While you were studying the blade, I was studying you. You're weak on your left side and your footwork could use improvement. Also I think I've fallen in love with you. Who said that.
── .✦ synopsis: What was meant to be a peaceful getaway quickly turns into something far more intense. Between shared moments of tenderness and nights that burn too brightly, your romance with Rafayel begins to blur into something darker, more possessive. You start to realize Rafayel isn’t just falling in love — he’s binding himself to you, and he won’t ever let you go.
── .✦ content: fluff, yandere!rafayel, seagod!rafayel, murder (not graphic), rafayel is a little crazy obviously, manipulation, obsession, SMUT (mdni)
── .✦ wc: 30.7k (i'm sorry)
── .✦ author's note: for my 1k follower special! thank you again ♡
The throne of Lemuria was carved from coral, polished to a dark gleam that reflected the shifting glow of the sea’s molten heart. Light drifted down in ribbons, painting the vaulted chamber in colors that should have dazzled — blues like sapphires, golds like flame, shards of pearl that gleamed like stars. Fish flickered in and out of the arches, scales flashing like coins scattered in the tide.
Rafayel slouched on the throne as though it were a chair stolen from some tavern. His chin rested on his palm, his violet gaze dull, half-lidded. Beauty pressed in from every direction, centuries of artistry, myth, and divine weight — and to him, it all felt hollow.
He let the silence hum in his ears, the pulse of the ocean vast and steady. It was a sound he had heard all his life, one he would hear until the seas themselves withered. Eternity stretched before him like a barren horizon, endless and flat.
The scrape of sandals against stone broke his thoughts. Elder Amund entered with his usual unhurried stride, white hair drifting in the current like a cloud. His lined face carried no reverence, only irritation tempered by long patience.
“Still sulking on that throne?” Amund’s voice cut across the chamber, rough and almost fond in its exasperation. “You’d think a god might find something useful to do with himself.”
“I’m not sulking,” Rafayel replied without moving, voice low and lazy. “I’m enduring.”
“Enduring what? A throne of coral, endless food, the devotion of every living soul under the waves?” Amund’s tone was dry, almost fond despite its sting. “Poor sea god. What a misery your life must be.”
Rafayel turned his head just enough to meet the elder’s gaze, lips twitching in something too humorless to be a smile. “It is, actually. Have you ever drowned in perfection, Amund? Everything gleams, everything shines, and still…” He trailed off, eyes flicking to the grand mosaic overhead. “…there’s nothing in it that feels alive.”
“You’re brooding.” Amund snorted, folding his arms. “The flame’s dying, Rafayel. You know what that means. Time’s running shorter than you’d like to admit.”
The reminder made his jaw tighten. He didn’t move, only let his gaze remain the mosaics overhead. Gods captured in shells and pearl fragments — faces locked in triumph and love. All frozen, all eternal, and not one of them stirred the emptiness pressing against his ribs.
“I know,” he said at last, voice flat.
“Then stop pretending you don’t. You need a devotee—a bride.”
Rafayel’s lips curled in a humorless smile. “So you’ve told me. Repeatedly.”
“Then listen, for once. The flame cannot burn without a bond. And without the flame, Lemuria falls. You were born for this duty, Rafayel.” Amund’s voice softened slightly, the sharpness edged with patience. “You’ve avoided it long enough.”
He dropped his hand from his cheek, fingers drumming against the coral armrest. “Tell me then, why must it be a bride? Why not any devotee? Why this ritual binding, this… bond, no one will explain to me? I hear the words, but they’re empty. Empty as this hall.”
Amund’s frown deepened, but his tone softened just slightly. “It isn’t words, boy. It’s survival. And it’s not a question of if—it’s when. You can’t keep yourself apart forever.”
Rafayel leaned back against the throne, the picture of languid defiance, though a flicker of truth stirred in his chest at the elder’s words. He hated the reminders, yes — but beneath that, loneliness gnawed at him, quiet and relentless.
He remembered the way others had looked at him in centuries past: with awe, with fear, with trembling devotion. Not once had it felt like being seen. Not once had it touched the hollow at his core.
Rafayel’s laugh was sharp, short, and lonely. “Forever is precisely what I have. And not one face I’ve seen is worth tethering myself to it.” He flicked his fingers, sending a ripple of heat spiraling upward, startling a shoal of fish into scattering. Their silver arcs vanished into the blue.
“No one has caught my eye,” he said quietly. “No one worth a second glance.”
Amund sighed, long-suffering, and turned toward the exit. “One day, Rafayel. Sooner than you think, someone will. And when that happens, all this brooding will seem very small.”
The chamber fell silent again when he left. Rafayel leaned back, staring at the ceiling of shattered pearls and broken gods, his chest a hollow tidepool.
“Find a bride,” he murmured, voice low with amusement and bitterness both. “As if such a creature exists.”
He let the silence swallow him again, not knowing the answer to his emptiness had already begun to take shape above the waves.
When Amund’s chiding footsteps faded, Rafayel lingered in the throne room a while longer, staring up at the drifting light as though it might offer answers. But the silence pressed heavy, and the weight of the flame’s slow guttering seemed to echo with every heartbeat.
With a sigh sharp enough to send a shiver through the current, he rose from the throne.
The city parted for him as he left — Lemurians bowing, turning their faces away, whispering reverently. He ignored them all. He moved like a shadow through the coral streets, past the archways of shell and pearl, past the flickering torches that struggled to hold the sea’s warmth. Always the same, always gleaming, always lifeless.
The water grew darker as he swam upward, away from the golden heart of Lemuria, through forests of kelp that swayed like ghostly hands. He rose until the pressure thinned, until he felt the tug of the moon pulling on the waves above.
When at last he broke the surface, night air kissed his skin, warm and salt-sweet. He drew in a breath as if he hadn’t tasted it in years, eyes narrowing at the stretch of sky overhead, stars scattered like spilled pearls across velvet.
The coast lay not far — a crescent of pale sand, the faint glow of torches flickering from a cluster of buildings beyond. The locals called it Verona, he remembered vaguely. A name carried to him on the tide, half-heard in the prayers of fishermen and drowned sailors.
He let himself drift closer, letting the surf bear him toward the shallows. From here, the human world unfolded in miniature: laughter carried over the water, the warm hum of music spilling from a distant tavern, the golden scatter of lanterns glowing like fireflies against the shore.
So fragile, so fleeting, yet something in it stirred a hollow place in his chest. Mortals, with their soft lives and easy joys. They burned bright, if only for a moment. How simple it seemed, to laugh beneath lantern light and call it enough.
Rafayel hovered just beyond the breakers, half-submerged, lavender hair slicked back by the waves. His eyes caught every flicker of movement on the sand, the way mortals moved together, touched, leaned close in secret whispers.
He told himself he had come only to clear his mind, to drown out Amund’s nagging voice with the chaos of another world. Yet as he lingered, watching the distant glow of Verona’s coast, he felt the faintest stirring of something that was not boredom. Not yet longing — but close enough that it made him restless.
“Humans,” he muttered, voice low, sardonic. “So loud. So brief. And still…”
The surf broke against the rocks, hissing like laughter, as though daring him to look closer.
The waves shifted, and there you were.
At first, Rafayel thought you a trick of the moonlight — a figure wandering the pale strip of sand, skirts brushing your ankles, bare feet leaving soft indentations in the tide-smoothed shore. But no, you were real, lit by the warm glow spilling faintly from Verona, haloed by starlight.
Something in him went still.
You wore white — a gown light and flowing, the kind that clung to no shape yet somehow revealed all. The fabric shimmered faintly where the water touched it, edges translucent, as if the sea had claimed part of you for itself. He drank in the sight, transfixed by how it moved around you, ghostlike, holy. For a moment, he thought of Amund’s words — of needing a bride, of the necessity of binding himself to someone, someday. And without meaning to, he pictured you in a veil, soft silk drifting down to frame your face, your hands reaching for his. The image was so startling, so visceral, that he drew a sharp breath and shook his head, as though the very thought were sacrilege.
He watched you bend to pluck a seashell from the damp sand, turning it over in your fingers with a concentration that was almost childlike. Then you straightened, tucking it away as you wandered on, the hem of your gown swaying with each step. Your toes brushed the edge of the surf, kicking lazily at the water.
So ordinary a thing, and yet…
Rafayel found himself leaning forward, twinkling eyes tracking every movement. He’d seen thousands of mortals in his lifetime — prayed to, feared, adored, dismissed. But none of them had ever looked like this. None of them had moved with such quiet gravity, as though the sea itself curved toward you.
The look on your face caught him: thoughtful, almost wistful, a crease in your brow that spoke of some weight you carried. Loneliness? A secret untold? He wanted to know. He wanted to strip your thoughts bare, lay them out like pearls in his palm.
And your voice — what would it sound like? Would it be soft and lilting like the tide at dawn, or hushed and secret, a melody meant only for him? He imagined it in his mind, low and warm, imagined the shape of his name on your lips.
Beautiful. You were beautiful in a way that unsettled him, not for your features alone but for the way you existed within the world: a mortal girl walking the shoreline as if the night belonged to you. No fear, no hurry, no thought of the god watching from beneath the waves.
Rafayel’s chest tightened unexpectedly. A strange, restless thrum ran through him, alien and unwelcome. The thought rose unbidden: What if she walks away, and I never see her again?
The idea clawed at him, sharp and unfamiliar. He had never cared before. Mortals came and went, their faces blurring together like foam on the tide. But the thought of you fading into Verona’s lantern-lit streets, of him losing this chance to look again, to know — it twisted inside him like a knife.
He shifted, almost without thought, letting the tide carry him closer. The beach was almost empty save for you; still, he sought concealment, slipping toward a scatter of jagged rocks where the surf foamed white. He lay against them, half-submerged, slick hair blending with the glimmer of the sea, eyes fixed on you with unblinking hunger.
Just once, he told himself. Just once, I need to see her up close.
It was a lie, and he knew it. Already the hollow that had gnawed at him for centuries roared with something dangerously like need. Already, the throne of Lemuria, the endless glitter of the flame, the monotony of his godhood — all of it paled beside the curve of your shoulders as you wandered the darkened beach.
He rested against the rocks, every sense straining toward you, waiting for you to draw close enough that the moonlight could sketch every line of your face into his memory. He told himself it was curiosity. That once he had seen you, once he had heard the sound of your voice on the air, he would be satisfied.
But the restless ache in his chest whispered otherwise.
─ ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ ──── ♡ ─── ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ ──
The night wrapped itself around you like silk, cool and salt-scented, the hush of the waves smoothing over all the restless thoughts that usually crowded your mind. Verona had charmed you from the moment you arrived — its warm streets, its laughter spilling out of tavern doors, its balconies draped with vines. Yet this… this was what you had craved most. The sea.
It had been so long since you’d seen it, let alone felt it — that give of wet sand beneath your toes, the playful chill of foam as it rushed over your heels before retreating. You laughed under your breath as the tide lapped higher, teasing, only to ebb again, leaving your footprints glistening in its wake.
Your skirts fluttered against your legs, light as air, the white fabric catching the starlight each time the breeze stirred it. One hand gathered the edge absently, the other cradling a small treasure — a shell with a blush of rose at its heart. You tucked it into your pocket, already imagining the little pile you’d bring home, a pocketful of the sea to keep.
For the first time in ages, you felt weightless. No imposing deadlines. No workplace politics. No eyes measuring every step you took. Just you, the night, the ocean — endless, alive.
And then, faintly, something else.
A sound.
You froze, tilting your head toward the water. It was too delicate to be the wind, too deliberate to be chance. A melody — low and liquid, threaded through with something mournful, yet impossibly beautiful. Notes rose and fell like waves themselves, slipping between the crash of surf, until you weren’t sure if you were hearing them with your ears or simply feeling them in your bones.
Curiosity tugged you forward.
The song grew stronger as you walked, drawn as though on an invisible tether. You followed the curve of the shore until the sand thinned into stone, until jagged rocks shouldered into the surf like ancient guardians. The music seemed to seep from them, echoing between their dark shapes, coaxing you closer.
You hesitated only a moment, heart fluttering with the thrill of mystery — then you moved, white skirts whispering around your ankles, your bare feet finding careful purchase against the salt-slick stone. Each note reached sharper now, more urgent, as though whoever wove it was aware of you, calling you nearer.
You couldn’t look away. Couldn’t stop yourself. The melody was a hook in your chest, pulling you toward the source waiting beyond the rocks.
And then you saw him.
Sprawled against the grey stone as though the tide had carried him there, half-draped in foam and moonlight, was a figure that at first seemed dream more than flesh. His hair fell in wet, silken strands over his shoulders, a dusky violet that shimmered blue where droplets caught the silver light. His body gleamed faintly with seawater, pale skin adorned with delicate chains, their links threaded with pearls that glowed like captured stars. In his hair, golden pieces twisted upward in the likeness of coral, glinting like treasure drawn from some shipwreck deep below.
Your gaze fell lower, and your breath caught. Where legs should have been, there lay a long, gleaming tail — scales of opaline blue shifting toward indigo, each one catching the light like glass washed smooth by centuries of tide. The fin at its end stretched languidly against the rock, as if even in slumber he held the grace of the ocean itself.
Mesmerized, you moved closer without thinking, crouching down so the tips of your skirt just brushed the wet stone. He looked asleep, lashes resting like dark brushstrokes against skin too striking to belong to any man you’d ever seen. A thought flickered: is he hurt? And before you could second-guess yourself, the word slipped from your lips in a whisper.
“Hey…”
No answer. Only the hush of the tide and the far-off cry of a gull. The water lapped closer to your knees as you leaned in, hesitant but unable to leave. You reached out, brushing your fingertips lightly against the skin of his arm, warm and strange beneath your touch.
“Are you alright?” you asked, a little louder this time.
For a moment, nothing. Then his eyes opened.
They caught you immediately — blue, impossibly blue, tinged with shifting pink at the center, like the inside of a seashell or the heart of a flame beneath water. They looked directly at you, heavy-lidded but sharp, and your breath stuttered under their weight. He blinked once, slow, then a voice as smooth as tide over stone spilled from him.
“Perhaps,” he murmured, lips curving faintly, “you’re disturbing my rest.”
The words struck like a ripple, low and velvety, with an amused cadence that made your heart jolt against your ribs. You froze, stunned — not just by his voice but by him, by the impossible reality of him. Every part of your mind urged you to respond, to say something, anything, but your tongue faltered. You were too busy staring.
At the scales that glimmered across his collarbone. At the droplets sliding from the ends of his hair. At the endless curve of his tail, scales shifting like starlight each time the water sighed against them.
He tilted his head, a sly smile tugging at his lips. “Staring? Bold of you.”
Your cheeks burned hot. “I…I didn’t mean to, I’m sorry. I’ve just… I’ve never seen someone like you before.”
“Mm.” He let the hum linger, eyes dancing as though he could drink in your fluster. “Is that a compliment, then?”
You blinked, caught, tongue fumbling uselessly between denial and honesty. The laugh that bubbled from him was soft but edged with something sharp, teasing. He leaned in just slightly, and you caught the faint salt-warmth of his skin, the wet tang of the sea clinging to him.
“You’re shy, aren’t you, cutie?” His voice was velvet, dangerous in its ease. “Don’t worry. I won’t bite.”
He shifted against the rock, scales dragging over sand with a whisper like shattered glass tumbling in waves. The playful curve of his mouth faltered, replaced for a fleeting instant with a flicker of strain. His hand came to brace against the surface beneath him, fingers curling hard enough that the tendons showed pale beneath his skin.
The sound that escaped him was small, almost careless — a soft exhale that could have been a sigh, but your stomach knotted anyway.
“Wait—” you leaned forward instinctively, skirts soaking at the hem where the tide had crept closer. “Are you hurt?”
His eyes cut back to yours, the teasing gleam still there, though now it seemed threaded with something heavier. “Mm,” he hummed, dismissive, “a bruise, perhaps. Nothing worth your worry.”
But you were already scanning him, gaze darting to where his scales met skin, to the faint lines of red that glimmered between some of the opaline plates. Your chest squeezed. “Did you… wash up here? On the rocks?”
He tilted his head, damp strands of violet hair spilling forward across his cheek. The smile that rose was crooked, too sharp to be entirely reassuring. “What if I did?” His voice was low, rich, curling around your ribs like the tide itself. “Would you take pity on a poor sea-creature?”
You swallowed, pulse quickening. “At least let me help you back into the water. If you stay here, you could get worse. I’ll—” you faltered, then steadied yourself. “I’ll just… be worried if I leave you like this.”
Something shifted in his expression then. His lips parted slightly, and for the first time the playful mask seemed to slip. The way he looked at you — intent, searching — made your skin prickle with heat.
“You’d worry for me?” he echoed softly, as though tasting the words. His eyes, bright as tidal fire, narrowed just faintly, catching the moonlight in a way that made them gleam too brightly, too hungrily. A glint, sharp and fleeting, as though some secret thought had just bloomed behind them.
When you nodded, unsure why your throat felt tight, his smile returned. Softer, but not safer. “How curious.”
You blinked. “Curious?”
His gaze dragged over you, lingering at your lips, then back to your eyes. “Humans rarely offer kindness to my kind without a hidden hook. Tell me…” His head tilted again, slow as a predator circling. “…is this your trap?”
The words startled you, the accusation catching you off guard. “A trap? No—I don’t want to hurt you. I just…” Your breath trembled, but you forced the words out. “I just want to help.”
For a beat, silence stretched between you, broken only by the hiss of the sea pulling back against the stone. Then his laugh came, velvet and low, curling like smoke from a flame.
“How very sweet,” he murmured, though there was still something sharp in his gaze, something that made your skin warm and cold all at once.
You shifted closer, your eyes flicking to the faint way his arm rested near his side, fingers curling there as if unconsciously shielding something. The moonlight caught the lines of his torso, pale and wet from the sea, droplets still rolling down the cut of his ribs. You couldn’t help it — your gaze lingered on the place you thought he might be hiding an injury.
“Let me see,” you murmured, reaching before you could second-guess yourself.
Your fingertips skimmed the ridge of his waist, warm skin slick beneath them, the rise and fall of his breath pronounced beneath your hand. He went utterly still. For a suspended second, he let you touch him, and you swore you felt the faint flutter of muscle tightening beneath your palm. His cheeks flushed faintly in the moonlight, an almost imperceptible betrayal of his composure.
Then, his hand closed around your wrist. Not rough, but unyielding, the strength in his grip undeniable. “You know,” he said, voice a lazy ripple of amusement, “it’s rude to touch a stranger so freely.”
Your breath caught, heat rising sharply to your face. “I—I’m sorry,” you stammered, eyes darting away before you forced them back to his. “I thought you were hurt.”
His fingers lingered a moment longer, the weight of his hold reminding you of how easily he could keep you there if he wanted. Then he let go, slow and deliberate, leaving your skin tingling where his touch had been.
“Not anymore,” he said, the words slipping out in a tone just shy of flirtatious, layered with something you couldn’t quite read. His gaze caught yours and held, steady and intent, as if the silence itself was a game between you. The crash of waves filled the stillness, your heart beating a fraction too loud in your chest, the air between you strung taut as the tide’s pull.
Finally, he tilted his head toward the horizon, where the moon hung heavy and silver over the sea. “Stay,” he said softly, with a half-smile that could have been either kind or mocking. “Watch the moon with me… before I return to the sea.”
For a while, you both sat in silence. The sea stretched endlessly black before you, its horizon fused with the sky, while overhead the moon was a pale lantern suspended in eternity. You stayed close to him, though you kept a respectful distance, your skirts gathered against the wind. He was warm even without clothes, the heat of him striking against the cool night air. His hair caught the light as well — wispy strands threaded with violet where the moon touched them, sea-spray clinging to glittering ends.
“Have you ever been on land before?” you asked softly, half-afraid to disturb the quiet spell.
He tilted his head toward you, eyes glimmering. “No,” he murmured. “This is my first time… and already, I think it suits me.”
Your lips curved despite yourself. “Suits you?”
“Yes.” His gaze drifted over you — not crassly, but in a way that left your skin tingling as though he’d traced you with his fingertips. “The air is sharp. The ground is steady. And then there’s the company.”
You ducked your head, heat rising to your cheeks, but couldn’t stop the small smile tugging at your lips. His words carried a weight that felt less like flattery and more like… seeing.
“And you?” he asked after a beat, voice softer. “Do you like the sea?”
You turned your eyes toward the restless waters, watching the pale line of surf break against the shore. “I always have. I used to think it was lonely out there, endless and empty. But maybe it isn’t. Maybe it’s just… waiting.”
“Waiting for what?”
Your throat tightened, but you managed a small shrug. “For someone to listen.”
His eyes lingered on your face for so long you felt the heat of it, the intensity. “Then it has been very lucky tonight,” he said at last, a faint smile curling at his mouth.
The question lingered on your lips before you even realized you had spoken it. “Do you… have a name?”
His gaze flicked to yours, bright and unbothered, and with a lazy curl of his mouth he said, “Rafayel.” The syllables slipped from him like a tide retreating from the shore, smooth and musical.
You repeated it softly, as though testing how it tasted in your own mouth. “Rafayel… it suits you.”
Something shifted in his eyes. The teasing lilt in his expression faltered just a fraction, and though he tilted his head away like the compliment meant nothing, you caught the faintest shade of warmth ghosting across his features — so fleeting you might have imagined it.
The silence that followed was no longer empty. It pulsed with the rhythm of the waves and the unspoken things that hung between you. You thought — absurdly, dangerously — that you could sit with him like this until the sun came up.
But practicality tugged at you. The hour had grown late. You shifted slightly, gathering your courage. “I should go,” you said, regret heavy in your chest. “It’s getting late.”
You rose, smoothing your skirts, then hesitated. Something in you refused to leave so abruptly. Before you could think better of it, you reached down and caught his hand. His skin was warm, rougher than you expected, and the strength in his fingers startled you.
“Will I see you again?” you asked, the words spilling out more urgently than you intended.
His lips curved into something almost mischievous. “That depends. Do you want to?”
You flushed, holding his gaze, your grip tightening unconsciously. “Yes.”
His thumb brushed once across your knuckles before he withdrew his hand, slowly, as though savoring the contact. “Then meet me here. Tomorrow night. Same place, same moonlight.”
Relief and excitement flared through you, lighting your whole body from within. “I’ll be here,” you promised, your voice firm despite the fluttering in your chest.
“Good.” His smile deepened, equal parts playful and unreadable. “Then so will I.”
You lingered a heartbeat longer, reluctant to sever the connection, before finally turning away. The sea breeze tugged at your hair, and when you glanced back, he was still watching, eyes glowing with a brightness that rivaled the moon.
You walked back through the quiet streets of Verona with a spring in your step, the salt still clinging to your skin, the cool night air brushing against your flushed cheeks. The city had begun to settle into silence — lamplights flickering, the faint hum of crickets replacing the daytime clamor. Yet inside you, there was nothing quiet at all. Your chest felt alight, your stomach fluttery, every part of you restless with excitement.
You laughed softly to yourself, unable to believe what had just happened. A mermaid — no, a man from the sea. You had spoken with him as though it were the most natural thing in the world, sitting shoulder to shoulder on the sand while the waves whispered at your feet. Part of you wondered if you had imagined it, some whimsical dream conjured by the ocean breeze and the moonlight. But then you remembered his eyes — blueish-pink, deep and startling, so alive with mischief — and you knew no dream could have felt like that.
By the time you reached the modest little hotel where you were staying, your heart was still racing. You pushed open the door to your room, let it fall shut behind you, and leaned against it with a grin you couldn’t quite smother.
What on earth is happening to me? you thought.
You had come here for a quiet vacation, to collect seashells, to stroll the beaches — not to meet men from myths. And yet, now, the thought of tomorrow night tugged at you with such intensity you could hardly bear to think of anything else.
You sat in front of the small wooden table, pulling out the treasures you had collected earlier in the day. Shells in shades of cream, pink, and coral spilled across the surface, still dusted with grains of sand. As you sifted through them, arranging them in neat little rows, your fingers hesitated. Something was missing.
Your bracelet.
You frowned, glancing down at your wrist. The familiar glimmer of silver wasn’t there. A small panic fluttered in your chest, but you quickly forced it away. You must have lost it when you’d been crouching among the rocks, sifting through shells. Maybe the tide had tugged it away. It wasn’t the first time a clasp had given out — besides, it wasn’t valuable, not really. Just a trinket. You exhaled, shaking your head. No sense ruining tonight with worries.
Your gaze drifted back to the shells, and you let your fingertips glide over them until they paused on one in particular — a delicate spiral shell, rose blush and white with a faint golden sheen when it caught the light. The prettiest of them all. You held it up, smiling faintly as you turned it in your hand.
An idea bloomed. I’ll make this into a necklace. The thought made your heart thump. Not for yourself, but as a gift — for him. A keepsake, something of the land to give to someone of the sea. Silly, maybe. Absurd, even. But the image of placing it into his hands made warmth spread through you, made tomorrow feel impossibly far away.
You lay back on the bed at last, the shell still clutched in your palm, your cheeks aching from smiling so much. You’d never thought your vacation would turn into something like this — something thrilling, surreal, almost unreal. And yet… you couldn’t wait to see him again.
─ ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ ──── ♡ ─── ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ ──
The sea cradled him as he swam back toward Lemuria, the tide folding over his shoulders in heavy silken sheets. His body cut through the water with practiced ease, yet his mind was not on the currents, nor on the pulse of the reefs, nor the faint hum of Lemuria calling him home. It lingered elsewhere — above the surface, where the air was thinner, sharper, and where you had stood.
Your warmth lingered against him, a delicious phantom heat where your hand had dared to rest. He had feigned the injury to tease you, just a test, but the way your cool fingers traced his waist — as if you were meant to be there, as if you had every right to touch him — sent a jolt of euphoria through him. His chest tightened, heart racing, a rush of delight he hadn’t expected. The audacity of your care, the intimacy of your touch, left him flushed, breathless, craving more.
Your face rose again and again in his mind, replayed endlessly: the softness of your eyes turned moonlit silver, your lips parted just slightly when you smiled, the way your voice had shifted between shyness and boldness as if you couldn’t quite decide which guise to wear before him. And god, your laughter. That small, bright burst of sound made him ache in a way fire and salt never had. He wanted more of it. Needed more.
But what lingered most was the sound of his name on your lips. The syllables, spoken in your voice, had curled through him like smoke and flame, leaving warmth in their wake. He imagined it again — softer, more intimate — breathed into the space between you when you lay drifting toward sleep, your hand tangled with his. He imagined it roughened by desire, torn from your throat when he coaxed pleasure from you that only he could give. Each version seared him, until he craved the sound with a desperation that felt perilously close to worship.
By the time he reached Lemuria, his blood was humming too loud to ignore. He made his way through the jeweled halls without a word to the guards, without acknowledging the servants bowing low. They mattered little. Their devotion was expected, perfunctory. But yours — your awe had been pure, unscripted, untrained. You had looked at him as though he were something wondrous rather than inevitable. That gaze had done what centuries of loyalty never could: it made him hunger.
He retreated to his private chamber, a sanctum carved of pale stone and glassy coral, lit by the sway of bioluminescent flora drifting in the currents outside. With a flick of his fingers, fire sparked to life — unnatural, searing orange and red, alien in the water-bound world. The candle flame wavered, imprisoned in its glass casing, and painted his sharp features in trembling gold.
He set the bracelet down before it. Your bracelet. The one you had been wearing when you walked the shore, when your hand brushed against his waist. He slipped it off when he grabbed your wrist, almost unconsciously — like a part of him needed to claim a piece of you then and there. Now it lay in his palm like a treasure wrested from fate itself. A piece of you — yours alone — now stays with him.
His fingers closed over it slowly, reverently.
“How well it suits you,” he murmured to no one, voice low, like he was coaxing a lover awake. “But it belongs here now.”
He pictured you draped in silks of oceanic blue, seated upon the coral throne beside him, the crown light glinting in your hair. He imagined your hand resting on the carved armrest — or better, in his. The people would kneel at your feet, their voices raised in worship not just for him but for you. You would command them with grace and cruelty alike, as the queen of Lemuria must. But unlike those before you, you would smile, warm and luminous, and the seas themselves would bow to your will.
He imagined it so clearly it made his chest ache. He saw you descending the marble steps of the throne room, the courtiers gasping as though the sun itself had entered their cold depths. He saw your lips curve, not for them but for him, always for him.
The candle flame bent under his breath as he leaned closer to the bracelet, eyes burning. Already he could not wait for tomorrow. Already the thought of you standing again beneath the moon — waiting, perhaps eager — was enough to set his blood to fire. He wanted to taste that anticipation, to see the way you looked for him, only for him.
Mine, the thought whispered unbidden.
She is mine already. She simply does not know it yet.
The bracelet gleamed as though in agreement.
Rafayel let the fire play between his fingers, small licks of flame dancing along his knuckles before fading into steam. The sea was vast, endless, unforgiving — but in all its breadth, it had never given him something so wholly precious. A fragile little land-born thing, with a smile that warmed him more than fire.
Tomorrow, he promised himself. Tomorrow, he would have more of your voice, your gaze, your touch. He would let you think it was your choice to return, your decision to step closer to the tide. But he knew better. You were already caught in his current, already bound to him by something you couldn’t yet name.
The flame guttered low, shadows rippling across the walls. Rafayel reclined back, eyes never leaving the bracelet set before the light.
Yes. Tomorrow.
And soon — forever.
─ ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ ──── ♡ ─── ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ ──
The morning sun pried its way through the thin curtains, striping the room in bands of gold. You stirred awake to the distant hum of mopeds on cobblestone, a faint chorus of gulls, the steady breath of waves rolling just beyond the city’s edge. It should have been an ordinary morning in Verona — another day to wander streets and collect seashells — but you woke with something else thrumming through your veins.
Excitement.
Today, tonight — you would see him again.
You rolled onto your back, staring at the whitewashed ceiling, grinning before you could stop yourself. Last night replayed in loops behind your eyes: the gleam of moonlight on his hair, the impossible sweep of his tail, the warmth of his hand around your wrist. You’d sat beside him like it was the most natural thing in the world. You pressed your hands to your warm face, muffling a laugh.
The room felt too small to contain your restless energy. You slipped out of bed, padding across the cool tile floor, throwing open the balcony doors. Morning air swept in — sharp with salt, softened by espresso drifting from the café below. Verona bustled already; scooters zipped past, vendors shouted in Italian, shopkeepers rolled up shutters to reveal displays of bright glass jewelry and leather sandals.
The lively scene filled you with an energy you hadn’t felt in weeks, leaving you smiling and moving to the mirror. There was already a brightness in your reflection, a spark in your eyes you couldn’t quite hide. You brushed your hair with unusual care, lingered over each pin and ribbon as though he might notice, even when no one else would.
A flowy dress was chosen not for comfort, but because you imagined how the color would strike against his eyes, how he might look at you. Every detail of your morning routine seemed to carry new weight, a quiet joy threaded through it.
On the dressing table sat the small shell, pale pinkish-white and iridescent, catching the sunlight like a treasure from the sea. You reached for it carefully, fingers curving around the smooth spiral. The thought had come to you before sleep stole you away last night — to make it into something more, something you could offer him when the moment felt right. A necklace. A gift that was yours alone to give. Just the idea had you flushing, heart fluttering with a sweetness you could hardly contain. Slipping the shell into a velvet pouch, you tucked it securely into your bag and left the room.
The streets of Verona were stirring, a warm breeze carrying the mingled scents of bread and flowers, the clamor of carts and the ringing of distant bells. Stone-paved alleys twisted and opened into sunlit squares where market stalls unfurled like bright sails, their wares glinting in the morning light.
Your eyes wandered eagerly from sign to sign, searching for a jeweler’s mark. Shopfronts gleamed with polished brass and delicate engravings, glass cases catching the sun like fractured stars. At each window you slowed, pulse quickening as you imagined the shell nestled in a setting of silver, perhaps with a chain fine enough to rest against his throat. The thought alone made your breath hitch, a smile rising unbidden.
You moved from one cobbled lane to another, the city alive around you — the lilting call of a fruit seller, the distant strum of a guitar, the murmur of tourists passing with maps in hand. Yet for you, the world seemed sharper, more luminous. Every step carried the undercurrent of what awaited you tonight, the promise of seeing him again. And all the while, you held the little velvet pouch close, the weight of the shell grounding you in its quiet significance.
The bell over the door chimed softly as you stepped into the little jewelry shop, the air cool and fragrant with polished wood and faint metal tang. Sunlight streamed through the tall windowpanes, scattering across glass cases filled with chains and pendants that caught the light like drops of water. A kindly-looking man behind the counter looked up from polishing a silver ring, his eyes creasing warmly.
“Buongiorno, signorina,” he greeted, his accent lilted and pleasant. “What can I help you find today? A gift, perhaps?”
You hesitated for half a breath, the shell clutched delicately in your hand, and then smiled. “Yes, actually. I… I found this shell while walking by the sea. It feels special, and I thought it could be made into a necklace.” You held it out to him, the pearly sheen catching the shop’s light.
His expression softened as he turned it in his fingers, inspecting its natural ridges. “Ah, very lovely. The sea always gives gifts to those who know how to look. A necklace is no trouble. Do you have a design in mind?”
Your heart quickened, not because of the design but because of who it was for. “Something simple, but elegant. Just enough to show it off. Do you think it could be ready… tonight?” Your voice tilted upward hopefully.
The shopkeeper chuckled gently, nodding. “For something this size? Yes, I believe I can finish it within a few hours. You may return this evening to collect it.”
Relief and excitement fluttered through your chest, your smile breaking wide. “Really? That’s perfect, thank you.”
His gaze grew a touch curious, and with a twinkle in his eye, he asked, “A gift for a sweetheart, perhaps? Someone special?”
Heat rushed to your cheeks, and you laughed softly, shaking your head. “No, no… not like that. Just… a new friend I made while traveling. Someone I’d like to thank.”
The man hummed knowingly, still smiling as if he didn’t quite believe you. “Ah, well—whether friend or something more, I think they will treasure it. Gifts born from the sea always carry a little magic.”
You felt giddy as you handed the shell over, as though the secret of who it was for might spill out of you if you weren’t careful. A friend. That’s what you’d said, and it was true. But still, you couldn’t shake the little rush of warmth that filled you when you pictured Rafayel’s face — his wry smile softening into something gentler when you placed the necklace in his hands. The idea made your steps lighter as you left the shop, Verona’s streets alive around you.
Never in your wildest imaginings did you think you’d meet someone like him, let alone find yourself planning gifts as though you were a girl with a crush. And yet, here you were, heart buoyant with the thought of seeing him again tonight.
─ ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ ──── ♡ ─── ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ ──
The great throne room of Lemuria shimmered with its usual austere magnificence. Shafts of refracted light filtered down through the domed ceiling of glassy mosaics, painting the marble floor in ripples of gold and azure. The chamber was empty save for Rafayel, lounging near one of the carved pillars, absentmindedly running his thumb over a small paintbrush he had tucked behind his ear. A low hum slipped from him — tuneless, but softened by the warmth threading through his chest.
“Curious,” came a voice, calm but edged with amusement.
Rafayel’s humming cut short. He glanced up to find Elder Amund standing in the doorway, his long robes flowing like tidewater around him. The elder regarded him with the kind of knowing gaze Rafayel often found irritating, though today it only made him more aware of the smile tugging at his own lips.
“You’re in good spirits,” Amund noted, stepping closer. His tone was measured, though not unkind. “Unusual, for you.”
Rafayel turned his face away, as if studying the painted mosaics on the far wall. “Don’t sound so surprised. I’m not incapable of good moods.”
“Mm. Yet I cannot recall the last time I heard you hum.” The elder’s eyes narrowed faintly, the corners creasing in suspicion. “Yesterday you were gone for some hours, and you returned late. Later than you ought to, given your duties here. Tell me, what occupied your time so thoroughly?”
Rafayel exhaled through his nose, feigning indifference. “I was on the surface. Watching the shore. The humans. Time got away from me.”
“The humans,” Amund echoed, as though rolling the word over in his mouth. He came to stand a little closer, lowering his voice as though sharing a private joke. “Did you meet someone?”
Heat prickled across Rafayel’s cheekbones before he could stop it. His hand flexed against his tail, betraying him. “...Just some human,” he muttered, as though the words themselves were nothing. His eyes betrayed more — flickering with the image of flushed cheeks, a laugh he’d been replaying in his mind since.
Amund tilted his head, not missing a thing. “Just some human?” he repeated softly, as though savoring the lie.
Rafayel’s jaw clenched, a flicker of irritation flashing through him at being read so easily. He lifted his chin, blush-tinted eyes sharp even in their evasiveness. “You’re imagining things, old man. I was curious, that’s all. Don’t weave your tales from a few hours spent above the waves.”
But the elder only smiled faintly, eyes heavy with meaning. Rafayel turned his gaze elsewhere, yet the faint flush still lingered on his skin, giving him away in spite of his words.
Amund let the silence hang just long enough to make Rafayel shift. Then, with that maddening calm that had always gotten under his skin, he said, “It’s good, you know. That you’ve found someone. Only yesterday you were brooding so heavily the sea itself seemed darker for it. Now I see a spark in your eyes again. You may pretend, but you can’t hide it.”
Rafayel’s shoulders tightened. His jaw worked as though he had to grind the words into dust before letting them slip out. “Don’t make this about the ceremony,” His voice was sharper now, edges cutting where before they had only hinted at steel. “Don’t cheapen it by dragging those traditions into this. You don’t know anything.”
Amund studied him for a long, quiet beat, the corners of his eyes creased in something that felt too much like pity. “If you say so.” The elder’s voice was mild, but the weight beneath it pressed like silt on Rafayel’s chest.
He snapped his gaze away. “Enough. Leave me.”
The water seemed to stir faintly at the command, and at last, Amund inclined his head and drifted from the chamber. The hush he left behind rang loud in Rafayel’s ears.
For a long moment, Rafayel sat frozen, pulse thudding in his temples. He hated how easily the man could needle at truths he hadn’t dared name. And yet — when he reached behind his ear, pulling the slim paintbrush free, it wasn’t Amund’s words that lingered. It was yours.
The thought of you unfurled, inevitable. He set before him a smooth slab of pale stone, its surface washed clean of grit. It gleamed faintly like moonlight filtered through water. His pigments lay scattered — ground coral, powdered shell, pressed kelp ash — and he set to mixing them with deft, restless hands. The motions were habit, but his mind was elsewhere: replaying the tilt of your smile, the fall of your hair, the brightness of your dress against the dim hall.
White, yes. That was what stood out most — the white of your gown, unearthly under the glow of moonlight. It had struck him then, that color, like a beacon he couldn’t look away from. He crushed shell finer between stone and palm, mixing it with pearl dust until it shimmered pale and soft. His strokes followed instinct, tracing the curve of a figure — your figure — indistinct, yet instantly recognizable to him even in silhouette.
It wasn’t enough. His brow furrowed. The lines blurred too easily, the likeness slipped away. He tried again, sharper angles for your chin, the ghost of your hair in loose sweeps, but frustration gnawed at him. This wasn’t your face. This was only suggestion, shadow.
His breath came out slow, controlled, but the fire of it burned in his chest. He wanted more. He wanted you precisely — every exacting detail, the arch of your brows, the heat of your gaze. He wanted to pin you to this stone so perfectly that no one could ever mistake who you were. And yet…
He sat back, brush poised, and told himself he had time. All the time in the world. Time to watch, to memorize, to study until your image was branded so deep into him that he could paint you in utter darkness, eyes closed, and still get it right.
The thought stirred a warmth in him — dangerous, heady. He gathered up the painted stone, still damp with fresh pigment, and rose.
In his private chamber, the shadows cradled the small shrine he’d begun without meaning to. Your bracelet glinted faintly where he’d set it beside a half-burned candle, its metal warmed by his touch too many times to count in the short time he’s spent with it. He placed the painted stone carefully before it, letting the faint shimmer of white on stone act as centerpiece.
For a moment, he only stood there, fingers brushing over the bracelet, curling to fit it against his palm. He imagined it encircling your wrist again, with his hand wrapped over yours, holding you still. The thought drew another pulse of heat through him, more satisfying than guilt, more intoxicating than shame.
It belonged here. You belonged here, he decided. And he had no intention of letting go.
─ ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ ──── ♡ ─── ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ ──
The necklace sat warm in your palms, the little shell catching the light each time it shifted through your fingers. It really was pretty — delicate in a way that felt far too sentimental, far too revealing for something you had commissioned so impulsively. And yet, you couldn’t let it go. The closer you held it, the more restless your nerves became, winding tight in your chest.
Would he laugh at it? Think it was childish? Too forward? The questions kept crowding your head with every step you took along the sand, the tide whispering against the shore as if mocking your nerves. You weren’t sure why you cared so much — after all, this was only the second time you’d see him. He was a stranger, barely more than a passing figure carved in sea spray and moonlight.
And yet… the thought of him forgetting you unsettled you in a way you couldn’t name. You wanted to matter to him, to linger, even if it was only in some small way. Something he could hold, something that would make him think of you when you were gone.
Your grip tightened on the necklace as excitement pushed against the nervous flutter in your stomach. You let the sea wind kiss your cheeks, tangling strands of hair against your lips, and forced yourself forward. Each step over the sand and shell-strewn ground drew you nearer to the familiar rise of rocks, the place where you had first found him waiting like some secret written into the waves.
The memory of last night stirred vividly — his voice, his smile, the way his presence had felt both sharp and soft, like fire curling beneath cool water. You could still see him leaning in, just enough to catch your breath, just enough to make the world feel narrowed down to nothing but him.
The moonlight was softer tonight, almost silvery against the water, the tide lapping gently as if it were in no rush to leave the shore. You slowed your steps as the rocks came into view, breath catching despite how familiar the place already felt. And then you saw him — Rafayel, stretched along the stone as though it had been carved for him alone. His dusky hair caught the glow, shoulders relaxed, his tail idly sweeping against the surface of the water with a flicking rhythm that drew your eyes without mercy.
“Hi, cutie,” he said before you could even gather yourself, voice low, smooth, threaded with something teasingly intimate.
The sound of it made your heart flutter. You managed a breathless, “Hi,” though your voice came out softer than you’d meant. You tried to look casual, but the truth was you couldn’t quite tear your gaze away from him. Seeing him again felt unreal, even though it was only the second time. Something about him unsettled you, pulled you closer.
You settled beside him on the rock, close enough that your dress brushed the edge of his tail as it flicked lazily. You watched the movement, a little spellbound, the moonlight glimmering against each scale like it had been polished for this very moment. He didn’t miss your stare — of course he didn’t. His lips curved knowingly, and then his gaze dropped to your clenched hand.
“What’s that?” he asked, tilting his head toward it, voice light but edged with curiosity.
Heat rose up your neck. “Nothing,” you said too quickly, squeezing your fingers tighter around it.
He raised a brow, smirk tugging at his mouth. “Nothing? You look like you’re guarding it with your life. Are you hiding treasure from me?”
You shook your head, heart thudding. The nerves buzzing through you only got sharper when you whispered, “Close your eyes. Hold out your hand.”
He blinked, clearly amused. “Close my eyes? Hmm. Should I be worried you’re about to slip something dangerous into my palm? Maybe a crab?”
You gave him a look that made him chuckle, but after a moment he obeyed, leaning back a little as he extended his hand toward you. His fingers spread, palm open, his lashes lowering against his cheek as his eyes shut. “All right. I’m trusting you, little land-dweller.”
Your chest tightened. Carefully, as though the weight of it suddenly mattered more than it should, you set the necklace into his hand. “Open your eyes,” you whispered.
He did, and for a moment — just a moment — he said nothing. He stared at the small loop of silver, the pale shell threaded through it, moonlight gleaming against the polished surface. The silence stretched, long enough that your stomach twisted with doubt.
“I—if you don’t like it, it’s fine,” you stammered, words tumbling out before you could stop them. “It’s silly, I know. I just thought—well, I found the shell yesterday, and I wanted—”
His voice broke in, quiet, almost uncertain. “This is… for me?”
Your lips parted, your pulse jumping in your throat. “It is. I just… I wanted to give you something. To commemorate the night we met.”
His eyes flicked up, bright with something you couldn’t place, and then the corner of his mouth tilted. “Was it that special?” he teased lightly.
You puffed out a breath, cheeks heating. “Of course it was. It’s not every day you meet a merman! And it was your first time on the shore. That’s important.”
