could go out tomorrow?” You propose in the evening in his bedroom. “If you’re free, that is?”

“Go out?” Bodhi hardly looks up from his homework.

“Yeah, you know, like a date…” That suddenly spikes his interest.

“Why would I be going out on a date with you?” He asks incredulously.

“Um… because, we…” You swallow hard.

“I have zero intentions of dating you,” Bodhi declares. “How the fuck did you even get that?”

“Well I thought, you know, that we… we had something going on,” you explain turning red.

“There’s nothing like that going on,” he shook his head at your humiliation. “You’re just a good helpmate that’s all.”

“Oh wow, fine,” you frantically pick up your things from around the place.

“Where are you going?” Bodhi questions.

“To be a good helpmate somewhere else,” you mutter before slamming the door behind you.

You felt the humiliation burning up your face until you reached the showers and splashed your face with cold water. Two years of help and support and he thought you were only being a friend? Friends don’t sleep over at each other’s after studying into two in the morning. They don’t put your grades over their own, they don’t make sure you are fed three times a day and don’t stitch you un in the middle of the night.

And they definitely don’t look at you the way you’ve been looking at Bodhi for the past two years, but clearly that’s something he missed. Now he acted like your feelings didn’t matter, like pouring your heart out to him was only a game, a joke to pass time. Every time you though of him laughing at you again, your heart cracked a bit more, that was not the man you had dreamt about for months. You had never seen him be this cruel to anybody.

Dain Aetos

Dating was the last thing on your mind when you entered the place where cruelty and spite concentrate and nightmares are the daily lived experience. Constantly fighting for your place between dragons and death threats, all joys of life were easy to move aside. You and Dain started meeting during your first year. It was familiar and convenient, the warmth of each other caressed your aching muscles.

Your bed was never too cold, his scent always lingered and half your desk was covered in his own textbooks. You were quiet and sacred about the time you spent together. You had fun at shared breakfasts and walks, even when you managed to snag duties together. Dain was your rock against which the current of insecurities and weaknesses crashed. He always held you up, always figured out how to boost your confidence up for a challenge.

When he was named squad leader for your second year, you were prepared to properly celebrate him. You wanted to congratulate him for acquiring the position he spent the whole year working overtime towards, but he never came. The cold walls of your room were silent and the darkness that fell deafening. On the third night he didn’t show up as he usually would, you found him in the gym, practicing fighting style he could do in his sleep.

“Hey, you’ve been couped up in here all this time?” You joke but his expression sours.

“I’ve just had a lot to think about and work on,” he dodges your question.

“Aren’t you going to come to bed? I wanted to congratulate you properly,” you wing at him.

“I can’t. We can’t do this anymore,” Dain states as if it doesn’t affect him at all.

“What are you talking about?” Your mind races but your heart already starts breaking.

“I have a leadership position now, fraternizing with cadets is forbidden,” he shrugs.

“So I don’t mean anything anymore?” You cry out. “Just because you’re a squad leader now we are nothing?”

“That’s the rules. And I’m not going to break them for you,” Dain specifies watching your stunned expression. “And watch your tongue. You’re out after curfew.”

“My apologies, squad leader,” you murmur after a moment and bow your head. “I thought you were just Dain.”

You run out of the gym, tears already falling. You knew Dain was a sucker for rules, but never would you have imagined the moment he’ll get a taste of power he’ll toss you aside as redundant. You weren’t even technically in his squad, and yet he wouldn’t risk an already secret relationship with you to jeopardize his position in the leadership you suddenly despised for corrupting his morals. Or maybe he was always like this, and you were destined to be just his collateral, a stepping stool to bigger greatness.

Imogen Cardulo

You didn’t know what you were thinking when you decided to try your luck and cross the parapet to the rider’s quadrant, but that place has been successfully kicking your ass ever since. It felt like you won challenges and earned a dragon by pure luck, and were kissed by gods to not have plummeted to your death or met the wrong end of a sword yet. Therefore your squad leader making a deal with another one and finding people to actually train with you and your friends was a welcomed relief.

Your excited talk of strategies and techniques as you waited in the gym was severed by the heavy door opening and fourth wing’s second squad striding in like they owned the place. They were all friendly, sure, but also quite deadly, if not themselves then with their dragons. But there hopefully would be no fatal wounding you in sparring. You actually grew to enjoy their company after a few weeks, quickly becoming friends, which was scarce in the quadrant.

After long evenings and impossible fight trainings you grew more and more interested in the pink-haired second year, Imogen. She always carried an aura of impartiality, like this whole place was beneath her and just an obstacle she needed to get through. She was harsh but also caring, lethal but beautifully deadly on the mat. However disinterested she tried to look, she always made sure her mates are okay and took care of threats before they had the chance to form. It took you week to gather the courage to finally do something about your dreamy staring and actually talk to her.

“Do you, uh, maybe wanna go out someday?” You offered hastily.