He laughed, a soft, rich sound that curled through the night air, and you knew he was laughing at your expression, at the way you were pouting without even realizing it. Embarrassment prickled your skin, and on impulse you reached forward to snatch the necklace back. “Fine, I’ll just keep it if you don’t like it—”
But his hand shot out, quick as the tide, wrapping gently around your wrist. “Wait.” His tone softened, velvet smooth but firm enough that you froze. His grip wasn’t harsh, just steady, warm where his skin met yours. His eyes held yours, and for a moment, something unspoken passed between you. “I love it.”
Your breath stilled in your chest.
“Truly,” he said, thumb brushing lightly over your wrist as if to soothe your nerves. Then he lifted the necklace, holding it up so the shell caught the moonlight, letting it sway between you. His smile this time was gentler, without teasing edges, carrying something almost reverent. “It’s perfect.”
And before you could say anything, he looped it over his neck. The shell lay against his collarbone, contrasting beautifully against his skin, and he touched it once, almost absentmindedly, as though grounding himself in the gift. His gaze flicked back to you, the amusement returning — but softer now, warmer.
“See?” he murmured. “Fits me perfectly. And now I’ll keep our meeting close to my heart.”
You tried to steady the rapid beat of your heart, but it was impossible with him smiling at you like that. He had to know exactly what effect he had on you — he always seemed to know — but for now, you didn’t mind.
You could feel the heat in your cheeks, though you hoped the moonlight hid it. His laughter lingered in your ears from when you’d tried to snatch the necklace back, your wrist still tingling faintly where his fingers had caught you.
The shell hung against his bare chest, pale and gleaming against skin that looked almost carved in the lunar glow. He toyed with it idly, as if testing its weight, his tail flicking lazily against the shallows beneath him. Every little movement of that shimmering fin drew your eye, the way the iridescent scales caught and scattered light as though he carried a piece of the ocean with him.
You leaned an elbow on your knees, trying to sound casual even as your chest felt tight with how aware you were of him. “So… I’ve been wondering something.”
He glanced at you, mouth curving in that way that always made your stomach flip. “Mm? Dangerous thing, you wondering, cutie.”
You rolled your eyes at the nickname, though you couldn’t keep from smiling. “Can you walk on land?”
The corner of his lip kicked higher, a flash of amusement sparking in his eyes. He tilted his head, feigning seriousness. “Are you asking me if I can sprout legs like some fairytale prince?”
Your laugh came quick and bright, chasing the sound of waves. “I don’t know anything about mermaids, okay! I’m going off of movies and old stories.”
“Oh, I see.” He shifted closer, resting an elbow where his knee should be in a pose far too human for someone shimmering with scales and seawater. “So you’re expecting me to sing songs that lure sailors to their doom? Or maybe comb my hair with a fork you stole from a dinner table?”
You covered your face with your hand, laughing so hard your shoulders shook. “Stop. I can’t believe you’re making fun of me when I’m being serious!”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he said, his tone dripping with false innocence. His tail gave another flick, splashing the hem of your dress lightly. His smirk widened when you gasped at the cold droplets.
You huffed, but you were grinning, leaning in a little closer. “So? Can you?”
For a beat, he let you stew, gaze glinting like he enjoyed your impatience. Then he tipped his head back toward the horizon. “Yes,” he admitted at last, his voice softer, like confessing a secret. “I have another form. One where I can walk.”
Your breath caught, excitement bubbling in your chest before you could stop it. “Really? Could you—” you leaned forward, eyes bright “—could you show me tonight? We could explore the city together.”
He barked out a short laugh, shaking his head. “Greedy,” he accused lightly, eyes flicking to yours. “You want to steal me away from the sea already?”
“Yes,” you said instantly, earning a surprised lift of his brow. You softened it with a grin. “It’ll be fun! Don’t you want to see what life is like on land?”
His gaze lingered on you, thoughtful, before sliding down toward the water as his tail flicked again. He exhaled, low and almost reluctant. “Using legs is… a strain on my body,” he said, quieter now, almost warning. “It’s not something I do lightly.”
You tipped your head, shoulders dipping a little, a flicker of disappointment crossing your face. “Oh… well, I don’t want you to hurt yourself,” you murmured, eyes falling away for a moment. Then, as if catching yourself, you looked back up at him through your lashes, a soft smile tugging at your lips. “But maybe… if you did, I could make it worth your while.” The look you gave him was half-pleading, half-playful, lashes fluttering in deliberate innocence as you leaned a touch closer, coaxing.
His smirk returned, slower this time, something unreadable simmering under it. “You don’t give up, do you?”
“Not when I want something,” you admitted, your heart thudding harder than it should.
He sighed, but there was a hint of amusement in it, his eyes cutting to you again. “Fine. But there’s one problem.”
Your brows knit. “What is it?”
His smirk turned downright wicked, and you regretted asking. “When I switch forms,” he drawled, leaning just close enough for your skin to prickle, “I’m naked.”
Heat flared in your face so fast you almost choked on air. “Wh—what?”
“Mm.” He dragged the sound out, clearly enjoying every second. “No clothes. Nothing at all, aside from the jewelry.” His smirk widened as his gaze dipped to your flustered expression. “Was that your plan all along, cutie? Getting me out of the water just so you could look?”
Your denial was instant and far too sharp. “No!”
The way his laughter rolled out of him didn’t help your case. You could feel yourself burning up, tugging at the hem of your sleeve like that would ground you. “I wasn’t—stop laughing!”
“Relax, cutie.” He waved a hand, grin softening, though the teasing glimmer stayed firmly in his eyes. “I don’t mind if you were. It’s hard to resist my charm after all.”
You groaned, burying your face in your hands. “You’re so annoying.”
“And yet, here you are,” he countered smoothly.
You peeked through your fingers at him, still fighting a smile despite yourself. He looked entirely too pleased, leaning back with the moon glinting off the necklace you’d given him, off the line of his bare shoulders.
You exhaled, trying to steady your voice. “Wait here. I’ll be back in a moment.”
His brow arched, but this time it wasn’t the usual lazy, teasing lift — it flickered sharp, quick, like the words struck something in him. “Back?” he repeated, tone smooth but edged with something tighter beneath.
“Yes,” you said quickly, brushing at the sand as you rose. “Just—don’t move.”
He straightened a fraction, pink gaze tracking you, a smile tugging at his lips as though he could play it off. “Should I be worried?”
“No,” you laughed, heart racing faster with each step you took toward the city lights in the distance. “I’ll be quick, promise!”
His laugh followed you — warm, lilting — but there was an undertone this time, a hesitation that wasn’t there before, like a tether pulled taut between you. You could feel his eyes on your back even as you hurried away, every step toward the streets beyond the beach thrumming with a nervous, electric energy.
The moment your figure turned from him, Rafayel’s chest tightened, as though someone had reached inside and given his ribs a cruel twist. He leaned forward slightly, resisting the sudden, ridiculous urge to spring up and follow you. He could still hear your voice in the salt-laden air, teasing and warm, your footsteps leaving prints in the sand that the tide was already reaching for.
His hand rose, almost unconsciously, to clutch the necklace at his throat. The shell was smooth, still faintly warm from your fingers, and the sensation of it made his pulse thrum. An offering. That’s what it felt like, as though you had placed a piece of your heart into his palm, delicate yet irrefutable. The thought made his breath catch, his lips curving in a smile he couldn’t temper.
His eyes narrowed slightly, fixed on your retreating figure as you moved closer to the city’s edge, hair catching the glow of the lamps lining the streets. You looked back only once, a fleeting glance, and he swore his heart stuttered. The faint blush that had tinged your cheeks when you’d given him the gift returned vividly in his mind, as if it had been seared there. The shy way you’d pressed the necklace forward, the curve of your smile betraying both nerves and delight — it had undone him completely.
So you did feel it — what he felt. Why else would you have thought of him? Made something, something simple yet striking, to press into his hands like a vow? No, this wasn’t silly sentiment. This was destiny moving, unfolding just as it was always meant to.
The ceremony that had weighed on him for so long, shadowing his every step with duty, no longer loomed like a threat. Instead, he could picture it clearly now: not a ritual binding him in chains, but a celebration. A union carved in light. You at his side, Lemuria blooming beneath the weight of your shared love.
You were warmth incarnate, and it left him greedy. That laugh, spilling so freely, should never be heard by anyone else. That smile, bright as the sun on the water, should be reserved for him alone. And those eyes — alive with sparks that made even the ocean pale in comparison — how long would he have to wait before you looked at him as though you belonged to him entirely?
His fingers tightened around the shell at his throat, a lover’s caress against its edge. It wasn’t just a token. It was a promise. You just hadn’t realized yet that you’d given it.
Would you come back quickly? Or would you make him wait, push his patience, tease him with absence? He tilted his head, eyes lingering on the path you’d taken. Either way, you would return. You had to. The tide had already pulled you into his current, and he wasn’t about to let you drift away.
Your face haunted him — how the moonlight caught the curve of your smile, how the corners of your eyes crinkled when you laughed, how the warmth of your hand lingered against his skin far longer than touch should. That warmth belonged to him. Your laugh, your shy blush, your every flicker of softness. All of it. His. The thought lodged in him like a star blazing underwater: he would never let it go.
Time blurred, and he didn’t realize how long he’d been lost in that tide of thought until your footsteps returned, quiet against the sand. He looked up — there you were, hair slightly mussed from the breeze, clutching a bundle of fabric. A shirt of white linen, simple trousers folded neatly over your arm. The sight of you offering them, the faint pink on your cheeks as you held them out, nearly unmoored him.
“For me?” he asked, though he already knew, his lips curving into something both tender and sly. He took them carefully from your hands, letting his fingers brush yours longer than necessary. You turned quickly, flustered, facing away to give him privacy. His grin widened.
“Are you sure you don’t want a peek?” His voice was velvet and teasing, meant to snare. “I wouldn’t mind.”
“Just—hurry up,” you shot back, refusing to turn around.
He chuckled, tugging the linen over his head, relishing the brush of soft fabric against his skin. God, you were adorable. So easily flustered, so quick to flee. Did you not realize how your shyness only drew him in further? Someday, he thought, he would coax every hidden desire from you. Have you pliant in his lap, whispering your wishes against his throat, every secret pulled free. But for now, he would let you believe you held the reins. He could play along with this slow descent. It was all the sweeter for it.
“Done,” he murmured at last, stepping up behind you. Before you could move, his hand slipped around your arm, spinning you lightly toward him. He stood tall now, shoulders squared in the crisp white shirt, trousers hugging his frame. The way your eyes flicked over him, then lingered, made heat rush to his cheeks despite himself.
“You look nice,” you said, soft, a small smile curving your lips. “You’ll fit right in.”
For once, words failed him. He felt the blush creep unbidden across his face, warming his skin even as he fought to hold your gaze steady. To think that one simple sentence from you could undo him so completely. He gave a crooked little smile, heart soaring, the shell at his throat pressing warm against his chest.
You didn’t even know — you couldn’t possibly know — just how completely he was already yours.
The linen was warm when he slid his arm through yours, urging you forward with a warm, “Come on, didn’t you want to show me this city of yours?” His tone carried both tease and command, but it was softened by the small curve of his lips, the one he wore only when looking at you.
You beamed at him, the shy gleam in your eyes matching the spring in your step as you led him off the sands and onto the bustling streets of Verona. The cobblestones radiated faint heat from the day’s sun, lanterns already glowing along the boardwalk. Music drifted between the chatter of vendors and laughter of children darting through the crowd. To Rafayel, it was overwhelming at first, but with your arm linked through his, it felt like nothing could touch him.
You pointed toward stalls one by one, offering explanations as though he were a curious child — yet he let you, indulging every word, every gesture. When you stopped before a vendor spinning tufts of sugar into pink clouds, you turned to him with bright eyes.
“Have you tried this before?” you asked, holding up a stick of cotton candy.
His brows lifted, faintly amused. “It looks like spun coral.”
You giggled, tearing off a piece and offering it to him. “Try it.”
He leaned down without hesitation, letting your fingers press the fluffy sweetness past his lips. His tongue brushed your fingertips — accidentally, deliberately, who could say — and he hummed softly at the taste, head tilted. “Hm. Too sweet.” Then, grinning slyly, he plucked another piece and held it to your lips. “But I think it suits you.”
You hesitated, cheeks warming, then opened your mouth to take it, only for him to laugh low in his chest, delighted by the way you flushed.
Next came a game — ring toss, simple enough. You leaned forward in determination, tossing each circle with a grace that had him shaking his head in disbelief. When you landed the winning throw, the vendor handed you a plush doll, soft and ridiculous, but when you hugged it to your chest, Rafayel thought it might be the most dangerous thing he’d ever seen: you, glowing with pride, looking at him for approval.
He wanted to cage the moment, hold it until it burned into eternity. Instead, he teased, “So this is what victory looks like for you? A stuffed creature?” Yet his lips softened at the sight of you hugging it tighter, his chest aching in ways he couldn’t explain.
Then you tugged at his hand, dragging him toward a small booth draped in velvet curtains. “Come on.”
He eyed it suspiciously. “What is this contraption?”
“A photobooth,” you explained, excitement bubbling in your voice. “It takes pictures, little portraits. Don’t you have that underwater?”
“No,” he admitted, curiosity piqued. “Our memories… we keep them differently.”
“Then let’s make one,” you urged, eyes shining. “You can keep it. Proof you were here. With me.”
The way you said with me nearly undid him. He followed you inside, lowering himself onto the cramped bench, trying not to notice how close your thigh brushed his. The curtain fell, cocooning you both in soft darkness broken only by the flash of the machine.
You leaned against him easily, instructing him on how to pose. The first shot — both of you smiling. The second — you flashing the plush victoriously while he rolled his eyes, though his grin betrayed him. The third — you holding up a silly peace sign, him caught mid-laugh.
And the last — without warning, you turned toward him, leaned in close, and pressed your lips to his cheek just as the shutter clicked.
He remained perfectly still, outwardly composed, but inside — inside it was devastation. The ghost of your lips burned hotter than any flame he’d conjured in battle. His pulse thundered in his ears. That brief, chaste kiss shattered something in him — because it wasn’t just affection, wasn’t just play. It was intimacy so casual you might not even realize what you’d given him.
But he knew.
He knew, and the knowledge made him dizzy.
When the strip of photos slid from the slot, you plucked it up, beaming as you handed him a copy. “Now you can keep it,” you said softly. “A memory.”
He swallowed, forcing a crooked smile as he took the strip with careful fingers, as though it were more fragile than glass. “A memory,” he echoed. But inside, he was already clutching it like treasure, a vow, a brand burned into his soul.
You slipped your own photo strip carefully into your purse, still smiling that soft, radiant way that never failed to hollow him out and fill him all at once. Rafayel was still reeling, still trying to steady the storm inside his chest, when it happened.
A stranger — careless, rushing — bumped into you as they passed. The jolt made you stumble, just a step, but to Rafayel it was enough. His blood went hot, his muscles tight, his fire begging to be loosed.
His hand shot out to steady you, curling protective around your arm as he turned a glare on the offender. His vision sharpened, narrowed, a dangerous instinct rising fast. The man barely glanced back, muttering an apology, but Rafayel’s temper flared all the same. How dare they touch you, even by accident? How dare they make you falter when you should be untouchable, sheltered, safe? His lips curled, words sharp and venomous at the edge of his tongue, ready to scorch—
But then you looked at him.
Your hand pressed lightly against his chest, your voice soft, calm, like water against fire. “It’s okay, Raf,” you murmured. “I’m fine. Really.”
The fury crackled under his skin, but your eyes — pleading, patient — pulled him back from the brink. He forced his hands to unclench, forced the molten edge of his expression to soften. Not here. Not now. If he lost control in this fragile place, if he let anyone see what he really was, he might never be allowed up here with you again. And that would be unbearable.
He drew in a breath, steadying, letting his thumb brush your arm once before he let go. “If you say so,” he murmured, though the weight in his voice betrayed how unwillingly he yielded. For you, only for you, he buried the urge to lash out.
You smiled, easing the tension with a tilt of your head. “Come on,” you said, reaching for his hand like it was the simplest thing in the world. “Let’s go explore more. We haven’t even seen half of this place yet.”
He let you pull him along, every nerve still tight, but soothed by the warmth of your fingers lacing through his. If you wanted to wander, he’d follow. If you wanted adventure, he’d make the world kneel to give it to you. Anything, as long as it kept you close.
The neon lights thinned the further you led him, replaced by a path lined with lanterns strung low in the trees. Their glow bathed your face in amber, soft and fleeting, shadows playing across your smile each time you turned back to tug him along by the hand. He let you drag him anywhere you pleased — he would follow you into storms, into fire, into the deepest abyss — but still, his grip never loosened, thumb pressed lightly against your pulse.
The world felt quieter here, the noise of the crowd muffled to a distant hum. He could breathe again, though the phantom echo of anger still hummed in his bones from the man who’d brushed too close to you minutes before. His blood still surged hot, a feral instinct to tear that stranger apart for daring to collide with you. Only your touch, your voice coaxing him back, had stilled him. He hadn’t cared about the gawking eyes or the risk of drawing attention — it was you who kept him tethered, your plea soft but firm: it’s fine, it’s nothing. For you, he’d swallowed the urge to bare his teeth.
“Better?” you asked, squeezing his hand.
He let out a slow breath through his nose. “For now,” he murmured, tone light enough to mask the truth. His gaze lingered on your profile, haloed in lanternlight, too lovely to lose.
You laughed softly, skipping a half step ahead. “You’re intense, you know that?”
He tilted his head, lips curving. “And you’re only just noticing?”
That earned him another laugh, sweet and easy, and he drank it in greedily. He could almost convince himself this was ordinary — that you were his, that this night was a beginning instead of a fragile illusion.
But then, your words shifted the ground beneath him.
“This street is gorgeous,” you said, eyes wide as you looked up at the strings of swaying lanterns. “I’ve never walked down here before.”
Something prickled at the base of his spine. “Never?” he echoed, casual on the surface, though his mind sharpened like a blade.
You glanced back at him, sheepish. “What?”
“Nothing,” he said, voice lazy, amused. But inside, a knot began to coil tight. He tilted his head again, studying you as if he could peel back your secrets. “You don’t know this area well, do you? Isn’t this your city, cutie?”
The question hung in the air, deceptively mild.
You hesitated, then gave a tiny shrug, as though it were nothing. “Not exactly. I’m just… here on vacation.”
The word detonated inside him.
Vacation.
He repeated it aloud, too quickly, too softly. “Vacation?”
You nodded. “Yeah. Just a short trip. I don’t live here.” You smiled, like you’d offered him something simple, harmless. “I’ll be heading back once it’s over.”
The smile didn’t reach him. He felt it like a knife sliding neatly between his ribs, the ground tilting beneath his feet. Heading back. Away. Away from him.
His hand tightened around yours before he realized, the lanternlight suddenly too dim, the night too small to contain the rush of panic clawing at his chest. You weren’t permanent. You were fleeting, a tide that would retreat and leave him stranded.
He kept his expression smooth — barely. A sliver of his grin remained, though his jaw ached with the effort. “I see.”
Inside, the spiral tore through him. He wanted to demand when, where, why you hadn’t told him sooner. He wanted to drag you back beneath the waves where he could keep you, where no one could take you. Already, his mind ticked through possibilities: how to tether you, how to make you stay, how to make vacation turn into forever.
But your eyes were on him, trusting, unguarded, and he couldn’t risk frightening you. Not here. Not now.
So he smoothed his thumb against the back of your hand, forced his voice steady, teasing. “A short trip, hm? Then I suppose I’ll have to make sure you never forget it.”
You laughed again, unaware of the storm behind his eyes, tugging him forward into the soft glow. He followed obediently, outwardly calm, inwardly unraveling — already crafting silent vows that he would not let you slip away. Not now that he’d had a taste of you.
You smiled softly, fingers brushing against his as if to reassure him. “There’s no way I could forget it,” you said, voice hushed and earnest, before your eyes lifted to his with that devastating sincerity. “Forget you.”
For a moment, the sea itself seemed to pause. The light cast a gentle halo over your features, making you appear all the more unreachable, all the more dangerous to his heart. His chest tightened — not with relief, but with something darker, hungrier. It wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough.
His mouth tugged into a faint, lopsided pout as his fingers twitched, betraying the unrest curling inside him. He forced a smile, but there was an edge beneath it, a flicker of shadow that the night itself seemed to lean into. “Humans…” he murmured, half-bitter, half-playful. “Always leaving.”
You blinked at him, surprised, before a small laugh broke from your lips, warm and sweet against the salt-heavy breeze. “I don’t want to,” you countered, tilting your head toward him as if to banish his sulk. “In a perfect world, I’d live in a city as beautiful as this. I’d spend every day by the sea.”
His breath caught. The words struck him like fire through dry reeds, igniting something uncontrollable. He turned his head toward you sharply, the amber light catching in his ocean-colored eyes, turning them molten. “Then why can’t you?” His voice was low, velvet over steel.
You faltered, lashes lowering. “Because…” you began, but your answer trailed, thin and evasive, slipping like water through cupped hands. “There are a lot of reasons. Life isn’t so simple on land…”
He studied you, eyes narrowing, the faint crease between his brows deepening. You weren’t lying, not exactly — but you weren’t telling him everything either. The vagueness cut at him, sharper than honesty would have. He hated not knowing what held you back, what dared to chain you away from him.
Still, you smiled softly, and it killed him that even in your hesitation you glowed like this. “I’ll really miss you,” you whispered, as though confessing something precious.
The words pressed into his veins like fire, a bittersweet intoxication. Miss him? No. He couldn’t allow you to.
His throat tightened. His hand twitched at his side, aching to clutch you closer, to press you against his chest where no distance, no reason, could ever tear you away. He forced himself still, swallowing down the feral thrum rising in him. “…I’ll miss you too,” he said quietly, his tone smooth but heavy, lined with truth he could barely contain.
But inside, the sea in his chest roared. He could feel you slipping away. He could see you walking away, fading into a world beyond his reach, a world he could not dive into no matter how far he swam. His pulse raced, frantic, until his hands itched with the need to seize hold of you and never let go.
And yet he smoothed it down, smoothing his thumb again over your knuckles, as though the small gesture could anchor him, mask the truth of his thoughts. He smiled, appearing gentle, composed — while inside his mind reeled with calculation.
You had said it yourself. A perfect world. You wanted to stay, to belong here, to belong with him. But something stood in your way. Vague “reasons,” distant obligations, that invisible wall between your heart and his ocean. If you would truly miss him — if you longed for the sea, longed for him — then all he had to do was remove those obstacles. Create that perfect world you dreamed of. One where you never had to face the pain of leaving.
His eyes lingered on your profile, bathed in golden light, lips parted faintly as though you might say more. Every flicker of the flames above seemed to crown you in warmth, each step you took beside him pulling him further into the orbit he could never, would never, escape.
You won’t ever have to miss me, he vowed silently, the words echoing in the cavern of his ribs. I’ll make sure of it. I’ll keep you here. I’ll give you the sea, the city, the world — anything, everything. You’ll never walk away from me.
He smiled faintly, just enough to hide the tightening in his chest, and gave your hand a reassuring squeeze. Outwardly, a companion walking with you under the lanterns. Inwardly, a creature sinking his claws deeper into the inevitability of you.
The words slipped from his lips before he could stop them.
“When do you leave?” His voice was low, careful, as if asking might shatter something fragile between you.
You exhaled softly, your thumb brushing over the back of his hand where your fingers laced together. “Tomorrow’s my last day. My flight leaves tomorrow night.”
The light trembled over your features, and he caught the flicker of sadness in your eyes. That small downturn of your mouth — barely there, but enough to twist something violent and possessive inside him. His chest ached at the thought of you vanishing from his city, from his reach, returning to some distant place that had nothing to do with him.
Internally, his thoughts tangled. Too soon. I don’t have enough time. I need to anchor you here, somehow — tie you to me, to the sea, to everything you said you wished for. You don’t want to leave, I know you don’t. So why should you? Why should I let you?
He felt you squeeze his hand gently, pulling him back into the moment. You tilted your head, curiosity softening your expression. “You look lost in thought. Are you… planning something special for my last day?”
The question was almost playful, but it struck him with the force of a promise. He turned his gaze toward you, allowing a slow smile to rise — measured, charming, the kind that made people underestimate him. “Something like that,” he murmured, watching how your eyes lit at the words.
You brightened, laughing softly, the sound like glass wind chimes stirred by an ocean breeze. “Oh, come on. You can’t just say that and not give me a hint! What is it?”
He leaned in slightly, so close you could feel the warmth of his breath even in the cool night air. “It’s a surprise, cutie.” His tone dipped on the endearment, rougher, weighted with a heat he didn’t bother to hide.
You pouted, bottom lip jutting in a way that made his chest constrict. “It better be good.”
Rafayel chuckled under his breath, though the laugh carried more possession than amusement. He lifted your joined hands, pressing the barest kiss against your knuckles. The lantern light turned his eyes to molten blue, shadows catching in their depths. “You’ll love it,” he promised, almost too softly.
Inside, though, his mind was racing. This is it. Tomorrow, I’ll make sure you see that perfect world you want — by the sea, beautiful, unending. You won’t miss me because I won’t let you go. You don’t need to leave at all. You’ve already told me what you want; now all I have to do is give it to you.
He let the silence linger, heavy but not uncomfortable, the night wrapping around you both with the scent of saltwater and honeysuckle from a nearby garden. Somewhere, waves kissed the shore, steady and endless.
He thought of keeping you here forever — your hand always in his, your laughter carried with the tide — and for the first time in centuries, the idea of forever felt too small.
The garden was hushed, all soft earth and green shadows, the air heavy with the perfume of blossoms just beginning to open under the late light. Rafayel walks beside you, a step slower than usual, letting you drift toward the rows of flowering shrubs. You reach out, your fingertips grazing petals, and he watches you as if you are the one in bloom here, more radiant than anything rooted in Lemuria’s soil.
You bend to pluck a flower — delicate, pale with a blush at its edges — and turn to him with that smile that undoes him every time. “Here,” you murmur, rising on your toes just slightly. He freezes when you slip it into the pocket of his shirt, right over his chest. Right over where the bond mark would be if fate had been kinder to him.
His breath stutters, chest rising beneath your fingers. He doesn’t dare touch you, doesn’t dare reveal the trembling reverence running through his veins, but inside he is alight — your gift is a vow, a symbol, whether you know it or not. To him, it feels like a claim. His.
The scent of the flower mingles with the salt-soft air and something inside him aches. He imagines your hands not just placing a blossom, but pressing over his heart, sealing yourself there.
“You’ll keep it safe,” you tease lightly, unaware of the weight of what you’ve done.
He swallows. His voice comes out huskier than he intends. “Always.”
The word hangs between you, heavy, unshakable.
You glance up at him then, and it happens — the look. The one he has been waiting for, the one that tilts the whole world on its axis. Your eyes linger too long, soften too much, the faintest curve of your lips betraying something deeper than playfulness. And he knows, suddenly and utterly, that if he doesn’t close the space between you, he will regret it for eternity.
Rafayel leans in before doubt can form, before his mask of irony or detachment can shield him again. He can smell your perfume — faint, sweeter than the blossoms, like something made just for him.
His hand hovers at your waist but doesn’t touch, not yet, as his lips find yours. The kiss is tentative at first, reverent. His mouth brushes yours like a question, but the way you sigh softly against him — the way your fingers graze the fabric over his chest, just above the tucked flower — answers him more clearly than words ever could.
The world seems to hush. Leaves whisper. Somewhere water trickles over stone. But all he knows is the press of your lips, the heat sparking through him like a struck match. He deepens it, just a little, enough to taste the sweetness of your breath, and feels the ground slip beneath him.
When he draws back, it’s only because he has to see you, has to memorize the look in your eyes right now. Your lips are parted, cheeks faintly flushed, your hand still resting over the flower on his chest as if to anchor yourself.
“You…” his voice catches, a rough edge breaking his composure. He recovers with a softer smile, almost boyish, the kind he never shows anyone else. “…you’ll ruin me, cutie.”
But inside, he thinks: No, not ruin. Save. Complete. I was always waiting for this.
The flower presses lightly against his skin through the fabric, right over the place where the bond should be, and he silently vows that soon, it will be there.
The lantern path faded into a curve of garden shadows, your hand still in his, when you slowed and turned those worried eyes on him.
“Are you doing okay?” you asked softly, voice lilting with that kind of concern that made his chest tighten.
For a moment Rafayel was blank — why would you think otherwise? His body thrummed with energy, every nerve singing after that kiss. Then it struck him. Ah, the little white lie he’d spun earlier. He had told you that being on his legs for long stretches was a strain. A convenient excuse then, a way to coax you into slowing down with him. Now you were looking at him like that, as though your tender worry could undo him.
He seized the opportunity.
He tilted his head, let a faint crease of weariness touch his brow. “Mm… you’re right, I’m a little winded.” he murmured, voice roughened, carefully measured. He slowed his steps, just enough to make it believable. “It’s catching up to me, cutie.”
You stopped short, squeezing his hand. “Then we should head back. Come on, lean on me if you need to.”
The invitation set his heart racing. He should have reassured you, told you not to worry — but instead he allowed it, allowed himself to shift his weight just slightly toward you, let his shoulder brush yours more firmly. Your smaller frame bore it without hesitation, your arm steady at his side, guiding him back toward the distant hush of the sea.
The path narrowed, lamposts casting pale pools of gold on the ground. He glanced sidelong at you, the soft line of your profile lit against the dark. You didn’t complain, didn’t tease — just walked at his pace, hand firm, steps careful as though you were shielding him. The smallest things undid him: the way you slowed at uneven stones, the way you angled your body so he wouldn’t stumble. He could have walked on his own with ease, but the warmth of you pressed so close was intoxicating.
“You should have told me sooner,” you murmured. “I don’t want you to overdo it.”
Rafayel swallowed, his throat suddenly dry. He wanted to say: I would walk through fire if it meant staying at your side. Instead he managed a strained chuckle. “I didn’t want to cut our time short. Being with you makes me forget.”
Your fingers flexed in his, squeezing gently, and he thought he might combust on the spot.
The path sloped gently toward the beach, a pale trail dusted in the glow of moonlight that lit the way. Every sound — the rustle of leaves, the quiet crunch of sand beneath your shoes — sank into his memory, already etched into the shrine of moments he was hoarding.
He turned his head to watch you as you looked ahead, the salt-kissed breeze pulling at your hair. How easily you held him, how unhesitatingly you offered yourself as support. It would be so effortless to let the mask slip, to tell you that it wasn’t fatigue at all, but longing — this endless, relentless pull to remain at your side, to be the weight you chose to bear every single day.
It wasn’t just indulgence. It was a taste of the devotion he craved.
Would you notice if he never let you go?
Would you even realize how deeply you were feeding the hunger inside him?
But then your voice cut through his thoughts again, gentle as tide foam. “You should rest soon. And… I should too. Tomorrow’s important, isn’t it?”
He smiled at that, soft and unreadable in the shadows. “It is.” His voice dipped lower, playful but not enough to hide the heat beneath it.
Your lips curved, but he could see the gleam of anticipation in your gaze. “Are you going to give me a hint now?”
He let out a low hum, as though considering, then shook his head slowly. “Mm… Nope. You’ll ruin the fun if I tell you now.”
You pouted, a small sound of protest leaving you, and god, if it didn’t light something feral in him. He wanted to capture that pout with his mouth, to feel it soften beneath his own. Instead, he chuckled, quiet and warm, and tipped his head closer. “Don’t worry. Tomorrow will be perfect.”
Your excited laugh broke through the air, light and unguarded, and he memorized it like scripture. The stars painted you in silver as you stopped at the edge of the sand, the sea spread out before you in diamond ripples. For a moment neither of you spoke, the world pared down to the hush of water and the brush of your hand still steady at his arm.
And then you did something he didn’t expect. You leaned in, slow, unhurried, and pressed a soft kiss to his cheek.
Rafayel froze. The world stopped with him. Your lips were warm against his skin, impossibly tender, like the brush of a prayer. He felt it in his veins, in his bones, as though that single kiss was enough to mark him, to bind him, to carve his place at your side in something deeper than words.
Finally, you drew back, your eyes lingering on him longer than they should have. “Goodnight, Rafayel. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
When you pulled back, smiling, the imprint of you still burned there. He wanted to lift his hand, cover the spot, hold it like a relic. His pulse thundered, his composure balancing on a knife’s edge, but he forced his smirk to remain, though his voice was quieter than he intended. “Sleep well, cutie. Sweet dreams.”
And before he could stop himself, he let his fingers brush against yours — just a fleeting touch, an unspoken tether — before you slipped away toward the city’s glow.
Rafayel stood where you left him, cheek still tingling, chest tight with something uncontainable. He touched the flower in his pocket — the one you had tucked over his heart — and whispered into the empty night, “Tomorrow. Our life starts tomorrow.”
─ ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ ──── ♡ ─── ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ ──
Back in your room, the door clicked softly shut behind you, leaving the world hushed in the dim lamplight. The stillness pressed in like the sea air outside, salted and sweet, and for the first time all night you were alone — alone with your thoughts, your heartbeat, and the warmth of him still tingling on your skin.
You sat on the edge of the bed, toes curling against the cool floor, and let out a breath that felt too shaky, too full. The night was alive inside you — every moment replaying like waves lapping the shore: the garden blooming under silver moonlight, the gentle brush of his hand as you guided him back to the beach, the rare openness in his eyes when he allowed himself to lean on you. And then that kiss — soft, fleeting, but enough to leave your heart clenching so hard you thought it might burst.
You pressed your fingertips to your lips, smiling helplessly. It had felt like something stolen from a dream. Maybe all of this was — this enchanted island, the way time seemed to fold into a space where it was only him and you, no obligations, no end. But tomorrow there would be an end. The thought cut sharp, leaving your chest tight. The idea of leaving him — of him becoming just a memory, another fleeting encounter washed away by distance and reality — was unbearable.
You swallowed down the ache, pushing the fear away. Tonight, you wanted to hold on to the sweetness, not let it sour. You lay back on the bed, staring at the ceiling with a giddy little laugh slipping past your lips. Because how could you not laugh? Rafayel was… Rafayel. Magnetic and impossible and so full of hidden depths that you were desperate to learn. He made you feel alive in a way you hadn’t known you were missing — like the world had more colors, more air, more pulse.
Your mind kept circling back to the way he’d looked at you in the garden, as though every petal you touched, every breath you drew, was something sacred. It made your skin burn, made your stomach flutter with something you couldn’t name. He wasn’t temporary. You refused to let him be.
But for now, tonight — you let yourself bask in it. Hugging the pillow close, you whispered his name against the fabric, cheeks hot with the confession you couldn’t quite voice to him yet. You didn’t know what tomorrow would bring, only that you were eager for it, eager for him.
Whatever surprise he had planned, you’d face it with your heart wide open. Because Rafayel wasn’t just a fleeting dream. He was the thing you wanted to wake up to.
─ ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ ──── ♡ ─── ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ ──
Rafayel drifted down into the stillness of his quarters, the faint glow of Lemuria’s currents illuminating the carved walls and pale stone. Here, the water always seemed hushed, a cocoon of silence where even the eternal heartbeat of the sea softened into reverence. Only the shrine before him gleamed warmly, the single candle at its center holding steady, flame dancing as if it breathed with him.
He bent, careful, reverent, the flower still fresh in his hand. Its petals were tender, fragile — yet it had survived your night together, the laughter, the garden air, your kiss. He brought it close, almost brushing his lips against its edge, before pressing it to the shrine. Fingers splayed, flames seeped out, golden warmth weaving into the veins of each petal, into its heart. The bloom shivered once as though startled alive, then stilled, caught in the amber glow. Immortalized. No rot, no decay — forever as it had been when you held it.
He let his hand linger. The beginning of our covenant, he thought, the words resonating through him like a vow. You had given him your laughter, your touch, the tremor of your lips against his. This flower was not merely a token — it was proof of what had bloomed between you, of what he could not allow to be fleeting.
Next, carefully, he drew the small strip of photobooth prints from the pocket of the shirt you had given him. The corners were already softening from where he’d thumbed them again and again. He stared, unable not to. Each frame was its own world: you smiling, laughing, lips parted mid-tease, your face turned toward his. And the last — the one that clutched his heart mercilessly — the imprint of your kiss against his cheek. He could feel it still, phantom heat pressed to his skin, deeper than memory. He brought a hand to his cheek as though the warmth would remain.
With a murmur, he lifted them into a protective bubble, a shimmer of his fire surrounding them like glass. They drifted upward and settled near the flower, haloed by candlelight, untouchable. Treasures, every one of them.
But it was the ribbon — silken, crimson-black in the low glow — that made his lips curl faintly, made something sharper and darker stir in him. You had not noticed when it slipped from your hair during the kiss. He had plucked it while you were consumed by him, unable to resist the keepsake. Now, he laid it across the base of the shrine, twining it delicately around the candle as though binding flame and fabric together. You. Him. A tether.
Rafayel curled his tail underneath himself, gaze fixed on the shrine. The candle’s flame caught the edges of the flower, the ribbon, the photographs, everything — your essence, gathered, sanctified, his offering and his claim. His breath slowed, reverence heavy in his chest.
But his mind did not stay still. It drifted to you, as it always did — your words still echoing in the night air. You had spoken of flights, of leaving. He felt the faint ache pulse in his jaw as he clenched it. Leaving… No. You did not truly wish to go. He had heard it in your voice, seen it in the way your eyes lingered too long, touched him too softly, kissed him with something like desperation disguised as daring. You wanted to stay.
And so, he would make you stay. He had the means. A storm — yes. A sky so heavy with thunder and rain that no flight could ever take you from him. He would weave it carefully, not cruelly, only as fate’s intervention. A gift of time, of impossibility turned opportunity. The storm would keep you here. And he would lead you, finally, to the sea. To the place you belonged, where he had always waited for you.
But first — preparation. A new life must not begin with less than perfection. He would ready gifts, silks, the finest garments the surface could offer. Things worthy of your beauty, of the world he intended to give you. The room you would call yours had to be dressed in warmth and luxury. Everything had to be touched with the certainty of forever.
The candle flickered, throwing gold across his face as he stared into it. Tomorrow, he thought, heart beating like the steady tide.
Tomorrow she will see. Tomorrow, she will know.
And as he rose from the shrine, leaving the flame to burn, he carried the phantom of your kiss with him — its warmth, its promise — the vow he would make unbreakable when he finally brought you to the sea.
─ ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ ──── ♡ ─── ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ ──
The storm howled outside your window, a ceaseless roar of wind that rattled the glass and made the curtains tremble like frightened birds. You awoke slowly, disoriented by the booming thunder that seemed to rattle the bones of the earth itself. For a moment you just listened, heart thudding with unease as the flashes of lightning painted the room in stark, white-blue light. The storm was merciless, rain lashing against the panes, each strike of thunder carrying a weight that set your nerves on edge.
Your first thought was of Rafayel. Was he safe in this chaos? Had the storm scattered whatever he had planned for you today, forcing him back into the depths? A pang of disappointment tightened in your chest, quickly swallowed by worry. He was of the sea, yes — but storms like this, storms that tore the horizon apart, felt unnatural, as if conjured by something greater than weather itself.
Reaching for your phone with trembling fingers, you blinked against the glow of the screen. A notification lit up your lock screen:
Flight Canceled: Due to severe weather conditions, all departures postponed until further notice.
You scrolled numbly, searching for clarity, until the pit in your stomach grew heavier.
The television flickered on, filling the silence with the urgent cadence of a newscaster’s voice. Grainy footage of the storm appeared on the screen, waves the size of buildings battering the coast, trees bending to breaking points. The words were a blur — unexpected formation… no signs of dispersing… citizens urged to stay indoors… remain cautious… But your attention slipped, lost to a faint sound threading its way through the static air.
A melody.
So soft you thought at first it was a trick of the storm, some errant whistle in the wind — but no, it wound around you, curling like smoke through your chest, through your very thoughts. You froze, blood running cold, as the notes slipped beneath your skin. It was achingly familiar, a haunting strain you recognized as his.
The music tugged at you, an invisible tether pulling you from the safety of the room. Your bare feet touched the floor before you realized you’d moved, body responding not to reason but to command. The storm outside no longer sounded like chaos but like a drumbeat to march you forward. You didn’t question, didn’t resist — couldn’t resist.
Through the corridors, down the stairs, your steps were silent and sure, despite the tremors in the walls and the occasional flicker of the lights. Rain lashed against you the moment you stepped outside, soaking you instantly, chilling you to the bone. Still, the melody pressed on, louder, closer, compelling. You trudged through streets nearly deserted, the storm beating down so fiercely that most had shuttered themselves inside. Debris rolled across your path, palm fronds and trash cans toppled, but you barely noticed.
Your hair clung heavy to your face, your clothes plastered to your skin, but all you could hear was the song. It guided you down narrow paths, across the slick roads, until at last the land gave way beneath your steps and you found yourself on sand, waves thrashing against the shore.
Only then did you falter.
The trance cracked like glass under pressure, your awareness rushing back all at once as the icy water lapped at your ankles, pulling at you with greedy hands. The storm was a living thing around you, lightning clawing across the sky, the sea itself enraged. You shivered, finally seeing how dangerous it all was.
Amid the chaos, something moved.
The water churned, not with the wild randomness of waves, but with purpose, parting in slow arcs. Your eyes widened as you caught sight of him, floating just beyond the break.
Rafayel.
His form half-shadowed, half-illumined by the lightning above. No longer the man you’d walked with under lantern light, but something otherworldly. His long tail shimmered with every surge of water, scales refracting the storm’s light into shards of silver and deep cerulean. His hair fanned around him like a halo, wet strands gleaming as though kissed by fire beneath the ocean spray.
But it was his eyes that stilled you where you stood. They glowed faintly, not just with reflection but with their own surreal radiance, a blue that seared through the darkness like twin beacons. They found you even in the storm, unerring, and in that instant you felt stripped bare, seen in a way that made your heart hammer.
He looked like something pulled from myth, something beyond the reach of men — an ethereal figure risen from the storm itself, commanding it. Godlike, untouchable.
And he was looking only at you.
Your breath caught. Your lips shaped his name before you realized you’d spoken.
“Rafayel…”
His head tilted, that faint, mischievous smile you knew so well curving his mouth, but it carried something else now — an intensity, a hunger. Slowly, effortlessly, he cut through the waves toward you until he was close enough to reach for your hand. Cold water dripped from his fingers as they wrapped around yours, his grip unshakably firm despite the storm.
He raised your hand to his lips and pressed a cool kiss against your knuckles, the salt of the sea clinging to his mouth.
“Surprise, cutie.”
Confusion tangled inside your chest. You blinked at him, rainwater running into your lashes. “I don’t… I don’t even know how I got here.”
“I brought you,” he said simply, as though the answer required no further explanation. His voice was steady, almost soothing despite the chaos around you.
Your brows knit. The words should have unsettled you, and they did — but more than that, his nearness tugged at you, the familiar pull you couldn’t resist. Still, unease lingered sharp in your gut.
He drifted closer, drawing you forward until the surf soaked your skin to the waist. His tail swept behind him, stirring up glowing ripples where it cut through the water. “I want to show you the sea, cutie.” he murmured. “It’s dangerous on land right now.”
You froze at the edge of his invitation. Your gaze flicked out at the endless black horizon, then back to his glowing eyes. The ocean whispered of darkness and unknowable depths, an abyss waiting to swallow you whole. “But… I can’t breathe underwater.”
The softest laugh escaped him, low and resonant, as though the sea itself hummed in his chest. He leaned close enough that the tips of his wet hair brushed your cheek. “Do you trust me?”
Your heart pounded against your ribs, your head screaming caution, but your body betrayed you — you could only nod.
The smile that touched his lips wasn’t entirely the one you knew. Sharper, brighter, tinged with something ancient. His hand didn’t let go of yours as the waves pulled higher, tugging you into him, into the sea, into the shimmering glow of his otherworldly form.
The cold swallowed you instantly, rushing up your spine, your neck, then over your head. You panicked, lungs seizing, heart thrashing, your body instinctively clamping down to hold what breath you had left. Darkness pressed from all sides, the storm muffled into a hollow roar above.
Your wide eyes searched for him — only to find him right there, cradling your face in his hands as though you might break. The glowing blue of his gaze anchored you in the chaos, drawing your focus. His lips brushed yours in a soft, lingering kiss, stealing the panic for a heartbeat. Against your mouth, he murmured, low and commanding, “Breathe.”
Your body resisted, fear clawing at your throat. But when you did — when air rushed in — there was no water, no drowning. It was air, pure and effortless, as though the sea itself bent to his will for you.
You broke away, eyes wide in shock, chest heaving. He chuckled softly, brushing a thumb along your cheek, his voice dripping warmth. “See, cutie? You’re safe with me.”
You could only stare, lips parting soundlessly. Your thoughts scrambled, unable to piece together what had just happened, the impossible truth that you were breathing beneath the waves. The storm’s flashes caught in his eyes, in the sheen of his tail, in the curl of his hair floating like dark silk around his face. Ethereal. Yours.
You smiled weakly, still stunned.
Before you could think, his arms wrapped tighter around you, tugging you against his bare chest, your cheek pressing to the line of his throat. His skin was cool and slick, but his embrace was firm, steady, grounding. “Hold on to me,” he whispered, his breath stirring your hair even here beneath the surface.
Your fingers curled against him, clinging.
And then he moved — tail surging in great, powerful sweeps, carrying you both down, deeper, into the vast, endless dark. The sea closed around you like a cathedral, its silence heavy and sacred, your heartbeat echoing against the steady rhythm of his body guiding you through the abyss.
The water grew darker the deeper Rafayel carried you, shadows folding over shadows, but you clung to him as though his warmth was the only anchor left in this alien place. His arm locked firm around your waist, keeping you pressed to his chest, and though the sea was biting cold against your skin, the heat of his body seemed to radiate outward, enough to still your shivers. You could feel the steady strength in him as he propelled you downward, his movements cutting through the water with impossible ease, each powerful stroke sending you both gliding through the vast silence of the abyss.
The world below began to change. What first looked like nothing but endless blue and gloom slowly came alive with color — fronds of kelp swaying like banners, glowing plankton spiraling past in ephemeral bursts of light. You tightened your hold around him, your fingers curling around the nape of his neck, heart pounding not from fear now but from wonder. And then, as the sea floor came into view, you saw it.
Lemuria.
It was like stepping into a dream. Spires of coral rose high as towers, their surfaces inlaid with veins of pearl that shimmered when the light struck them. Vast arches carved from living stone framed wide avenues that wound between crystalline domes, each one glowing faintly from within as if lit by captured starlight. Schools of fish darted like ribbons of silver and gold through the streets, scattering when Rafayel’s presence brushed against them. The city pulsed with a rhythm all its own, a living, breathing sanctuary beneath the weight of the sea.
Your breath caught, and you turned your face up toward him. “Where…are we?” Your voice came out in a soft awe, even though part of you still couldn’t quite believe you were speaking at all beneath the water.
Rafayel’s eyes glimmered with a warmth that cut through the otherworldly strangeness. His lips curved as he answered, simply, “This is Lemuria. It’s…home.”
You stared, your chest swelling, and couldn’t stop the small, incredulous smile tugging at your lips. “So this was your surprise?”
He nodded, his hand slipping down to catch yours, lacing his fingers through yours even in the drifting current. “Do you like it?” His voice carried something almost boyish in its undercurrent — hopeful, as though your answer mattered more than anything.
You squeezed his hand, still unable to tear your gaze from the gleaming avenues, the ethereal beauty around you. “Yes,” you breathed, still dazed. “It’s… beautiful.”
That earned you one of his true smiles — the kind where his eyes softened at the edges, his teasing sharpness mellowed into something far gentler. He tugged you closer, brushing his thumb over your knuckles as though to anchor you against the impossible wonder of it all.
“Then come,” he said, pulling you with him through the water. “There’s more to show you.”
He guided you through the sweeping arches, weaving down a path that opened into a temple unlike anything you had ever seen. Its columns were carved from dark stone streaked with veins of pale opal, rising higher than you could fathom. Murals shimmered across its walls, painted in pigments that caught the bioluminescence, their figures moving subtly as if alive, telling stories of gods, kings, and storms long past.
Inside, the space unfolded into wide chambers, the light refracting through crystal inlays scattered throughout the floors and ceilings, painting the walls with shifting hues of blue and gold. Statues of Lemurian guardians lined the halls — fierce, beautiful, half-human, half-creature, their eyes set with gleaming gems.
“Do you live here?” you asked softly, your voice echoing in the vastness.
He tilted his head, lips quirking. “Mm. I spend most of my time here when I return. It keeps the sea from swallowing it whole.”
You traced your fingers across one of the carved reliefs, its surface cold beneath your touch yet thrumming faintly, almost alive. “It’s beautiful,” you murmured, glancing back at him. “Even more than the city.”
Rafayel chuckled under his breath, trailing after you, eyes following your every movement. “Careful, cutie. The elders would not like to hear that their jewel has been upstaged by a ruin.”
You shot him a small smile, unable to help the dry amusement in your tone. “I’m sure you’ve charmed worse crowds.”
“Maybe,” he conceded, grin sharpening, though his eyes softened as they lingered on you.
He led you deeper still, through narrow halls where the walls glittered with embedded shards of shell and gemstone, until you entered a chamber that opened into a wide atrium. The ceiling was cut glass, letting streams of pale light filter down from the surface far above, turning the whole place into a cathedral of rippling color.
Rafayel watched you turn slowly in place, taking it in. He didn’t speak at first — just let you look, let you marvel, his hand warm and steady in yours. And though the sea was vast, and the temple grand, there was a quiet hum beneath it all that made the air between you charged.
It wasn’t just a place he was showing you. It was a piece of himself.
The throne room opened before you in a breathtaking sweep of marble-white stone and pale opalescent light, the walls glittering as though embedded with shards of pearl. The water itself seemed to hum with reverence in this space, currents slowed to a languid drift, as though the sea itself bowed to its master. Your gaze drifted to the centerpiece of it all: a throne carved from coral and shell, shimmering with mother-of-pearl and streaks of silver that caught every mote of bioluminescence. It seemed impossibly regal, too grand, too holy — and for a moment, you wondered who could possibly be worthy of sitting there.
“Is… is this yours?” you asked softly, voice hushed with awe as you turned to Rafayel.
He followed your gaze, expression unreadable in the dappled light. Then, without the slightest hesitation, he said, “Yes.”
You blinked at him, your mind tripping over the simplicity of his answer. “Are you like…the king of Lemuria?” The words tumbled out before you could stop them, half incredulous, half reverent.
At that, Rafayel laughed. Not his sharp, mocking laugh you’d grown used to, but a low, velvety sound, rich with amusement. His hair rippled like ink in the current as he turned back to you, smile curling with mischief. “Not quite,” he said, voice dropping conspiratorially as though telling you a secret. “I’m not their king. I’m their god.”
Your jaw dropped. Heat rushed to your face even though the water was cool against your skin. “You’re joking,” you blurted, searching his expression for any hint of teasing. “You have to be joking.”
“Do I look like I’m joking, cutie?” His eyes glowed faintly, a strange otherworldly shimmer that matched the quiet pulse of the sea itself.
You stared at him, speechless, before finally throwing up your hands. “And you never thought to mention this to me before?”
He tilted his head, pretending to study the mosaics on the ceiling instead of your wide-eyed face. “It didn’t feel important when I was with you.”
“Not important?!” Your voice echoed faintly in the vaulted chamber, incredulous.
His lips twitched, failing to hide a smile. “What did you want me to do? Should I have made you bow to me and offer to grant your wishes?”
Despite yourself, a laugh burst from your lips, bubbling into the water. You pressed your hand over your mouth, still staring at him like he’d just told you the sky was a dream. He grinned, satisfied at your reaction, before glancing back at the throne.
“Sit,” he said, gesturing lazily toward it.
“What? No.” Your refusal was immediate, a flush heating your cheeks. “That’s yours. I—I can’t sit there.”
“Can’t?” His brows arched, teasing. “Or won’t?”
“Both!”
He drifted closer, circling you like a predator amused with its prey, his tail flicking lazily through the water. “You’re already here. No one else is around. Humor me.”
“I’ll look ridiculous.”
“You’ll look perfect.” His tone left no room for doubt, and the way his gaze fixed on you — hungry, unyielding — made your chest tighten.
You shook your head, flustered, but the intensity of his stare wore you down. Slowly, hesitantly, you crossed the wide expanse toward the throne. Each step felt heavy, surreal, until you finally lowered yourself onto its cool surface.
The moment you sat, Rafayel froze. His smile faltered — not into disappointment, but into something softer, something reverent. His eyes widened slightly, drinking in the sight of you as though he’d conjured you from the sea itself.
“You…” His voice was low, almost reverent. “You look like you’ve always belonged there.”
Your breath hitched. The water hummed faintly in your ears, every sense heightened under the weight of his gaze. He drifted forward, slowly, his tail curling beneath him as he bowed low — not playfully, not mocking, but with the solemn grace of something ancient.
Then, gently, he reached for your hand. His fingers brushed yours, and he lifted it to his lips. The kiss was featherlight, yet it sent a shiver spiraling through you, heat blooming where his mouth touched.
Your cheeks burned. “Rafayel—”
“Shh,” he murmured, lips curving against your skin before he finally pulled back just enough to look up at you. “Do you know how beautiful you are right now?”
Your breath tangled in your chest, your protest catching on your tongue. He was close enough that you could see every glint of color in his irises, the quiet awe softening his features.
“You’re teasing me again,” you managed weakly, though your voice betrayed the flutter in your chest.
“No,” he said simply, with a conviction that made your heart stumble. “This time, I’m not.”
The air — or what passed for it down here — seemed charged, the weight of his words pressing around you. You could only stare at him, face warm, lips parted, unable to form a reply as his hand lingered against yours, anchoring you to the moment.
Rafayel’s lips trailed soft, deliberate kisses up your arm as he pulled you gently from the throne, his touch both reverent and claiming. “Come,” he murmured against your skin, his mouth brushing the tender inside of your wrist before he let it go. “Follow me. There’s one last surprise I have for you.”
Your mind reeled, flustered from the spectacle of moments ago, his words still echoing in your head. You could hardly imagine what else he could possibly have to show you. And yet, dazed and breathless, you let him lead you down the gleaming corridor, his hand warm around yours, the soft sweep of his tail gliding alongside him in the water.
When he pushed open the carved doors to his private quarters, your breath caught. The chamber was unlike anything you had seen before: every surface gleamed with treasures. Fine garments, silks so delicate they seemed to float in the currents, cascades of pearls, jewels that caught and refracted the candlelight like fragments of stars, rare shells polished smooth as glass. Light seemed to find its way in through clever lattices in the walls, dancing across the room in dappled waves, mingling with the glow of countless candles. It was beautiful — immaculate, radiant, overwhelming.
“These,” Rafayel said, his voice almost casual but his eyes trained on you, “are gifts for you.”
You stared at him, speechless. Your lips parted, but for a moment no words came, your chest tightening as you turned to take in the magnitude of what he’d done. “I… I don’t know what to say,” you finally whispered, shaking your head faintly. “How could I ever repay you? You didn’t have to—”
“Yes, I did,” he interrupted smoothly, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. His eyes softened, but there was a firm certainty in his tone. He stepped closer, the faintest smirk at his lips. “A beautiful woman deserves beautiful things. Though…” His gaze swept down your figure, then lingered on your face again, “they don’t come close to you.”
Heat rushed to your cheeks, flustering you further. You looked back at the room, struggling for words, until his question cut through the silence: “Do you like it?”
“How could I not?” you breathed out, almost too quickly, nodding once. “I love it. Thank you.”
His smile curved slow, self-satisfied. “So you’ll stay.”
Your head snapped back toward him, caught off guard. “Stay? What do you mean?”
“With me,” he replied simply, as though it needed no further explanation. “In Lemuria, in this temple.”
Your heart lurched. “You… you want me to live here?”
Confusion flickered across his expression, though it was tempered by amusement, as though your doubt entertained him more than anything else. “Didn’t you ask for this, cutie?”
“I—” The stammer caught in your throat, helpless, and before you could gather yourself, he was already closing the distance.
His hand came up to cradle your face, fingers threading gently behind your ear. His touch tilted your chin, guiding your gaze to his, and then his lips brushed across your cheek, featherlight, coaxing, coaxing. “You said you’d miss me,” he whispered against your skin, each kiss punctuating his words as he trailed them down the curve of your jaw, the slope of your throat. “Now you’ll never have to.”
His breath was warm against your neck, his mouth a torment of soft heat as he continued, his voice low and persuasive, like velvet winding around your thoughts. “You can spend your time in the sea… in a city more beautiful than dreams. Isn’t this what you’ve always wanted?”
Your lashes fluttered shut, your hands coming up instinctively to press against the hard plane of his chest. His heartbeat thrummed beneath your palms, steady and alive, as he kissed along your neck. A sound slipped from your lips — half whisper, half moan — his name barely formed, broken by the shiver coursing through you.
“Rafayel…”
You felt the heat of him press against you, his lips trailing along your jaw, brushing over the hollow of your throat, teasing, coaxing, leaving the faintest bite that sent a shiver down your spine. Every nerve in your body hummed, torn between the wild pull of desire and the stubborn whisper of hesitation. You wanted him, wanted him desperately, but part of you froze, aware of how far this was going, how much control you were giving up.
And then, out of the corner of your eye, something caught your attention. A flicker of movement, shapes, light… a shrine. Your breath hitched, your pulse stuttering. It was unmistakable.
Your bracelet — once lost, now resting there like it had never left. A ribbon from your hair, placed carefully as though he had plucked it from the very moment you had given it without realizing. The photos, the flower, a hoard of all your memories together. The candle flickered, warm and steady, anchoring the small, sacred collection.
You pushed him back, just enough to create space, eyes wide and heart racing. “What… what is that?” you whispered, voice trembling despite yourself.
Rafayel blinked, startled out of the haze of your nearness. “What…?” he echoed, then followed your gaze to the shrine. His expression softened, understanding dawning, but there was an unmistakable gleam in his eyes, something proud and possessive all at once. “Oh… those?” His voice was quiet at first, but firm, deliberate. “They’re tokens… of your devotion to me… and of mine to you. Our memories.”
Your gaze lingered on them, drawn magnetically. Your hand trembled slightly as you stepped closer, compelled to touch, to understand. The silhouette on the smooth stone caught your eye, instantly recognizable — the outline of yourself from that first night you met him. You picked it up carefully, almost reverently, fingers brushing the surface. “This… this is me, from the night we met,” you breathed, awe-struck.
“Yes,” he said simply, voice a little lower, a little huskier. His eyes never left you. You could barely form another word, overwhelmed.
Before you could react, he was there again, closing the space, warm hands sliding around yours, taking the stone carefully. He placed it back at the center of the shrine, with meticulous care, reverence in every movement. And then he was close to you again, too close, his chest against yours, eyes locked on yours, lips barely hovering, whispering, “We’ve formed a bond, cutie… a bond that can’t be broken. You’ll stay here… with me. You’ll rule Lemuria alongside me. Doesn’t that sound nice?”
You opened your mouth to speak, but the words tangled, trapped by the storm of feelings swirling in your chest. You wanted to answer, desperately, but hesitation held you, sharp and impossible to ignore.
Rafayel’s gaze sharpened, intensity deepening, voice dropping into a rich, commanding timbre that made your pulse thrum painfully in your ears. “Say it,” he murmured, a dangerous edge to the softness. “Say you’ll stay.”
Your throat tightened. “What about… my life?” you asked, the words barely audible, almost a plea.
His hand cupped your cheek, thumb brushing your skin, grounding you, but his other hand pressed against your waist, holding you immovably. His eyes were locked onto yours, and when he spoke, it was both a promise and a declaration: “That… is keeping us apart. I’ll remove any obstacle. Any. One way or another, you’ll stay with me.”
You trembled, heart hammering, caught between disbelief, longing, and fear. His presence surrounded you completely, intoxicating, overwhelming. Every breath, every shiver, every heartbeat screamed his name, his claim, his desire, and yours intertwined in the echo of the shrine’s candlelight.
You could feel the pull of him, the unyielding weight of his intent, and against every instinct to resist, a different part of you — a reckless, thrilling, impossible part — wanted to fall entirely into it, to trust him, to belong.
He pressed his forehead to yours, warm, insistent, and whispered, softer now, velvet against your ear, “Say it… say you’ll stay with me, cutie.”
Your lips parted, breath catching as the world narrowed to him, the shrine, the glow of candlelight, and the pull of something you didn’t understand yet couldn’t resist.
The words spilled from you before your mind could argue, before hesitation could take hold. “I… I’ll stay,” you whispered, breathless, heart hammering in your chest. Your head screamed at you that this was insane, that you were plunging headfirst into something impossible, but the pull of him — the warmth, the intensity, the magnetic hold of his gaze — was too strong. Your body betrayed your caution, leaning toward him, melting against the pressure of his chest.
Rafayel’s eyes lit up, a dangerous, radiant glow that made your knees weak. “I knew you would,” he murmured, voice thick with satisfaction and something warmer, deeper. Without another word, he bent toward you, capturing your lips with his in a kiss that was equal parts claim and tenderness, fierce yet feather-light, leaving you dizzy, breathless, entirely undone.
Your arms instinctively wound around him, tangling around his strong shoulders, your body pressed to his as if it had always belonged there. Every inch of contact sent shivers up your spine, a storm of heat and anticipation coiling inside you, making your world shrink to the point where it was just him, just you, and the delicate weight of the shrine’s candlelight flickering beside you.
Then — a knock. Sharp, insistent, breaking the fragile bubble of intimacy.
Rafayel froze, lips still brushing yours, eyes narrowing, tension snapping through him like a live wire. “What?” His voice cut harsh, clipped, like steel on glass.
A guard’s voice called through the door, steady but urgent: “Elder Amund wishes to see you, Rafayel. It is… urgent.”
Rafayel’s jaw clenched, a storm brewing behind his eyes. His tail flicked, and you could see the rigid line of his shoulders, the way his entire body seemed to bristle at the interruption. “I’m… not available,” he said through gritted teeth, tone sharp enough to make you flinch.
The guard’s voice didn’t waver. “It is important, Sir. Elder Amund insists.”
Rafayel’s gaze flicked to you, and for the first time, there was a touch of reluctance in his eyes, a fleeting vulnerability. He exhaled, running a hand through his hair, and the sharp edge in his expression softened slightly, though the tension still hummed in his muscles. He lowered his forehead to yours, brushing against your temple for a moment, and whispered, voice rougher than before: “Stay here. I’ll be back soon.”
Your chest tightened at the thought of him leaving, even for a short while, and you nodded, barely able to form words.
Without another pause, he leaned down, pressing a searing kiss to your lips, lingering just long enough to imprint the memory of him before pulling back and glancing toward the door. His eyes were dark, stormy, full of promise and possessiveness. Then, in a blur of fluid motion, he swept out of the room, leaving you trembling in the afterglow of his touch, the shrine’s flickering candle casting long shadows across the floor.
You stayed rooted where you were, heart still hammering, hands brushing against the stone silhouette and the bracelet, the pull of him lingering like electricity in the air. The room felt impossibly quiet without him, and yet you could feel him everywhere — in the warmth that lingered on your skin, in the echo of his voice, in the scent of him that clung faintly in the air.
─ ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ ──── ♡ ─── ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ ──
The corridors of Lemuria seemed to hum beneath his tail as he glided toward the throne room, the echo of the storm above still vibrating faintly through the water. Every flick of his tail mirrored the storm brewing in his chest — an unsettled mixture of irritation and cold calculation. He arrived at the threshold, tail coiling beneath him like a spring ready to strike, and his eyes fell on Amund, waiting as if he’d anticipated Rafayel’s impatience.
“What do you want, Amund?” Rafayel’s voice was clipped, sharp, carrying the edge of a predator who had already run out of patience.
Amund’s gaze, steady and unflinching, held him in place. “I see you’ve finally found a devoted follower,” the elder said, his tone almost ceremonial, almost approving. “It is time you completed the ceremony, Rafayel.”
Rafayel’s lips quirked in a scoff. “So that’s what this is about,” he said, letting the words drip with controlled disdain. The idea that this was a duty, a ritual, a game — an obligation — grated against the raw heat of his own will.
“The flame will not last much longer,” Amund continued, voice firm. “It must be completed, or Lemuria itself will suffer.”
Rafayel’s crimson eyes narrowed. “And what, exactly, must I do for this ceremony? You’ve kept me in the dark long enough.” His voice rose with the imperceptible weight of command, though externally he appeared composed, coiled tension restrained beneath polished poise.
Amund hesitated, then relented, his tone lowering with the weight of inevitability. “You must take your devotee’s heart and offer it to the flame. Only unwavering devotion can save Lemuria.”
Rafayel’s jaw tightened, the words slicing through him like a blade. Calm on the surface, he blinked once, twice, masking the storm inside. Disgust churned in his chest, mingling with disbelief and a fierce, protective heat. Her heart? My beloved, her life… The thought alone made his stomach twist. To hear Amund speak of you as a mere sacrificial tool, as though your devotion could be measured and burnt, repulsed him down to his core.
He leaned forward slightly, eyes narrowing, voice low and dangerous. “And you… you will be guiding this ceremony?”
Amund nodded. “Yes. I will oversee the ritual, ensure that it is done properly. It is for the good of Lemuria.”
Every muscle in Rafayel’s body coiled tighter, tail flicking impatiently, eyes darkening. The elder’s certainty, the cold expectation in his voice — it was an obstacle.
He dares stand between me and her. He dares treat her like this, as if she were a tool, a means to some flame. I won’t allow it.
Internally, a plan began to take shape, intricate, precise, and absolute.
I promised I would remove any obstacle that stood between me and her. This ends tonight.
Rafayel straightened, his voice dropping into a quiet, commanding growl that carried the weight of his resolve. “Very well. I will complete the ceremony.” He let a pause hang, letting it rattle the elder just slightly.
Amund’s brow furrowed, a flicker of surprise flashing across his face, though he masked it quickly. “Good. I’m glad to see you finally take your duty seriously. Lemuria will be better for it.”
Rafayel’s pulse was steady outwardly, but inside it was a hurricane. A mixture of disgust, wrath, and almost intoxicating exhilaration coursed through him.
I will show him what devotion really means. I will prove that no one, not even the tome of this kingdom, can stand in the way of us.
He let his gaze sweep over Amund, unyielding, unflinching, radiating the authority he wielded naturally, one he knew would bend the elder to his will.
“Get everything ready,” Rafayel said, tail flicking with controlled menace. “Tonight, we complete it. Prepare the ceremony. I will see it done.”
As Amund nodded, subdued under the quiet storm of his god’s fury, Rafayel’s mind already raced ahead, mapping every detail, anticipating every possible complication. Your safety, your life, your very devotion — it was all his now, and no one would dare take it from him. The ceremony would be completed, but not as Amund envisioned.
Tonight, I will bend fate itself to bring her fully into my world.
He lingered a moment longer, eyes glinting with a mixture of wrath and desire, before turning back toward the halls, already calculating the next moves. The storm above mirrored the one within him, and Lemuria would bear witness to his resolve.
The corridors of Lemuria stretched before him like a labyrinth of muted light and echoing footsteps, but Rafayel barely noticed. His mind was a storm, churning faster than the ocean above. Soon, everything would be claimed — every lingering obstacle erased. Lemuria would belong to him and to you, irrevocably, eternally. Every plan he had meticulously laid, the time he spent with you, all the gifts, all the care — it all pointed toward this night, toward the inevitability of your devotion entwined with his. You were more than a follower; you were not a mere devotee. You would be his bride, his beloved. The thought made his chest tighten with a heady mixture of possessiveness and triumph. Nothing — no one — could take you from him now.
He pushed open the door to his private quarters, expecting to see you there, waiting, smiling, flushed with anticipation. His pulse quickened, a delicious ache spreading through him at the thought of you, of finally claiming your place beside him. But the room was empty. His heart dropped, a cold claw tightening around it. The candlelight flickered against the walls, catching the shimmer of shells, pearls, and the myriad gifts he had prepared, but there was no warmth of your presence.
“Cutie?” His voice broke the stillness, carrying across the room. “You’re here, aren’t you?”
Silence answered him, thick and mocking.
His gaze snapped to the door, the windows, every shadow, every corner. Nothing. Every instinct in his body screamed that something was wrong. His tail coiled tighter beneath him, fingers clenching into fists that left faint impressions in his palms. He surged forward, voice rising slightly as he called again. “Where are you?”
A guard appeared, bowing hastily, sensing the sudden tension radiating from him. “Your Highness… I… I think she… she must have snuck out,” the guard stammered.
Rafayel’s eyes narrowed, the fire within him igniting into something darker, sharper. Fury and worry collided, a maelstrom of emotion. His chest heaved, lungs burning with a need to act. “Snuck out?” His voice was low now, dangerous, the calm veneer slipping. “Do you know where she went? Did anyone see her?”
The guard shook his head, hesitant. “No, Sir. She… she’s gone from the temple.”
Rafayel’s tail lashed against the floor, sending ripples of water and tension cascading through the room. His mind raced.
What if something happened? What if she left me? What if all of it — her promises, her devotion — was a lie?
The thought made his stomach twist with both dread and possessive fury. He could not allow it.
She wouldn’t. She couldn’t. Not my beloved. Not my bride. But… if she had… it would be okay. I will find her. I would bring her back. I would make her understand. She belongs here, with me. There is no corner of this world where she could hide from me now. All of my senses are attuned to her. Every flicker of thought, every heartbeat, every breath — I would find her.
The fire of his obsession flared. His mind conjured a thousand possibilities, all leading to the same end: you would return to him. Whether by fear, by reason, by love, or by necessity, you would not escape. Lemuria itself would bend to ensure it.
“I will find you,” he whispered, voice taut with a dangerous mix of devotion and threat. “No storm, no path, no shadow… nothing can keep you from me.” His eyes glimmered, the eerie blue glow of his tail reflecting off the walls like liquid lightning. Every sense heightened, every instinct sharpened — he was no longer merely searching; he was hunting, a predator whose prey was the one he loved, whose desire for your safety and possession were indistinguishable.
Rafayel surged through the halls, tail propelling him with unnerving speed, moving with fluid grace, as though the very water of Lemuria carried him toward you. Every thought circled around you — the curve of your smile, the warmth of your lips, the softness of your voice, the gentle flush of your cheeks when you looked at him.
Everything she is is mine. Everything she does, every glance, every word, every heartbeat is mine. And I will not allow her to leave, not now, not ever.
The storm above mirrored the chaos within him, yet inside, he was crystal clear. You would be found. You would be safe in his grasp. You would stay. He had prepared a world for you, a life, a home. And now, the hunt was on — not for vengeance, not for conquest — but for what was always, inevitably, his. His heart. His bride.
Every shadow, every ripple of water, every sound in the halls became a guide. He could sense you, almost tangibly, as though your very presence emitted a beacon only he could detect.
She cannot escape me. She will never escape me.
And with that certainty burning in his chest, Rafayel surged forward, every movement a promise, every thought a vow. Tonight, nothing — not even the wild sea, nor the storm above — would keep you from him.
─ ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ ──── ♡ ─── ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ ──
The rain hit you like jagged shards of ice, soaking you to the bone, plastering your hair to your cheeks, masking the tears that ran freely down your face. The storm hadn’t relented, and the thunder rolled across the sky in deep, ominous rumbles, shaking the sand beneath you. You could barely see the water ahead, the violent waves churning under flashes of lightning. Your lungs burned from gasping for air after the frantic swimming, and every muscle ached, trembling from exhaustion.
You sank to the shore, letting the cold sand bite into your skin, trying to ground yourself even as the wind whipped around you. Rain stung your eyes, making it impossible to focus, and the memory of what you had heard — what you had overheard — looped through your mind, relentless. Rafayel… agreeing to take your heart. Amund’s words echoing in your ears, distorted by the storm: “You must take your devotee’s heart and offer it to the flame. Only unwavering devotion can save Lemuria.”
Your chest felt hollow, each breath a struggle against the storm and the horror inside you. You had trusted him, let yourself feel something you hadn’t in years, maybe ever, and now the weight of betrayal pressed down like the storm itself. How could someone you had begun to care for — someone who had been so gentle, so kind, so impossibly beautiful — agree to something like that?
You buried your face in your arms, sobs breaking through the storm, hot and helpless against the cold rain. Every fiber of you wanted to run, to hide, to disappear completely, but even thinking of leaving brought no comfort. You didn’t know where to go, who to trust, or what to do. The shore stretched endlessly around you, the waves thrashing and hissing like a warning.
Fear gripped your chest in icy fingers. The thought of dying here, alone and powerless, churned your stomach. But there was more than fear — it was the heartbreak, the sickening betrayal that twisted through every beat of your heart. You had believed in him, in what you felt when you were near him. And now it all seemed like a lie, or worse, a trap you had walked straight into.
You hugged your knees to your chest, shivering from exhaustion, rain, and terror. The storm around you blurred into a wall of gray, but inside, your world had narrowed to this one unbearable truth: you didn’t want to die, and you didn’t know how to get out of the mess you had fallen into. The sea before you, once so enticing, now seemed alien and threatening, and even the memory of Rafayel’s warmth made your chest tighten with betrayal.
You cried on, letting the water mix with your tears, letting the storm drown out your thoughts for a moment. You couldn’t see a way forward. You couldn’t even see the shore behind you. All you had was the cold rain, the biting wind, and the impossible weight of knowing that the person you had begun to trust — maybe even love — had agreed to something so horrifying. And that knowledge left you trembling, broken, and utterly alone.
The storm raged on around you, rain slashing at your skin, thunder rolling like the roar of some furious god, yet all of it seemed to shrink away as the sea in front of you moved differently. A swell rose from the waves, glinting with electric streaks of lightning, and suddenly, Rafayel emerged, water cascading down his bare, gleaming body. His tail shimmered beneath the surface before he brought himself fully upright, shoulders taut, eyes flashing with that surreal blue glow.
Your breath caught in your throat. Fear clawed at your chest. “R-Rafayel…” you whispered, voice trembling. The rain blurred your vision, but the sight of him — so impossibly real, so otherworldly — made your heart race in a way that wasn’t entirely fear.
“There you are, cutie,” he said softly, voice carrying over the storm, almost too calm, too certain. He moved toward you, and instinctively, you stumbled back, arms raised. “Stay away from me!” you shouted, panic rising in your chest.
Rafayel’s eyes narrowed, and with a flick of his hand the sea obeyed — a massive wave surged up behind him, impossibly tall, blotting out the horizon. The roar of it swallowed your breath, the sheer force vibrating through the sand beneath you. His gaze locked on yours, unblinking, merciless.
“If you try to leave me, if you run…” His voice was low, sharp as the edge of a blade. “…then I’ll make sure there’s nothing left for you to return to. Your life isn’t there anymore. It’s with me, in the sea.”
Terror iced your veins. You stared at the towering wall of water, heart hammering, throat dry. You could almost feel it ready to crash down and sweep everything you’d ever known away.
Another forward motion, and before you could react, he had caught your arm, pulling you up, his fingers curling around it with unyielding strength. “You can’t leave me,” he said, voice low, dangerous. “You’ve already promised yourself to me.”
Tears blurred your vision. “Let go! You can’t—” You tried to wrench your arm free, but he was stronger than you imagined.
He tilted your chin up gently, almost tenderly, and whispered against your temple, “Shh, it’s okay. I’ll hold you. I’ll lock you up if I have to… until you understand, cutie.” His eyes shone with a manic light, the storm reflecting in the depths of them, a fierce, desperate devotion that made your stomach twist.
“Our promise…” he murmured, and there was no hesitation, no doubt. “It’s okay if I’m the only one who keeps it. We’ll stay together until the end of time.”
You pushed against him finally, hands on his chest, trembling with a mix of fear and fury. “Stop lying!” you shouted, your voice cracking. “You’re going to take my heart! You brought me here to sacrifice me—you betrayed me! I trusted you, loved you, and you—” your breath hitched, breaking on the word, “—you used that against me!”
For a heartbeat, he was still. And then… a wicked, almost gleeful smile curved his lips. The way it made your skin crawl was undeniable, but it didn’t erase the pull, the impossibility of looking away.
“So…that’s why you ran,” he said softly, moving closer again. You tried to shove him back, but he was like water itself — fluid, inexorable, impossible to resist. His hands cradled your face, thumbs brushing over your cheekbones with frightening intimacy. “Cutie…I love you. I told you…I will remove anything standing in our way. I will never let anything hurt you.”
“How… how could I believe you?” you whispered, fear lacing every word.
His answer wasn’t immediate. Instead, he lifted one of the iridescent scales from his tail, water dripping from it, sparkling even in the storm’s dim light. He held it delicately in his palm before taking your hand, pressing your ring finger to his lips. Heat flared, his touch both electrifying and possessive.
The scale shivered in his hand, glowing faintly as he infused it with his fire, reshaping it, transforming it until it fit perfectly on your finger. The ring was warm, pulsing slightly against your skin, as though alive. Your breath caught in your throat.
Rafayel’s voice was soft, intimate, yet edged with certainty that made your heart quake. “Tonight… during the ceremony, our covenant will be witnessed and blessed by the sea. We will form a bond everlasting. You are my bride.”
“Elder Amund…is a fool. If he believes I’d sacrifice you for some unworthy flame—” He scoffed. “—Then, he can show us his devotion tonight. His heart will feed the flame.”
His words, the fire, the intensity of his gaze — it all overwhelmed you. You could feel the storm’s energy, the pull of the ocean, the heat of his devotion pressing against every nerve. Your hands rested against his chest, feeling the steady pulse of him beneath the water. You were terrified. You were exhilarated. And somehow, impossibly, you felt pulled into him, into the certainty of his possession, into the promise of what he called your future together.
Your mind screamed with reason, yet every fiber of you, your heartbeat, your very breath, was tethered to him. He held you in the rain and surf, the storm bending around him, and in that moment, it felt like there was nothing in the world outside of him, you, and the fierce, unrelenting claim he had on you.
The sea roared. Lightning split the sky. And Rafayel’s eyes bore into yours with a devotion so complete, so terrifying, that all hesitation, all resistance, all fear seemed to fold into an intoxicating, dizzying surrender.
Your words came out, just above a whisper. “We…We’re going to kill him?”
Rafayel’s grin deepened, wicked and fond, his eyes glinting like lightning on the water. “I was planning to do it myself… but if you wish, I’ll place the blade in your hand, cutie.” He leaned closer, brushing his lips against your temple, his laugh low and soft, curling into your skin. “I didn’t realize my bride had such a fierce streak.”
But the weight of it all pressed heavy on you, and you shoved gently at his chest, forcing him to look at you. “This is serious, Rafayel.” Your voice trembled, caught between fear and the pull of his nearness. “How do I know this isn’t just another trap? How do you even know sacrificing him will work?”
His chest rumbled beneath your palms with a soft chuckle. He caught your wrists, guiding your hands to rest over his heart, the steady, powerful beat thrumming against your skin. His eyes softened, though a dangerous glimmer still danced in their depths. “The only trap you’ve fallen into,” he murmured, brushing his lips along the curve of your jaw, “is a life spent by my side. Does that honestly sound so terrible?”
His fingers curled lightly at your waist, grounding you in the storm, and the world seemed to shrink to the warmth of his touch and the certainty in his voice. “If Amund’s heart cannot save Lemuria…” He drew back just enough to meet your gaze, his voice carrying a quiet, unshakable conviction. “Then I’ll raise a new city from the ruins. Just for us. A kingdom where I will worship you for eternity.”
The words sank into you like heat spreading through chilled skin, dizzying, dangerous, but irresistibly sweet. His thumb traced a slow circle against the inside of your wrist, his breath warm at your cheek. “Trust me,” he whispered, pressing your hand more firmly to his chest so you could feel the steady, unwavering beat of him. “Let me show you. You’ll always be safe with me. Always cherished. Always mine.”
The rain battered down, the sea raged behind him, but in his arms there was warmth, promise, and a terrifying, magnetic devotion that pulled at the very core of you.
Your throat tightened. You wanted to argue, to tell him that none of this made sense, that every word should frighten you — but the warmth of his heartbeat beneath your palms, the steadiness of his grip, the quiet reverence in his tone…it all unraveled you.
You shook your head weakly, but it wasn’t no. It wasn’t anything at all. You could feel the last of your resistance thinning, slipping away like a fragile thread in a storm. “Rafayel…” Your voice cracked on his name, softer this time, weighted with a plea you didn’t fully understand yourself.
His lips curved, tender where a moment ago they’d been sharp, and he drew you closer until the world beyond his arms felt impossibly far. “That’s it,” he whispered, brushing a kiss across your damp cheek. “Stop fighting what you already feel. Stop doubting what you already know.”
The fight inside you twisted painfully — fear clawing against something deeper, something warmer, something that had already entwined itself into the hollow of your chest. And then, with a shuddering exhale, you let it go. Your forehead dropped against his shoulder, your fingers curling in helpless surrender against his chest.
He exhaled too, a sound of satisfaction that rumbled through him as his arms closed around you, holding you as though you were both fragile and irreplaceable. “There you are, cutie,” he murmured, his lips brushing your temple. “My beloved bride.”
Before you could think to speak, he shifted, gathering you effortlessly against him. His body coiled, tail cutting through the surf with an elegance that made the storm itself seem clumsy. The sea accepted him, parting around his movements as he carried you back into its depths.
You clung to him as the water swallowed you both, salt stinging your lips, hair tangling in the currents. Fear still flickered in you, but it was dulled beneath the steady heat of him, the way he held you like you were treasure, like you were home.
And despite everything — despite the storm above, despite the terror still whispering in your chest — you let yourself rest in the cradle of his arms. Because even as fear gnawed at you, safety pulsed just as strong. Because surrender, for better or worse, felt inevitable.
Rafayel pressed a kiss to your hair, his voice vibrating through you like a vow. “We’re going home.”
─ ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ ──── ♡ ─── ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ ──
The city had never looked so alive.
Silks wound your figure like liquid light, pearls strung through your hair until each step seemed to catch the glimmer of the tide. Beside you, Rafayel was resplendent in sea-blue robes threaded with gold, his dusky hair pulled back to reveal the impossible artistry of his face. The two of you walked hand in hand through the streets of Lemuria, and the world pressed in around you like a living tide.
The people sang. Their voices rose in haunting chords, praise upon praise for the god who had saved them, prayers spilling like foam for the flame that kept their city alive. You felt the sound in your bones — it vibrated through the jeweled stones underfoot, it swelled in the salt-wet air, it pressed against your ribs until your heart couldn’t keep its rhythm. Their devotion should have been comforting, but instead it only deepened the tight coil of dread at the pit of your stomach.
You caught glimpses of faces — children throwing flower garlands, elders bowing low, eyes shining with tears of gratitude. You wanted to feel that warmth. Instead, you felt as though each reverent gaze passed through you, a reminder that you were here for a purpose greater than yourself, a purpose you still did not fully understand.
When you stole a glance at Rafayel, you nearly stumbled. He was smiling faintly, not at the crowd but at you, as though you were the only thing in this city worth looking at. His grip around your fingers tightened, firm, grounding. Your chest ached at the tenderness there, even as doubt screamed in the back of your mind.
A temple loomed ahead, carved from coral and obsidian, its gates wide open to swallow you whole.
And then you were inside.
The noise of the people died instantly, leaving the hush of waves against the stone, the faint crackle of the flame at the temple’s heart. The chamber was vast, but it felt suffocating in its emptiness: only three figures within it — you, Rafayel, and Elder Amund.
The elder stood before the great brazier, the flame of Lemuria burning dull within it. His robes brushed the ground as he opened the tome, the thick vellum pages glinting with seawater ink. His voice was low and steady as he began to recite the words of sea god’s past, each syllable rolling like a tide, heavy with weight you could feel but not name.
You shivered.
The air was charged, prickling across your skin. Every breath tasted of salt and smoke. You folded your hands against the silks at your waist to stop them trembling, to anchor yourself to something tangible.
This was it. This was the moment that would decide everything. Whether you had been led to love or led to ruin. Whether Rafayel’s devotion had been true or only the mask of a predator.
When you dared to meet his eyes, your fear both sharpened and softened. There was something there that should not have been possible under this roof, in this moment — adoration, aching and raw, as though every song of praise sung outside meant nothing compared to you.
And yet, still, the words you had overheard echoed in your mind. The reveal that he needed your heart. The smile when you had accused him.
You swallowed hard, pulse hammering in your throat. You wanted so desperately to believe him, and for a moment — when you saw the devotion burning in his gaze — you almost did.
Amund’s voice rose again, low and sonorous, each word resonant, strange, utterly unfamiliar. The cadence of it was ancient, a tide rolling in a tongue not meant for you, and it made your nerves coil tighter. You couldn’t parse his meaning, but you knew it was meant for the gods, for the sea itself.
Beside you, Rafayel shifted, and your breath caught when his hands found yours, enveloping them in warmth. He leaned closer, his lips brushing the shell of your ear, his voice pitched low enough for only you. “You look beautiful right now,” he murmured, and though it was soft, there was conviction thrumming beneath it, steadying. His thumbs stroked the tremor in your knuckles. “Don’t be scared.”
Your gaze flicked up to his, and for a moment the sacred chamber dissolved into the molten tenderness in his eyes — blue lit faintly by flame, heavy with devotion. The nerves tangled tighter inside you, not from fear of him but from the weight of what you were about to step into.
He reached into the pocket of his silk robes, and when he drew his hand out, your breath stilled. Resting against his palm was the flower you had given him in the garden, its petals now alive with light, glowing softly with his fire. He lifted it reverently, pressing his lips to its bloom, and then held it to you.
With trembling breath, you leaned forward and brushed a kiss against the petals, your lips grazing warmth and energy. He smiled faintly — an expression that felt like the sea itself had curved toward you — and pressed the flower to his chest.
The bloom vanished in a shimmer beneath his palm, and where it had touched, a sigil of fiery orange bloomed through his skin, pulsing faintly with power. The mark glowed like living flame, and when he drew your hand over it, the heat radiated up your arm, searing and intimate.
“This bond,” he said, voice hushed yet certain, “gives you the power to command me. I will obey. Always. Through it, I can sense you—your breath, your heart. By the heart of Lemuria, our covenant is formed. The sea has given its blessing.”
Your chest tightened, but not from dread. Instead it was the staggering rush of love, of devotion mirrored back at you with such raw honesty it nearly undid you. The nerves were still there, curling like a storm below the surface, but they were tempered by the warmth of his hand, the heat of that mark, and the certainty of his vow.
When he bent to kiss you, it was slow, tender, carrying the weight of everything spoken and unspoken. The taste of him was salt and fire, soft lips and steady breath, the promise of eternity bound between you. And as you kissed him back, the unease fell away, replaced by the heady truth — you loved him. Fiercely, impossibly, against all sense.
Even in the shadow of fate, that love blazed brighter than fear.
Rafayel lingered close, his forehead resting briefly against yours, his hands still wrapped around yours as if he could anchor you through the storm. Then, at last, he drew back — reluctantly, gently — as the sound of movement stirred the water around you. Amund was stepping forward, robes shifting like waves, his gaze solemn and intent. He came to stand before Rafayel, and with both hands raised something shining between his palms.
The dagger gleamed as Amund pressed it into Rafayel’s palm, the weight of it sending a shiver through you. Your throat went dry, and you felt your breath catch in your chest. A single thought hammered through your mind: this is it. The jagged edge of fear settled in your stomach, cold and suffocating. For a terrible moment you could already feel the point of that blade sinking into your chest, splitting you open, tearing your heart free.
Amund’s voice was low, solemn. “Are you ready?”
Rafayel’s fingers curled tightly around the hilt. He didn’t hesitate. “Yes,” he said, his tone steady, certain.
You held your breath, trembling, braced for betrayal. Every muscle in your body screamed at you to run, but you couldn’t move, couldn’t blink. The world narrowed to that knife, to the man you loved holding it, to the certainty that your fate hung in his next motion.
But instead of turning on you, Rafayel shifted — slowly, deliberately — toward Amund. His crimson smile slashed across his face, sharp and humorless. “You have followed me for years,” he said, voice smooth as black water. “You guided me since I was young, formed me into the god I stand as now. Does that not make you my most devoted follower?”
Amund stiffened. His hand twitched against his side. Confusion lined his features. “Rafayel… what are you saying?”
Rafayel laughed, low and cutting, void of all warmth. The sound made the hairs on your neck rise. “I am giving Lemuria what it needs. The flame asked for the heart of a devotee. You told me to sacrifice my beloved’s heart.” He glanced toward you, and for a moment, the sheer intensity of his gaze made you falter. “But I am unwilling. Surely, you, Amund, who has devoted everything to me… surely you are willing to give your heart in her place.”
Amund stumbled back a half-step, his composure cracking. “No—you’re mistaken. Rafayel, listen to me. You don’t understand what you’re doing—”
“You’re wrong,” Rafayel cut in, and his voice dropped to a chill whisper. “I understand perfectly.”