“I’m flattered, but I’m not interested. Besides, I’m already seeing someone,” she shrugged apologetically and turned away to talk to Rhiannon.

Your cheeks flared as you turned on your heel and walked away, of course she was already seeing someone, how could she not be? She was such a catch, of course a dumbass like you would be nowhere near her standards. Even if she wasn’t already taken, why did you think she’d be interested in a girl like you? You were lucky not to stumble over your own shoelaces and fall down the stairs most days.

She was just too cool for you. She was the kind of soldier who flies to the battle at fronts, and you would be lucky to even get there and not get lost on the way or fall off your dragon because you decided to lean away too much to watch a flock of flying ducks. Of course she was way out of your league, but it didn’t make the heartbreak and rejection hurt any less. There were no limits to dreams, but the bigger they were the more it hurt getting them crushed.

Violet Sorrengail

Maybe you hadn’t had known Violet Sorrengail since the crib, but with how close you were since the day you met you might as well could have. Since her family started residing around Basgiath and then her mother became its general, you were inseparable. You spent days and weeks burrowed under piles of books, visiting archives and libraries since early morning till the staff kicked you out at night.

You understood each other on levels most other people never got to. You developed a routine and zoned into each other’s minds so well you most of the time didn’t even need words to communicate anymore. You grew up dreaming about college and the archives, studying for the entry exam long before you even got the chance to sign up. When she couldn’t leave the school you exchanged letters, long paragraphs talking about big changes and small experiences you had in a day.

After the past half a year you didn’t see each other, you couldn’t wait for the day you’ll meet again on conscription day, and then no doubt receive cream linen robes and share a room on the campus. You got slightly nervous when you didn’t catch her signing up or see her in the test hall, she would never be late for this. Your mind raced with dangerous possibilities, but you had to concentrate on the task at hand. After the exam though, with every passing hour your anxiety spiked until there was no chance she’d come anymore.

The next days were more stressful than they needed to be, no professors giving you any information about her whereabouts no matter how hard you begged and all your letters going unanswered. You could hardly sleep, worried about the things that must have happened to her to miss conscription day. Your stress and nerves were answered the day she strode into the archives dressed in rider black leathers and her beautiful hair tied up.

“Violet!?” You couldn’t believe your eyes, you spent so long worrying about her and there she was, in a completely wrong quadrant. “What the hell happened to you?”

“Hi,” she answered sheepishly. “Sorry, I couldn’t tell you, mom sent to me to the riders.”

“But… we have dreamt about this for years…? To become scribes together…” You didn’t understand how she could have taken such a turn and not even tell you about you.

“Yeah, I know, but hey, it’s not so bad there. The food is good, it’s a little scary, but I met Xaden and oh my god, if you’d just look at him, he’s so strong, and tall, and handsome…” Violet blubbered on.

“But… it was supposed to be us…” You whisper softly.

“Well, I am a rider now. I have a different life,” she shrugged like it’s just another weather change.

Like she didn’t just wreak your whole world, like she didn’t burry everything you dreamt of together in a single sentence. Of course Violet was meant for great things, she was amazing. Smart, beautiful, confident. You just never thought these things suddenly wouldn’t include you. That she’d exchange you for a man, no matter how handsome, in just a couple days. This time, you were sure your heart breaking must have been heard throughout the whole silent archive.

Mira Sorrengail

Mira Sorrengail was a legend. Even before you left Basgiath you’ve heard stories of her heroism, battles and missions that earned her titles and medals. You were excited to work with her of course when you’ve got the orders to join her outpost, but also nervous of what she’d think of a rookie like you. But soon you found out she wasn’t as cruel and indifferent as some tales made her out to be. She was a little standoffish, sure, but anybody would be with new people they didn’t know.

With each sparring session spent together and every strategy meeting you agreed in, you’ve learnt a bit more about how kind and caring she actually was. She protected the people she held close and took no bullshit from anyone. And you couldn’t help but fall for her more with each little detail. How she prepared her morning coffee, how she organized her notes in mission briefings, what her routine was before flying away.

Maybe it was the fresh air and atmosphere of constant danger speaking, but you were enamored with everything she did, to a point you had to ask people to repeat themselves when you watched her stretching or handling deadly weapons for too long. You needed to do something about this intensifying crush before it crushed you, and the end of the evening training session was the perfect opportunity.

“What are you doing Saturday?” You ask nonchalantly when stacking mats back in place.

“I have plans, why?” She measures you with her eyes.

“Just wondering if you’d maybe wanna go out with me?” That earned you a burst of laughter from her.

“Sorry, but no,” Mira laughs. “You aren’t really my type.”

“Wow, that was…” You shake your head. “Sorry I asked.”

It was cruel to laugh at you like that, for simply asking. She didn’t need to be thrilled, or even flattered, but it’s not like she had to make you into a whole spectacle. Of course she wouldn’t be into you, you were just a younger rider hardly out of college, but somehow you had still hoped for the impossible. You only hoped for a chance to worship her for how amazing she is, but clearly she had no desire for that.