Before you could exhale, before Amund could speak again, Rafayel’s arm moved in one swift, merciless arc. The dagger plunged into Amund’s chest. The sound — the wet, final thud of steel tearing through flesh — struck you like a physical blow. Amund’s strangled cry echoed through the chamber before it dissolved into silence.
Your lungs burned as you released the breath you hadn’t realized you’d been holding, trembling so violently your knees nearly buckled. Your vision blurred. Still, you couldn’t look away. Rafayel’s hand was steady as he withdrew the dagger, slick and red, and in the same motion drew forth the gleaming essence of Amund’s heart.
He glanced over at you, expression softened just slightly, though his words held no less weight. “Don’t look if you’re scared.”
But you couldn’t peel your eyes away. You were transfixed — horrified, trembling, but unable to tear yourself free from the gravity of him, of this moment.
Rafayel turned to the waiting flame. In his hands, the heart seemed to pulse faintly, as if clinging to life. He lifted it, offering it upward. At first, nothing happened. The silence was suffocating. Doubt clawed at you — had he been wrong? Had this sacrifice been for nothing?
Then the fire stirred. A flicker, small, uncertain — before it swelled, brighter and brighter, until the chamber blazed with radiant light. The flame roared alive, crackling and burning with a power that felt eternal.
Rafayel smiled. A slow, triumphant curve of his lips as he turned back to you, his eyes glowing like the fire itself. “The sea has accepted my offering. Lemuria is ours now.”
Something broke in you then — your fear, your hesitation, your doubt. Your nerves dissolved into a rush of heat that sent you stumbling forward. You didn’t think, didn’t question. You simply threw yourself into his arms, clutching at him with everything inside you. The dagger clattered forgotten to the floor as he wrapped you against him, holding you close, anchoring you in the storm he had created.
“Do you trust me now?” he murmured against your temple, his voice low, coaxing, and impossibly tender after the violence you’d just witnessed.
“Yes,” you whispered, your voice breaking. A tear slipped down your cheek as you pressed your face to his chest. “I’m sorry for doubting you. I should have known.”
His hand came up, gentle where it cupped your jaw, his thumb brushing away your tears. “It’s okay,” he soothed, eyes softer now, molten with something deeper. “It doesn’t matter. Nothing stands in our way now.”
Your gaze drifted despite yourself, catching on the crumpled, lifeless form of Amund sprawled across the stone floor. Your stomach churned, the image searing itself into your mind.
Rafayel saw. He was quicker than your doubt, quicker than your grief. His hand tightened against your cheek, tilting your face back to him, forcing your eyes to his. “Don’t look,” he commanded, voice low, magnetic. His twilight gaze consumed you, pulling you back into his orbit. “Just look at me.”
And you did. You drowned in him.
When he kissed you, the world seemed to collapse and expand all at once. His mouth was fierce and unrelenting against yours, as if sealing a pact, as if binding you to him with every press of his lips. The sea outside surged in answer, the flame roaring higher, wrapping around you both like a witness to your union.
You clung to him, trembling, tasting salt and fire and something irrevocable. The world was ash and water and Rafayel, and nothing else mattered.
The temple doors opened with a groan, heavy stone swinging wide as you stepped into the open air. The sudden brightness of Lemuria’s streets made you blink, the flickering light of the sacred flame behind you replaced by the shimmer of the undersea city. The crowd had gathered in droves, the sound of their anticipation a restless hum that instantly erupted into cheers the moment Rafayel appeared, your hand still tangled in his.
“Behold!” His voice carried easily, smooth and commanding, echoing off the marble facades and coral-draped arches. He raised the dagger, now sheathed, for all to see. “The flame has accepted my offering. Lemuria is safe. She will prosper.”
The people roared, voices mingling with the distant song of the ocean current that drifted through the city. Hands reached out, flowers were tossed into the street, petals catching in the water like confetti. For a moment you were swept into their joy, watching faces alight with reverence and hope, their god and his chosen bride at the heart of it.
But Rafayel didn’t linger. The moment the announcement was spoken, he clasped your hand tighter, tugging you from the swell of voices. His tail flicked swift and powerful, weaving through side passages and narrower streets, past guards who bowed their heads as he passed.
You stumbled a little to keep up, still glancing back toward the crowd. “Shouldn’t we stay? Celebrate with them?” you asked, the sound of laughter and music already swelling behind you.
He looked back at you over his shoulder, a hint of mischief softening the gravity of his expression. “Celebrate?” His thumb brushed over the back of your hand, slow, deliberate. “My love, we just forged our covenant in flame and blood. I’d rather celebrate with my bride than share her with the city tonight.”
The word bride hung between you, sharp and intimate, leaving your chest tight and your cheeks warm. You swallowed hard, the heat rising in you more startling than the roar of the people outside. Still, you let him lead you, feet moving without protest, the press of his fingers at your wrist a tether you didn’t want to slip free of.
─ ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ ──── ♡ ─── ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ ──
Rafayel’s grip on your hand was firm, magnetic, pulling you through the glittering halls toward his private chamber. The light of the bioluminescence flickered along the walls, catching on the golden threads of your silks, the jewels adorning both of you shimmering with every step. Your pulse raced with each step, excitement and anticipation coiling in your belly as you followed him without hesitation.
Then he stopped abruptly in the throne room, tail flicking behind him with a lazy, deliberate sweep. His eyes met yours, a slow, wicked smile tugging at the corner of his lips. “Sit,” he commanded softly, but there was an edge to his voice, a spark of mischief and possession.
You flushed, biting your lip. “Rafayel… knock it off,” you murmured, though your knees betrayed you, weakening slightly at the sound of his voice.
“I’m serious, cutie,” he said, tail curling and flicking as he moved closer, letting the weight of his presence press around you. “It’s as much yours now as it is mine.”
Reluctantly, heart hammering, you obeyed, settling onto the throne once more. His hands didn’t linger long on your waist before sliding down your thighs, the silk warm and soft under his touch. Each brush of his fingers sent shivers crawling up your spine. You gasped softly, pressing your thighs together instinctively.
“What are you—?” Your question caught in your throat.
“Worshipping you,” he murmured, voice low, husky, brushing against your ear. “Every inch of you deserves attention, cutie.”
His lips followed the path of his hands, kissing your thighs, trailing the silk higher and higher. Your body arched toward him without thought, breath catching with each deliberate motion, heart pounding like a drum in your chest. He paused for a heartbeat, letting the anticipation coil tighter, before his hands peeled the silk from your lower half.
“Rafayel…” you whispered, trembling, unable to stop the flush of desire crawling through you.
He chuckled softly, a sound that vibrated through your core. “Shh… just feel, just be mine.”
Then his mouth found you, hot and wet, tracing a slow, deliberate stripe up through your slit. Your knees quivered instinctively, the cold of the throne beneath you contrasting with the searing heat pooling low and deep. He lingered, tongue teasing the sensitive flesh, flicking, circling, tasting. Each brush of him sent tremors shooting up your spine.
You gripped the edges of the throne as your heart thudded erratically, the steady, powerful pull of his presence anchoring you even as your body betrayed you. “Ah… Rafayel…” your voice broke, a fragile mix of moan and plea. “I… I can’t—”
“You can, cutie,” he murmured against you, lips curling into a mischievous, possessive smile you could feel vibrating through your core. “You taste so good… so sweet.”
His tongue teased, pressing deeper, slipping over the sensitive nub of your clit, suckling gently, coaxing you into the dizzying haze of arousal. You gasped, body arching toward him without thought, hands tangling in his hair. Each pull, each flick of his tongue, each press of his lips was precise, worshipful, yet maddeningly possessive.
A soft sigh escaped him as he slipped a finger inside you, slow and wet, curling expertly to hit all the spots that made your knees threaten to buckle. Your breath hitched, half a moan, half a cry, the mix of his mouth and finger driving heat through your body until your vision blurred with desire.
“Rafayel… oh—” you whispered, voice trembling, fingers gripping his violet hair tighter, as if holding onto him could keep you from floating entirely into the pleasure he orchestrated.
“You’re finally mine,” he murmured, lips pressing against the slick, sensitive flesh of your heat. His finger pulsed inside you, slick and insistent, every movement perfectly timed, driving you closer and closer.
He drew back slightly, just enough to capture your clit between his lips again, sucking and nipping lightly, teasing, tasting, coaxing a sharp, delicious moan from your chest. His other hand traced along your hip, pressing and kneading, grounding you in his heat, in the way his tail flicked and coiled behind him, echoing the deliberate, fluid rhythm of his body.
“I’ll have you like this everyday… this entire temple will be marked by you,” he murmured between kisses, teasing the tender flesh, sliding a second finger in to curl and stroke. The slow, deliberate motion had you trembling, whining against him, body arching, the heat pooling so impossibly deep it felt like it might consume you whole.
A coil tightened deep inside, a delicious, unbearable knot of pleasure, and you shivered violently. Your voice tore past your lips in a guttural, high-pitched whine, a mix of moan and cry, your body arching forward, hips trembling as your climax crested with shattering intensity. Your toes curled, and your fingers tugged at his hair with a ferocity that made him groan low and soft, his tail flicking in the water-like rhythm behind him as if echoing the pulsing waves of your release.
“Rafayel…ah—don’t stop,” you cried, gasping, your entire body practically melting against the throne as your climax rolled through you in waves, leaving you trembling, quivering, and impossibly spent.
He let you ride it, murmuring soft praise, whispering low and possessive words into your ear, lips brushing your temple, fingers holding you steady even as you shook. “Mine… all mine… so perfect,” he breathed, voice vibrating against you, making your core tingle anew even as you sagged weakly against him.
Once you’d caught your breath, he gently lifted you from the throne, his arms firm and warm around your trembling body. The wet silk of your dress clung to your skin as he carried you through the halls, your limbs still too wobbly to protest. When he opened the door to his private quarters, the room blossomed into golden light, each candle igniting as though by magic, the glow soft and warm, flickering across the walls, reflecting off the fine garments, pearls, and shells arranged throughout the room.
He set you carefully onto the bed, your body still shivering from the aftershocks of your release. For a moment, he simply gazed at you, eyes dark and worshipful, and then a mischievous glint crossed his face. He took your discarded silk panties, holding them up for a brief second, and then deliberately placed them near the shrine.
You blinked at him, laughter spilling from your lips despite your flushed, breathless state. “You’re insane,” you said, shaking your head.
“Haven’t I made that clear already, cutie?” he replied smoothly, the faint curve of a smirk on his lips, his eyes dark with amusement and desire.
Then he crawled over you, careful, slow, letting his chest press against yours, heat radiating through his body, tail curling beneath you. With a swift, fluid motion, he flipped you so that you straddled him, his tail moving beneath you like a living thing. The sensation of it pressing against your clit was immediate, searing, sending a fresh pulse of delicious, electric pleasure through your body.
He placed his hands firmly on your hips, rocking them against him with deliberate, teasing pressure. “Use me,” he murmured, voice low and reverent, almost worshipful. “Take what you need… I’m yours, cutie. All of me, for you.”
You gasped at the friction, the heat, the impossible intimacy, and he kept his eyes locked on yours, watching every shiver, every tilt of your head, every clench of your thighs. His hands moved with patient guidance, hips nudging against yours, tail adjusting with each subtle grind, ensuring every movement pressed the pleasure right where it needed to be.
“So soft,” he murmured, voice husky, as he encouraged you to move faster, to find your rhythm. “Every inch of you… mine to worship. Let go for me, cutie. Let me feel it.”
Each movement, each press, each deliberate, teasing grind of him beneath you sent shocks of heat curling through your body, a delicious mix of desperation, surrender, and awe. You clutched at his shoulders, heart hammering, breath catching in short, stuttering gasps as he guided your movements, eyes never leaving yours, reverent, obsessive, completely devoted.
You could feel it building again, a coiling knot of pleasure that had nowhere to go, tightening, pulsing, and every teasing flick of his tail and pressure of his hands made it burn hotter. Your breaths came ragged, uneven, gasps and soft whines spilling from your lips as he murmured into your ear: “That’s it, cutie… mine… let go for me… my bride…”
Your hands clawed at his shoulders, fingers digging in as the knot inside you snapped, exploding in searing, shuddering waves that ran through your body, hips trembling uncontrollably over him. You cried out, shivering, collapsing slightly against him, unable to hold yourself upright as the pleasure crashed and crashed again, each pulse wringing another whimper from your throat.
Rafayel’s lips found yours instantly, kissing you hard, deep, possessive, leaving you tasting the remnants of your last climax on his lips. His hands moved to your chest, fingers teasing, pinching your nipples just enough to make you gasp and shiver in renewed arousal, tail coiling tightly beneath you, pressing against you in every possible way.
“Mine,” he whispered into your lips, voice rough and reverent, “Say you’re mine.”
Your pulse fluttered wildly. The words slipped out before hesitation could catch them, a breathless vow against his mouth. “I’m yours… and you’re mine.”
For the briefest instant, everything stilled. Then his lips curved into a wicked, almost triumphant smile — one that made your stomach tighten with both fear and aching want. He wanted you just as unmoored, just as ruined with need for him as he was for you. And you had just proven you were.
His fire shimmered fully over him, scales fading to skin, muscles shifting beneath the new solidity of his legs. You barely had time to gasp at the change before he moved, a predator’s grace and a lover’s hunger combined. His hands caught your wrists, pressing them above your head as he rolled you onto your back, pinning you into the soft sea of blankets. The sudden weight of him above you stole your breath, made you arch instinctively against him.
“Perfect,” he growled lowly, his lips brushing your ear. “You’re perfect like this… beneath me, trembling for me.” His hips pressed forward, teasing your slick entrance with the heavy heat of him, and you whimpered, every nerve lit.
He kissed you then, slow and deep, his tongue tasting, claiming, before breaking away just enough to murmur, “Say it again. Say you’re mine.”
The head of his cock slid against your folds, spreading your arousal, making your back arch desperately. “I’m yours,” you gasped, nails scraping at his shoulders when he rocked forward just enough to give you a taste.
“And don’t forget,” he added, voice rough with both restraint and reverence, “I’m yours too, cutie. Every piece of me. No one else will ever have me—only you.”
The sincerity tangled with the wickedness in his gaze, a worshipful obsession that left you raw. Then he pushed in, slow but insistent, stretching you inch by inch until he was seated fully inside, his chest pressed to yours, his mouth capturing your every gasp.
The rhythm he set was deliberate at first, almost punishingly slow — making you feel every pulse, every drag of him deep inside. He worshiped you with his touch: lips trailing fire down your throat, teeth nipping at your collarbone, fingers tweaking your nipple until you gasped and writhed. His other hand slipped between your thighs, rubbing slow, dizzying circles against your clit in perfect time with his thrusts.
“Look at you,” he rasped, pulling back just enough to see your face twisted in pleasure. “So beautiful like this… my love, my bride. You were made to take me, weren’t you?” His thrusts deepened, hitting that perfect spot that made your eyes roll back. “Say it again. Say you’re mine while I’m inside you.”
Every word dripped with possessive reverence, as though he was binding you to him with each stroke, each breath. And the more he pressed, the more you felt yourself unravel, every nerve alive with the worship of his body against yours.
Your lips parted on a shuddering breath, his words shoving you closer to the edge. “I’m yours,” you gasped, eyes locking with his even as they threatened to roll back from the pleasure. Your nails dug into his shoulders, desperate for something to anchor you against the force of him. “Always yours, Rafayel—ah—”
That last admission drew a wicked smile to his face, his chest rumbling with a low, pleased growl. He crushed his mouth to yours, tongue sliding deep as his thrusts turned harder, more demanding, each one angled to drag the sweetest sounds out of you. His hands were everywhere — gripping your thighs, sliding up your sides, claiming every inch of you as though he could mold you to fit him perfectly.
The kiss broke only for him to nip at your lip, your chin, the arch of your throat, sucking bruises into your skin as his hips drove against yours with delicious force. “Mine,” he rasped again, words vibrating against your pulse. “You feel how you were meant for me? How your body opens for me?” His teeth grazed the curve of your shoulder before his mouth returned to yours, hungry, insistent.
Your body clenched helplessly around him, heat coiling, building with every rough thrust that hit deep, with every reverent word he poured into you like worship. His thumb found your clit again, circling in tight, teasing motions that made you jolt and whimper into his kiss. Your back arched off the bed, the sharp pleasure pushing you closer, closer — until it all came undone.
You shattered around him, a cry muffled against his mouth as your third climax crashed through you. Every muscle seized, fluttering and gripping around him so tightly it dragged a broken moan from his chest. He didn’t slow, didn’t let you drift away, driving into your convulsing body with a heat that only grew rougher, desperate.
“That’s it, cutie,” he growled into your ear, breath ragged, pace relentless now. “Want you to feel me spill inside you. My bride—made for me.” His hips slammed deep, his thumb never leaving your clit, forcing your body to wring every ounce of release from him.
And then he groaned, low and raw, mouth crashing to yours as he spilled into you, hot and unrelenting, pulse after pulse filling you while you milked him with trembling walls. His kiss was frantic and claiming, tongue tangled with yours, as though he needed to fuse himself to you completely in that moment.
By the time his thrusts slowed, dragging out every last drop of release, your body was trembling, spent beneath him, lips swollen from his relentless kisses, skin marked with his reverence. He didn’t let you go — still buried deep, breathing hard against your lips — as though he couldn’t bear to be apart from you even for a heartbeat.
His breath was still ragged against your ear, his body heavy over yours, the heat of his release pulsing deep inside you. For a moment, the only sound was the mingling of your uneven breaths, the slick press of skin against skin as he held you close.
When he shifted as though to pull back, you clung to him, arms winding tight around his shoulders, nails faint against his skin. “Don’t,” you whispered hoarsely, pulling him back down, chest pressed to chest. “Don’t leave me.”
Rafayel stilled, then angled his head to look at you, blue eyes softened in the dim glow. “Cutie,” he murmured, brushing his lips over your damp temple, “I’m not leaving.”
“You can’t,” you pushed, voice shaking with exhaustion but burning with fierce need. Your grip on him only tightened. “You promised yourself to me too. You can’t take that back. If you ever try—” You swallowed, your pulse hammering, the words spilling unbidden. “If you ever try to go, I’ll use our bond. I’ll force you to stay. I’ll lock you away if I have to.”
For a heartbeat, he only stared. Then a slow, wicked smile spread over his lips, and a low laugh rumbled from his chest, rich with delight. “My bride,” he whispered, kissing you hungrily, tasting your vow on your lips. “You sound just like me.”
You flushed at his words but refused to release him, and he only gathered you tighter in his arms, as though you were the most precious thing he’d ever hold. He nuzzled into your hair, breath warm against your ear, a final murmur of, “Good, claim me, just as I’ve claimed you.”
The last threads of your voice faded into the hush of the room, and for a moment, only the steady cadence of his breathing filled the space. Rafayel shifted just enough to look at you, the faintest curve of his lips betraying the storm of delight behind his eyes. You felt it through the bond too — warmth, possession, that unshakable tether between your souls thrumming like a vow newly forged.
He brushed a strand of damp hair from your cheek, fingers lingering against your skin as though committing the shape of you to memory. “Sleep, my heart,” he murmured, softer now, reverent. “I’ll be here when you wake.”
You pressed closer, sealing yourself against him as if daring fate to try and separate you. In that cocoon of heat and breath, there was no world beyond the two of you — only promises spoken and unspoken, only the pull of a bond neither of you could resist.
When sleep finally claimed you both, it did so in perfect synchronicity — two heartbeats aligned, two souls entwined, as though the night itself had accepted your vow.
a/n: finally.... yandere raf is here. i didn't make this super dark since its for a celebration and honestly super dark content isn't my thing, but i hope it still hits. writing this was so fun even though i lowkey ruined my sleep schedule finishing it, it was so worth it. i hope u all enjoy and thank you again for 1k ♡ i love u guys
Synopsis: After you are chosen as a tribute for the Hunger Games, you are prepared to do anything in your power to ensure you return home. However, you find that your resolve is weaker than you anticipated when it comes to the boy from District Two — a volunteer tribute by the name of Mydeimos.
AO3 | HSR Masterlist
Pairing: Mydei x F!Reader
Word Count: 30.1k (yeah idk either)
Content Warnings: hunger games au (so like every warning you can think of regarding that: major character death (Look At The AU they’re all getting murked 😭), violence, blood, descriptions of injuries, vague References to child exploitation, substance abuse, and ptsd), so much hysilens and dan heng and phainon glazing you might stop to wonder if this is actually a mydei fic, slow burn wc wise fast burn timeline wise, angst, some incredibly random character features??, sorry if i butcher your fav idk they are all probably ooc
A/N: to those of you who follow me you Know this fic has been giving me so much grief (to the point i made my username mydeiglazer69 for a day) it was supposed to be a quick under 10k words oneshot that i wrote for my dear friend kaioculus (@/cryoculus) and well. clearly it is Not That. LOL T_T to kai….thank you for being the first victim of my wheel and letting me steal your man and put him in Situations 💔 for everyone else i promise this looks like an intimidating wc but it’s not that bad…..really…..and if you give it a chance thank you so much i love you x1000
The room where you go to meet Hysilens is empty and tiled, the windows covered with a fine layer of dust and the ceiling impossibly high over your heads. She sits in the middle, and you think she has never looked so small, so frightened, so you try to picture her as you have known her for every day of your lives thus far. Yet you find you cannot muster any images of that fierce girl who would skewer fish by their eyes and shrimp by their tails; you only see her alone, curled in a chair meant for a man, her jaw clenched with firm resolution but her leg periodically twitching, betraying her impassive facade.
When she sees you, she stands, and before you know it her arms are around you and your tears are damp against her pale throat. She is the one who ought to be weeping, but she has never been such a person, and so she is motionless, clinging to you and humming lowly. The song is familiar, reminding you of the placid ocean and the sun beating down at you as you cast your nets over the side of your wooden boat, and something swells like a ripcurrent in your throat at the memory.
“It’s alright,” she says finally. Her voice never shakes, but her fingers dig into the space between your shoulder blades, and her heart pounds like the sea at storm. “Why are you crying? You know I’ll win.”
“But what if you don’t?” you say. Unlike her, your words crack with despair, because unlike her, you have that luxury. You can leave this room with red eyes and puffy cheeks; Hysilens, however, must remain as she always is, or else she will be preyed upon with a swiftness as soon as she arrives at the Capitol.
“I will,” she says. “I’ve even killed a shark. Don’t you remember? It was your birthday, and I bought you a cake with the money. How can this be any different?”
“They’re people. It’s not the same at all,” you whisper, because now you are remembering last year, when a girl from District Nine won her Games but lost her sanity. You and Hysilens had watched together as her mentor, still a boy himself, had dragged her to the stage and held her in place while she wailed, so disconsolate that Callictus couldn’t even manage to interview her about her victory.
“It is the same,” she says in a tone that allows no argument, and although the words are cold, you understand what she means by them. They are the same because they have to be the same. They are the same because if they aren’t, she will be unable to bring herself to do what she must. They are the same because she will die if they are not.
“Then you will come back,” you say. “There’s nobody in the world who’s better at hunting fish than you, Hysilens, so if it’s the same, then you will definitely come back.”
“Exactly,” she says. “We will swim together again, my friend. This is not goodbye forever.”
You want to respond, to tell her that she must find a weapon, that she must not delude herself with thoughts of heroism and selflessness, only her own preservation, but before you can, the door slams open and a dark-uniformed Cleaner enters.
“Time’s up,” he says shortly, gruffly.
“No, wait,” you say. “Wait! I need more, I need — Hysilens, Hysilens, you have to win. You have to do everything you can to win!”
“Time’s up,” the Cleaner repeats mechanically, wrenching you away from her, ignoring how you reach your arms out, your fingers skimming along her collarbones, her neck, as you are pulled from the room.
“It’s just fish!” you say frantically, because you cannot bear the thought of her losing, you cannot bear the thought of her returning like that girl from Nine, with blood in her eyes and a fog in her mind. “It’s just fish, they’re just—”
“I’ll come back!” she calls after you. “I promise—”
The Cleaner slams the door shut between you both, muttering something under his breath about District trash and their backwards customs and illogical whims, and then he lets go of you like he could not be happier to shove you away. Left alone in the hallway of the Justice Building, you sink to the ground, sobbing in earnest, because now that you are apart from her you are cold with the knowledge that you may never see her again.
One week later, Hysilens enters the arena. Another two and she leaves as the victor, which you are sure you should celebrate, but when she takes the stage and Callictus asks her how she feels about it, all she can do is shrug. Her eyes are hollow, not lively like tidepools as they once were, and when she comes to visit you for the first time since her name was called that day, the only thing she does is hold her red hands to your nose and ask you if you can smell the salt. You tell her that you are in District Four, it will always reek of salt, and then she sighs.
I keep scrubbing and scrubbing, but it doesn’t wash out. Do you have better soaps? It won’t come off. Please help me. It won’t come off.
She’s not talking about salt from the sea, and you wonder if she might have been better off dying in the Games after all.
Hysilens was young for a victor, and two years later you are old for a tribute, but it is still strange to see her standing on the stage beside Phagousa, gloves pulled over fingers clasped behind a straight back, a frown settled on a face that is yet to lose its girlish softness, although innocence has long since fled those forlorn features. She does not meet your eyes — after the last Reaping, she told you privately that she could not bear looking at you for fear that it would enact some kind of divine will, and you suppose even now she has this superstition — but the deliberation in the act means she is as aware of you as you are of her, or perhaps more so.
Phagousa is a tall woman, and her proximity to Hysilens as well as her enormous shoes only exacerbate this, so that she appears to be as towering as any of the men from District Eleven. She’s known for it, your escort, for her odd taste in footwear, which stands out even more than the wigs that the woman from Twelve is so fond of. This year, there are tiny guppies swimming around in the platform of her heels, and you are far enough away to be unsure if they are real as well as too distrustful to assume that they’re not.
“Shall I give a speech?” she says, and although the escorts are meant to be the paragon of virtue, as members of the Capitol, in practice everyone knows she is a hopeless drunkard taken with the ecstasy and indulgence of wine. If the President found it offensive, he might’ve said something, but year after year, Phagousa returns, so no one bothers with complaining. Anyways, her speech is one you all memorize early in school, before you are turned to fishing for work and nothing more, so the less time she wastes with it, the less you must be tortured by the anticipation of the Reaping. “Ah, well. Glory to President Lycurgus and the Capitol!”
Her nails are colorful, and only when the cameras zoom in to show her hand muddling about in the glass bowl do you realize that they are patterned like fish scales. She must find it so novel, so endearing, to paint designs that mock you and call herself your representative. You have never despised her as much as you do in that moment, when she finally picks out a slip and unfurls it with those fish-scale-talons, her perfect lips parting in delight.
“For the ladies!” she says, allowing the moment to stretch on, for suspense or dramatic effect or whatever else it is that they value in the Capitol. Your mind wanders as you try to imagine who it might be, and so when she finally says it, you hardly take note. In fact, she has to repeat it once and then twice, tapping on the microphone for emphasis, before you notice the panic on Hysilens’s face and realize what she has just said. “Excuse me? Young lady, are you present?”
Of course you are present, and now you are frozen with horror. Two years ago, foolishly, you had told your mother that the worst moment of your life was when Phagousa had called Hysilens’s name in the Reaping — Hysilens, your best friend since you were so young, who you had nearly lost — but then, how could you be considered foolish for that? How could you have known then that so soon, you would experience this new tragedy, that in such a short time, it would be your own name announced in Phagousa’s Capitolite drawl?
Your legs carry you to the podium without your mind’s consent; then Phagousa is smiling at you, calling you precious, and Hysilens is so pallid it is only a testament to her will that she has not yet fainted before everyone. You stare at the distant horizon, where the ocean stretches into the sky, and you pretend like that’s all the world is, like you are not standing between Hysilens and Phagousa, waiting to hear the name of the boy who might soon die at your side.
“And our lucky male tribute is…Dan Heng!” Phagousa says, her voice a sing-song. Of course she’s happy — after this, she will go and have attendants pour wine down her throat until she is in a stupor. But how can you feel the same? Because of all of the people in District Four, of every single person that might’ve been in his place, you think it’s a special sort of unfair that the one who has been chosen is Dan Heng.
Phagousa’s words are followed by a shrieking sob. Even before the crowd parts around them, you know who it is that is crying: Bailu, Dan Heng’s little sister, whose first Reaping was this year. How relieved she must have been when your name was read off, and how that relief must have compounded into guilt and fear when Dan Heng’s name immediately followed it! Because he is the only family she has left, their parents having died when they were very young, and now she stands to lose him as well.
Even the Cleaners do not yank Dan Heng away from her when he crouches to wipe at her face with his worn sleeve. Everyone is solemn for this moment, solemn in a way they weren’t for you — you are nobody of particular note, after all, another tribute in a throng of countless, but Dan Heng is different. There’s not a person in this District he hasn’t helped, and so you are all silent as he joins you, giving you a curt nod and a smile, considerate until the very last.
“District Four, please join me in a round of applause for your tributes in the 68th Hunger Games!” Phagousa says. “Congratulations, you both, and may you bring pride to us all!”
The Cleaners usher you away to a room you have only visited once, but which you have seen countless times in your nightmares, such that it is imprinted in your memory and impossible to efface. Dust-covered windows. High ceilings. A chair for someone far larger than you in the middle. But this time you are the one sitting, not Hysilens, and it is your parents who enter and embrace you, not your despondent self.
“Hysilens did it,” your mother says, petting your hair as she did when you were a little baby. “You can, too.”
“We know it,” your father says, his hand on your shoulder awkward, unsure, but solid. “District Four will have another victor.”
To stop yourself from crumbling, you clear your throat and try to think of something, anything, that will distract you. Yet every thought that passes only brings you closer to the verge of tears, because each is a reminder that you are going and may never see them or District Four again.
“Bailu,” you say finally, for at least she is a safer topic. “You’ll take care of her?”
“Don’t worry,” your mother says. “We’ll all pitch in when we can.”
It’s hardly reassuring, but this is the most you are allowed in Four, where the Cleaners are more watchful than anywhere else. The temptation of the open ocean is too great to leave you all to your own devices, or so Hysilens muses, and thus your every move is monitored by those shadows of President Lycurgus, who take any abnormality as dissent and make every effort to quell it before it can gain water.
“Do your best to garner support,” your father says, always practical, never wasting a moment with sentimentality. “You’ve always been good with the tridents. If you can get enough sponsors, then maybe they’ll even send you one. They did it with that boy from Nine a few years ago, remember?”
He’s talking about Phainon, the youngest victor to date, who was so beloved by the Capitol during his Games that he was sent an entire sword by his sponsors — a fine one, made of bronze and steel, not the half-smithed discards that typically litter the arena every year. For a boy who had grown up in the wheatfields of District Nine, a sword was not so different from a scythe, and he had cut down the remaining tributes with a swiftness that was entirely at odds with his sweet face, earning him an easy and unprecedented victory.
“Anything is possible,” you say, for you are sure he knows as well as you do what he has neglected to mention in this hoping — that Phainon was known, is still known, just as well for his uncommon beauty as for his youth. No amount of charm or trying will give you his silver hair or his way with the Capitolite women, who have loved him since they first saw him and who love him even more now that they can fawn over him without fear of retribution, and so such an expensive gift is not one you should dream of, let alone count on.
“It doesn’t matter what you have to do,” your mother says. “You are our daughter. We will welcome you home with open arms.”
You cannot cry, so you nod rapidly, swallowing your fit before it can come, and then all of you sit in silence until the Cleaners come to escort them away. When the door shuts behind them you suddenly think of a million more things to say to them, I love you and the current is strong today and tend the garden well, the insects are so insatiable this year, but the cruelty is that it all only comes to mind now that they are gone and you can never say any of it again.
In truth you do not expect any more visitors, so when the door creaks open and a Cleaner enters, you are halfway to standing when you realize there is a young girl with the man, the whites of her eyes and the apples of her cheeks bright like coral under the summer sun. The Cleaner tells you you have ten minutes, and then he leaves you alone to wait apprehensively for her to speak, without the faintest notion of what she might say.
“I think you’re going to win,” Bailu says before you can even open your mouth. She is so articulate it’s easy to forget that she is so young, but when she approaches you, you realize she would hardly come up to your chest if you stood face to face. “No, I am sure of it.”
“What?” you say. You had expected her to beg you to spare her beloved brother, had expected to make some empty promise about how you’d try, so you are lost for words and left fumbling. “Me? How? I’m not — the tributes from One and Two are always the strongest contenders, and even Dan Heng has a good chance, so why…?”
“Everyone knows you and Miss Hysilens are best friends,” she says. “She won’t let you die, which means you’ll win.”
Hearing it in her matter-of-fact tone is different than when the words had come from your bereft mother or your stoic father. Of course they had said so, they had to cling to empty promises like that or else they might drown in the haplessness of their grief, but Bailu…your victory must be the antithesis of her desires. There can only be one, after all, and if you are to win as she predicts, then that means Dan Heng will come home a corpse. Her brother, the only one she has left — she is telling you that she is sure he will die, for no other reason than because she is so convinced that Hysilens’s affection for you will transcend even the odds of the arena.
“Is that what you came to tell me?” you say. She looks away, pursing her lips in an expression you are sure she picked up from Dan Heng. It is severe and unlike her typically sunny disposition, although you suppose today is the kind of day that doesn’t warrant much cheer, anyways, so maybe you shouldn’t be surprised.
“I wanted to ask you something,” she says. “But it might be difficult, so if you have to say no, I understand.”
“Go on,” you say. “The Cleaners aren’t patient, and I am sure we do not have much time.”
“If you have to face my brother in the arena, and you — and you find yourself winning — can you be gentle?” she says, all in a rush. “I know I can’t ask you not to kill him, but—”
“Yes,” you say, cutting her off when she breaks down, rubbing at her eyes furiously in a fruitless disguise of her sorrow. “I’ll do my best, Bailu.”
“I asked him to do the same,” she says, her voice high-pitched and choked. “I made him promise to be really nice to you. He won’t give you any trouble in the arena, he swore he won’t, so please try to avoid him for as long as you can, and he’ll do the same.”
“I will,” you say, and it’s easy, because it was your plan all along. Wrapping your arms around her small frame, you hug her to you, marvelling at how frail she is, a fine-boned sandpiper shielded from the harshness of the world thus far by her brother, who is strong where she is meek, sturdy where she is slight. “Please go to my parents if you need anything, and don’t watch the Games on your own, okay?”
You don’t want her to be by herself if Dan Heng dies. When he dies. You can’t fathom what it will do to her and you don’t — the thought of her in their home, alone, watching her brother bleed out on the screen…it makes you so sick you want to take her somewhere far away, where she can hide from this reality forever.
Phagousa retrieves you and Dan Heng from the Justice Building, babbling on about how exciting it is for you that you are finally going to the illustrious Capitol, how much you will definitely love it, how it smells of sweets and perfume instead of kelp and rot, how the women are as beautiful as jewels and the men are so exquisitely handsome that they are beyond compare — she winks at you when she says this, and you almost ask her what her city’s fascination with Phainon is about, then, if the Capitolite men really are so illustrious. Yet you know better than to aggravate her with foolish questions, so you bite your tongue and pretend like you are fascinated, when all the while you are inching closer to Dan Heng so you can whisper to him under your breath without being overheard.
“I told my parents to look after your sister,” you say.
“Thank you,” he says, and when Phagousa squeals at her recounting of her last birthday, where a man hid inside of her birthday cake and sprung out with a dance as she tried to cut it, he rolls his eyes. It is almost endearing — perhaps in the past it really might’ve been — but then you are boarding the train and you remember Dan Heng is not a person you can afford to find endearing anymore. You have done him this one and final favor, have promised him that no matter what, his sister will be alright, and now you would do well to forget that you ever might’ve been classmates, that you ever might’ve been friends.
“Alright, then! Get some rest for now, and we can reconvene later,” Phagousa says. “It’s been an exciting day for us all, and I for one am looking forward to a shower. The air in Four is so sticky, it’ll ruin my skin if I don’t wash up as fast as I can! I recommend you both do the same. You’re a beautiful pair of tributes, really you are, and that’s going to be more of an advantage than you realize, so don’t squander it.”
Your quarters on the train are nearly half the size of the entire first floor of your house in District Four, and you are momentarily overwhelmed by the vastness of it all, by the bed which is the size of a boat, by the surroundings blurring past as the train shoots away from the home you have known for your entire life.
“I can’t believe it,” a soft voice says from behind you. You don’t need to turn to know that it is Hysilens who has entered, and just as she remained so emotionless when she was chosen, you give her that same courtesy, staying still even as she wavers. “I thought that, by getting chosen, I had managed to protect you somehow. I suppose I shouldn’t have, but I always comforted myself with it, with the knowledge that I had gone into that arena so you would never have to. The world couldn’t be that barbarous, could it? The odds could never be so unfair that it would happen to us both, and better me than you, or that’s how I always saw it.”
“But now I’m here, too,” you say. “I guess the world and its odds are just so.”
“I was a popular victor,” she says, a little desperately. “And you’re more approachable than me by far. You’ll have more sponsors than anyone, I promise, and you’ll win, too. Even faster than I did.”
“Hysilens,” you say.
“You have to agree,” she says, insistently tugging on the hem of your pale green Reaping dress, which you had inherited from your mother. “They can tell when you aren’t confident. No one will back a beached whale, so don’t be one. You have to prove to everyone that you are someone worthy of their time, their attention — their money. You have to make them see in you what I do. Don’t tell me that you can’t do this. Don’t act like you’ve lost before the Games have even begun.”
“I know,” you say. “I was just going to say that we should watch the other Reapings. For old times’ sake.”
It’s a flimsy way of hiding your morbid curiosity — the truth is that you just want to see the faces of the other tributes, that you want your first glimpses at those who might kill you and those who you might kill. But it’s true that when you were younger, you and her would always watch these official programmes together, so she takes the bait easily, or maybe she just doesn’t want to think too deeply about it.
The tributes from Twelve are covered in coal dust, as they often are, and neither of the ones from Eleven smile when their escort calls their names. The first one of note is the girl from Ten, Hyacinthia, who is so young and shining that you feel it in your chest when she beams at her escort, Aquila, like she hasn’t just been sentenced to her death.
“She can’t be too much older than Bailu,” you say softly. “A year, maybe. Two if we’re being generous.”
“There’s always tributes like that,” Hysilens says. “They never win, but they try so hard…”
When the girl from District Nine is called, a mouse-faced brunette named Livia, one of the past victors, Cyrene, is so hysterical that Phainon must lead her off of the stage with an apologetic wave to the cameras. You glance at Hysilens, wondering if she knows more now that she is one of them, and she nods grimly.
“You remember how she was,” she says. “After winning. She couldn’t speak to Callictus, even with help.”
“Yes,” you say.
“She’s very kind,” Hysilens says. “A sweet little sea hare when she has her mind to herself. But the rumors are entirely true — a part of her is stuck in a loop of watching her district partner lose his head, over and over and over. I don’t know that she’ll ever escape it. She’s just lucky to be from Nine; Phainon takes up so much of the Capitol’s attention that her madness is swept under the rug easily enough. It’s not always the case.”
The girl from District Six is younger than Hyacinthia and smaller than Bailu, with large, watery eyes, and two identical sisters who cling to her arms when her name is read off — Trianne. Hysilens actually hisses in disapproval at this, and you are about to ask her what’s wrong when you realize that she is staring not at Trianne but at one of the older victors, a stately woman with cascading red curls and a pallor cast over her aghast expression.
“It makes you wonder,” Hysilens says when Tribios embraces the girl without care for her audience, sinking to the ground and rocking her back and forth, back and forth. “Does everyone really have the same odds?”
When the feed switches to District Four, you are unsurprised to see that they spend most of the time highlighting Dan Heng. He is the admirable one, the handsome boy beloved by his entire town, the sweet boy whose little sister is waiting for him at home, and next to him you have such a plain story you all but fade into the background — or you would’ve, if the cameraman did not give you the small grace of showing Hysilens’s shock when your name was read off. What a pity, that you must profit off of her pain, but both of you know that even that slim bit of humanity you have been afforded could be the difference between starvation and sympathy, so you do not complain, even if you would much like to.
Yet of all the districts, it is Two’s Reaping which far outshines the rest, which even Dan Heng and Bailu cannot compete with, because both tributes are volunteers, and they are a class above the rest. The boy is more of a man or a statue, making even Dan Heng look scrawny and awkward, and the girl is almost as beautiful as Aglaea, the beloved victor from District One whose Games you were too young to understand fully upon watching.
Gnaeus, their escort, is far more serious and composed than Phagousa, and he announces things with a certain gravitas that is fitting of District Two, which has by far the most victors amongst all the districts. You wish that Phagousa would learn from him, but then again you think she is so dependent on drink that even the sagest advice could not save her now that she has wasted away so completely.
“Polyxia,” he says, and almost before the name has left his mouth, there is a hand shooting defiantly in the air.
“I volunteer!”
She yells in the way of one who is not accustomed to raising her voice, but there she is, a pale-haired girl with one hand on a wheelchair, standing protectively before the girl sitting in it. You can only assume that that is Polyxia, and when the volunteer introduces herself as Castorice, Polyxia’s twin sister, you understand all too well the choice she made.
“Don’t be mistaken,” Hysilens said. “She may look pretty and sweet, but the ones from Two, they’re all monsters in their own right. Don’t underestimate her, unless you want a repeat of Cerydra’s Games.”
“Yes,” you say. “I know.”
Cerydra won the year before Aglaea by using her diminutive stature to full effect, playing the part of helpless girl before turning on everyone with such viciousness that even now, her Games remain one of the least-rewatched. There’s violence and then there’s gore, and you suppose the latter is nowhere near as acceptable to the Capitolites as the former.
“Hephaestion!” Gnaeus continues after introducing Castorice as Polyxia’s replacement. It doesn’t really matter to him, you suppose, as long as there is a tribute and the ceremony can be finished in a timely manner, but after he calls for Hephaestion, the gathered citizens grow even more silent than they had for Polyxia. Maybe it is because all of them had known deep down that Castorice would replace Polyxia, and so they had never actually anticipated that the invalid girl would really have to participate, but they know that no one will do the same for Hephaestion.
He coughs as he trudges towards the stage, and although the camera pans away, it’s not fast enough to miss the shudder that wracks through his body. What a joke it is, you would say to Hysilens if you were not so horrified, that the indomitable Two inadvertently chose their weakest for this contest of strength. But instead you watch, silent and sick, as Hephaestion grows closer and closer to his doom, until he is halted by a firm declaration.
“I also volunteer as tribute.”
He is the most beautiful creature you have seen, this new boy from Two, his hair a blaze down his back, his skin the shade of sand, his eyes like dappled sunlight. Enormous and powerful and beautiful; it’s all you can do to hold onto Hysilens’s hand, your heart’s turmoil reflected on her face, reflected even on Castorice’s, for his counterpart indeed inches away when he takes his place beside her. Maybe, when Hephaestion had been called, she had had some notions of being able to defeat him and whoever might come from District One, which is the only other district aside from Two that consistently produces serious contenders for the position of victor. Yet it is obvious to anyone with eyes that he is a beast entirely apart, and she must know him better than most, having grown up alongside him as she surely had.
“What’s your name, young man?” Gnaeus says, and unlike Phagousa, who would’ve fainted from the excitement or launched into some rambling speech or another, he is brusque, professional. You would like him, you think, if he weren’t a Capitolite.
“Mydeimos,” the tribute responds. “My name is Mydeimos.”
“Well,” Gnaeus says when Mydeimos does not offer anything further. “Congratulations, Mydeimos. May the odds be ever in your favor.”
The train moves at such a blinding speed that you are at the Capitol before you know it — or perhaps it is that you wish time would slow down, that you and Hysilens and Dan Heng could remain on this journey forever, because now that you are at the Capitol you can feel it on the back of your neck, you can feel him and his immense presence with every step you take towards the room where you will meet your prep team. Mydeimos, the tribute from Two; even though you haven’t yet met him, in your nightmares your imminent death takes on his form, donning his golden cloak and pouring blood down your throat until you drown in it.
“Just go along with what the prep team says, and don’t fight,” Hysilens instructs you as you walk down the white hallway together. She’s allowed this privilege, she tells you, only because the stylists are so fond of her, and even then it’s a risk, but one she’ll take, since it’s you. “It’ll hurt, but you can bear it. Allow them to do their jobs — they may not seem like it, but they want to keep you alive in their way. There’s a lot of bragging rights involved for whoever’s tribute wins the Games.”
“Hurt?” you say nervously. Her eyes soften, and she pats you on the shoulder.
“You’ll be alright,” she says. “Don’t worry.”
Then she’s leaving you alone, which is the worst thing, because you don’t want any moments to yourself. You don’t want to think about it, don’t want to think about the fact that in one week’s time, you will be the one leaving, the one going to the arena with such a slim chance of returning that it’s all but nonexistent.
There are three of them on your prep team, and although they introduce themselves, you are too worried about Hysilens’s warning to pay much attention to what they’re saying. They’re artificial-looking and distinct, however, much like every Capitolite, and you settle for referring to them with their most distinctive traits.
One is a woman, tall and broad, her skin leathery and her hair grey. You can’t quite figure her out, because such a description should imply elderliness, but she doesn’t seem any older or younger than the rest of her — admittedly equally as ageless in appearance — counterparts. There are designs on her nose and along her cheekbones, which at first you think are white paint, but when she leans closer to remove your shirt for you, you realize they are ivory or enamel, embedded into her face so thoroughly that they give that illusion. When she smiles at you and takes a pumice stone to the bottoms of your feet, you dub her Grey Bitch for the harshness with which she scrubs at them.
“You District Four tributes are always so lovely,” the man combing through your hair says with a dreamy sigh. There’s no tenderness in his motions as he yanks through the tangles, almost like he is determined to remove all feeling from your scalp. “Hysilens was such a beauty, as well. Half of the work is already done for us! I can’t imagine having to try and dress up those rats from Twelve. It’d be like staining the lips of — of — of a pig, and presenting it to Callictus as his next television star!”
At this, he bursts into yowling laughter, and you almost want to tell him that he is exactly one such pig, albeit far more feline, his skin a violent shade of green, his ears pointed at the tips, his pupils slitted and a cumbersome tail dragging along behind him. When he notices your gaze trailing after it, he beams at you.
“Isn’t it something? I paid thousands for it. It was almost an entire year’s salary!” he says. “I’m just glad no one else has had the idea to combine this shade of green with a tail.”
“It would be awful if you spent so much, only for your vision to be plagiarized,” the man in the corner says. He is mixing something in a bowl, and it’s only when he pours it on your legs that you realize it’s a hot wax that scalds your skin. Although he, too, is green, his mouth and forked tongue are bright red, and his teeth are filed into points that dig into his lower lip when he beams at you. “Ah, relax, it’ll be quick!”
With that, he tears away the wax and what you are sure is several layers of your skin along with it. You cannot stop yourself from yelping in surprise, leading to peals of laughter and knowing glances exchanged between the three of them.
“This is the fashion in the Capitol right now!” says the green cat of a man. “Once we’ve washed off this district filth and made you right as rain, you’ll win sponsors easily. Never underestimate how much power your appearance has!”
Maybe he’s not wrong, but it’s Hysilens’s directives that keep from flinching more than his well-intentioned but terribly-executed assistance. She seemed to believe that the prep teams really might make the difference between winning and losing, and how can you argue with that when she is a victor and you have never even been to the Capitol before? So you grit your teeth and bear it, even though you feel not unlike how a fish freshly-salted must, all raw and stinging and left to the open air to bake.
The prep team’s chatter fades into background noise for you. Their discussions are so foreign to you as to be a separate language entirely, for what do you know of liquor and enhancement and avarice? To you, the symbol of excess has always been the drunkard Phagousa, but she is nothing compared to the men and women that they refer to, men and women who eat until they are full and then vomit again and again so that they can eat more.
You think of Bailu and Dan Heng when they mention this like an inside joke, Bailu and Dan Heng when they were children and their mother had at last succumbed to her illness. What a strange sight they had been, a boy with hollow cheeks carrying a girl on his back and eating spoiled fish to survive until he was old enough to catch his own. You wonder what the prep team would think if they had seen them then, or if they even would see them. Wouldn’t the siblings just be another instance of the very district filth they meant to efface from you at present?
“I think you’re finally ready for Caenis,” the red-mouthed man says, wiping an affected tear from the corner of his eye. “Oh, this is definitely our finest work to date.”
“You’ll be the most gorgeous tribute in the entire parade,” says the green cat, taking the comb through the length of your hair one final time. “Even more than that boy from Two.”
“Oh, but what a handsome thing he was,” the grey woman says with a dreamy sigh, clasping her hands together in front of her chest and swooning dramatically. “Why, I wouldn’t have minded being assigned to him—”
“Watch yourself!” the green cat says, his tail lashing against the ground, which shouldn’t be possible yet somehow is. “We’re her prep team, not his. And don’t get attached to someone who might not even be a victor, or you’ll be as disappointed as you were last year, when that boy from Eleven was killed by the girl from Three!”
“Weren’t you just saying yesterday that you’d do anything for Phainon to glance your way?” the red-mouthed man adds with a snicker. “How do you expect to gain his attention when you’re so fickle? Next you’ll be saying you want Anaxagoras, too.”
The grey woman titters to herself, waving them aside shyly. “I’m only keeping my options. And Anaxagoras, honestly! Who would want that wastrel?”
Anaxagoras is a victor from District Three, one of very few, and although his Games were unremarkable enough, he has gained acclaim in the years since for his permanently bad temper and the flask ever-attached to his hip. He’s not much older than Phainon, and younger than Aglaea from One, but he’s never had their charm and thus never enjoyed their enduring popularity. Indeed, he’s only ever brought up in times like these, to be made a mockery of and nothing more.
“Just saying, just saying,” the red-mouthed man says, and they continue along with their conversation merrily, not even deigning to wish you farewell when they duck out so that you can wait by yourself to be scrutinized by this mysterious Caenis.
You expect another Capitolite in excess, so when she enters, you are surprised to see that the only sign of alteration on her entire person is the shade of her eyes, which are a slitted and snake-like blue. Yet it suits her so well that it almost seems natural, and you are so comforted by even the thought of this semblance of normalcy left in her that you cling to it as best as you can.
“Hello,” she says. She speaks clearly and precisely, without the muddled and fanciful turns of phrase that most Capitolites employ, and she doesn’t fill the silence, either, waiting for you to respond with her eyebrows raised and arms folded over her chest.
“Hello,” you say.
“My name is Caenis, and I am your stylist,” she says. “It is my job to make you as marketable as possible, through whatever means necessary.”
“Yes,” you say. “Er, why are you saying it like that, though?”
“My partner and I have devised a pair of outfits that we are sure will be popular with the audiences, and it is your job as a tribute to wear what I give you without complaint,” she says. You had already resolved to do that, so you are nearly irritated, but then she is rummaging about in her bag to brandish your costume, and your jaw drops.
“Is that all?” you say.
“No complaints, remember?” she says.
“Yes, but, I mean, isn’t there…more?” you say.
She smiles flatly, without a trace of empathy to the curve of her lips, and you realize that you actually recognize her, albeit barely — she had been Aglaea’s stylist as well, which makes you suddenly very grateful for what she has given you. They had sent out Aglaea in nothing but gold spray paint and tastefully placed jewels, after all; at least there is fabric to this, fabric and form if not much of either.
“It’ll be alright,” she says. “We’re very good at our jobs. Not a thing will slip, I promise.”
“If it does?” you say, not sure the answer is one you’ll prefer.
“Well,” she says. “Make sure the cameras catch it. You might get another sponsor or two for your efforts.”
The first night that all of you are in the Capitol is marked with a grand parade, which is what the prep team has been readying you for. All of you tributes will ride in chariots marked with your district numbers, wearing costumes representative of your district’s specialties — for Four, it is fish and the sea — and allowing the Capitolites their first proper look at you. This is your chance to make a lasting impression, whether good or bad, and it’s not a stretch to say that those tributes who are flashy and bold in the parade end up with twice or thrice as much backing as the ones who fade into obscurity. The Capitolites are like moths or magpies, after all, drawn to that which glitters and glows, to flashes of muscles and hints of curves, and they are the ones who have the money, the power, and so Caenis’s strategy, crude as it is, is often a winning one.
You feel a little shy when Caenis leads you through the path of chariots lined up, so you try to focus on the horses instead of your fellow tributes. They are so well trained that they don’t even need a driver, and there’s a kind of solace in the emptiness of the front box, allowing you to pretend like no one is looking at you, although you know it’s the opposite, because in truth the entire world has their eyes on you and the twenty-three others in the basement of the training center.
“You, too, huh?” Dan Heng says when you join him. He offers you his hand to help you onto the chariot, which you take and do not thank him for, and his expression when you wince is comically commiserating, like you are two friends discussing the currents instead of tributes that will be at each other’s throats in a few short days. “I guess it’s probably worse for you.”
Your entire bodies have been covered in fine gold netting, similar in structure to what you use to catch fish, but glimmering and soft instead of drab and thick like those meant for purpose. False seaweed and strands of cowries weave in and out of the knots, forming something like a skirt on you, a loincloth on him, and seashells curve around your chest, whereas his is left bare entirely. It’s beautiful and scant and alluring; in any other year, it would’ve been enough to win you both the attention of the entire crowd, to win you enough sponsors just based on aesthetic appeal that your performance in the week before you entered the arena might be meaningless. But this isn’t any other year, and Caenis’s efforts will come to nothing, you can tell even before the trumpets play, because this year, the one everyone will be looking at is Mydeimos.
The chariot for District Two is only one ahead of where you and Dan Heng stand, and although the angle of it means that you cannot quite tell what they have dressed Castorice in, Mydeimos is directly in your line of sight, and even if he weren’t, you would’ve craned your neck just so he could be. He is the only other tribute in this entire Games that matters to you, the only other tribute that is your particular concern, the only one who is unequivocally older and stronger and better, so you suppose it’s likely it’ll always be this way. You’ll always be looking for him, measuring him against your own performance until the moment you may meet in the arena, when you will have to put the accuracy of your estimations to the test.
The crowd roars for him, and the cameras linger on him longer than anyone else, and you should feel jilted but you cannot bring yourself to blame them when you are doing the same. How can you ever tear your eyes away from that bold lash of fire as the gold horses of his chariot march him and Castorice forward? He is inescapable, unavoidable, and he has once again left the world entranced, as he did when he volunteered for that sick boy in Two.
They have leaned into that intrinsic burning, that unsettled flame of his, and so there are red designs tracing his muscles, lining his eyes, circling his throat — a target, almost, and a teasing one, at that. You might kill him if you touch it, but could you ever get so close? There’s bronze armor on his legs and gauntlets on his hands; gold bands studded with blue stones ring his arms and hang low on his chest, inadvertently shielding his heart. Crimson fabric painted with flames at the hem wraps around his waist and torso, fluttering behind him in the wind, doing little to cover him, and his expression is so solemn it’s as if he’s one of those paintings that were destroyed in the Dark Days, when the districts first rebelled against the Capitol.
In another world, it is Dan Heng receiving this adoration. In another world, it is he who captures the Capitol’s hearts with tales of his sister and his sorrow, whose pearls and netting gleam brightly enough to eclipse the rest of the tributes, whose tribute partner might ally with him until the very end, whereupon he will kill her and return the triumphant victor. In this other world, you are that very partner, and maybe there, your friendship with Hysilens and the mere clams covering your breasts will be enough to give you a fighting chance. But not here. Not now. Not in the world as it is, where Mydeimos exists and steals everyone’s hearts without so much as a twitch of his lips.
When all of the chariots finally roll to a stop beneath the sweeping balcony, President Lycurgus steps out, his hands clasped, his expression unreadable behind that mask he always wears. You have never been so close to him before, but for some reason, you find yourself more frightened than inspired. It’s sinister, the blankness of his hidden face, the coolness of his voice as he addresses you all.
“Welcome, everyone,” he says, to a round of rousing applause. “And welcome, tributes. We in the Capitol welcome you!”
Everyone cheers. The screens in the back of the stands reflect the citizens, many of whom are throwing roses at the gathered tributes and reading the names of their favorites off of their programs.
My-dei-mos. My-dei-mos. Most of the flowers fall at his feet, which gives the cameras an excuse to dally on him a little longer, but he is not the only one. There are others who they yell for, Cifera from One and Dan Heng at your side and even, to your surprise, you — though you can not manage indifference as well as the others, so you crouch and gather the ones you can reach in your arms, hugging them to your chest and hoping they can see how you beam, how sincerely you wish to thank them, though of course it’s not really the flowers you are so grateful for.
“We would like to wish you,” President Lycurgus says, raising his hands to silence the crowd, which swells with anticipation, “a happy Hunger Games! May the odds be ever in your favor.”
In the rush of the parade’s aftermath, you are separated from Dan Heng as you try to find an elevator that will take you to the fourth floor as you were instructed by Caenis earlier. You feel silly now that you are by yourself, silly and cold, too, for even though it is summer, there is a nip of chill to the night. Hugging yourself, you wish that you had grabbed onto your partner before you dismounted the chariot, or that Hysilens could read your mind and manifest next to you as she sometimes does, but sadly, none of these things happens. Your savior comes in the form of a boyish shout, which is far too casual to come from a fellow tribute.
“Hey, District Four! We have space in our elevator, if you’d like.”
You don’t even stop to question why he might be yelling for you; it’s the first familiar and friendly sound you’ve heard in the bustle of stylists and prep teams and tributes, so you run, squeezing into the elevator just as the doors are about to shut. Sighing in relief and slumping against the wall, you close your eyes, only opening them when a second passes and you still haven’t moved.
“Did you, ah, want me to push it for you?” Phainon says, his hand half-raised, pointing at the panel of buttons labelled with the floor numbers. Your face burns when you realize that they’re all waiting for you to do something, and you shake your head furiously, reaching over and pressing one labelled fourth floor, cursing yourself for being so foolish in front of another district’s mentor.
“Sorry,” you say when the elevator starts moving. He shrugs.
“It’s alright. Hysilens asked me to look out for you if I saw you, and I told her I didn’t mind. He certainly doesn’t,” he says, motioning towards Anaxagoras, whose eyelids are heavy and low, his fists clenched on the railing like he might fall without the support.
It’s the two of them, you, Trianne, and the boy from Seven — you think his name may be Chartonus, but you’re not quite sure — in there together. Trianne is clearly bewildered, shrinking into herself in the corner, and Chartonus, although he towers over all of you, Phainon included, seems even more uncomfortable than you do. For his part, Anaxagoras has probably had more from his flask tonight than most people would in a week, if his glazed-over eyes are anything to go by, and so that leaves you and Phainon to converse as the elevator crawls up at a snail’s pace.
“Your costume is quite bold,” he says, and you don’t want to be presumptuous, but there’s almost a hint of sadness in his eyes when he speaks. “You look very pretty.”
“Thank you,” you say, more than a little flustered, because hearing such compliments from Caenis and your prep team was one thing, and hearing them from Hysilens will be another, but Phainon is different. Every Capitolite wants him, so to think that such a highly-regarded man, rumored to have slept even with President Lycurgus’s beloved sister, is telling you that you are pretty — you bite the inside of your cheek to stop yourself from saying anything you might regret. “Um, you also…look…pretty…”
You trail off, because now there’s blood in your mouth and Phainon is laughing at you. He doesn’t mean it cruelly, but he’s laughing all the same, and you wish Hysilens were with you, because she’d surely have some witty comeback, especially given that they are apparently friends.
“Thank you,” he says. “I can see why Hysilens thinks so highly of you. It’s a shame, you know, about the arena and all. I think we would’ve been friends if you had been born in Nine. You’re a nice girl.”
“I swear to god, Phainon,” Anaxagoras groans, clutching his head. “Shut the fuck up. I’m too hungover for this.”
Phainon gives you a conspiratorial eye roll. “You just had your last bottle during the parade, Anaxa. How are you already hungover?”
Anaxagoras paws blindly at his belt, where his flask is hanging. Sighing with the air of one used to such tasks, Phainon unhooks it and hands it to him. Anaxagoras doesn’t thank him, only pouring it down his throat and wiping away the excess as it leaks from the corners of his mouth.
“You’re the girl from Four, right?” he mumbles out afterwards.
“Yes, that’s right,” you say.
“Hm,” he says. “You don’t look as strong as Hysilens.”
“Anaxa, you can’t say that,” Phainon reprimands. “Sorry. Normally he’d be antagonizing Aglaea right about now, but she’s clearly elsewhere.”
Anaxa chuckles to himself. “Don’t tell anyone, but I’m betting…I’m betting…I’m betting on Mydei...”
He faceplants before he can finish his sentence, and Phainon doesn’t even try to catch him, running a hand through his hair before giving you, Trianne, and Chartonus an apologetic look.
“I’m very sorry about him,” he says.
“Is he like this a lot?” Trianne says timidly. Her voice is a mouse-squeak, and you almost move to reassure her, but then you think it will be worse if you do that now. You’ll be in the arena together soon, so giving her false hope of protection like that would be beyond cruel. Phainon, though, has no such qualms, his entire demeanor gentling until you can almost forget the sight of him when he won his Hunger Games, mud matting his hair to his forehead, his sword in his hands, dripping with blood and entrails, tears in his eyes as he—
“He can be,” Phainon says, patting her on the head. He knows she’s doomed just as well as the rest of you, and you guess he doesn’t see the point in posturing or cruelty. Even if they are stupid and talentless, the tributes from Nine will almost certainly outlive her, so what point would there be in trying to intimidate the frightened girl? “Don’t worry, though. District Three has good doctors, and the Capitol has better ones. Oh, it looks like we’ve reached the fourth floor! It was nice to meet you. Tell Hysilens she owes me one.”
The elevator opens right after he waves at you in farewell, and you dart out without a backward glance, thinking that even more time with Phainon is not worth another second in Anaxagoras’s presence, especially considering you’ve never been particularly interested in him, anyways. You can hear your prep team wailing in the back of your mind, but now that you’ve met him in person you can say for sure that there is a muchness about him, an extravagance that you can admire and understand but would never desire for yourself.
“You may not realize it, but these days of training are vital for your success in the games,” Hysilens instructs you over breakfast. You are in the training outfit the Capitol provided for you, grey pants and a grey shirt, while she is still in her nightgown, a bowl of fruit in her hands that she lazily picks at in between sentences. “Last night was your debut with the Capitolites. This is your debut with the other tributes.”
“What do you mean?” you say, pushing around something bready and soaked in syrup with your fork.
“If you’re memorably strong, or from a district like Four that’s known for healthy tributes, then in the arena, the others will either try to hunt you down or be frightened of you. Now, the latter is far more desirable than the former, obviously — but it’s dependent on the alliances you make, which in turn is dependent on your behavior in the next few days. I’ll spend today reaching out to the other mentors to see who might be open to working with you, but I need you to do your part and try to curry favor with the ones I recommend, as well as any others you might identify as strong allies,” she says.
“Got it,” you say, because it does make sense. “Who are you thinking?”
You half-expect her to start off with the obvious, Mydeimos, but she goes in a completely different direction.
“Cifera,” she says. “The girl from One. Aglaea’s confident in her, and she doesn’t have confidence in anyone unless they earn it. There’s more to her than she’s shown us thus far, and though I don’t think you can trust her for an instant, she could be a valuable tool, especially in the earlier days of the Games.”
“I’ll try,” you say, because from what you remember of Cifera at the parade and her Reaping, she is coy and quick and slippery. It will be difficult to pin her down, and Hysilens must know this, because she rushes to continue on.
“Dan Heng is a given if you want him, and Castorice isn’t a bad option, either. Compared to that partner of hers, she may not seem like much, but the two of you together could hold your own for a while,” she says. “In fact, I’m on good terms with Cerydra, and I’m almost certain she’ll tell Castorice to reach out to you today.”
“What about him?” you say. “Mydeimos. Isn’t he just as much of a given for Castorice as Dan Heng is for me? Why wouldn’t she stick with him?”
Hysilens makes a face. “I tried talking to Krateros yesterday, at the parade. Seems like Mydeimos has no interest in alliances with anyone, Castorice included. Stuck-up ass. I wouldn’t recommend approaching him, in all honesty. Don’t worry — he’s formidable, but even setting aside Cifera, if you can come to an agreement with Castorice and Dan Heng, Mydeimos won’t be an issue. After that, it just comes down to which between the three of you will come out the victor, and that’s a fight I have faith in you to win.”
You and Dan Heng travel to the main floor of the training center in silence, each lost in your own thoughts. You almost ask him if his mentor, an older victor named Triton, has told him to ally with you, but you don’t know what you will say if he tells you no, so you hold your tongue, deciding you can discuss it closer to the day of the Games. For now, you would be better off trying to meet with the others, so as soon as the elevator stops, you peel off towards the station where spears are propped up against the wall, not waiting to see if he asks you to stay with him.
A spear isn’t terribly unlike a trident, albeit weighted slightly differently, and as you maneuver it in a set of familiar motions, you relax into that mantra which echoes throughout Four after every Reaping Day: they’re just fish. It’s just fishing, this is just a trident and your opponents are nothing more than sea bass and you can do this, really.
Then, out of the corner of your eye, you see Dan Heng showing Trianne how to tie a square knot, her fingers fumbling over the precise motions, and the spear becomes so heavy in your hands you must set it down for fear that you will drop it and make a fool of yourself entirely.
True to Hysilens’s prediction, Castorice comes up to you shortly before you are told to break for lunch. You are at the edible plants station, only because the other combat stations have been taken up by tributes you are too nervous to approach, and for a while she just stands to your left, sorting through berries with you, her eyes trained on the task but flicking to you ever so often.
“Our mentors are good friends,” she says finally. “Cerydra and Hysilens.”
“I think so,” you say.
“They’ll work well together,” she says, tiptoeing around the point before getting straight to it, “if we’re allies.”
“That’s right,” you say, because despite the advice Hysilens has given you, despite Castorice being your best chance at winning, something in the back of your mind protests it. You know that you should be ecstatic — here you are, approached by a tribute of your own skill level, and with Dan Heng all but guaranteed to join you if only you ask, your odds have never been higher. But you can’t bring yourself to be, and it takes you only a moment to understand why that is.
There he is, Mydeimos from Two, hefting a polearm in the air. To him, a spear is a spear, not a replacement for a trident, and the way he uses it is ruthless, efficient, an extension of the weapon that his very body is. He wastes no movement, the way you know you must, and even without it, he is dangerous. He is dangerous, and Anaxagoras is betting on him, and even Phainon did not disagree with him, necessarily, when he said it, which means something. Which means a lot.
That is the issue, the one you can’t even tell Hysilens without sounding ridiculous. You don’t want Castorice. You don’t want Cifera. You don’t even want Dan Heng, as horrible as that is. You only want him, you only want Mydeimos as your ally, because you feel that if you do not have him, then you will definitely lose, and nothing can change that, no matter how many other people you work with. You will die without him, this you know, which means you need him. No one else. Just him.
“Well,” Castorice says, feigning a smile at you. “Let me know.”
You smile back at her, just as false, just as bright, just as guilty. “I will.”
Mydeimos is sitting by himself, apart from the others, who have separated into their own groups already. You ignore Castorice and Dan Heng, both of whom look at you expectantly, and make a beeline for him, putting your plate across from his but refusing to sit until he deigns to look up at you.
It pins you in place, his stare, and for a second your mouth goes dry and you remember what it’s like to die at his hand. Every nightmare, every fitful dream, you think of them and remember the crush of his grip around your windpipe, the heat of his lance piercing your chest, the salt of the blood weeping from you. Such a delicate thing it is, that he can be both savior and slaughterer if you are not careful. Hysilens would not approve, you can hear her voice in the back of your mind — what happens when it’s just the two of you left? How will you kill him then? — but it’s too late now.
“What is it?” he says. He speaks pleasantly enough, to your surprise, not cruelly, and his voice is level instead of furious at your interruption of his meal. “Speak if you have something to say, and leave if you don’t.”
“I want you to be my ally,” you say. His expression sours.
“No,” he says. “I have no interest in allies.”
“Well, you should,” you hiss, sitting in huff and crossing your arms, glaring at him all the while. “Who do you think the first tribute everyone hunts down is going to be? You’re a threat to us all, Mydeimos. I know it, and I know you know it, too.”
“So what?” he says. “I can take on any of you if I need to.”
“At the same time?” you say, and he does pause at this, so you press onward before you can cower away from it. “Castorice, Dan Heng, Cifera, and me, could you fight us all and win? Even if you did, you’d likely be left in such a state that even Hyacinthia or Trianne could finish you off.”
“You’re threatening me?” he says, raising his eyebrows but sounding mildly impressed. “If that's the case, then why don’t you go over and sit with the rest of your friends? Castorice and Cifera and Dan Heng, was that who it was? Why aren’t you with them now?”
“Because I don’t want them,” you say. “I want you.”
“Right,” he says. “But why?”
“Dan Heng,” you admit, although you don’t realize it’s true until you’re saying it. “He’s dangerous. If I ally with him, I’ll have to kill him eventually, and I don’t — I don’t think I can do that.”
How could you go home and face Bailu, face the rest of District Four? Knowing that it was you who killed him? You can’t tell Mydeimos how reliant you are on him elsewise, but this much you can share, and it’s not a lie, either. You don’t want to be the one who fights Dan Heng. You don’t want it to be the two of you in the end.
“You’re hoping I’ll kill him for you,” Mydeimos said.
“Yes,” you say, almost cringing from the bluntness of it but steeling yourself to this hard truth: either you or Dan Heng can live, but not both of you, and the one who will make it out has to be you. “I do.”
“I see,” he says. “Then am I to assume you’re offering to face off against Castorice for me?”
“If those are your terms,” you say. He cocks his head at you, inspecting you thoroughly. You don’t know what he’s looking for or what he finds, but it must be something he approves of, because he nods once, short, sharp. You hold your breath, hardly believing it, but then he places a slice of apple on your plate, a tentative peace offering of sorts.
“Fine,” he says.
“Fine?” you say.
“I’ll tell Krateros to talk to your mentor, District Four,” he says. “The old man’ll probably burst from excitement, anyways. He’s not been happy with me.”
“So you’ll be my ally?” you check.
“Yes,” he says and then, with a wry expression, close to a grin but not quite, he offers you his hand. “And you’ll be mine. I hope you don’t regret it.”
His hand is warm, and it engulfs yours when you shake once, twice, sealing the pact. Now he is yours. Now you are his. In the arena, you will fight together. In the arena, the phantom of your nightmares will be your only guardian. Your mouth tastes death and your breath comes short, but you do not falter, because in your heart, you can feel it blooming, faint and small but there nevertheless: hope.
“How was it?” Hysilens asks you when you return later that day. You are in the middle of changing, and she did not bother with knocking, but neither of you care for such things, and you hear her flop on your bed as you pull your training shirt over your head to replace it with something cleaner to wear until you can shower later. You shrug, but then you realize she’s probably not looking at you, so you clear your throat.
“Alright. I made an ally.”
“Just one?” she says. “Was it Castorice? Cerydra told me she told her to talk to you.”
“Er, no,” you say, because you feel a little awkward now. How are you supposed to tell Hysilens that you have, in essence, rejected her ideas? She’s your mentor, not just your best friend. You should be following her directives, and she specifically told you two things: that she didn’t recommend you approach Mydeimos, and that you should ally yourself with Castorice. What have you done? Exactly the opposite.
“...Okay,” she says, slowly and carefully. “Cifera?”
“Mydeimos,” you say.
“What?” she says.
“The tribute from Two,” you say. “Mydeimos. We’re going to be allies.”
She blinks at me. “Mydeimos?”
“That’s what I said,” you say, a little impatiently. “He’s having the same conversation with Krateros right now, I’d expect. You’ll probably hear from him tomorrow, but it won’t be anything new. It’ll be the two of us in the arena.”
“Just you two?” she says, adjusting to it quicker than you had anticipated. You thought she might be angrier, but she’s taking it in stride so well you almost wonder if she planned for it.
“Yes,” you say. “It seemed like that was all he was open to.”
“I see,” she says. “Alright, if that’s how it is.”
“You’re not upset?” you say. “I didn’t follow your advice at all.”
“He’s a viable option,” she says. “He’ll keep you alive for a while, at least, and you can always betray him when it’s convenient. It’ll be more difficult than if you had done as I said, but it’s not an unsalvageable strategy, and it offers its own benefits. For one, the chances of the two of you being hunted down while you’re together are close to zero, especially when there are so many weaker tributes that could be chosen. You might even be able to take the Cornucopia, and I don’t need to tell you how valuable that is.”
“Right,” you say, relieved at her detached assessment, which indicates that you haven’t made an entirely wrong decision in pursuing Mydeimos. “Does that change anything else that you’ve said to me?”
“Some of it,” she says. “Castorice, Cifera, and Dan Heng are now your greatest enemies instead of potential allies, but as for how you’ll take care of them…it depends on if any of them team up. On their own, none of them will pose threats to the two of you, but they might realize it and band together to take the two of you on.”
“What should I — we — do if that happens?” you say.
“Kill them,” she says simply. When your face falls, she flicks your chin before pulling you into a hug, and even here, so far away, she smells like home, comforting you immeasurably. “It’s okay. Don’t forget what we always say.”
“They’re just fish,” you say. “But Dan Heng—”
“—is also another fish,” she completes for you, callous despite the fact that she knew him once, too. “You chose to ally yourself with Mydeimos. Dan Heng is not someone you can afford to worry about anymore, just like the rest of the tributes. Not if you want to make it out of there.”
Although you are now allies, you don’t see much of Mydeimos in the rest of your days training. You are still a little intimidated by him, and also worried that he will change his mind, leaving you entirely alone when you reach the arena, so you try to give him his own space, settling for wandering about the various stations, avoiding the others as best as you can. They make it easy; you suppose Cerydra must’ve told Castorice that you have rejected her offer, and Cifera has never seemed the friendly type in the first place. Dan Heng takes to your mutually agreed-upon silence well enough, and the rest of the tributes would never dare approach you anyways, so all in all it is a simple, mindless way to pass the days until your evaluations and interviews.
In order to make things easier for sponsors, all of the tributes are privately evaluated and scored for their skills, so that there is some objective method of choosing who to back — on a scale of one to twelve, those who rank higher are considered safer picks, due to clearly possessing some exceptional skills. It’s not a failsafe, as there’s only so much that can be displayed in a few minutes’ time, but at least it is something to count on for the ones whose bets are more numerically based.
You go in order of district, as you always do. You and Dan Heng sit side by side, and you almost want to wish him luck when he stands to enter, you even open your mouth to do it, but the words die before they can take form. How can you wish him luck? You fell into an alliance with Mydeimos partially because you want the boy from Two to kill him in your stead. How can you know that and still say it with such confidence? Good luck. It’s such a joke that you remain silent until you are told the Gamemakers will see you now.
They are seated at a long table stacked with food, and although a few of them seem like they are verging on the edge of distraction, most of them watch you intently as you enter the room. The head Gamemaker, who has just been promoted to the position and apparently had ‘a lot of fun’ designing this year’s arena, if the gossip from your prep team is to be believed, nods at you. He’s a handsome man, violet haired, dark eyed, with one of those fancy Capitolite names: Veritas Ratio.
“Whenever you’re ready,” he says.
Hysilens has told you many times over not to do anything too obscure or strange — by virtue of being from District Four, you are already guaranteed a high score, as long as you perform to expectations. All you have to do is take a spear and show you can use it; anything more is unnecessary, a waste of their time as well as yours.
It’s nothing revolutionary, but the Gamemakers must be suitably impressed, because they give you a 9 that night, the number flashing bright beneath your name. Dan Heng gets a 10, as does Cifera, and Castorice gets a 9 like you. Chartonus, the boy from Seven, gets an 8, which is a high score for someone from a generally underperforming district, and somehow Hyacinthia gets a 7, causing Hysilens to furrow her brow in confusion.
Mydeimos gets an 11. It matches him, the strict number, and you don’t think there’s a person alive that didn’t believe he would get such a designation. Hysilens looks at you when it happens, but you pretend like you don’t see her curious gaze. She must be wondering how you feel about it, but why does it matter? It’s too late now for you to take it back, even if you wanted to — which you don’t. You’re glad for it, really, glad that the highest ranked tribute is on your side, is your ally. This is just further proof that you did the right thing.
“The most successful interviews are ones where the tributes go in having an angle already determined,” Hysilens says. She’s convinced your prep team, with a bat of her eyelashes, to be allowed to sit in as they get you ready for your interview, perching on the counter and pretending to ignore their rapt attention. “Who do you want to be portrayed as? It’s something you want to be sure of, because otherwise Callictus will decide for you, and he’s only one man, with only a short time to present you to the Capitol. He won’t always pick what you want him to.”
“I see,” you say. “What was your angle?”
“They told me to go for lethal,” she says. “Seductive and lethal. I don’t know if it worked. I guess it must’ve.”
“It definitely did!” the green cat of a man currently layering your toenails in seashell pink lacquer pipes up. “Everyone in the Capitol was captivated by it.”
“Right,” Hysilens says, shifting slightly and giving you a look you cannot decipher. “Well, anyways. What do you want to do?”
“I’m not sure,” you say. “Do you have any ideas?”
She tilts her head, as if trying to see you from a different perspective. “Nope.”
“Nope?” you say. “Seriously, you can’t think of anything?”
“It’s not your fault,” she says. “It’s just that I know you so well, I can’t put you in one archetype so neatly. I can’t say you’re sexy or cute or kind. You’re all of those. You’re none of them. I don’t know. You’re everything! But how are we supposed to show that to the entire Capitol in three minutes when it’s taken me my entire life to learn it?”
“Oh,” you say. “I’m not sure.”
“If only you could be on stage with her, Hysilens,” the grey woman says. She’s smudging sparkly powder along your forehead, and she is so focused on her task that she doesn’t even waver as she speaks. “I remember when she got chosen in the Reaping and the cameras focused on you. It was the most intense moment of the entire day! Besides Castorice and Mydeimos volunteering, of course. But even then!”
“Chills,” the red-mouthed man says, miming a shiver. “Literal chills. You looked so sad, it’s really made us all wonder what your relationship could possibly be. You’re obviously not siblings, and she’s not your child, but there’s no doubt about it, you love her. It’s so amazing!”
“If the mentors were the ones being interviewed, you’d definitely make her the most popular tribute,” the green-skinned man says, his cat tail flicking. “Too bad you have to stay in the audience. Well, it’ll be good while she’s in the arena at least!”
“Maybe we should try ruling out avenues that definitely won’t work,” you say when all Hysilens offers in response is a pout. “It might lead us closer to something we could try.”
“Definitely don’t do the silent and strong thing,” she says almost immediately. “I can guarantee that’s what Mydeimos will go for. Probably Chartonus, too, and both of them will be able to carry it way better than you ever could.”
“I wasn’t planning on it, so that’s good,” you say.
“You could just about pull off sweet and innocent, but not with Hyacinthia and Trianne in the running,” she says, stroking her chin as your prep team begins to decorate the muscles of your legs with a pattern like fish scales. “Your connection to an existing mentor is the same. Even though we’re best friends, Trianne is Tribios’s daughter. That’s a narrative we can never compete with, as much as we’d like to.”
“Why don’t you just go for the obvious?” the red-mouthed man says. You’d all but forgotten they were all there, really, so to hear the input takes you by surprise, but you motion for him to go on. After all, it’s Capitolites like him that you’re trying to impress, anyways, so shouldn’t you hear what he has to say, even if he is just a member of your prep team? “Caenis would kill us if we spoil the entire surprise, but your interview outfit isn’t that different from your parade one, if you know what I mean.”
Your throat feels a little scratchy, because you do know what he means, and then you look at Hysilens, only to find that she is pursing her lips in clear disapproval. She doesn’t like it, didn’t like the netting you were draped in then and won’t like whatever Caenis has come up with now, but the man has a point. It’s an easy way of gaining sponsors, maybe even the easiest. It worked for Phainon, for Aglaea, for Hysilens — it’ll work for you, too, because unlike the others you are competing against, you will play into this interpretation. You are not the beautiful Mydeimos or the cold Dan Heng or the sweet Hyacinthia, who have other, better qualities to sell; all you have is this, and you must lean forward and convince Callictus, convince the sponsors, that if you are not strong, if you are not sweet, you are at least desirable.
Once again, you and Dan Heng are matching, although the connection is looser this time. He is in a white suit, simple, plain, his shirt underneath sheer like seafoam, silvery shell patterns lining the bones of his regal cheeks, his hair and collarbones sprayed with something glimmering that gives the illusion of dampness, his eyelashes clumped together and his lips pink as if he has just clambered from the water. On the other hand, you are in that same white, but on you it is pearls, winding tightly around you in a semblance of a dress, forming a dripping halo that tumbles from the crown of your head to your bare shoulders. Your arms and legs reflect the glare of the cameras, golden fish-scales stamped along them, and if Dan Heng is meant to resemble someone who has just crawled out of the sea, you look like you have never left it.
Taking your place in the line before him, you turn immediately to look at Mydeimos, wondering what they have put him in — only to find that he is already looking at you, his brow low over his eyes, his mien only lightening when your gazes meet. He’s in a suit as well, dark, the sleeves of his jacket carelessly rolled back, his hair tousled and half-tied. Aside from the striking amber of his eyes, the only hint of color in the entire effect is the sapphire necklace he had worn in the tribute parade, drawing attention to the breadth of his chest, the tightness of his shirt, how it strains against his muscles even when they are at rest.
“What a show-off,” Dan Heng says, with that dry humor of his. “Triton says he’s refused any alliance proposals. I guess he’s betting that those muscles of his will be enough to win him the Games alone.”
“You wanted to ally with Mydeimos?” you say. As Callictus begins the program and calls Cifera, who as the female tribute from One is the first to go, Dan Heng hums in thought.
“Triton recommended I try,” he says. “The two of us are the strongest contenders, so wouldn’t it make sense if we worked together? Especially because you don’t have any interest in being allies with me.”
“I—”
“It’s okay,” he says kindly. “You don’t have to explain it to me. We went to school together and lived in the same district; maybe we were even acquaintances, but both of us know that none of that matters in the arena. You should make whatever choices you think are best, and I’ll do the same.”
“He’s my ally,” you say to Dan Heng, and even though it’s not a secret, necessarily, it feels like something shameful that you have to get off your chest, that you have to confess to him before you enter the arena tomorrow morning. “Mydeimos. He’s my ally.”
“I see,” Dan Heng says. “How’d you convince him?”
You can’t tell him, of course you can’t tell him, so you swallow and look away. “It doesn’t matter. But it’s true.”
“I believe you,” he says. “You’ve always been like that. It’s impossible not to be friends with you.”
“What did you say?” you say, because now, in the back of your mind, an idea is forming. You wish you had had it sooner, because you really ought to consult with Hysilens, but it’s too late now. All you can do is rely on this instinct of yours and hope that it’s correct.
“Back in District Four,” Dan Heng says, giving you a bewildered look. “Hysilens isn’t exactly the easiest person to befriend, but you did so effortlessly. It stands to reason that it was the same with Mydeimos.”
“Right,” you say. “Yes, that’s it.”
“Uh-huh,” he says, and then he smiles slightly. “I wish we had been better friends back at home.”
“I don’t know why we weren’t,” you say, and then you are so utterly, crushingly desperate that it’s all you can do to stop yourself from clinging to his sleeve the way you’ve seen Bailu do when she is nervous. “Dan Heng, it’s not too late. We can still be allies, I can talk to Mydeimos and convince him—”
“Hey,” he says. “It’s okay. I already have my two allies, and I don’t think either of them would have any interest in working with either of you.”
Your blood runs cold. Of course, you had known that it was possible, that it was likely, but to hear him all but confirm that he and Triton have made contact with Districts One and Two, that Aglaea and Cerydra have given their blessings for him to work with Castorice and Cifera…it’s frightening. It’s an excruciating reminder that you really are going to be enemies soon, that he and the other two will be your greatest threat, that Mydeimos may have to make good on his promise after all. You don’t know what you were hoping for, what you were expecting, but the cool detachment with which Dan Heng says it leaves you momentarily breathless. I already have my two allies. And you already have your one, but even still, even still. You don’t want to ever meet him in the arena, not with Bailu watching, even though you are sure now that you will have to.
“District Four, you’re up,” one of the stage attendants hisses, and then you are being ushered onto the stage, where you sit across from Callictus, adjusting the pearls so that the cross of your legs does not cause them to ride too far up your thighs.
“My, oh, my! Our lady from District Four, and what a beauty she is. Well, after the tribute parade, I guess you could say that we all knew that!” Callictus says, rousing the audience into a surge of applause and whistles. You search the crowd for Hysilens, but instead, your eyes land on Phainon, who stands out even when he is meant to be another face in a sea of the like. He is not smiling, and he does not clap, although he does offer you a slight nod in acknowledgement when he notices that you are looking at him. You wonder if he resents your popularity, if he wishes it were Livia, the female tribute from Nine, receiving this adoration instead, but for some reason you are sure it’s not the case.
When you finally do see Hysilens, tucked away over by where Triton and Phagousa are sitting, you can tell she is wearing that worried expression of hers, the one where her brow pinches together and her lips press into a tight line. She is expecting you to play into Callictus’s words, and you suppose Phainon must be, too, as well as the rest of the audience — it’s a time-tested strategy, and one that Caenis has set you up for so nicely, so why wouldn’t you? Besides, that’s what the two of you had discussed, and no matter how lukewarm Hysilens had been about it, you both had agreed that it was the safest option, the surest. Yet instead of batting your eyelashes, instead of giggling, you smile politely at Callictus and wait for the noise to die down.
“Thank you,” you say, and then you fold your hands in your lap. “You look wonderful, as well. All of you do. I feel so lucky that I get to sit in front of you and be applauded, when I should really be somewhere wearing clothes that still smell like fish.”
“Ah, the infamous stench of District Four,” Callictus says, and then he leans closer, pretending to sniff the air before you. “Don’t worry, dear audience, I can’t smell a thing on our friend here!”
You pretend to sniff him back, and then you wrinkle your nose, shooting the crowd, shooting Hysilens, a helpless look. “Oh, but dear audience, if only I could say the same…”
The crowd bursts into laughter as Callictus’s jaw drops comically loose and he produces a spray bottle from his pocket, spritzing lavender-scented essence into the air and fanning it about. You cover your mouth with your hand so that it looks like you are laughing, when really you are just trying not to inhale the sharp, alcohol-tinged droplets that are now floating about.
How did you come to know Hysilens? Dan Heng was the one who reminded you of it. You don’t have years, as she said, only a spare few minutes, but you don’t have to seduce the Capitol to make them love you. You only have to get them to see you how she does, to befriend them as you once befriended her, and it will be enough, or at least it will have to be, because you have realized what it is that Phainon and Hysilens have been hinting at this entire time — being desired by the Capitol is a debt, and it’s not one you will want to be collected when the time comes.
“Is this better?” Callictus says, straightening his shirt and then whispering to the crowd as if you are not there. “I’m really so nervous, you all…she’s even more intimidating up close.”
“Intimidating? Me?” you say, and this time you actually do laugh, because no one has ever called you that before. “I’m the one who’s intimidated! You’re a celebrity, the entire district — country knows you, so shouldn’t I be shy? Now you even smell nicer than I do.”
Callictus pumps his fist in the air. “She thinks I smell nice!”
Everyone cheers, but you know it’s not enough. You have been lovely, pleasant, amusing, but not memorable. As soon as you leave this stage, as soon as Dan Heng takes your place, you will be forgotten, and your chance at sponsors will vanish along with your memory. You cannot let Callictus decide for you who you are going to be. You cannot let anyone decide that, not him or Caenis or Phagousa or anyone.
You don’t have a sister like Bailu or Polyxia; you don’t have a mother who is a victor or an age that will gain you sympathy; you only have Hysilens’s faith and Mydeimos’s spear to ascertain your victory. The latter you cannot speak of, but the former you must tear out of your chest and show to the world. Look, you must tell them. She is my best friend. She believes in me. Now it is your turn. Now you must believe in me, too.
“Callictus,” you saw, drawing his attention immediately. “If you don’t mind me being blunt, and if the audience doesn’t mind listening in…well, I have to ask you for some advice while I have this chance.”
“Certainly! I’d much rather talk about your problems than my odor,” he says.
“Oh, I was only teasing you,” you say before sobering. “It’s just, you know, what with the Games starting tomorrow, there’s still a few people that I’m wondering how I should say farewell to. Or, honestly, no, that’s not accurate. There’s only one, but the thing is that I can’t say bye to her.”
“Why not?” Callictus says.
“She won’t let me,” you say. "Isn't it ridiculous? I bet you if I tried right this moment, she’d say something like, don’t be ridiculous, you’ll be back in a week.”
“She sounds like a stubborn one,” Callictus says, leaning back in his chair and stroking his chin, as if you have presented him with some impossible conundrum.
“The most stubborn,” you say. “It took me a month before I could even convince her to be my friend in the first place, if you’ll believe me.”
“An entire month!” Callictus says.
“She was the best fisher in the entire district, so it was hard to impress her,” you say. “I don’t think she even looked at me until I saved one of our classmates from drowning. We were on a boat, you see, and he had fallen off the side — he had a nervous temperament, he was prone to fits, so it wasn’t his fault, but it happened before any of us knew it.”
“Oh, dear,” Callictus says, and his speechlessness is like a victory to you, because it means that now you are the one in control of the interview.
“I dove off the side after him,” you say. “I wasn’t thinking about her or my teachers or anyone else. I’m one of the strongest swimmers in our district, so it had to be me, or that’s what I told myself. The others would die if they went after him, because someone who’s drowning will always try to drown you with them, you see. Even I might’ve, in truth — died, I mean — but instead I brought him back to the surface, despite how he kicked and clawed. After that, she told me that if I’m so determined to stay alive, to keep the others around me alive as well, then I can’t be half-bad. But there’s the issue.”
“The issue?” Callictus says. You know you’re running short on time, the interview is already halfway over if not more, and so you do not delay.
“She’s seen me defy death once,” you say. “She’s seen me defy it a million times back home. So how can she say goodbye to me when she knows I can do it again? What are the odds of the arena compared to the cruelty of the sea?”
The audience sighs as a collective, dreamy and yearning and fond. They are pining for you and this mysterious friend of yours, who gives you such wholehearted credit, and they are taken with the romance of your escape from death. This is something that the others cannot compete with — this is something memorable. There’s only one thing left for you to do, and you pray Callictus understands what you need him to ask you.
“We’re almost out of time,” he says, and when you stand, he does, too. “This friend of yours, who is surely watching, would you like to say anything to her before you go? I’m sure our viewers would love to know.”
You fight back a grin, because he has done exactly what you wanted, but you are meant to be heartbroken right now. And you are, of course you are, because it’s not just anyone you are talking to right now. It’s her, your best friend, your mentor, who without even trying has made you special.
“Yes,” you say. “But not goodbye. After speaking and reminiscing with you, I’m sure that that’s the last thing either of us wants to say to each other.”
“Then?” Callictus prompts, and now you do smile, your eyes going to where she is sitting, her eyes wide but her lips curved in approval.
“See you soon,” you say. “Hysilens.”
The crowd screams and the timer rings; when you are escorted off the stage, it is with a perverse joy in your heart. You know even Trianne and her mother cannot compete with what you have done, because it is not Hysilens’s love for you that you have played upon — your friendship has never been like that, anyways. It is her trust that you showed the Capitol, her unwavering, unshakeable certainty. She believes in you, and she is not just any girl but a victor, so now — you are sure of it as you resume your place backstage — they do, too.
The tracker they inject into your arm is hard under your skin, a hot and angry lump that pulses long after it has settled comfortably into place. It wouldn’t do for a tribute to be lost in the arena, not when you are the entertainment, and anyways, it monitors your vitals, making it easier to keep count of who dies and when. In the chaos of the Games, especially the earlier stages, this is invaluable.
Caenis is waiting for you in the room where you will go in the tube that’ll carry you into the arena. You wish it could’ve been Hysilens, or even Phagousa, but your stylists are supposed to get you ready in your uniforms to make sure that there aren’t any issues, any contraband snuck in to gain an unfair advantage over the rest of the tributes. She’s hardly comforting as she dresses you in the lightweight jumpsuit, which is dark colored and thin, nothing like the rich, warm fabrics you have grown accustomed to in your two weeks at the Capitol.
“Do you have a token?” she says when you are ready. She’s brisk, matter of fact, but in a way it almost makes you feel better that this is not a tearful farewell. You can focus, can clear your head and think about what your next moves should be.
“Just this,” you say, showing her the ring on your index finger. It was a gift from your parents for your birthday two years ago, and when you left District Four, it was the only thing you could think of to bring with you as a reminder of your home. Caenis inspects it and then nods.
“Good,” she says. “It’s perfect. Pretty, but not too cumbersome, and you can’t be choked by it.”
“Yes,” you say, a little faint, because you hadn’t even considered that aspect. Caenis is a veteran of these Games, though, and a Capitolite notwithstanding, so she doesn’t bat an eye, only nodding at you, offering you a glass of water. You down it in a few gulps, not knowing when your next chance to drink something clean and good might be, and then you nibble nervously on the crackers arranged along a plate atop the only table in the room.
You wish you had tried a little harder to coordinate with Mydeimos in these days leading up to the Games, because you have no idea where you’re supposed to meet him, what you’re supposed to do, if you plan to rush into the Cornucopia or if you’re going to hang back — well, that’s a foolish question. Why would you not rush into the bloodbath? The Cornucopia is where the best weapons, the best supplies are concentrated, right in the center of where you as tributes count down to the beginning of the Games. As you get farther and farther away from it, the quality of weapons gets worse, the amount of food gets lower. Only the strongest tributes or the most desperate dare to brave the frenzy of that first day, when the claim on the Cornucopia is staked, but aren’t you and Mydeimos exactly those strongest tributes? Still, if only you could confirm with him once. You don’t want to charge into a death match without his support, and as it is, you are still half unsure whether you both are even still allies or not.
“I’m a senior stylist,” Caenis says when a cool, mechanical voice comes on over the loudspeaker and instructs you to prepare yourself for the beginning of the Games. “Every year, I’m given the first choice of tributes. Do you know what that means?”
“What? No,” you say, because you are more preoccupied with the way your feet have turned to a pair of twin anchors, leaden weights that you must drag behind you as you trudge towards the glass tube that will shoot you into the arena.
“I chose you,” she says. “Not Mydeimos. Not Cifera. Not Castorice or Dan Heng or Chartonus or any of the other predicted favorites. I chose you.”
“Why would you do that?” you say. You almost add something snarky like did you think I’d look the best without clothes on?, but your time is so limited that you wait, because you genuinely are curious as to her reasoning.
“When Phagousa called your name,” she says. “How horrified you were. How unmoving. But you stared out at the sky instead of crying, and when that dear Dan Heng was chosen as your partner, it seemed as if you pitied him, despite sharing his fate.”
“Well, I mean, he has his sister and all…” you trail off when Caenis raises her eyebrows at you. She has a smile like that shark Hysilens killed once upon a time, that she fished from the depths and sold to buy you a cake, all jagged-toothed and crimson-tinged and cruel.
“But does it matter?” she says.
“No,” you say. “No, it doesn’t.”
“Good,” she says. “Don’t forget that. Your destiny is different, you decided as much back then. I see it. Hysilens sees it. Even the rest of the Capitol sees it, and that’s no small feat when you’re up against such showy figures as Mydeimos, who are all flash, no substance. But you managed, you convinced them, and now all you have to do is make it true. Survive. Jump off the side of that boat, just like you did all of those years ago back in District Four, and this time, swim back to the surface alone. Do you understand? You have to make sure the others drown.”
The speed that the tube pushes you into the arena with is dizzying, and it’s only the reminder that those who fall off their platforms before the timer is up — whether intentionally or unintentionally — are blown to smithereens by the landmines laced into the dirt that keeps you steady. You have a minute before the cannons go off and the Games officially begin, and you know you have to use it wisely, so you glance around, taking in your surroundings.
You’re in a valley, a mountain on one side, an enormous dam on the other, and the Cornucopia in the middle of the ring your platforms form. Streams lace through the edge of the small clearing you’re in, which seems to be the only break in the massive pines as far as the eye can see. The sun is glaring and cruel in the cloudless sky, but for some reason, although your breath makes clouds of frost in the air and you know you should be cold, you find you’re not in the slightest. It’s the clothes, you reason, some fancy Capitolite technology to prevent all of you from dying silent, bloodless deaths.
The platforms are assigned at random, and you are between Chartonus and Trianne. Chartonus is solemn and does not look at you when you peer over at him; Trianne, for her part, cringes away from your curious stare. Neither of them hold any particular meaning for you, and as the countdown continues, you become more and more frantic.
There’s Cifera, who winks at you playfully when your eyes meet, and Castorice, who frowns a little. But not Mydeimos, where is Mydeimos? Your ally, you need to find him, but the time is going too fast and there are too many of you and the last person you see before Callictus announces a happy beginning to the 68th Hunger Games is Dan Heng. He smiles at you, slightly, imperceptibly, and then he nods; you don’t know him well enough to be sure of what he’s saying, but you think it’s something like acceptance. Goodbye, maybe, if you are being hopeful. Try your best. May the odds be ever in your favor.
Then the cannon goes off and you are running and Dan Heng is the last thing on your mind, because it’s as Hysilens says: he is just another fish, and you cannot afford to worry about him anymore.
What you need is a spear, but the spears will be in the mouth of the Cornucopia, and you don’t think you can wade through the throng with your muscle alone. You are fast but not fast enough to get there first, either, so you settle for trying to find a weapon that will at least work in the meantime. A knife or something, anything — there! You look around to make sure that no one is near you, and then you crouch, snatching a black-handled blade from the mud —
“Watch out!”
You’re not sure where he comes from, but with a shout, Mydeimos appears, and then he is throwing a spear at you. Your eyes widen briefly, and then you duck, allowing it to find its true target: Livia, the girl from Nine, who had snuck up behind you with a stone in her hands, aimed to smash into the back of your skull. She folds over with a breathless gasp, but Mydeimos does not hesitate, yanking the spear out of her stomach and tossing it to you lightly, the tip still glazed over with a sheen of her blood. You take it by the shaft, and once again you are reminded of the tridents you used back home, grounding you immediately. They’re just fish. Hysilens’s words echo in your mind, but they’re in Mydeimos’s voice, perhaps because he is staring at you with a strange sort of gentleness.
“Are you alright?” he says.
“I’m fine,” you say, and then you shove the spear towards him for safekeeping, lifting your arm over your head. Just fish. They’re just fish. I can do this. I know how to kill fish. Then you fling your knife towards the boy from District Five, who is rushing over towards you. It flies in an arc, quick, impossible to avoid, and it strikes true, knocking him over with its impact into his chest. “We need to get to the Cornucopia. Dan Heng is with Cifera and Castorice, and we can’t let them take it.”
“How do you know?” Mydeimos says, giving you the spear back and taking the knife from the body of the boy from Five, although really he himself is such a threat that it feels excessive. With him at your back and the spear in your hands, no one dares to approach you, and you make it through to the fighting in the Cornucopia with ease.
“He told me,” you say. “During the interviews. We need to watch out for them.”
The boy from Eleven tries tackling you, but you ram the butt of the spear into the hollow space at the base of his neck and kick his legs out from under him. You don’t know if it’s enough to kill him, but he lands with a sickening crack of his spine and does not get up, so you don’t dwell on it.
“They’re not here, at least,” Mydeimos says, his back pressing to yours as he takes another spear from the stacks in the Cornucopia, although by now there isn’t much of anyone left to challenge you. Bodies litter the clearing around the Cornucopia, and the others have fled, no doubt advised by their mentors to avoid the bloodbath, which is almost never worth it for those who are not like you and your ally.
“For now,” you say as the cannons finally begin to tally the results of this first clash. Normally, they go off at the moment a tribute dies, but the bloodbath is too quick, too brutal. There’s no sense in counting when every minute, another person is lost, so they wait until everyone disperses to collect the bodies and mark them all as gone.
“Twelve,” Mydeimos says with a heavy exhale, pinching the bridge of his nose. “That’s already half of us.”
You think about little Trianne, if she was one of the deaths, and then you wonder if Dan Heng made it out, though you dismiss the concern immediately. Of course he did, he and his ally Cifera had the highest scores in training besides Mydeimos himself. It’s the others you should think of, like that brave, beaming Hyacinthia, who had been so cheerful even as she walked up to the podium after her name had been called. They are the ones whose faces you will see in the sky tonight.
“Who can we count out for sure?” you say, more because you need something to do than out of any real need for it. Every night of the Games, the national anthem will play, and then the faces of the tributes killed that day will be reflected in the sky for those of you left to see. But you need to catalogue and list what you know, what Mydeimos knows, or else you will be sitting still for too long, and you want to avoid that at all costs.
“The girl from Nine,” Mydeimos says.
“Livia,” you say, and you don’t know where the nearest camera is, but you imagine Phainon must be watching you through it. At least one of the tributes from his district is already dead, dead because of you. How must he be feeling right now? Does he hate you? Or he is resigned to it by now, after so many years of being a mentor? District Nine hasn’t produced very many victors, after all. Himself and Cyrene are the only ones in recent memory, so you suppose he must be used to it. To watching the people he grew up alongside die.
“Right,” Mydeimos says, and he does not make fun of you as you thought he might. “Livia.”
“And the boy from Five,” you say. “The one I—”
“Yes,” he says when your voice tapers into nothing. “That’s two. I fought Chartonus for this spear, as well.”
“Did he give you much trouble?” you say.
“He might’ve, if I were someone else,” he says, which is a modest way of saying no. Chartonus was widely considered a bit of an underdog favorite for those who were interested in betting, so you are sure there are more than a few gamblers in the Capitol who are furious that he has been taken out so early, but such is the nature of the Games. He was strong, undeniably so, but it was his misfortune that the first person he met was simply stronger.
“I also got the District Eleven boy,” you say. “So that’s four between us.”
“Five,” Mydeimos corrects. “I dealt with the girl from Five while you were fighting off the one from Eleven.”
“So District Five’s out entirely, then,” you say, and what you don’t add is that it is your union, your alliance, which has done that. Mydeimos nods.
“Correct. I’m sure it’s not the only one. There’s seven other tributes that died, and we know for sure that you and I are alive,” he says.
“I guess we’ll find out tonight,” you say. “What should we do until then?”
You’re hesitant, waiting for him to suggest you go hunting, as many of the tributes from Districts One and Two often do. Anything to get the Games over as soon as possible; you understand the sentiment, but you don’t think you have the constitution to do that, to chase down the others in the vast swathes of pines and kill them on purpose. The bloodbath was different, the rush of the moment meant you had no time to think, but to plan it out…you are not ready yet. Maybe you won’t ever be.
“We’re not hunting,” he says immediately, decisively, and you could kiss him, you are so grateful.
“Good,” you say.
“Good?” he says.
“There’s no need for it,” you say. “I’m sure the others will take care of the weaker tributes for us.”
Castorice, Dan Heng, and Cifera — you can’t imagine Dan Heng doing anything like that, but the other two, it’s not out of the realm of possibility, and if he is their ally, then naturally he will have to comply. Castorice has the kind of fresh-faced sweetness that is ripe to rot in the arena, and Cifera is too sly, too cunning to hide and wait out the Games idly. You can allow them to worry about the competition, and in the meantime, as long as you defend the Cornucopia, you will keep yourselves in a better condition, so that when you do face off against them, the match goes the way you want it to.
“Then we can just stay here,” he says, his thoughts clearly going down the same path yours just have.
“Right,” you say. “For now, we should take inventory of everything. It’ll be good to know what we have so we can ration it appropriately, as well as what weapons we want to use and which we just don’t want falling into the hands of the others. The Cornucopia is easy to defend, so I don’t think it’ll be an issue if we both work on it together, at the same time, and we can get done faster that way.”
“I suppose we have nothing better to do,” he says. “Alright. Are you okay with doing the left half? I’ll take care of the right.”
“That’s fine,” you say, and as hovercrafts descend to gather the fallen tributes, you and Mydeimos settle into something of a rhythm, putting the weapons aside in stacks, organizing the food into neat piles by type and amount, splitting the water amongst the various containers you find. Luckily, water isn’t something you’ll have to worry too much about, not when the dam has so much in reserve, but who knows how clean that will be? For now, you have more than enough from what the Cornucopia has provided, and though that may not always hold true, the water from the reservoir will remain a final resort.
You can understand why tributes fight so desperately for a chance at the Cornucopia as the day stretches on, fading into twilight before you and Mydeimos are finished with your attempt at responsibility. There’s enough supplies to last the two of you for a month at the least, and more weapons than you know what to do with, some of which you’ve never even seen before. You toss the old spear you used in the bloodbath aside, taking a new one that is heavier at the point, the way the tridents of Four are, and you notice Mydeimos does the opposite, casting away his knife for a slender lance with a tip like a fishhook.
The notes of the national anthem mark the end of your progress, as both of you sit side by side on the lip of the Cornucopia, staring up at the sky. It’s a little uncomfortable, his arm against yours, smears of rust on his cheek not unlike the paint his stylists put him in for the tribute parade, but also nice, in a way. Enough that you don’t tell him to move, at any rate.
The first face is the boy from District One, Cifera’s partner. After that, it’s both tributes from District Three, and you’re both relieved and disappointed when District Four is skipped over, because for better or worse, it means Dan Heng is alive. The pair of tributes from Five that you and Mydeimos killed show next, and then the boy from Six, who is immediately followed by Chartonus from Seven. After that, it’s the girl from Eight, and then it’s Livia, which prompts you to look at Mydeimos. He seems unruffled, though, and you suppose this does make sense. To him she is no different than the ones from Five — after all, it’s not like he’s ever met Phainon, so why would he care what a different district’s mentor might think of him?
After Livia, they show the boy from District Eleven, the one you killed with the tail end of a spear, and then both tributes from District Twelve. The anthem reprises, and then the sky is quiet, leaving you to mull over this development.
“Looks like Cifera, Castorice, and Dan Heng are still around,” Mydeimos says. “No surprise.”
“Hyacinthia from Ten and Trianne from Six, too,” you say. “They must’ve fled as soon as the cannons went off.”
“It was the only option they had,” he says, surprising you once again with how low his voice is, how melancholy. Most if not all of the tributes from Two are like mutts designed by the Capitol to kill, but Mydeimos seems genuinely bereaved by the thought of Hyacinthia and Trianne running helplessly in the arena. You almost wonder if this is some act, some front he is putting up to get you to lower your guard, but what good would it do him? You are the one who asked to be his ally. If anything, it’s his guard that needs to be lowered. You trust him already, or at least as much as you can trust anyone in this arena, which admittedly isn’t very much, but it’s more than nothing.
“That’s seven of us,” you say, counting on your fingers. “Who else?”
“Girl from Six,” he says. “And Seven.”
“Boys from Eight and Nine,” you say. “And Hyacinthia’s district partner. That’s everyone.”
“They must’ve allied,” Mydeimos says. “He’s probably looking after her, got her out of there quick enough that they didn’t face anyone in the bloodbath.”
“Most people do work with their district partners,” you say. “What we're doing is the radical thing.”
He glances at you out of the corner of his eye, measured and careful. “Regret it yet?”
“It’s hard to, when I’m sitting at the Cornucopia,” you say, keenly aware of the cameras on you. It’s not just the Capitol — your district is watching you, too. “But he would’ve been a good option as well. This is just how it worked out, him off with his allies and me with…with mine.”
“I swore to my parents that I wouldn’t have any allies,” he tells you, and although he doesn’t quite laugh, he does something very close to it, an amused exhale of sorts. “They must be sitting at home and throwing stones at their television. Stupid son, they’ll be saying right about now. Why’d you pick the girl from Four?”
You snort. “They’d rather you picked someone else?”
“Castorice,” he says. “Because we are district partners. Or Dan Heng, because it would be an easy way to get rid of what might grow to be the greatest thorn in my side. Not you.”
“Well, it’s not like you had much of a choice,” you say, leaning back so that you can rest against the walls of the Cornucopia. “I picked you before anyone else had the chance.”
“That’s true,” he says. “I guess it absolves me of some of the blame. Thank you. Yet I’m still the one who accepted your proposal, so I’m not faultless.”
You yawn. “Your parents aren’t the ones playing the Games for you. You’ll need me to keep watch, if nothing else.”
“You can sleep first,” he says. “I don’t trust you yet.”
“What?” you say, instantly alert, because his actions the entire day have indicated the opposite. He shrugs.
“Can you blame me?” he says. “You were so eager to be my ally. Why is that? You clearly have no grudge against your district partner. For all I know, you really are aligned with Castorice, Cifera, and Dan Heng, and that’s the reason none of them have shown up to the Cornucopia yet, despite all three being more than capable enough to at least make it out with a sword or a pack. How can I be sure that the instant I fall asleep, you won’t put that spear right through my back?”
“I wouldn’t—” You fall silent when you realize he’s right, and then you offer him your hand. “When the time comes, let’s promise to end this alliance on fair terms. We’ll give each other a day to gather our things and split before we become enemies entirely. I swear to you on the name of District Four that I will uphold this oath.”
He shakes your hand, much as he did when he agreed to be your ally. “Alright.”
“I have no intentions of betraying you yet. The reason why the others haven’t come is simple: they don’t want to risk it so early. None of them are stupid, I am sure of it, and the beginning of the Games is the most dangerous time to approach the Cornucopia, which they know as well as we do. The same way we are allowing them to pick off the weaklings, they allowed us to gain control of the Cornucopia. They’ll fight us for it eventually, but when the time comes, Mydeimos, I promise I will be on your side. I won’t leave you to them alone,” you say.
“Okay,” he says. “Then, as a show of your goodwill, allow me to take the first watch.”
He’s not entirely convinced, and as you lie down in one of the sleeping bags that was rolled up in the back of the Cornucopia, you think that you don’t trust him this much, either. But what choice is there? One of you has to sleep first, and just as you extended him that branch of alliance without any idea of what his response might be, you;ll have to do the same this time.
But the night passes uneventfully enough; halfway through, a cannon sounds off, marking the death of another tribute and rousing you for long enough to convince Mydeimos to switch places with you, but that’s about it. He’s uneasy when he settles down, you can tell, but when you remind him it’ll do neither of you any good if he collapses from exhaustion, he reluctantly agrees, and then he is asleep within seconds.
Two days pass, and you’re fairly certain it’s only the deaths of the boy from Eight and the girl from Seven that have occurred since the bloodbath that keep the audience sated. They’re restless, the Capitolites, and you know that if you do not do something soon, the Gamemakers will get involved to spur you into action, and you’ve seen in previous Games how ugly that can get. You and Mydeimos are the most highly anticipated tributes of this year, and your alliance has likely only caused even more people to be invested in you, so the fact that you’ve been largely sedentary won’t be permitted for much longer.
“We need to make a move,” you say, that third morning when you are tucked away in the Cornucopia. It’s easier to defend when you only have to watch the mouth of it, so you and he spend your nights together inside that golden horn, one of you staying awake to keep an eye out for the other tributes, the other getting what fitful rest they can manage. “The interest from the bloodbath is bound to be waning, and they’re going to want us to do something soon. If we don’t decide for ourselves, they’ll decide for us, and I don’t need to tell you that that’s not something we want.”
“Who do we go after, then?” he says. You raise your eyebrows at him.
“Who else?” you say. “We might as well face them now. The earlier, the better, right? There’s no sense in having these Games drag out any longer than they should. I for one want to go home, and I’m sure it’s the same for you.”
You wait for him to question you, to tell you that maybe you should be more prudent, but he only hums. Of course he does — he’s confident, maybe more than he should be or maybe exactly the right amount — and then he crosses his arms.
“Do you have any ideas, or are we just going to wander about blindly?” he says.
“Wandering isn’t the best plan,” you say, frowning. “We’ll leave the Cornucopia unguarded, and I wouldn’t want to do that for too long, lest we come back to all of our supplies pilfered.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” he agrees. “But we’re going to have to leave it eventually, unless you’re suggesting we split up?”
“I wasn’t, but now that you mention it, it’s not a bad thought,” you say. “If you go after one of them, it’ll alert the other two that the Cornucopia is unguarded, or at least that I’m alone. They’ll be bold enough to take the gamble that they can gang up on me, and then they’ll come scuttling over like little crabs to scavenge what they can.”
“Can’t they gang up on you?” he says, and if you didn’t know better, you’d say the crease in his forehead is borne of worry, instead of just pragmatic concern. But you do know better, so you fight the urge to pet soothingly along his arms how you might have if he were a friend of yours in Four, and instead you smile at him.
“Of course they can,” you say. “That’s why I’m relying on you to have the element of surprise and defeat them when they think they have the upper hand. Be quick and come back to me, Mydeimos; I’ll just do my best to hold them off until then.”
The moment he leaves, a spear in hand and a grim expression on his handsome face, you long to call him back. In just these two days, you have developed a frightening dependence on him, which you can only see now that he has left — with him gone, you feel empty. Exposed. Like there are a million eyes watching you from between the pines, and even playing with a spear of your own cannot ward them off as well as he would’ve.
It’s the first time you’ve thought of her in a while, but suddenly you wish you could speak with Hysilens. Does she approve of this impulsive plan of yours, which places so much faith in Mydeimos it’s laughable? You doubt it; she’s probably sitting next to Krateros in the room reserved for victors, scowling and shaking her fist at you. Idiot, she’s probably saying. Who’s to say he won’t come back late?
On accident or on purpose, it’s true he could do either. Maybe it’ll take him longer to fight the others off; maybe he’ll take advantage of the situation and allow them to finish you before swooping back in to secure the Cornucopia for himself. Both of these outcomes are possible, and it’s absurd of you to hinge your survival on him like this, but then again, hasn’t he done the same? Because you could be the traitor. You could be the one who has secretly plotted with Dan Heng and Castorice and Cifera to lure him into a trap at the Cornucopia, and still he has gone forth. He has to trust you if he wants to win, just as you have to trust him, or at that’s how you would tell it to Hysilens if she were here.
He promised me, you would say, stroking up and down the shaft of your spear, the idle motion doing little to soothe your nerves. One day. We promised each other that, and until that day comes, we are allies in full, which means I have to trust him.
It’s excruciating, being the one left behind. You have no idea, no way of knowing what is happening in the depths of the forest. If only you were with the Gamemakers, sitting next to Veritas Ratio in the fancy control room, able to see everything in the arena at once! Has Mydeimos found them yet? Is he crossing spears with Dan Heng, exchanging blows with Castorice, chasing down Cifera? Who will be coming to hunt you down? If it is your district partner, will he at least have some sort of kindness, some mercy, as Bailu asked him to?
The mention of Bailu makes you remember your promise to her. If you have to face my brother in the arena, and you find yourself winning — can you be gentle? What does she think of the fact that you have, in essence, sent Mydeimos after him? The living weapon from Two. The golden-haired lionfish of a volunteer. You chose him as your ally, and now you have in essence given him permission to kill her brother, who you swore to treat gently even in your eventual enmity. She must hate you. She must really hate you a lot.
It happens all at once: a high-pitched squeal, Cifera’s cackling laugh, and then a knife, whizzing through the air and embedding itself in the heart of a girl, who collapses with her arms still stretched out towards you. Your eyes widen when you realize that it is Trianne, her red shock of hair giving her away, and then you are stumbling out of the Cornucopia and pointing your spear at Cifera, who is beaming at you and holding another knife to Hyacinthia’s throat.
“Well, well, it must be my lucky day,” she says. Hyacinthia’s breaths come fast and short, her eyes wide and panicked when they settle on you. Help, she is mouthing. Help me, please help me. “The lady from Four without her dashing knight to save her.”
“Cifera,” you say. “What are you doing? Let go of her. If it’s me and the Cornucopia you want, that’s fine, but let us fight fairly.”
“Fairly?” she says. “Why would I ever do that, when you’ve staged this elaborate trap for me? You don’t care about fairness. You’re just mad that you’re the one who’s been played for the fool. That’s right, I bet you never counted on me being faster than your precious allies and their game of pretend, huh? But here I am.”
“What are you talking about?” you say, all too aware of Trianne bleeding out in the grass and the whites of Hyacinthia’s eyes, which are growing pink from the hand holding her by the neck.
“It doesn’t matter. Sure, I’ll be fair,” she says. “Let me take what I want from the Cornucopia, and I’ll let this one live. Not sure what you all see in her, but I’m sure she has some talents, right?”
“I don’t believe you,” you say. “Where are Castorice and Dan Heng?”
“Castorice and Dan Heng?” Cifera says, and for the first time, something like genuine confusion flickers across her face, although it’s gone in an instant, replaced with smugness. “No idea where the girl from Two is, but that partner of yours is facing off against Mydeimos. I wonder who will win — actually, now I’m wondering who you want to win.”
“Let go of Hyacinthia,” you say.
“You know, I’m painting you out to be a real hero right now,” Cifera says, her voice dropping to a seductive purr that even you can hardly hear, despite your proximity to her. “I’m getting the sense you need the boost to your image right about now. Really, you should be thanking me, not waving that big old lance around like I’m your enemy!”
“Cifera,” you say. “I won’t ask again. Let her go. She’s not strong enough to harm anyone, and you’ve more than frightened her.”
“Yet she scored a seven in training,” Cifera says with a hum, although she does loosen her grip on Hyacinthia, prompting the girl to greedily inhale, coughing and hacking. You take a step towards them, but Cifera gives you a warning look, sharp enough that you halt in your tracks and glance towards the trees. Whether Dan Heng or Mydeimos, you don’t care, but one of them, you want one of them to appear, so that you are not alone in this. “How about it, little Hyacinnie? How’d you manage that?”
“I don’t — I just knew some knots and snares from working with the cows in Ten,” Hyacinthia gasps out. “Please, I promise I won’t hurt you, I’ll just take Trianne and go —”
“It doesn’t matter,” Cifera says, and beneath her snarl is a wilting desperation. “If I want to go home, you’re in my way. Nothing personal, but that’s how it is.”
“You’re the one who killed the two after the bloodbath,” you say when Hyacinthia whimpers. “The girl from District Seven and the boy from District Eight. It wasn’t Dan Heng or Castorice. Just you.”
“Enough talking,” she says, and then, in a movement like a flash, she slices Hyacinthia’s throat and tosses her aside before you even know what’s happening. A cannon booms immediately, and then, a moment later, another one goes off. “Just remember I offered you a peaceful solution. It was your own miserly nature that cost her life, so the next time we meet, don’t even think about trying to take the moral high ground. You and I, we’re just the same.”
“How could you? How could you do that?” you say, throwing your spear at her. If it were anyone else, it would’ve cleaved her straight in two, but she’s quick like a cat, that Cifera, quick and limber, dodging and sprinting away in a series of motions you could never hope to replicate. She’s canny, too — why should she bother with picking a fight when you and she are so evenly matched, and Mydeimos may be back soon to turn the tides in your favor? No, but you cannot pursue her, or you will leave your supplies unguarded, and so she runs unopposed, leaving you with Hyacinthia and Trianne and the Cornucopia looming behind you, as silent and stony as President Lycurgus’s mask.
Hyacinthia is dead, there’s no point in checking what is certain, but still you do not bother retrieving your spear, racing over to Trianne, whose fall was not marked with a cannon. You hope, in the darkest parts of you, that the second cannon was for someone else, and then you gather her in your lap, holding her to you as you would hold the younger ones in Four, when they were too frightened to swim, as you even once held Bailu, right before you boarded the train to the Capitol. She is still warm, still breathing, but barely.
“Trianne,” you say. “Trianne, listen to me. What happened?”
“Oh,” she says. “It’s you. He told us to find you.”
“Who told you?” you say, and she can barely keep her eyes open, so you feel particularly cruel in your frantic inquiries, but you also know that you have no time to spare. “Trianne, who told you to find me?”
“Dan Heng,” she coughs out. “He told Hyacine and I…if anything happens to us, we should find you, because even though you’re not our ally, he knows…he knows you’ll take care of us.”
You almost drop her. Dan Heng? Why would he send Hyacine and Trianne to you? Why isn’t Trianne frightened when she says his name? She should be frightened. He and Castorice and Cifera, she should be frightened of them, so why is she looking at you like she is pleading with you to do something?
“Why?” you whisper, and then she’s gagging on the blood coating her throat and you have to resist the urge to shake answers from her. “Why, Trianne, why would he say that? Why would he care if you’re safe or not? Why did he send you to me? Why, why, you have to tell me why!”
“He was our ally!” she says, and then she bursts into sobs, turning her face into a pink, frothy mess of spittle and tears. “He told us before the Games began, when we were training — if it were his little sister — if it were his little sister in the arena — he would want someone to look out for her — and now he’s fighting Mydeimos alone, he told us that he can do it and we just have to find you and he’ll join us later — I want my mama, I want my mama —”
You cradle the back of her head, allowing her to muffle her tantrum in your shoulder as the world spins around you. The two allies he had mentioned on the night of the interviews, the ones who you had assumed were Cifera and Castorice…it was them. Trianne and Hyacinthia. Dan Heng, who could’ve been the victor if he wanted, who could’ve been the victor if only he had taken your offer, had instead chosen to defend these doomed girls. He could have gone home to his own sister, but he chose — he chose —
“It’s okay, Trianne,” you say, wrapping your arms around her as tightly as you can. Her sobs have quieted into hiccups, and you know she is not long for this world. Tribios must be watching, and you are ashamed of yourself for what you say next. “Your mama is on the way. She’s waiting for you. Just a few more moments, and she’ll come take you home.”
“Really?” Trianne says, but she does not lift her head or give any other indication that she is even still alive.
“Yes, really,” you say. “Really, really. She’s just running a little late, but she’ll be here as soon as she can.”
“I don’t know if I can stay awake for long enough,” Trianne admits. “Will you tell her I’m sorry when she gets here?”
“Of course,” you say.
“Tell Dan Heng, too,” she says. “We should’ve been faster…we didn’t realize Cifera was there, if only we had been faster…”
“It’s not your fault,” you say, and in truth, it’s not Cifera’s fault, either. Whether at her hand or someone else’s, Trianne’s fate would have been the same. At least Cifera gave her the mercy of a painless wound and a death in someone’s arms — both are luxuries in the Games, and it might be strange to call it a kindness, but that’s really what it is. “Dan Heng will understand, Trianne. He would never hold it against you.”
“My mama liked him a lot,” she says. “I bet she was glad that we were working together in the arena.”
“I bet she was,” you say. Her chest is barely rising, barely falling, and you have to hold back tears so she doesn’t realize that you are frightened. “She must have been so glad you had someone looking out for you when she couldn’t be there to do it herself.”
The boom of the cannon echoes like a drum, bouncing around the cavern of your skull, and you squeeze Trianne tightly, lifting and setting her beside Hyacinthia, her ally, so that the hovercraft can come collect them before the flies descend and gorge themselves. Then you curl yourself around a spear in the mouth of the Cornucopia, hugging it to you like you did Trianne, and although your eyes remain curiously dry, your lower lip trembles as if you are wailing along with the now-dead girl, who left this world in tears.
He stumbles out of the forest a few minutes later, once the hovercraft has already left: Mydeimos, the eternally victorious Mydeimos. You know what it means. You heard that cannon, the one that resounded moments after Hyacinthia fell, and you cannot bring yourself to stand and greet your ally when you already know what he is going to tell you.
Yet the closer he gets, the more you notice that there is something strange in his gait, something strange and stumbling and wrong. He is missing the spear he set out with, and his footsteps drag; before you can stop yourself, you are standing and running towards him, halting right before you reach him when you realize there is blood seeping from a puncture wound in his side, a steady river that he has half-heartedly stemmed with a wadded up handful of leaves. He makes no acknowledgement of it, though, only extending a hand to skim along your face, patting it fondly, like the two of you are old friends.
“I did what you asked,” he says. “If you don’t want to be my ally anymore, I understand.”
Then he collapses, and you hardly make it in time to catch him, hooking your arms under his, the weight of his limp figure heavy in your embrace. For a moment, you cling to him, your cheek to his heart, your fingers splayed across his back, and you think that it would be easy to let him die here. You don’t need him anymore. Dan Heng is gone. Cifera at least considers the two of you to be evenly matched. Castorice hasn’t done anything yet, and you doubt she will for a good while. For the first time, victory doesn’t seem like a far-off promise, an unattainable thing, but rather a graspable truth. All you have to do is leave him now. All you have to do is let him die, just like Caenis said you should.
But you can’t do that.
It takes a long time to drag him back to the Cornucopia, and longer for you to undo the top half of his uniform, pulling away the leaves and grime from his body while you are at it. The wound is a gaping hole in his torso, the flesh jagged around the piercing, and you have to remember to breathe through your nose so that you do not vomit at the sight. You suppose Dan Heng put up more of a fight than any of you anticipated he would, and for some reason, you are momentarily proud, although then Mydeimos is groaning and your attention is stolen.
“What are you…?”
“Just try to sleep,” you say, standing and searching for where you have kept the medical supplies you found. This is the benefit of claiming the Cornucopia — you actually have medical supplies to speak of, not just water and iodine droplets. They’re hardly sophisticated, but if Mydeimos wins the Games, the Capitol will fix him so that it’s like nothing ever happened, and if he doesn’t, well, sporting a half-treated injury for the next few days will be the least of his problems. “I don’t know how painful this will be, so it’ll be better if you’re not awake.”
He ignores you, because of course he does, propping himself up so that he is leaning against the wall of the Cornucopia and watching you through half-lidded eyes as you rub soap into your hands and pour precious water over them. Crouching by him and ignoring his harsh exhale, you dump the rest of the bottle on his ribcage, massaging the soap along the frayed edges of his wound before rinsing it off until it is pink and clean and decidedly worse in appearance than before.
“Why are you doing this?” he says as you wind a silvery thread through a slender needle you found buried at the bottom of the pile, knowing it’s meant for mending clothes but finding you have no other options. Holding the wound closed, you murmur an apology, both for the pain and for your lackluster sewing skills, and then you begin to stitch it together, squinting in the dim light filtering through the mouth of the Cornucopia to make sure that it is even somewhat even.
“You’re my ally,” you say. He answers you with a shudder as you yank the thread through his skin; wordlessly, you rummage in your pocket for dried fruit that he can bite on. He accepts it immediately, his jaw working furiously as you continue, only pausing occasionally to wipe the sweat gathering along his forehead and at the base of his neck.
“So what?” he gasps out, reaching for more dried fruit, which you feed to him immediately, tapping it against his lips so he opens his mouth for you.
“So you can’t die yet,” you say. “I still need you.”
“For?” he says, bitter, humorless, and more than a little delirious. He’s slipping in and out of consciousness, and you hope he’ll make up his mind to fall asleep for good soon, because he’s only making it worse for himself at the moment. “Dan Heng is dead, and taking care of me will only burden you. I’m not going to recover from this, not fully. You know that.”
“Maybe you will,” you say, tying the end of the thread into a knot and then unscrewing the cap of a small container of ointment that you can only hope has something like antibacterial properties. It’s not only blood loss — a potential infection is just as much of a concern for him at this point, if not more so, given that his ‘doctor’ is a girl who has spent much of her life thus far in the pursuit of killing fish and little else.
“Then what will you do?” he says. “I won’t take it easy on you because we were allies.”
“I just don’t want you to die,” you say, and when you are done with the ointment, you wrap a roll of gauze around his torso. The work is sloppy and by no means best practice, but at least he is alive and bandaged and clean instead of writhing about and dying in the mud. “Not so soon.”
Not right after Trianne. Not right after Hyacinthia. Not right after Dan Heng. The tributes in the bloodbath were nameless, were your age, but Trianne and Hyacinthia were so young, and Dan Heng…
“Did he fight very hard?” you say as you unwrap food for yourself, sitting on Mydeimos’s other side, so that you are between him and the entrance to the Cornucopia, your spear standing at the ready should anyone attempt to surprise you.
“Yes,” he says. “The people of District Four are just as Krateros said. Strong. Slippery. I remember when I told him I was willing to be your ally, he shook his head and laughed. Pretty little fish-girl. Of course she tore down your defenses, they always do that. Dan Heng was the same. He found weak spots that even I didn’t know existed, and he exploited them mercilessly. In all honesty, I couldn’t even say I won because I was more skilled. It was just that I had a better weapon.”
“I see,” you say, gnawing on a piece of bread that has grown hard from overexposure to air so that you are not overcome with a fresh wave of tears. You don’t know what it is you’re mourning — half of the reason you even allied yourself with Mydeimos was so that he could kill Dan Heng for you, so what cause, what right do you have to grieve? It’s Bailu you’re sad for, you reassure yourself, Bailu who will forever return to an empty home and remember a time when there was another. You don’t miss Dan Heng yourself. It’s just her.
“What happened…here?” he says. He’s exhausted, slumping over already, but he does his best to look at me when you answer.
“We were wrong,” you say, and then you pause. “No. I was wrong. Dan Heng’s allies weren’t Castorice and Cifera. They were Hyacinthia and Trianne.”
Mydeimos is silent, but he does frown at this. You remember the first day, when you had mentioned that Hyacinthia and Trianne must have run off as soon as the Games began, how unexpectedly dejected he had been, and you think you understand him a little better.
“Cifera is the one who’s been picking off tributes while we’ve been here. I guess she took advantage of your fight with Dan Heng to chase after the other two, who he had told to — to come and find me,” you say. “She threw a knife at Trianne, and then she tried holding Hyacinthia hostage, telling me that if I allowed her to go through the Cornucopia and take what she wanted, she would let her live.”
“Did you do it?” he says.
“No,” you say. He opens his mouth to protest, but you shake your head. “She would’ve killed her anyway. You know that. Hyacinthia was always going to die.”
“I spoke to her once,” he says. “She sat with me at lunch during one of our training days. I told her I didn’t need any allies, and she told me she had no illusions of being considered as such, not by me. She just thought I looked lonely.”
“Oh,” you say, because you had never spoken to her, but you find it believable nevertheless. She just seemed like that kind of person, and anyways, Mydeimos isn’t the type to embellish or lie.
“She has a pony,” he says after a moment, like he is struggling to recall something, caught up in the recounting of this tale he must have been told by Hyacinthia herself. “Had. In District Ten.”
“Oh,” you say again, hugging your knees to your chest. You want him to shut up and never speak of her again. You also want him to brand these things into your mind forever, so that you do not forget.
“Fattest pony in the entire district. She spoils it incessantly, gives it as many treats as she can afford, and even pieces of her own dinner if she’s running low. Fed it an apple before she left and promised she would see it again soon,” he says, and then, you suppose too sore to make it to the mess of bedding he has claimed for himself, he rests his cheek on your shoulder, closing his eyes. There’s no more pretenses amongst you two, not now that you have saved his life. He trusts you entirely, because he has to. He has no choice. “I wonder if someone will tell it that she won’t be coming back for a long time. Will it even understand? Or do you think it’ll keep waiting?”
With that he is asleep, and when you begin to cry in earnest, you bury your face in his hair, so that the cameras cannot catch you doing it, allowing his silent form to shield you from the world, just this one time.
You think that you should be safe for the next couple of days — you have given the audience plenty of excitement, so the Gamemakers shouldn’t feel any need to intervene, and as for Cifera…well. It’s Dan Heng that they show in the sky, not Mydeimos, and she has no way of knowing what condition he is in, so you doubt she’ll dare to show her face, and the other tributes will be much the same.
Now that Dan Heng, Trianne, and Hyacinthia are out, the number of tributes has thinned considerably. It’s you, Cifera, Castorice, the boys from Districts Nine and Ten, the girl from District Eleven, and Mydeimos — if you can even count him in such a state. It’s the time that tributes start getting desperate, and also the time that relationships, if formed, are severed, but here you are, taking care of your ally with a faithfulness that most people don’t even afford their district partner.
“What’s District Two like?” you ask him when he wakes up the next morning. Although it took you much effort, you had helped his unconscious form to lie properly, amidst pillows and blankets, and then to busy your hands along with your mind, you had begun inspecting all of your medicinal supplies, trying to determine which ones would be the most effective in treating him.
“Huh?” he says, still dazed. Stretching his arms over his head, he immediately winces, and you’re about to reprimand him when you hear the sound of a parachute outside. Scrambling over him, you deflate only slightly when you see that it is labeled with a neat 2, meaning that it’s not for you. It’s too small to be a weapon — not that you had actually been hoping for one of those — and when you open it you see that it’s just a pill bottle, filled to the top with hard white capsules. The bottle has swirling Capitolite cursive across the front, and it takes you a second to realize that it reads Pain Medicine, causing you to grin.
“You have rich sponsors,” you say, ducking back into the Cornucopia and pressing the bottle in his hands. “Take a couple. It should help.”
He takes two and swallows obediently, without even asking you what they are. It’s such a contrast to the tribute you entered the Games with, the one who refused to even sleep for fear you would betray him, that you are momentarily amazed. He doesn’t seem to find it particularly noteworthy, however, handing the bottle back to you and blinking at you in a way you might describe as sweet, were you prone to idiocy. His lashes, surprisingly dark but still fading to gold at the tips, flutter a little when he does, and you don’t think he means to but you can’t help yourself from thinking that if you were in District Four…oh, if only you were in District Four…
“You were asking me about District Two,” he says, interrupting your train of thought as neatly and easily as that.
“Hm? Oh, yes,” you say, shaking your head to clear the last vestiges of your daydream from it. “Your home. It must be very different from Four.”
“I’d assume,” he says. “We live by a mountain, not an ocean, and every day after school, we lug boulders from the quarry to the masons, so that they can work on them.”
“No wonder you’re all so strong,” you say, finding a newfound appreciation for the tributes from Two and their repetitive victories. When they have been surrounded by it from a young age, doesn’t it make sense that they appear as if carved from that very stone? Mydeimos shrugs.
“And it’s no wonder why you all from Four are so quick,” he says. “You fish, right?”
“That’s right,” you say. “All different kinds, whether with nets or rods or harpoons. Before her Games, Hysilens was the best spearfisher in the entire district. She even caught a shark once, my last birthday before she went into the arena, and it made her so much money I even got to have a cake. Nothing special, nothing fancy, but…I remember how happy we were that day. Like nothing could ever happen to us.”
“Hysilens,” Mydeimos says. “Your mentor.”
Although you are sure that the live feed had cut away from the two of you while you were talking about your homes — President Lycurgus doesn’t like these shows of solidarity between districts, after all — there’s no doubt that the attention is back on you now. How could it not be? What a story it is, you and the wounded Mydeimos huddled together in the Cornucopia, and you are about to speak of Hysilens, who the entire Capitol adores, whose friendship with you is the entire reason you have even gained as much popularity as you have.
“We were best friends first,” you say. “The story I told in the interview, all of it was true. She was hard to win over, but she’s that kind of person, where once she is yours you will never be rid of her entirely. When she was chosen for her Games, I was so frightened. It was —”
“—the worst moment of your life,” he completes for you when you can’t go on. When you raise your eyebrows at him, he looks away. “It was the same for me when Hephaestion was called.”
“The boy you volunteered for,” you remember. “Why did you do that? You’re old enough. This was going to be your last Reaping. You could’ve escaped the Games entirely.”
“He’s sick,” Mydeimos says. “Weak and sick. Maybe if Dan Heng took pity on him, as he did the others, he could’ve lasted a little longer than the bloodbath, but otherwise, he would’ve died faster than Hyacinthia and Trianne. You saw him in the Reaping. You know he would’ve been powerless compared to the rest of you.”
“But, Mydeimos,” you say. “He’ll die young anyways, won’t he? That kind of illness won’t ever fade. So what’s the point?”
“At least he will die with dignity,” Mydeimos says. “He’ll be home, having never killed or run for his life, and when he departs, he will be surrounded by people who care for him instead of tributes who celebrate his end. There’s a point.”
“I see,” you say. “So it’s like that, then.”
Maybe it’s the same for you. Maybe if Hysilens were sick and dying, you would’ve volunteered to give her even one more day of peace. Still, you wonder how Hephaestion must have felt watching Dan Heng’s spear drive into Mydeimos’s side. Did he think that it should’ve been him? Did he curse his friend for volunteering to delay his death, when inevitably that death will find him regardless? You would. If you were Hephaestion, you would.
The nights are growing colder and colder the longer the Games go on, and you don’t know who first suggests it, but you and Mydeimos begin to sleep together instead of apart. Really, it’s mostly him who is sleeping, caught in the eternal haze of the Capitolite pain medicine as he is, but the warmth of his feverish body pressing against you while you sit and watch the moon creep along the sky is enough to strengthen you to stay up for as long as you can.
You haven’t told him yet, but his wound is infected, you are sure. Although you cleaned it as best as you could, you have no doubt that Dan Heng’s spear was filthy when it entered Mydeimos, and you’re no doctor, to actually be able to do anything for him. Whenever you change his bandages, you cringe at the swollen redness of it, the heat that emanates from the site, and it’s really only the bottle of pain medicine, already dwindling low, that is allowing him to persist without hunching over in constant agony.
“Shouldn’t I leave you?” you murmur to him one night. He’s asleep, curled into your side, his temple resting on your collarbone, and you are combing your fingers through his hair, more because you are afraid you, too, will sleep if you do not do something, anything. “I should, right? Your wound isn’t getting better, and it’s been a long time since anything happened in the Games. Everyone is bound to be getting impatient, and if something happens…protecting you will cost me. I should definitely leave you.”
You don’t want to, though. He continues to sleep, unaware of what you are saying, and then he sighs, as if he is content. Like this, he doesn’t look like the beast from Two, and you can hardly imagine him as he was in the tribute parade, all glorious and proud. He feels so delicate, his breaths light, his lips curved into a small smile. You hope he’s dreaming of something pleasant — maybe his home, back in District Two, where he can laugh and carry stones with Hephaestion, racing him all of the way back to where the masons await them.
Outside, in the quiet of the night, there is a soft sound. You are instantly alert, nudging him off of you and grabbing your spear to investigate, but it’s not Cifera or any of the other tributes. It’s a parachute, the number 4 written on it in white. Your first sponsor gift, and it’s no bigger than Mydeimos’s pain medicine, begging the question of what it could be, given that you are uninjured.
When you unwrap it, you find a ring. It matches the one you are wearing as your district token, and you know what Hysilens means in sending it to you — because this is a message, not a gift, and the timing of it means there’s only one thing she’s trying to impart.
Leave him. Come home.
“Mydeimos,” you say to him the next morning, while the two of you are eating what constitutes your breakfast — more dried fruit, which is sweet and won’t upset your stomachs, and more bread, which will go bad if you don’t eat it quickly enough. “I think it’s time.”
“What?” he says, genuinely curious. It doesn’t even cross his mind, you realize, and the ring your sponsors sent you is heavy on your middle finger, where it sits loose and cold. A reminder. You hear Hysilens’s voice as clearly as if she is next to you, and it insists that you follow through, that you not let sentimentality overtake you. It is time.
“There’s only seven tributes left, including us, and since Trianne, Hyacinthia, and Dan Heng, none have died,” you say, and he still looks so confused that a lump forms in your throat, because how can you do this? It’s a death sentence. The moment you leave him, he will die, but you have to. You have to. “We can’t be allies anymore.”
He searches your face for some trace of humor, but when he finds none, he only nods, attempting to stand. You descend upon him immediately, pushing him down, and then you embrace him tightly, clinging to him, trying to memorize what he feels like, the exact timing of his heartbeats, the fire of his skin, the marble of his muscle, which even now has not yet wasted away.
“Don’t do that,” you say, your voice trembling and pathetic. “Stay in the Cornucopia. I’m the one who’s breaking our alliance, so I’m the one who should go. Just let me take what I need, I promise I’ll leave you with enough. Enough to survive until the very end, if you have to.”
“As if I could stop you from doing as you please,” he says. “Even with my full strength, I don’t think I ever could.”
You don’t ask him what he means by that. You suppose it must have something to do with what Krateros told him: pretty little fish-girl. Of course she tore down your defenses, they always do that. But you think that if you ask him, it will make leaving even more difficult, so you swallow down your curiosity and take one of the bags, filling it with food and a few knives before slinging it over your shoulder and grabbing your favorite spear, the one which has a grip worn to the shape of your hands.
Although you swear to yourself that you won’t look back, you do, one last time, right when you are at the edge of the clearing where the grass bleeds into underbrush. He’s sitting in the Cornucopia alone, a blanket in his lap, white bandages wrapped around his waist, and his eyes are closed, his face turned towards the rising sun that paints his acceptance in shades of gold. It’s almost like he’s waiting — waiting for you to come back, or for someone to kill him, you don’t know which. The longer you stare at him, the more your resolve weakens, but then his eyes blink open and in a swift motion, you turn, running as fast you can, praying Cifera finds him soon, because if you are met with the pitiful gold of his irises even once more, then you will be lost.
You wander through the forest until nightfall without running into anyone. It’s empty and eerie and the fact that there haven’t been any cannons in days makes you uneasy. The Gamemakers are planning something — the audience is almost certainly bored by now, for the other tributes are clearly avoiding one another, and whatever was happening between you and Mydeimos in the Cornucopia…it’s not something that they would understand, anyways, nor would they find particular amusement in it. A girl from Four and a boy from Two; your alliance was not unexpected, and the death of it is not, either. You are doing what so many other tributes before you have done — but sometimes you question the truth of that. Sometimes you think that your alliance was more than an alliance, though it was obviously less than anything else it could’ve been. But it’s true that that night, when you sleep hidden away under the cover of a massive pine tree, you wish he were with you, so that you could wind your limbs together for warmth and watch the horizon for those who might approach.
“It’s you!”
You’re awoken by the exclamation, and you are on your feet immediately, brandishing your spear at the girl who has manifested out of nowhere. She raises her hands immediately, her eyes wide, and you realize that it is Castorice, Mydeimos’s district partner, who had once offered to be your ally. Both of you are frozen, and then slowly, you lower your spear, though you do not drop it entirely, holding it loose by your side, scanning the area constantly in case she isn’t alone.
“Castorice,” you greet tersely.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” she says. “I’m actually glad to see you alone. Did you finally break your alliance with Mydei?”
“Mydei — Mydeimos?” you say. She frowns.
“Sorry, that was his…childhood nickname. Yes, Mydeimos. Cifera told me the two of you were allies — no, no, she’s not here, I promise! We ran into each other once and agreed to let the other live in exchange for information. I told her that Dan Heng is working with Hyacinthia and Trianne, and she told me that you’re with him. But you’re not anymore, right?” she says.
“Why do you ask?” you say begrudgingly. Castorice leans closer to you, her eyes sparkling and her hands clasped together.
“If it’s the case, we should team up!” she says.
“What?” you say. “Isn’t it a bit late in the Games to form a new alliance?”
“I know Mydei,” she says. “We grew up together; you could even consider us friends, once. As long as he’s alive, none of us have a chance at winning, especially not now that Dan Heng is gone. But you and I, we could do it. I really think we could.”
It’s exactly what Hysilens had suggested before the Games — allying with Castorice, taking out Mydeimos, and then turning on her to come out the victor. But it won’t take the two of you to kill him anymore. It won’t even take one. As long as you leave him alone, he’ll die on his own, this you are sure of.
“No,” you say, and then you raise your spear protectively in front of you. Castorice is clearly puzzled, but you shake your head before she can even speak. “He is still my ally. I won’t go against him.”
Before she can answer, the ground starts to rumble, knocking you both off balance. You scramble for your things as trees begin to fall and, in the distance, the low moan of protesting stone resonates. Castorice tries to say something, but you flee, because you know what is happening: the Gamemakers have grown tired of your inactivity, and by rejecting Castorice’s offer, you have forced them to take action. Now, the arena has turned from a mere prison to a genuine death trap.
It’s an earthquake. You can’t tell if the sounds around you are cannons or boulders, and you don’t stop to think about it, either; you only have one thought in your mind, and surely Hysilens is yelling at you, but you can’t help it. It has to be you, you have to get to him, you have to, you have to. Before Cifera or Castorice. Before the Gamemakers and their creations. You never should have left him, but you did, and now you have to get back to him before he is killed.
The earth stills, but there’s that sound again, the stone against stone, grating and squealing. Then there’s a cackle in your ear, and you whip around to see Cifera perched in a tree, peering down at you with those wide blue eyes of hers. You’re not sure how long she’s been following you, if she even was following you or if this is just a coincidence, but you are relieved to see her. If she’s with you, then that means she’s not with him. That means he’s safe, it has to mean he’s safe—
“I guess we know who the most popular tribute of the year is,” she says. “Congratulations.”
“What?” you say. She’s just far enough away that you can’t reach her with your spear, and fast enough that you don’t dare throw it, freezing you in a state of permanent indecision. She strokes her chin, clearly luxuriating in this brief moment of control, and then she waves her hand in the direction of the Cornucopia, where Mydeimos is waiting for you.
“There’s seven of us left,” she says. “Maybe less. Who knows how many of those idiots were crushed in the quake itself? Well, I do wonder…how many amongst those seven can swim?”
“Swim?” you say. She laughs again, raising a finger in the air.
“Hear that? I’m pretty sure the dam is breaking,” she says. “I don’t need to tell you what will happen when it does.”
You remember that dam, how enormous it is, the vast quantities of water it holds back. If it falls, the entire arena will flood, and it’ll come down to who can survive the raging currents best. Your own words from your interview mock you: I’m one of the strongest swimmers in our district. It’s not an accident. He must find this funny, Veritas Ratio, sitting up in his control room and toying with the arena as he wishes. Are you? Are you really so strong?
“As for me, I’m going to try and find higher ground,” Cifera says, and she suddenly looks so sad that you forget she’s the one who killed Hyacinthia and Trianne. How can you even hold that against her, anyways? When you've done the exact same thing yourself? She was right — there’s nothing like moral superiority between the two of you. You’re the same. All of you tributes, you’re the same, and you can understand that only now, when they’re all set to drown.
“Good luck, Cifera,” you say, because in the end, she’s just trying to survive, and she could’ve killed you already but she hasn’t yet. You don’t know why; maybe she senses the futility of it, or maybe she just doesn’t want to take the chance that you will kill her first.
“Running to the Cornucopia?” she says.
“How’d you know?” you say, pausing in your tracks. She cackles again, but this time you recognize it for the show of bravado it really is, nothing more. She’s not delighted or brave. She’s just as scared as the rest of you, only better at hiding it by a little.
“Better be quick, pretty little fish-girl,” she says. How much has she seen? How much has she heard? How much does she know? You’re not sure, and you doubt she’ll ever reveal her hand, secretive until the very end. Her cackle fades into a giggle, and then she sighs, a note of finality to it all. “Last I checked, that prince of yours is in no condition to be facing down a flood. Even a couple droplets of rain might be enough to kill him.”
“You—!”
She waves at you and then takes off in the opposite direction, and you have half a mind to pursue her, but now that she’s mentioned it, you notice that the air truly is thick with the sound of the dam cracking in a million little places. It won’t hold for long, and you need to find him before it breaks, so you can’t keep wasting time with Cifera, who has already admitted her own defeat.
He’s still alive. She would’ve told you if she had bested him, you are fairly certain, which means that even if she saw him, she wasn’t able to kill him. Did he recover enough strength to fight her back? Somehow, you doubt it. It was the Gamemakers’ earthquake that saved him, saved him just as surely as it doomed him, chasing away Cifera before she could end him but also leaving him stranded in the path of the oncoming deluge.
You hear it before you see it, the dam finally crumbling away and water bursting forth. Now your only hope is that the torrent will have slowed by the time it reaches the Cornucopia, but you don’t have much faith, so you double your pace, and when you burst into the clearing you are met with the surge of water rushing towards you.
District Four is no stranger to flooding, and you know your priority right now should be climbing to high ground, as Cifera surely is. Going underwater is suicide; even if you can navigate the currents, there’s debris to worry about, weapons and branches and stones and maybe even those genetically engineered monstrosities of the Capitol, which will no doubt try to hunt you down if you should enter their watery domain.
Survive. Jump off the side of that boat, just like you did all of those years ago back in District Four, and this time, swim back to the surface alone. Do you understand? You have to make sure the others drown.
You whisper an apology to Caenis, your stylist, who had stripped you bare before the Capitol and called you beautiful. You are hardly beautiful like this, ragged and exhausted, and you apologize once more for rendering her work obsolete. You have let yourself become filthy and desperate; you doubt there’s a man or woman in the Capitol who wants you now, who will be able to look at you and see anything but the girl who stared down a flood and then, with an iron spear still in her hand, dove directly into it.
The spear drags you to the bottom faster than if you had swam there yourself, and when you see shadowy figures surrounding you, their eyes slitted, their tongues forked, it serves as a deterrent to them, as well. You move against the direction of the water, searching for the gold of the Cornucopia, and nearly a minute passes before you catch it glinting in your peripheral vision.
They have swarmed him, those deplorable things, drawn to the scent of the tender wound in his side, that raw and aching flesh which begs to be bitten. This flood, too, is a design of the Gamemakers, for it is less aggressive, more pervasive — the force of the water should have killed you all on impact, but that kind of total destruction would come with no entertainment. It’s these creatures, which no doubt will hunt down the tributes that cannot outswim them, that were the purpose of the earthquake and the dam breaking. You wonder if they have been waiting on the other side of the dam this entire time, or if they were just placed in the waters minutes ago, but you suppose in the end it doesn’t matter, because they are here now, and if you cannot fight them off with the precious air you have left, they will devour you both.
Such cowardly things they are, the point of your spear chasing them away immediately. Scavengers, like sea crabs, not proper predators; it’s an empty threat, because underwater your movements are slowed, so if they set their minds to it, they can surely take you and the spear alike, but it is an effective one nonetheless, sending them scrambling at least for the moment.
The sun filters through the unsettled turmoil of the surface peculiarly, illuminating his floating body in the strangest of ways. His eyes are closed and he is smiling, truly smiling, and you hate that you are the one who will drag him back to the realm of the living when he is clearly so peaceful, but you are selfish, you are, and so you wrap your arms around him, allowing your spear to sink into the depths, and then you press your lips to his, breathing for him as you pull him along with you to the surface.
You are lightheaded when you finally break free from the water’s constraints, grabbing onto a nearby tree branch and using the last bit of your strength to haul him onto it with you, lying him down and pressing on his chest, the way you were taught in District Four, pressing and pressing on it until he coughs up silt and opens his eyes.
“You’re alive,” you say as he gingerly props himself up against the trunk of the tree, his hand on the place where you may have even broken his bones in the effort of bringing him back, of keeping him with you for a moment longer.
Over the sound of rushing water, you hear a cannon, a cannon that was almost his, and you are so distraught by this that you take his face in your hands and kiss him, as you had under the water, but now without the excuse of lending him your air, your life. This time, it is you who needs him, and he is the one who gives, still tasting like a river, muddy and wet and drowning, but sweet and vigorous, too.
“Why did you do that?” he says. “That was dangerous, you should’ve — you should’ve —”
“Your wound is infected,” you say to him, your forehead still leaning on his own, your hands still cupped around his jaw, his own firm against your nape. “You know that, right?”
“Yes,” he says. “That’s why I don’t understand why you came back. I’m going to die soon anyways. Why would it matter if it was drowning or disease?”
“There’s a point to it,” you say, and then you pull the second ring, the one your sponsors sent you, from your middle finger. Sliding it onto his pinky, you curl his hand into a fist and kiss his knuckles. “There is always a point.”
You want him to die with dignity. You won’t celebrate his death, you know this, and although you could not save him from the running or the fighting, at least his final end is not like that. At least in this last moment, he is not a killer and he is not alone.
“Look,” you say when his breathing grows even more labored than it was when you first escaped the flood. His hand is still in a fist, still in your grasp, and you trace the ring you have given him. “This is from District Four. Back home, when we say goodbye to someone for the last time, we give them something of our own to remember us by.”
“Ah,” he says, and you fight to keep your voice steady, allowing him to rest his head in your lap and close his eyes, murmuring something about how warm you are.
“You’ll remember me, won’t you, Mydeimos?” you say.
“Of course,” he says, and although he is burning to the touch, his teeth are inexplicably chattering, and he moves impossibly closer to you, like he is trying to leach away a warmth you cannot give him. “My ally.”
“Yes,” you say. “Your ally.”
Before you can thank him for everything, for fighting Dan Heng, for agreeing to work with you, for lying with you every night and living for so long, a cannon bangs. As the water begins to recede, so fast, so unnatural, like there is a vacuum sucking it away, the loudspeaker turns on, and a familiar voice echoes through the arena: Callictus.
“Esteemed viewers, I present to you the victor of the 68th Hunger Games: our lady from District Four!”
It’s you. Cifera was right — the flood was a device the Gamemakers used to ensure your victory, because you were the most popular one left in that stalemate of an endgame. You have won. You can go back home to District Four, to your parents and Hysilens and everyone you have ever known. By all rights, you should be celebrating.
Yet as the hovercraft descends to collect you, tearing you from the limp corpse you cannot bring yourself to let go of, all you can do is shriek and shriek and wonder if it will ever leave your mind or if it will haunt you for the rest of your life.
in which: you hate okhema. it's too loud, too busy, too many bad memories associated with home. until phainon shows you otherwise.
or, in which you really were not expecting to fall in love with your friend, but fate has always been particularly funny, especially when you agree to be his fake partner for the upcoming kephale festival.
warnings: 20,000 words, slow burn, fake dating!au, modern!au, university!au, gn!reader, fluff with a good dash of angst, familial issues and toxic home environments, happy ending, two idiots in love, PINING, he falls first and harder, aglaea as a mother figure to both phainon and reader
a/n: more detailed notes here, this fic was a monster to write but is my new magnum opus. i hope you enjoy. if this flops, i'm cancelled both my mydei long fics that are in progress.
You don’t like it back home.
The city of Okhema is a metropolis haven with beautiful architecture and lush outdoor spaces, but, the streets are too busy, the people too obnoxious, and the memories you have there are dull and uninteresting. You don’t like it, you don’t like going home every summer, you don’t like leaving the Grove of Epiphany and returning to the lackluster life of your growing years, forced to spend another summer with your nose pressed in books.
People who aren’t from the Holy City like to proclaim it as a dream destination as it is beautiful, a lush paradise of bustling markets, expansive bathhouses, theatrical performances. It welcomes people from all corners of Amphoreus, and will be especially busy with the upcoming Kephale Festival.
While you’ve avoided going home for the past two years, you might be pushing your luck too far now for your parent’s pleasure.
“Y/n, are you alright?” Hyacine’s sweet voice snaps you out of your reverie, and you realise now that perhaps you’ve been staring down at the wooden table for a bit too long to be considered normal.
“I’m fine,” you wave your thoughts away, suddenly feeling very scrutinised under everyone’s gaze. “What was the question?”
“I just asked if you were going back to Okhema for break,” Castorice asked from across the table. “You don’t normally go back during the holidays, right?”
“I have to this time, it’s been a while since I’ve seen my family, they’re kind of… demanding I come back,” you rest your chin in your palms, trying to mask the displeasure that churns in your stomach. “Why’d you ask?”
“Oh, what a shame. I’ll be staying behind for once, I was hoping we could spend some time together, but I guess not.”
“Aw, that’s such rotten luck, I would have loved to spend the holidays with you, Cas!” You visibly deflate in your seat. Spending time here with a close friend would beat out anything Okhema has to offer, and suddenly it feels even harder to go home. You wonder if you could conjure any kind of excuse that would suffice for your absence. However, given long it has been since you last saw your family, they’d be severely displeased if you flake out this last minute.
The wrath of your parents is not one you’d want to induce.
“Hey, while you’re in Okhema, will you be at the Kephale Festival?” Phainon’s chipperness cuts the conversation like a warm knife through butter, his bright smile stealing your attention.
The Kephale Festival was an annual celebration and one of the more important dates in the Holy City’s calender. To celebrate, the entire city comes alive with games, banquets, and performances from human dancers to chimeras alike, turning into a spectacle to behold. So much so, that people from all corners of Amphoreus come just to witness it, wanting to partake in the celebrations themselves. After all, no other city knows how to celebrate like Okhema.
Despite being such a distinguished event, you’ve historically kept to yourself during it. Friends would invite you, but you’re not particularly enthused, maybe at most traversing through the streets a little to find some food to indulge in. The more vibrant celebrations, however, you’ve kept up a streak of avoiding them throughout the years.
Surprisingly enough, this isn’t even Phainon’s first time asking. This was your third year at the Grove of Epiphany, and for the last few times, you’ve said ‘no’ each time whenever he asked.
“I don’t have plans for it,” you admit.
“What? You’re in Okhema for once and you don’t attend the Kephale Festival? That’s unheard of.”
“Not everyone is a socialite like you, Deliverer,” Mydei chips and you laugh underneath your breath. Phainon pouts at you, as if pleading for you to come up his defence when you know very well there’s a myriad of smart retorts he could respond with.
“In all fairness, it is a huge yearly celebration, I even think my family has plans of going.” Hyacine intervenes. “Are you maybe too familiar with the festivities?”
You shrug. “Maybe, but if you’re in Okhema this year, then we should hang out!”
“That sounds great! Would you like to join us, Phainon?”
“Of course!” He nods enthusiastically, “We should show you around!”
The conversation flows onto something else, which you’re grateful for. Eventually, the group splits when Castorice and Hyacine head to a class together, and Mydei follows, leaving just you and Phainon.
You two move to a different section in the expansive gardens of the Grove, seeking shelter from the bright sun by sitting under a large magnolia tree. The dirt surrounding you is littered with droppings of the white petals, Phainon idly fidgeting with the blooms and grass, even making little knots and threads of them.
Sitting with your knees tucked and a book resting on your legs, you can’t help but get the feeling that the white-haired man wants something from you, his gaze flickering over to you and lingering for a few seconds before he turns his head away.
There’s a question he wants to ask but doesn't know how to approach it, like the words won’t roll off his tongue in the way he wants it. There’s also a furrow in his brows, and you know that determined look all too well. You saw it when he was failing Professor Anaxagoras’ classes during the first half of the semester and worked hard enough that he managed to scrape a distinction from the scholar. Whilst his efforts were fuelled by him desperately wanting to prove himself, you gave him the push to really go for it.
So, exactly like you did then, you nudge him in the right direction.
“Something on your mind, Phainon?”
His bright blue eyes widen, flickering back to you as he straightens his spine, clearly being caught off guard by your question. “How’d you know?”
“You’re fidgeting.”
He laughs in that boisterous way of his, eyes crinkling at the corners. “You speak as if you know me like the back of your hand.”
“Well, I wasn’t wrong, was I?” You turn your attention back to the pages. “Fine, don’t tell me if you don’t want to.”
“No, that’s not it, I do have a favour to ask of you, I’m just afraid it’s a bit embarrassing.” His hand goes to scratch the back of his neck and he refuses to meet your eyes.
It’s amusing to see Phainon, who’s exuberance is larger than life and unapologetic about it, suddenly become as shy as a small child asking for extra sweets from Okheman vendors. However, for how long you’ve known Phainon, you’ve learnt that whenever he displays this quieter side of his, he’s trying to express a concern that worries him, so you wait patiently for him to answer.
“You know how I asked if you were going to the Kephale Festival this year?” Asks Phainon. You nod. “Well, I… was hoping to also ask if you could be my date.”
“Date? People need dates for the festival? I thought it was just games and performances and food.”
“It is! However, my mother is invited to lots of galas in celebration, and she always drags me along, somehow landing me a date every time. She has done this since I was fifteen, and honestly, Y/n, I can’t take it anymore,” he grimaces. “I don’t want to have another awkward festival experience, so I was hoping you would be able to accompany me this year?”
It sounds easy enough, maybe a little awkward. What you know of Phainon’s home is that he was adopted by a lady in Okhema who, from the stories he’d tell you, seems like a lovely woman, so you’re not entirely opposed to the idea of attending a gala and potentially meeting her.
Besides, this is Phainon. You may prefer to stay away from galas when you can, but he always has a way of making things fun. Where’s the harm?
“Being your date sounds easy enough. All I have to do is attend, right?”
Phainon laughs awkwardly. “Yes, but that’s not all. My mother believes in chivalry above all else, she will do unspeakable things to me if I’m bringing just a friend. So… we have to pretend that we’re in a relationship.”
“What?”
Suddenly, he’s on his knees and his hands are pressed together. “Please, Y/n, I’m begging you to help me out here. I’ll treat you to a lifetime of meals, just don’t make me suffer through another festival with someone I hardly know!”
“I-It’s just a festival…”
“After years of suffering through awkward scenarios with people I hardly know, it feels like torture. I just want to bring someone who i will actually enjoy spending time with.” With the way he was pleading, you don’t think there is much room to intervene. It’s an odd request, you’re not even sure if you wholeheartedly believe his reasoning because of the many flaws in his logic.
Regardless, this issue seems serious to him, and it truly seemed as if he needed the help, and you’re willing to cast aside reason for someone reliable like him. If it were anyone else, you would have rejected, but Phainon? Who has always been there for you? You don’t have the heart to say ‘no’.
“O-Okay, I’ll do it.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
Suddenly, he brings you into a hug so tight that it feels like your ribs are being pressed together. He’s basically proclaiming a series of ‘thank you’s right in your ear, leaving you with barely any oxygen or brainpower to wonder if you’ve made a grave mistake, or if this will just be another funny story to share with your friends.
· · ─ · ☼ · ─ · ·
Pie-non: I’ve arrived at Okhema!
Pie-non: Good to be back
Pie-non: How about you?
Y/n: i’m only heading back this afternoon
Y/n: good to know you made it home safely :)
Pie-non: Hehe
Pie-non: Safe travels :D
· · ─ · ☼ · ─ · ·
“Welcome home.”
Traditionally, it is a phrase meant to be said with warmth, a phrase of love and care that after being away from home so long, you can not help but feel like you’ve finally returned to where you belong, where you’re forever safe from the anguish and hardships of life. It is meant to be a warm greeting, but the words are so icy it creeps up your spine.
In a cruelly familiar way, you feel your muscles tense, concealing a shiver to let it simmer beneath your skin instead, lest you be scolded for improper behaviour.
“I am home,” you say.
“After all those years spent in the Grove of Epiphany, I had assumed you abandoned us.” There is no humour behind your mother’s words, no lightness underneath.
You thought you would have forgotten the cold edge of your mother’s voice.
You steel yourself. “I have been furthering my studies.”
“At an underwhelming pace, yes, that would be correct. You may go to your room first and put all your belongings away, however, return to the living room within half an hour, your father will have returned by then.”
“Of course.”
“Dismissed.”
Within these walls, everything is constructed perfectly. From the furniture, to where it’s placed, to the floor boards and its distance from the ceiling, everything was made to be precise and perfect, and not an inch out of place. Within these walls, there are clocks everywhere, and they are all set at the exact, same second, ticking at the exact same millisecond so you are reminded to not waste a single tick. Within these walls, goosebumps crawl stubbornly all over your skin, trailing along your forearm, back, and neck, making your hair stand up.
Within these walls, you always feel cold, despite the bright Okhema sunlight that shines through routinely-cleaned window panes.
Within these walls, is your least favourite place in all of Okhema.
· · ─ · ☼ · ─ · ·
Pie-non: Are you free today?
Pie-non: Let’s hangout :0
Y/n: sure!
Y/n: i have a few errands to run, but i’ll be done before 1pm
Y/n: is that okay?
Y/n: we can get lunch or something together
Pie-non: More than
Pie-non: Do you need an errand buddy? I’m great entertainment :p
Y/n: it’ll be quite boring though
Pie-non: It’s ok, I like spending time with you!
Y/n: alright
Y/n: meet me at marmoreal markets at 11am
The list of errands to complete your parents left you seemed longer today, and you scrutinise the additions that definitely were not there yesterday– just thinking about retrieving everything is making your head ache. Additionally, given how expansive Okhema is and how there are businesses all over the streets of the city, this errand trip is going to be exhausting.
You stand up straighter and exhale a deep breath. It’s nothing unmanageable, no need to feel so frustrated over something so minute.
If anything, you feel bad that Phainon has to endure it with you.
Your father had returned home yesterday exactly the same as you last saw him, perhaps with more wrinkles on his forehead and less hair on his head, but with the same distaste for the world he’s heralded for decades.
They dropped you a series of tasks to complete, and you immediately resigned to your fate of being an errand runner.
Couples, friends, and families pass by as you wait for Phainon. The markets are a notoriously busy and overstimulating space, leaving you to continuously glance left and right for any indication of his arrival.
Thankfully, he doesn’t keep you waiting for long, appearing with two cups of iced drinks in his hands and that usual, easygoing smile of his.
“Hey, Y/n!” He waves at you, his other hand occupied with a carton holding two drinks. “Sorry if you’ve been waiting long, I got us some drinks to keep us cool!” He hands you one of them.
“What’s this?” You ask, eyeing the drink and the way it was presented. There are plenty of famous cafes around the markets that go viral all the time on the web for their cute aesthetics and unique drink combos that oddly mesh very well together.
“I got you a pomegranate cream latte!” He stabs his straw into his drink, “you do like pomegranate, right?”
Incredible, it’s like Phainon knew you haven’t had your caffeine fix yet. “Yeah, I do. What did you get?”
“A fig iced tea, want to try some?” He tilts the cup’s straw to your mouth and you hum at the fruity flavour that explodes on your tongue, nodding in approval of his choice, saying something about how you’ll get that next time.
Then, you take a sip of your drink and hum in approval at his choice again. “This actually tastes pretty good, I would never have tried this if I saw it, thanks a bunch.”
He makes a sound of satisfaction, pleased with your judgment. “I’m glad, otherwise I would have had to drink it for you.”
“No thanks, we don’t need you to be caffeinated today.”
“Aw, why not? I did promise I’d be an exciting errand buddy today.”
“You don’t need caffeine to be exciting, Phainon.”
He laughs, the corners of his eyes creasing. “I’ll take that as a compliment! So, partner, what kind of date do you have planned for us?”
You roll your eyes. “Unfortunately, this is going to be a date between me and this list of errands to get through, so let’s see how long you last before you regret tagging along.”
It’s like he takes that as a challenge, following along with every task you complete so obediently that you begin feeling bad for putting him through this, even if he’s not complaining or showing any physical weariness. Instead, he’s making small talk with the vendors you visit, asking about business, their days, what they’re selling. They’re far more receptive to him than you, but you’re certain that’s just part of Phainon’s charm and how effortlessly he can draw people in and keep them there.
Eventually, when you’ve finally completed the last task on the list, you and Phainon settle for a restaurant nearby.
“Thank you for accompanying me today,” you watch as he pours water into both your glasses.
“No problem! It was fun, we talked to so many cool people like that fabrics owner!” Phainon exclaims. “Who knew that deep colour of red could only be achieved with pomegranate wine?”
“Speaking of which, I didn’t realise you knew so much about tailoring and garments and all that, where’d you learn?”
He waves his hand dismissively, “my mother, actually! Of course, I am nowhere as skilled as her, but after watching her weave for so long, I’ve picked up a few things along the way. I could never actually make anything, though, I’d be stuck threading the string through the needle.”
“Wow, so your mother is a seamstress?”
“Yeah! She actually runs a business in it. I really should know more about it, but fashion has never been my strong suit. She’s always picked out my outfits for me and burned the things she didn’t like.” There’s a twinge on embarrassment on Phainon’s features as he recalls the story and you laugh.
“Did she dress you for today?”
He crosses his arms. “No! I’m not that aesthetically challenged anymore.”
“I’m kidding,” you take a sip of your water. “Either way, having you around made the day a little more bearable.”
“Just a little?”
“Just a little.”
“Are you sure it’s not a whooooole lot more than just a little?”
You roll your eyes. “Whatever.”
He grins. “By the way, lunch is on me. I do owe you a lifetime of meals.”
“What? No, it’s fine,” you insist, “I thought you were just kidding!”
“I wasn’t, you’re my saviour, really.”
“That’s an exaggeration, come on.”
“I’m paying. That’s final.”
Phainon beats you to the register later, successfully covering your portion of the meal before you can do anything about it, smiling smugly at you when he’s successful.
· · ─ · ☼ · ─ · ·
Pie-non: Do you want to come over to mine?
Pie-non: Mum wants to meet you c:
Y/n: omg actually
Y/n: i’d love to! what day were you thinking?
Pie-non: How about Saturday? I’ll come pick you up.
It dawns on you in Phainon’s car that you actually have to play the role of a loving partner. You knew what you were getting into, but it only hits now that the act has to come alive as you sit in his passenger seat, a box of fruits from Janusopolis in your lap.
When he pulls up at, what you assume has to be, his house, you have to stop and admire for a bit. It’s really nice, and you wonder how on Amphoreus you didn’t know that Phainon might have come from an affluent background. Maybe because the air of arrogance that rich Okheman kids carried around was not present in him- either way, you suddenly feel a lot more nervous for what his foster carer might be like.
You have had your fair share of unpleasant run-ins with rich people.
He unlocks the front door and calls out a loud “We’re home!”. His voice booms through the expanse of his home and in response, someone exclaims a ‘welcome home’, the voice hypnotising and mature as the sound of heels ricochet down the walls.
You had an image of what Phainon’s guardian might have been like, but you definitely were not expecting the face of your parents’ number one business rival to turn and greet you.
It’s like the universe is playing a grand prank because you’re certain half the colour has drained from your face, and you’re utterly speechless as Aglaea, the infamous ‘Goldweaver’, gives Phainon a small hug. You’re sure you look like a fool when she turns to greet you. Intimidatingly beautiful and beautifully intimidating, she is every part as terrifying as you were expecting her to be.
The first thing to note is that she is far more beautiful in person, carrying an air of dignity that will take your breath away. The second thing to note is she has an extremely kind smile, and you’re unable to see the villain that your parents have relentlessly painted her out to be.
They say that eyes are the window to the soul, but it seems that Aglaea has boarded hers shut with wooden planks, because you can not sense what she is thinking at all. She regards you incredibly neutral, like you are just another person in the threads of her life, and in a sense, you are. However, you were expecting more scrutiny, more hostility concealed by over-honeyed words, and a piercing gaze that would scan you up and down, considering Phainon just introduced you as his other half.
You expect her to be like your mother. Instead, she smiles like she has known you her whole life.
“It seems that my boy has met his match,” she approaches you with a dignified air to her, as if all the dust particles in the atmosphere part with each step she takes, never obstructing her perfect appearance. “Y/n, it is an honour to meet you.”
“It is a pleasure to meet you as well, Lady Aglaea.” You tense when you realise you’ve addressed her too properly, feeling a grim jab of embarrassment to your gut. Quickly, you recover. “I brought some gifts for your household to enjoy! These are fruits from Janusopolis.”
“That is very thoughtful of you, and please, drop the formalities, no need to be so polite.”
You relax your shoulders a little.
“Phainon has told me some stories about you, you’re from Okhema as well, correct? Will you be here for the Kephale Festival?”
“Yes, I will be.”
“Good.” She smiles at you, and the gesture alone feels like a pat on the back, despite the fact that you have done nothing but be present before her. “What is it that you study at the Grove?”
Some small talk is made, you answer each question she fires your way flawlessly, strategic with the tone and language you choose to respond to her with.
However, unlike most ‘interrogations’ from recognisable members of society, this one with Aglaea feels less daunting and more like she’s genuinely getting to know you, each question not meant to disarm or test you. Rather, her curiosity stemming from interest and careful consideration of all you say.
You were not expecting that from the most successful businesswoman in Okhema. Maybe even all of Amphoreus.
After a few minutes, the conversation flows to a close. “Regrettably, I cannot stay to chat- Phainon, do take good care of Y/n. Y/n, you may tell me if he misbehaves, I’ll spin him back into shape.”
You laugh. “I will. It was lovely meeting you!”
“Make yourself at home, Y/n.”
The door closes behind her with a resounding click, and you feel like a massive weight has been lifted off your shoulders. From all the anecdotes you receive in passing from your parents, Aglaea is hardly as devious as they make her out to be. Frightening? Perhaps, but she is not a spawn of malice and evil.
Still- a little warning would have been much appreciated.
“Why didn’t you tell me your caretaker was Aglaea?” You ask.
A few days ago, when Phainon said his mother owned a business in garment making and tailoring, you assumed it was on small scale, not an enterprise worthy of toppling over her competitors’. You’re pretty certain she runs a tailoring store for fun, external to the rest of her conglomerate.
He blinks at you. “Would you have known who she was beforehand?”
“Yes! Your mother is the most successful businesswoman in Okhema, some warning would have been nice!”
“Does it matter? Would that have changed how you perceived her?”
You shut your mouth.
“To me, she is the woman who I am eternally grateful for, without her, I do not know where I would be. That is the only version of her that matters to me.”
Shame crawls up your spine at the realisation you were accusing Phainon under his own roof.
“You’re right, I’m sorry. I got ahead of myself, she seems like an incredible woman.”
“It’s okay,” he nods, an understanding look in his eyes, “would you like any food or water?”
“A glass of water is fine, thank you,” you say quietly and he leads you deeper into the pristine abode of his. You pass by pictures hung up on the wall that you merely glance at, not wanting to pry for too long. Despite how neat Phainon’s house is, it feels lived in. Like a space that is clean, yet welcoming, like the decorations and furniture were chosen for beauty and comfort, not just to show off endless vasts of wealth.
“You’re fine with pets, right?” Next thing you know, he whistles loudly and you hear several, little claws resounding through the halls, pattering against the marble floor. Eventually, a pack of five or so chimeras round the corner, clearly excited by the call of their owner, who bends down to their height so they can all jump onto his lap.
They’re all over him, rubbing against him excitedly and jumping around like the exuberant creatures they are. The sight is so cute, it almost makes you coo.
(You are, however, not above sneaking a photo that you will definitely send to Hyacine, Castorice, and Mydei later. The latter is going to laugh his ass off at the sight but you know incredibly well that he would love the pack and let them jump all over him too.)
“Hey guys! I missed you too, yeah, I know, I know, but we have a guest!” Almost as if they can understand him, they immediately stop their assault on Phainon to glance at you instead, five pairs of bright, beady eyes staring right at you. “Everyone, this is Y/n!”
It seems like that opens the floodgates, because they are suddenly jumping all over your legs, hoping to knock you down like they did with Phainon. They howl and whine, quietening down when you scratch their ears, keening at your touch.
“They really like you!”
“I think they like everyone.”
“Sure, but they like you the most, look! They’re so happy!” Then, you feel a smooth graze against your ankles, as if something was rubbing against it. When you look down, there’s a blue chimera already gazing up at you with sparkling eyes and it mewls when you make eye contact, tail wagging in excitement. “Especially Bubbles! He’s super fond of you.”
You bend down to pick it up and it sits comfortably in your arms, leaning against your shoulder as you cradle it. “He’s cute.”
“I’m glad you think so!”
“Where did you get all of them?” You ask, staring at the litter that was now playing amongst themselves, tackling, laying down, even stepping on each other.
“I found them abandoned in a cardboard box in a back alley. I was coming home from school one day when I was 16, then I saw baby Bubbles’ nearby, as if waiting for someone to come by. He led me to the rest of the pack and Aglaea allowed me to keep them, it would be cruel to split them up, they deserve to grow up together.”
“That’s really kind of you.” You suppose it makes sense for someone like Phainon to be so kindhearted that he couldn’t stand the idea of stranding defenseless animals, especially in a city as bustling and busy as Okhema. They would not have survived long without a home.
Fortunately, neither of you need to think about a scenario where that is reality.
“Bubbles is a smart cookie,” you murmur and the creature in your arms looks at you as if it knew it was being complimented.
You nuzzle your cheek against Bubbles’ head, and he reciprocates by rubbing his against your chin.
(If you squint, the likeness between Phainon and Bubbles is uncanny, the both of them even wearing the same innocent smile with gentle eyes; ones that make you feel like nothing is wrong with the world.)
When you return home, you call out ‘I’m home!’ and hear nothing but silence in response. Moments later, your mother pops through the hallways and informs you of an email your father has forwarded to you– internal documents that required calculations and he expected them finished within the coming days.
You’re in no position to decline, so you grit your teeth and get to work.
A few days pass since you last saw Phainon. He’s been texting you consistently about a variety of things, sending photos of his chimeras, the views he sees while on his runs, or other miscellaneous things like the dromas-shaped pancake he got from a food stand.
Meanwhile, you’ve been cooped up in your study, the hours passing by nonstop as you work through the pages of financial information forwarded through.
Pie-non: What are you up to today?
Y/n: nothing fun
Y/n: just finishing up some reports for my parents
Pie-non: Sounds super gross :(
Y/n: the good news is that i’m almost done and can treat myself soon!!!
Pie-non: Yay!!
Pie-non: We should hangout then :0
Y/n: hmm
Y/n: i have the day free on sunday! just need to return by curtain fall for a charity event
Pie-non: Lets meet then!
Pie-non: The weather forecast is looking nice, how about a picnic?
Pie-non: We should go near the lake!
Y/n: haha okayy sounds good
Y/n: talk more soon, gotta get back to work.
· · ─ · ☼ · ─ · ·
Your legs are shaking, and no matter how hard you try, they won’t stop.
The discomfort serves as a sufficient distraction to the disappointed look in your parents eyes as they sit across from you, the low lighting from the living room lamp only highlighting the creases in their forehead and the downturn of their eyebrows. They’re berating you. You have to maintain eye contact as they berate you, forced to watch all the changes in their expression as they vocalise just how disappointed you’ve made them.
From a young age, they have drilled this into you; that you need to look your failures in the eye, that you must maintain their gaze as they ‘tell you how to improve’, but it’s never grown easier over the years.
Everytime it feels like there is a small child inside the cavern of your chest shaking uncontrollably, its legs are curled to its chest, fighting to preserving what little warmth is left. You feel it trying its best, but you’ve learnt and accepted that one’s ‘best’ is sometimes just not enough, and failure is in the form of a pile of papers smacking the coffee table loudly.
“Not only that, but you have calculated all of the ratios wrong, our team can not start on the reports otherwise for the quarter,” your father repeatedly jabs the file, to a point where you think it might dent from his actions. He spits “such foolish mistakes.”
Your mother is no help. She never is against your father’s wrath, instead, she strokes the flames. “What do you have to say for yourself?”
“I have no excuse,” you murmur, “I’ll get it fixed.”
“By 9 am tomorrow. Do not dream of sleeping until it is done. Dismissed,” your father waves you off and that is your chance of escape.
With insurmountable amount willpower, you stand and try to conceal the wobble in your legs as you trudge out of the living room and up the stairs to your designated office.
Sitting down in front of your laptop fills you with dread, your vision is persistently blurry as you open all of the files, and doom is a wet droplet that flows down from your eye to your chin. It’s followed by another, and another, until there are puddles on the mahogany desk below you.
Crying is a burning feeling you have not felt in years, not since you’ve arrived at the Grove of Epiphany, but this is a dance you will never forget the steps to. Too accustomed to the way your retinas burn, how your nose stings, how it hurts even more to push down the evidence and forcefully collect yourself.
In Kephale’s name, all you want is to be back in your dorm at the Grove. You wonder what Castorice is doing right now. If things were different, you could be spending the holidays together, sharing drinks or snacks together, laughing. You think about what Hyacine is doing with her family, how they should be preparing for their trip to Okhema soon– you should really text her about it soon. Mydei’s probably back in Castrum Kremnos winning every wrestling competition there is, at least, that’s what he said he was doing when you last asked, showing off the many gold medals he’s won since he’s gone home.
You miss your friends. You hope they’re happy and well and not crying quietly by themselves late at night in front of a fluorescent screen, losing against a set of numbers.
Your phone buzzes.
Pie-non: [ image attached ]
Pie-non: Bubbles misses you!
It’s a photo of the chimera curled up on Phainon’s lap, and it looks like he’s in the middle of watching a series, having a far more comfortable and cozy night than you. Despite the tears in your eyes fogging up your vision, you laugh at the text, typing back a response in between sniffles and small hiccups.
Y/n: aww :( he’s so cute
Y/n: i really miss bubbles, too
Pie-non: You’re welcome to see him anytime
Pie-non: Sticker
Pie-non: [ image attached ]
Warmth blooms in your chest, a stark contrast to the decrepit sense of loneliness that was settling in your chest mere moments ago.
Wiping your nose with a tissue, you set your phone down, and turn back to the gruesome folder of spreadsheets your parents have ordered you to look through and fully correct before tomorrow.
· · ─ · ☼ · ─ · ·
The weather is nice today. Okheman summers tend to be incredibly dry and hot, with scorching rays that beat you down and dry out your skin if you stand under it for too long. Here, however, sitting under a tree whose foliage filters out most of the sun, leaving patches of light to decorate the ground and your skin, you think this is the peace summer is meant to bring. Especially whilst by the waterside, where the wind carries its coolness and kisses your face with it.
You’ve missed this part of home, and the natural beauty of the Holy City.
There’s a shriek behind you and you turn around to see where the source of the disruption is, but the sight is more wholesome than you anticipated. A little girl being chased by an older brother, both of them looking no older than seven. There’s dirt on their hands, knees and clothes, and their parents chase after them with noisy concern, pulling out handkerchiefs and water bottles like their lives depend on it.
Eventually, the two children stop and listen to the whims of their parents. The father dabs the streaks off his daughter’s face, saying something you can’t hear before pressing a kiss against her forehead. The mother stops and scolds her son for not drinking enough water on such a hot day, leaving him to go run after his sister again with a ruffle of his hair. Your eyes are glued on the couple, how they look proud and content with their children, the warm day like a blessing.
(In another life, you’ll receive the love you feel indebted to own, but in this one, you’ll get by chasing the approval of people who may never grant it to you, who may never love you like you deserve.)
“I’m sorry I kept you waiting!” A familiar white-haired companion sits down on the picnic mat beside you, an apologetic smile on his boyish features, paired with a bakery box in his hands.
“It’s alright, I haven’t been here long,” your gaze lingers curiously on what he’s holding. He opens the lid and inside sits a little, charming cake, seemingly the same size as your hand but with three layers of height. “How cute! What’s the occasion?”
“It wouldn't be right to turn up empty-handed, so I picked this up on my way here! Looks good, right?”
“How thoughtful of you, very picnic-esque. How should we eat it?”
“I just grabbed two forks and thought we could… just go at it.”
Phainon is kind enough to let you have the first bite, watching you struggle to find the right place to take the first stab with a small smile of amusement on his face. Cakes are delicate and the first ‘slice’ should always be handled with care, you reason, and he just chuckles when you successfully extract a piece.
“Cheers,” your forks tap against each other and watch each other’s expression when the dessert melts in your mouth.
A look of delight flashes in his eyes. “That’s really good!”
“Delicious,” you reach for another bite. “I don’t remember the last time I had a cake from Okhema. They really bake it differently at the Grove.”
“Must have been your birthday or something, right?”
“I haven’t been back here in years,” you murmur, “and I never really celebrated. I think the first time I got my own cake was when Castorice and Hyacine made one for me.”
You don’t know what compelled you to share that tidbit, or why you had to bring the atmosphere down on such a lovely and warm day, but now you’re stuck pretending like that bittersweet fact doesn’t haunt you as much as it does.
“If that’s the case, then let’s think of this one like a… welcome home cake,” he says. “It’s good to be back, right?”
“Sure.”
The rest of the afternoon is spent talking and slowly chipping away at the dessert. Summer has a particular ability to make life more magical with sunlight flickering through the dense leaves overhead. The two of you are content with watching the water, gazing out into the distance as you chat about a variety of things, the atmosphere comfortable and friendly like always.
“This time of day is perfect for an afternoon nap,” Phainon muses, “I’m feeling quite drowsy.”
“You can take one if you’d like,” you offer.
“It’s alright,” he laughs sheepishly, scratching the back of his head, “I’ll manage, besides, I’m here to spend time with you!”
“You would take naps all the time back at the Grove. I brought a book with me, anyways, I can keep myself entertained.”
He presses his lips together. “A nap does sound really good right now… are you sure it’s fine?”
“Of course.”
After some small adjustments, you find the weight of his head resting on your thighs– something you’ve gotten used to with how fond of afternoon naps he was. He has accompanied you enough that a sacred routine between friends developed; you reading under the waning afternoon sun of the Grove, and him resting with you under the thick shade of the trees that grow there. You have dropped a book on his sleeping face a few too many times, and he has made it even by drooling on your clothes as he rests soundly against you.
“You were born in Aedes Elysiae, right?” You murmur, watching your fingers that thread through his snow-white hair, one that has gotten long enough for you to curl your fingers around at least three times. “When did you arrive in Okhema?”
He hums in contemplation, white eyelashes catching the gleam of the sun every time he blinks, fluttering gently. He is resting on his side, giving you a clear view of his side profile.
“I don’t think I was any older than fourteen, nearly fifteen,” he murmurs, “but my hometown was beautiful. The wheat that grew there was so long, I have fond memories of running through it with my friends, and the crops were the best. Something about them was different, fresher, maybe it’s the soil or the way the farmers planted it.”
He continues his spiel excitedly, hands moving animatedly, matching the enthusiasm in his words and tone.
“That sounds dreamy,” you muse.
“Right?” Then, there’s a melancholic shift in his futures; a droop of his eyelids, a small downturn of his lips. “I wish there was an Aedes Elysiae to return to, it’s been abandoned since the Black Tide took it all away. My parents, they- they managed to send me to Okhema in the nick of time.”
“Phainon-”
“-it’s okay,” his hands nervously fiddle with the hem of your clothes. “I’m grateful to be where I am now. If it weren’t for a magnificent stroke of luck and Aglaea finding me, I don’t know where I’d be today, she took me under her wing and loved me unconditionally. That’s why I’ll always do what I can to make her happy.”
Then, he turns his head and cranes his neck to look up at you.
“If it weren’t for everything that happened, I wouldn’t have gotten to meet you, either.”
Sincerity shines in his eyes, and your breath gets caught in your throat. Not once in your life have you thought someone would be grateful to have known you.
“Somehow, you still manage to find a way to me, even though I’m the most irrelevant aspect of the story,” you chuckle whilst untangling your fingers from his hair to cradle his face instead, chill palms resting against warm skin. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to bring up bitter memories.”
“It’s fine! Really, I’m fine. If anything, I’m happy you asked, I love my hometown and telling others about it, it means a lot that you were curious in the first place. Phew, all that talking’s got me even more tired now, I think I’m gonna take a nap now.”
You nod, reaching for the book you brought in your bag. “Alright, sleep well, Phainon.”
He shifts around a bit afterwards, finding a comfortable position to rest in, but after a few moments, his breathing evens and he falls still save for the rise and fall of his chest.
Still, you think about the uncharacteristic glumness in his eyes, how it looks like he was on the verge of tears despite the evenness in his voice. There’s a lot behind Phainon’s story that you’ll never know– after all, they say the kindest souls are the ones who have faced the greatest challenges, and you wonder if he’ll tell you about all of them someday.
For now, you play with his hair and read your book, waiting for him to wake up.
Later that night, you’re sat alone, dressed in an outfit picked by your mother that does not match your style, paired with beautiful gems that weigh down your chest and wrists.
There are people mingling away from where you are, and it is a crowd you must return to, but for now, you need a breather and a moment to recollect yourself.
You’ve talked to too many people tonight, smiled for too long that your cheeks ache now, and you’re still nursing the same drink you’ve had since the start of the night. There is no desire to drink it, the champagne merely for decoration so people do not ask you if you would like another and invite you to drink.
In your hand, your phone shakes with a notification.
Pie-non: How’s the charity event going?
Pie-non: I hope you’re not having too much fun without me ;0
Y/n: lol it would be so much better if you were here
Y/n: it’s going fine
Y/n: i can’t wait to go home
You open your camera and send him a photo of your barely-touched champagne glass, followed by a silly selfie. You wish he were here with you, the night would be infinitely more bearable.
Pie-non: You look great!!
Pie-non: I’ll be praying that the time goes by faster
Pie-non: Btw Aglaea gave me tickets to a play and suggested we go together
Pie-non: Would you like to go with me? :p
Y/n: sounds great, i’m keen
Y/n: tell your mother i say thank you!
Y/n: i need to go back now, ttyl
· · ─ · ☼ · ─ · ·
“At the charity ball last night, there were a few offers made by sons of reputable businessmen,” your mother mentions over breakfast the following morning, and you halt your chewing, looking up from the news tablet.
The idea of being negotiated is revolting, you have to force down the food that is in your mouth as you slowly lose your appetite.
“Don’t you think it is about time you find a partner? Many of your classmates from high school have, your class president was engaed recently.” Your mother continues, not even glancing up from over the rim of her glasses.
Your thoughts drift over to Phainon. He’s… he’s not exactly your committed partner, but you are playing the part of being one to him, and you’re merely doing him a favour because you’re friends.
Why does calling him that feel like you’re choking over your own words? Why is your heart beginning to rebel, when did it have autonomy to do whatever it wants? Why is it doing flips as you think about yesterday, how he laid on your lap, how he gently played with the hems of your clothes as his voice fondly recalled vulnerable moments of his youth?
“No, I- I’m seeing someone!” You blurt without thinking and she finally looks up at you, an eyebrow raised.
“Is that so? And you did not check to see if this… someone is suitable for your father or I’s standard?”
“He is! He comes from a wealthy background and studies veterinary science at the Grove. I… didn’t want to tell you about it yet because I wanted to make sure he is perfect, you’ve always taught me to bide my time.”
“Oh? Fine, but you need to bring him to us soon for our approval. We would hate for you to be with a hopeless suitor who will merely waste your time.”
“Absolutely. Yours and father’s approval are very meaningful to me.”
She sighs through her nose. “Very well. Don’t let us down.”
“I won’t, mother.”
The rest of breakfast is silent, leaving you room to dwell with your thoughts.
You don’t actually like Phainon, do you? Maybe the mirage of dating him has gotten to your head, convinced you to see him in a new light- but nothing has changed since you were just friends. He’s always been kind, made you laugh, invited you to events, bought you your favourite drinks, showed you unconditional support, he’s always been all of these things and more, so why does your heart beat erratically now thinking about it?
You fall back on your bed, the weight of these thoughts making you toss and turn against the comforter. You think about his kind smile and dig your head further into your sheets, you think about his gentle eyes and scream a little. It feels as if you’re living a scene straight from the romcoms you would watch when you were younger. Maybe… you’ve always liked him?
You’re going insane.
(Since when were you the type of person to overthink about how someone perceived you? You stand hopelessly in front of your wardrobe, scanning through the pieces, the growing pile of clothes you deem unsightly sat atop your comforter. Titans, all of a sudden, nothing looks good or sits right, one outfit was too revealing, another not revealing enough– you’re going to go crazy!)
Later that evening, you meet Phainon outside the theatre. He’s dressed in a button-up with black slacks, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows to show off his forearms (and the veins– stop looking so damn hard!).
He grins widely when he sees you, pushing off the wall to meet you halfway.
“Hey! I’m so glad you could make it!”
“I’m glad I could make it too, thanks so much for the invite, I’ve heard good things about the drama we’re watching tonight, all the tickets are sold out though, how did Aglaea manage to snag us some?”
“Oh, you know,” he waves his hands, “friend of a friend, either way, someone couldn’t make it so these tickets are ours. How was the charity event?”
You hug the spare jacket you brought closer to your chest, murmuring “it was fine, honestly, the most fun part of the night was when you texted me.”
“That boring, hm? Well, at least you’re here with me now!”
“That I am. We should probably go inside now and find our seats.”
“Good idea,” then, he jokingly bows and offers an arm to you, like they do in old movies. You giggle before threading your arm through his. “Shall we?”
“We shall.”
The play was great- magnificent even, enthralling during some scenes and humorous in others, the audience clearly reacted well to it when the actors received an outstanding ovation during the bows, but the greatest comedy was your internal conundrum.
For it was difficult to focus when all you could think about was how his hand was right next to yours, resting on the armrest of his chair. When he leaned in to say something funny or share commentary, your heart skipped a beat every time you caught his gaze, the stage lights reflecting in his aquamarine eyes. It overwhelmed you with an undeniable urge to break free and destroy all boundaries of friendship, a feeling you had to suppress before you did things ‘fake partners’ would regret.
When you finally left the theatre, he offered to get dessert together before heading home.
As you walked, you were discussing the play together (or what you could remember). However, you were keenly aware of how your hand kept grazing his, fingertips brushing against each other every so often.
To your surprise, he grabs your hand with his and interlaces your fingers.
“We are supposed to be dating, right?” Phainon scratches the back of his head sheepishly, “I hope you don’t mind.”
“No… no it’s fine,” you murmur, shaking your head.
“Hey, actually, that reminds me; you know how to dance, right? It’s expected of the ball’s attendees.”
You blink at him. A ball that requires its attendees know how to dance? Just how formal is this event? “I know the basics. If anything, I’m more surprised that you know how to dance.”
“Hey! I’ll have you know I am quite excellent, I promise I won’t be stepping on your toes.”
“I was messing with you. With how many years you’ve been attending, I expect you to be the best dance partner I could ask for.”
He turns his face away, hand creeping up to scratch his neck. “Aww, now you’re just making me nervous.”
“I’m looking forward to the gala, it’ll be fun.”
“Me too! It’ll be so much better this year with you coming!”
“Tell me more about the gala.”
He begins what he’s best at: talking your ear off. While you’ve always loved hearing him tell stories, it’s even better now, listening to his anecdotes as he waves a dripping ice cream cone around, your hand still in his.
On Kephale’s light, this man is not good for your heart at all, matter of fact, he’s merciless without even realising it, but you’re uncertain if this will result in a happy ending.
When all is said and done and the gala is over, the two of you will return to your normal routine as friends and nothing more. You will continue reading under the shade in the Grove and Phainon will be nearby, either resting, studying, or fiddling with a stray basketball he picked up. You will continue going for snack runs together, picking up the requested items of your friends. You will fall back into normalcy with these feelings devouring your insides, heart forever attuned to a boy out of reach.
· · ─ · ☼ · ─ · ·
Pie-non: Sooooo Aglaea wants you to come over for lunch one day
Pie-non: Would you be able to?
Y/n: that sounds great, i’d love to
Y/n: when?
Pie-non: How about this Saturday?
Y/n: i’ll mark it down on my calender
Pie-non: Yay!
The second time meeting Aglaea feels less daunting. It’s Phainon who opens the door, grinning widely as he greets you with a hug. There’s specks of flour on his face, along with smears of other ingredients, and only then do you smell the aromatic smell of whatever he is cooking.
“Come on in! Make yourself at home,” he ushers you in, letting you set your things down before leading you to the dining area. Adjacent to it is an expansive kitchen with windows that welcome in generous amounts of Kephale’s light.
“Y/n, how lovely it is to see you again,” Aglaea’s melodic voice chimes and you stand up straighter, hugging the big bouquet of flowers close to your chest.
“Thank you so much for having me! I’ve been looking forward to today, so I brought some flowers to express my gratitude.”
“That’s very thoughtful, thank you. Just set them down on the kitchen counter.”
You do as your told, eyeing the plates of delicious-looking food. “Would you like my help with anything?”
“If you could set the table, that would be great.”
“Of course!” You take the plates and cutlery that Phainon hands you, setting them in the exact way you’ve been taught growing up, in the order that befit dining. Aglaea sees this and leaves a harmless remark that you’ve been taught well, and you graciously wave off her comment, saying there’s more for you to learn.
Phainon carries all the dishes, setting them down on the table. Then, he turns to you with that same excited smile, beaming.
“I’m so glad you could make it, Y/n!” Radiant. He’s so radiant you think his teeth could work as flashlights in the dark.
Still, your heart skips a beat. “I’m very happy to be here, thank you for inviting me. Also, Phainon, you have something on your face.”
“Oh, where?” He rubs his face but it only worsens it, smearing more flour on his face.
“It’s fine, I got it.” You grab a napkin from the table and wipe off the excess from his skin, trying your best to be gentle whilst he stands incredibly still, letting you do as you please. “There. All good.”
“Thanks!”
Neither of you are aware of the softness in Aglaea’s expression as she watches. It’s only with a clap of her hands do the two of you break out of the little world you were lost in and you jump away from Phainon like he’s burned you, embarrassed as Aglaea laughs.
“Come on kids, lets sit down now or the food will get cold.”
Lunch goes by easier than expected. You had been prepared for another feast where you would sit with your spine straight and shoulders tensed, echoing rehearsed laughs over dry jokes and unfunny remarks. Instead, your mirage has, once again, been completely disarmed by Aglaea’s questions; she seemed genuinely interested in what you had to say, like your hobbies and passions, or the little anecdotes you’d share when talking about different topics.
Naturally, she shares stories as well. Phainon asks her if there’s been any interesting business deals, and she responds with a flippant sigh, vaguely detailing a client that’s been driving her up the wall, which both of you have animated reactions to.
Meanwhile, Phainon keeps coaxing you to try more dishes, especially the ones he made, watching your expression with keen intensity while his mother smiles fondly from across the table, retopping your glass of water whenever it emptied. By the end of lunch, your stomach is full and your heart even more so.
When Phainon goes to feed the family of chimeras, you’re left alone to talk with Aglaea while washing the dishes. However, the tranquility of the moment is ruined by a buzz of your phone, soured when you realise it’s your father who didn’t even write a message, just sent two files and a link, no doubt thrust upon you to complete.
“Who is it?”
You quickly shut off your phone, taming the agitation gnawing at your ribcage. “Excuse me, it was just my father.”
When Phainon returns to the room, Aglaea suggests something about taking you to the riverside. “You shouldn’t stay cooped up inside on such a lovely day,” she had reasoned and the next thing you know, he’s pulling you out the door like an overexcited chimera, eagerness dripping off him in waves.
You yell at him to slow down, heart hammering from physical exertion and the feeling of his hand tightly squeezing yours. He apologises with a sheepish smile but does not drop your wrist, guiding you to a carved path covered by thick foliage and the end of it was a clearing that gazed over a vast river.
It’s beautiful. Fluffy clouds drift by overhead, following the downstream current. Your feet take you along the direction of the current, the rock and sand crunching beneath your footsteps as the waves roll by.
“It’s so peaceful here.”
“I know right?” Phainon rolls his sleeves up and sorts through the pile of rocks underneath your feet, picking up each one and inspecting them carefully, discarding any he deems unsightly. You don’t quite understand what his criteria is, but when he has a handful of sizeable ones, he throws one out.
It skids along once, twice, many more times before finally dropping into the water.
He looks at you like he’s expecting a congratulations, so you give it to him and he beams. Next thing you know, he’s instructing you on how he did it.
“You want to angle your body and hit the surface at a lower level, make sure you’re using the flatter side of the rock, then, with a flick of your wrist…” he throws the rock and it skids across the surface level seven- eight- nine times before silently dropping into the water, and you stare blankly at the dissipating ripples.
He made it look so easy.
“Here, try skip a few stones!”
You try your best to abide to his instructions. Angle the body, get lower with the water level, and flick of the wrist and it… plonks into the water without so much a hop.
“Aw,” you murmur, but instead of berating or ridiculing, Phainon hands you another rock, similar to the one you just threw.
“That’s okay! It’s pretty hard to get on the first try, have another go.”
Maybe it was the sun, but the stone in your hand felt nicely warm, and you let your gaze linger on him for a moment, waiting for the disappointment to appear in his eyes. Yet, it never comes. All he does is beam at you with a thumbs up for encouragement.
This time, when you flick your wrist, it skips across the water surface one, two, three, four, five times before halting, and the only evidence that you’ve succeeded are the ripples fading away. The only witness claps, softly cheering.
He’s applauding because you skipped a stone on the surface of a river.
It’s so silly and simple it makes your heart skip a beat.
You manage to hit a high score of seven, while Phainon manages to go into the double digits, and you find yourself clapping for him too, occasionally high fiving in celebration.
(This is the sense of belonging you’ve been chasing after your whole life. The love you’ve craved for so long but always thought would be out of reach, yet, these two have somehow proven that caring for someone is not a Herculean task.)
· · ─ · ☼ · ─ · ·
If there’s one thing Okhema has taught you, it’s that happiness is fleeting and there will always be those who want to stomp out your light.
“We didn’t even know you had friends in Okhema. You left all the people you knew behind the second you went to the Grove, disappeared from the face of Amphoreus like some runaway child,” your mother quips, metallic spoon clinking the tea cup she was stirring.
You stiffen. “I thought a change of environment was what I needed.”
She taps the edge of her cup twice, the sound resonating through the room. “If you were more capable, you would have been able to balance both. Unfortunately, not all of us are, you should have been grateful your friends from high school gave you the time of day. They were all such valuable connections to have.”
You want to defend yourself, tell her about how horrid and small they made you feel, but you suppose she would never understand, not when she treats you the same. Unfortunately, one group is far easier to run away from than the other.
“Do you even have friends at the Grove?”
“Of course,” you insist, trying to keep your tone levelled. After years of living here, you’ve grown to understand that any display of emotion would be weaponised against you, but it never gets any easier trying to suppress them. Not when the snarky words of your mother are said with the intention of wearing you down.
She raises her teacup to her lips. “Are you sure they even like you?”
Does she drink poison to stay hydrated? Her toxicity truly knows no bounds.
“Yes, I’m sure.”
Your tea finally finishes steeping, and before you can raise it to your lips, your father, who finally decides the conversation is worth entering, chimes up. “I’ve heard some of the people in your grade have started finding success in life, one’s even managed to get a booming startup off the ground.”
“Off the back of his father’s money,” you retaliate.
“So what? Does that change the fact that he’s operating a successful business and a respectable entrepreneur?”
Rich, you think. Where’s your support, then? They can’t even give you the time of day.
“You finally have a rare break back home, and instead of working, you spend everyday out and about and falling behind. Time is the most valuable resource one can have and you insist on wasting it by going out everyday.”
He smacks his lips together and shakes his head.
“Ridiculous.”
You try to stand up for yourself. “I’m on summer break, I’ve been working hard the last three years to maintain honours with top grades-”
“-We expect you to do better.”
Frustration boils in your chest and clogs up your throat. Defending yourself is never productive in this household, and trying to have the last say only leads to a thundering chest that feels like you’re one breath away from caving in.
As soon as dinner was over and you could leave, you’re out the front door before you can think twice, putting on the most comfortable pair of shoes you can find before darting out.
You couldn’t stay in that house a minute longer, otherwise your agitation would have boiled over and stained the pristine floors.
The sky overhead bleeds a multitude of warm hues with orange clouds drifting by. The beautiful sight cheers you up minimally, but it’s not effective against the swirling cauldron of emotions sitting in your stomach and the fumes that stick to your throat. You’re so frustrated, you don’t know if you want to scream and kick something or cry.
When will this game end? When will this dance cease? When will this symphony of turmoil finally diminish?
Pleasing them doesn’t change them, rebelling against them just makes things worse, and running away and avoiding them for two years did nothing.
What did you do to deserve this?
Deep breaths. Inhale… exhale… the breeze of summer infiltrates your senses, and you realise that your feet have taken you to a familiar park. One that, whenever explosive arguments occurred, you would come here to calm your racing mind and turbulent emotions. It has been your routine since young, and after two years of not seeing this natural scape, a bittersweet ache of nostalgia returns. Time may pass but old habits die hard.
“Y/n?”
You freeze.
Your stinking luck. Why now?
“Phainon!” You choke out, along with an awkward laugh that comes out as a pathetic garble instead. Oh Titans, you’re crying. You didn’t even realise you were crying, the dried-up tear streaks staining your skin an incriminating sign that you immediately hurry to wipe away.
He can’t see you like this.
Scrambling to stand up, you steady yourself with the trunk of the birch tree you were previously sitting under. You frantically wipe at your cheeks with your shirt, the cotton like steel wool against your skin as you scrub and scrub and scrub, ridding the evidence of your emotional display.
You can’t even look at him, too ashamed.
There’s a warm pair of hands wrapped around your wrists, and you flinch at his touch, “Y/n… what’s wrong?”
“Nothing! Nothing at all,” the words are a jumbled mess of syllables that get jammed in your throat as you pull yourself away from him, stumbling backwards. “I’m fine.”
“I don’t think you are.”
“I swear I am.”
“You can tell me if something’s wrong.”
“Nothing’s wrong, everything’s fine!”
“It’s clearly not-”
“-It clearly is.”
“Y/n, it’s pretty obvious something’s wrong.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Stop pretending-”
“-Phainon, please.”
He’s silent for a few beats before conceding pensively. This time, his tone is softer. “Okay, but you know I’d never judge you, right? So if you need someone to talk to, I’m here.”
Unconcealing your face, you still refuse to meet his eyes, gaze glued to his shirt instead. The first thing you notice is that he’s wearing merchandise with the Grove’s logo printed in the centre, along with the words ‘sport and athletics’ underneath.
“Thank you.”
“I’m serious. You don’t have to be alone, you believe me right?”
You’re silent for a few beats. “Yes,” you lie.
“Then say it.”
“I…” your swollen eyes flit up to meet his. There’s a steady intensity in his expression that almost makes you cower, so you glance away and find the trees behind him far more bearable. “I believe you.”
It’s awkwardly silent for a few beats afterwards, neither of you knowing what to say to lighten the mood, but it was him who was dragged into your unfortunate mess, so you squeak a very meek “I’m sorry you had to see me like that.”
Phainon blinks. “Why are you apologising? If anything, I should be apologising to you for almost scaring you off.”
“It’s only because you snuck up on me!”
“My bad, my bad,” he scratches the back of his neck.
It falls painfully awkward again, a gust of wind brushing against the back of your legs. You shiver.
“Are you cold?”
“No- I’m fine, it was just a chill. What brings you here?”
“I was out on a run, this park is on my normal route.”
“It’s so far from your house!”
He tilts his head, ivory locks swaying with the action. “Is it?”
“Well, I guess this wouldn’t be too hard for you, Mr. Top Athlete.”
“Oh, stop it,” he waves off your compliment. “Would you like to get a bite now that we've bumped into each other? My treat.”
The scalding words of your father echo in your head. “I would but I think my family’s expecting me, I shouldn’t keep them waiting too long, sorry.”
He frowns, dejection glossing over his features. “I understand. When can I see you next?”
“To be honest, my parents were scolding me earlier for going out so much so I might need to stay home for a bit. I’ll text you when I think it’s better.”
“Alright.”
“Well. Guess I’ll see you later, Phai-”
Without warning, you’re engulfed in a warm embrace, Phainon’s fleece shirt pressed against your chin as you crane your neck to meet his towering height. His arms are wrapped tight around your torso, one wrapped around your shoulder, the other around the back of your lower ribs, pressing you securely against him. His cologne smells like cedarwood and bergamot.
(The setting Okheman sun casts golden rays that illuminate his sky blue eyes gorgeously, but you will never forget the unfamiliarity of how he looked at you, and how even the light did nothing to hide it. He regarded you like something that needed fixing, like you were an antique vase that lay shattered on the floor, like you were his favourite mug, like you were something that took love and intention to create.
Instead of sweeping you aside, he held you close to his chest and cradled you there, determined to piece you back together.
You return his embrace.)
· · ─ · ☼ · ─ · ·
The coming days are mundane. As always, your parents excel at sweeping tension under the rug. Breakfasts are silent, and you’re trying to appease them so you can make it to Phainon’s gala, careful not to stroke their (delicate) tempers.
You’ve successfully managed to let them know of your plans with Hyacine. Given that she was in Okhema, you didn’t want this chance to slip out of your grasp, so you’re relieved you’ll get to hangout with her for a day or so.
Other than that, you don’t have much to occupy your time outside of reading, taking occasional walks, and texting your friends, so your mind drifts back to the white-haired man more often than not.
You’ve been in constant contact, active on both the groupchat with your friends and private chats, but you think back to what he said to you days ago. By the power of unfortunate timing and coincidence, he had caught you at an incredibly sensitive moment– you’re not embarrassed about that anymore, but you can vividly recall the fire in his eyes. How he seemed… angry at your sorrow, like it was unfair that you were feeling upset, like it was his responsibility to fix it.
‘If you need someone to talk to, I’m here’.
Would he even want to hear what you have to say? There’s no worth bothering him with problems as mundane as yours… but you can’t say you haven’t been tempted to tell him.
During hours late in the night, when your psyche was tired and rationality worn down after a long day, you were one word away from spilling it all on a late night video call, but the sentence never came out. Instead, they’d crawl right back in your throat and settle uncomfortably in your heart, deciding that someone like him should not need to worry about you.
What if he is curious, though? He wanted answers, he wanted to console you, wanted you to talk to him, but all you did was jump away when his hands touched yours and refused to speak like some sensitive child.
If you try hard enough, you can feel how hard he squeezed you in that hug, the ghost of his embrace pulling you tight against him. You can remember how he felt in your arms, how the fabric of his shirt felt bunched up in your fists, how grounding it was.
To you, Phainon will always be untouchable, on par with Kephale’s light that beams its warmth on everyone and will always be loved by all. Meanwhile, you’re a puppet tugged along by frayed strings, still trying to discover what it means to be loved and cared for. You are the dust that sits gathered on the windowsill, staring up at the sky outside, yearning for a way out.
Sighing, you savour the sun for a few moments longer. When you cast your gaze downward and see the specks of grey decorating the window frame, you frown, descending to get something to wipe it away with.
· · ─ · ☼ · ─ · ·
Pie-non: The gala is in 13 days from now :0
Pie-non: Aglaea said that she can help you get ready if you’d like!
Y/n: really?? it won’t bother her?
Pie-non: Nope!
Pie-non: Believe or not, she likes this kind of stuff
Y/n: well, if she’s okay with it, then yes please!
Aglaea gently runs her fingers through your undone hair, classical Amphorean music softly humming in the background from an old record player. The open window welcomes in a warm draft, one that hits the bottom of your neck.
You love the outfit she has picked for you. It’s lightweight and hugs your figure at all the right places but isn’t too tight that moving is a struggle. Most importantly, you still feel like yourself and comfortable in your own skin.
She truly is a tailoring expert.
“I take it that you like the clothes I picked for you?” Aglaea asks, and you glance up at the mirror, unaware of how wide you are smiling.
“I love them,” you announce unabashedly, cheeks beginning to hurt. “They’re gorgeous.”
She laughs, the sound gentle and honeyed as she begins brushing through your hair. “So is the wearer.”
Your gaze flickers back to your reflection. “Thank you.”
It’s silent save for accessories jingling as Aglaea decides which ones best suit you, testing a variety of necklaces, bracelets, arm bands, and more hair pieces. The quiet is comfortable, as if you are more than the (fake) partner Phainon has brought home for the holidays, like you are someone worth a reserved seat at her dinner table.
However, when you leave Okhema at the end of summer, you’ll have to shatter your plate and end this make believe. In the midst of all your new-found feelings, when you and Phainon return to the Grove, he will have to find an excuse as to why you may never return to visit her again. You already feel guilty for wasting her time and energy like this, you can’t fathom how disappointed she will be when it’s time to throw it away.
“Phainon has been looking forward to today for a long time,” she tells you, a warm look in her eyes when your gazes meet. “Before, he’d be grumpy and petulant whenever I had to get him ready, complaining about all the dates I arranged him, but recently he’s been bouncing off the walls with excitement.”
You giggle. It’s easy to picture a younger Phainon pouting and huffing, sat in the exact chair you’re in now, throwing a tantrum before Aglaea would straighten him into shape, but you can also imagine current-Phainon eagerly counting down the days to an event he used to dread. Maybe you really did him a favour by agreeing to accompany him. After all, going to big galas with a friend was far more enjoyable than going with someone you did not know.
“Of course, he was never ill-mannered to those I chose, he is far too kind for that, but every year I wondered when he’d finally bring someone of his own choosing.”
“Really? But he’s so popular and well-liked.”
“Phainon is very particular about the people he surrounds himself with. When he first told me that he had a date for this year’s Kephale Festival, I was curious who it was that finally caught his eye. Then, I met you and understood why he liked you so much.”
Your heart skips a beat. “Really?”
She nods. “Admittedly, he has told me about you before and shared pictures you took together from the Grove, along with the group of friends you share. So I have heard about you from all the stories he’d share with me.”
“It’s a really incredible group, we’re all great friends.”
“I’m grateful he has you all.”
Aglaea smiles fondly. “I’m grateful to have him, too.”
A few beats of silence pass. This time, you’re compelled to speak up. You say “my parents are business owners too. They specialise in a similar industry to you.”
“Yes, I am vaguely familiar with them. To be successful, you have to know your competitors, but I get the sense they’re not very fond of me.”
“They regard everyone who is not in their circle as rivals and therefore, don’t care about maintaining politeness. I apologise if their aloofness has offended you.”
“Nonsense, I am not holding you accountable for the actions of two different people, not when they should be far more mature. It is baffling that the child they have raised has far more decorum than the supposed role models.”
A feeling of satisfaction settles in your stomach when you hear Aglaea’s remarks, and you don’t even want to defend them, giggling behind your hand. “Did you know of my status before you met me?”
“I know everything in Okhema, so naturally, I recognised you the moment Phainon sent me a group photo.”
You glance up at her, her golden eyes focused on your hair. “I assumed you would herald the same distaste for them and by extension me.”
“Darling, there are a few things we should clear up,” she reaches for a bobby pin, body hovering close to your head for a second. “Apathy is a better suited word than distaste. Business has progressed far beyond a game for me, I do what I do to keep my work afloat, not interact in elaborate mind games with my competitors. Has it turned out that way? Perhaps, but unintentionally. I do not harbour ill intention toward people I have never met, not even when I recognised you for the first time.” Finally, she meets your eyes. “All I discerned about you was that you were a treasured companion to Phainon, and for as long as you make him happy, you will always have a place here in my home.”
Kephale’s light cast her in an angelic light, illuminating Aglaea’s silhouette as she pats your shoulder reassuringly. Your stomach churns at her honesty, the adoring way she speaks about Phainon– would your parents speak of you like this? Have they ever regarded you with this much love and light in their eyes?
Gaze flickering away, there is dust gathering on the edges of the windows.
“Besides, when I see you, I see a powerful individual who has yet to step into who you really are, and that is above the fact that you are also the love of Phainon’s life.”
Her honesty, the kind way she’s smiling at you– you feel horrible for deceiving her.
“Phainon and I aren’t really together,” you blurt out without thinking, and you’re immediately covering your mouth with your hands, eyes blown wide as you gauge her reaction in the mirror.
However, she doesn’t seem the least bit surprised. Instead, she laughs, so animatedly that her shoulders shake, her eyes shut as elegant smile lines crease her skin.
She inhales deeply with a hand on her chest. “As I said earlier, I know everything in Okhema, and I know that you and my boy aren’t actually together.”
“What? Did Phainon tell you?”
“No, but my intuition is imperceptible, darling. Nothing escapes my eyes. While I could tell you two were upholding a fake relationship, I can also tell that you genuinely like him, don’t you?”
“I do,” you admit softly. “I really do.” You declare it louder the second time. “Is it stupid of me to?”
She shakes her head. “While my guess is that he used me as an excuse to ensnare you, I trust that there is a genuine reason behind his actions, but that is a conversation reserved between you and him. It is not my place to comment on it. However, I can offer you this: when the time comes, know that I am in full support of the both of you.”
“Thank you, that- that means a lot.”
“All you do is thank, thank, and thank people when all they do is show you the basic care you deserve,” she says as she clasps a necklace together.
You fall unnaturally still, eyes stinging as tears begin welling up in your eyes. If Aglaea picks up on your change in behaviour, she is kind enough to not comment, instead, she keeps working on your appearance, pinning and brushing and curling.
After a few minutes, she pats your shoulder and tells you she has finished. So you stand and admire the masterpiece she has styled you into, your hair falling down beautifully, accessories clinging together each time you so moved; you feel ethereal.
“He’ll be speechless when he sees you,” Aglaea smiles at you approvingly.
“Thank you,” you whisper. You hope she knows that you’re grateful for more than just the styling.
“You’re quite welcome, dear. You shouldn’t keep him waiting, Phainon may be patient, but something tells me he’s downstairs, eager to see you.”
True to her prediction, Phainon is already waiting for you by the bottom of the staircase, fixing his traditional Okheman outfit. When he hears the sound of your footsteps, he looks up but his wide smile falters, shrinking into something more shy and bashful. You carefully descend the steps, holding onto the railing with a gentle grip as fabrics sashay and gold bangles sound against each other, indicating your arrival.
Your date is uncharacteristically quiet, eyes wide and unblinking as they follow your every movement, unable to glance away, even when you come to a stop before him. You anxiously wait for a reaction from the usually-expressive man.
“What do you think?”
He snaps out of his reverie. “I– uh, you- you look incredible.”
“Thank you. It’s all thanks to Aglaea.”
“Not all, I’d argue,” he wipes his hands on his pants before extending one. “Let me help you down.”
It felt nice to have his warm palm in yours; how he barely put any pressure on your fingers as his gaze was stuck to the stairs, ensuring you wouldn’t misstep.
When you reach the bottom, you give him a once-over, keeping your admiration lowkey and refraining from ogling at his biceps. “You look good, Phainon.”
“I’m glad you think so, I have something to prove tonight.”
“What are you proving?”
“That I’m worth standing by your side.”
Your heart, it’s doing that uncomfortable thing again. You have no idea what to say in response as your face heats up uncontrollably, heat creeping up your neck.
Thankfully, Aglaea saves the day, her heels clacking as she descends the stairs. “Let’s head out now, we’re already running a little behind.”
“Yes, Aglaea.”
A small tug on your hand reminds you that Phainon has yet to let go, and he beams with satisfaction when your attention returns to him. Aglaea comes to a stop beside you and you feel heat creep up your neck at the knowing look she gives you.
“Was he speechless?” She asks.
“He couldn’t speak for a minute,” you shyly confess and Phainon splutters in protest, causing his mother to laugh, an affectionate smile tugging at her lips when she looks at her son.
Her hands reach over to fix a small part of his outfit. “We were simply teasing. Let’s leave now, the car should be waiting outside.”
The ride to the gala is longer than usual due to closed off roads, but sometimes, you could catch a glimpse of people celebrating. Phainon would point out scenes he found funny or entertaining, delighted by all of the stands with dromas merch, vaguely mentioning how ‘Prof Nax would really like them’. He points to the families who have dressed up, circles of people dancing, and the food stands that he’d like to try sometime soon.
Eventually, the detour ends and you arrive at the steps of the gala. After driving in through the gates, you admire the architecture and construction of the venue. It’s exterior and interior were all thoroughly decorated, and someone guides you through the hallways to arrive at the correct room.
Before Aglaea can be whisked away by a crowd, she mouths ‘go have fun’ to the both of you.
“You seem excited, Phainon,” you face him.
“It’s cause I get to spend time with you!”
“Why? We spend a lot of time together regardless.”
He tilts his head. “I always enjoy spending time with you, do I need another reason to be excited about it? Do you want to get food first?”
“You’re hungry, aren’t you?”
“Maybe, so please?” he pleads with his eyes.
“Fine.”
You’re glued to Phainon’s side for the rest of the night. Occasionally people come up to talk to him, greeting him with a big hug and asking how life has been. Then, their curious gaze would drift over to you, wondering who the ‘lucky’ date is.
He’d introduce you enthusiastically, telling you names of people you don’t remember as soon as they turn around and leave.
Uncharacteristically, it seems like Phainon does not have a lot to say for once as you’re the one to do most of the small talk, asking the partygoers about themselves and showing interest in everything they say. He, on the other hand, is practically too eager to see everyone leave before turning to you with a big, innocent smile, his arm tugging you even closer to his side.
Then, when it’s the two of you again, he’ll talk your ear off once more.
“Are you enjoying yourself so far?” Phainon asks.
“Of course, this has probably been the most fun I’ve had at an event,” you tell him. “Everyone we’ve met seems pretty nice so far, and the food’s good! Are you having a good time?”
He nods enthusiastically, taking a big mouthful of a fig cake dessert. You use your napkin to wipe the crumbs away from the corners of his lips.
“I’m incredibly grateful for you and Aglaea. This is my first Kephale Festival in a while, and it’s been really enjoyable.”
“You don’t know how happy it makes me to hear that, and it makes me infinitely more happy seeing you get along with my mum. You’re my two favourite people, it means a lot to me.”
When the night is halfway through, there’s a sudden announcement through the loudspeakers, calling for the crowd to prepare the floor for the partner dances. You raise your eyebrow, it really was true, what kind of events still have formal dances these days?
“You weren’t lying,” you murmur to him.
“Can’t say I didn’t try to prepare you.”
“As long as you don’t step on my toes.”
“Oh come on, I’m trustworthy enough, aren’t I? I promised you I wouldn’t.”
You find a space adequate enough, coming to a stop as Phainon grabs your hand, raising it to shoulder level to prepare. Then, the music kicks in, a lively three-four piece being played by the live entertainment.
Shaking the nervousness out of your system, he sets the rhythm and you easily follow along. Historically, special dances with their own significance were made in Kephale’s honour, and almost every Okheman learns it either in school or by watching people on the street given how important it is to the Holy City.
It is said that partner dances are important because Kephale is capable of holding the world on his shoulders alone, so one should rejoice in his benevolent sacrifice and celebrate the gift he gave with another. Furthermore, the steps of the dance follow a circle, as if replicating the world on his shoulders and honouring him.
Mentally, you thank Kephale for his sacrifice, because you get to see Phainon’s joyfully handsome expression as you dance around, following each other’s steps perfectly. He even twirls you around while you move, causing you to throw your head back and laugh, the fabrics you wear twisting and dancing with you.
You want this moment to last forever. You want to engrain the excited thrum of your heart and the bliss that travels through every vein in your body into memory. You want to be in this moment, under the lights of the dance floor, with him, forever.
He looks at you like you’re something marvellous, turquoise eyes never straying from your face, hand holding yours tightly so you don’t hop too far away from him.
Then, the band builds up to a crescendo, and the dance ends with a final pose. Your chests heave and stray strands of hair stick to sweaty skin, but neither you nor Phainon can think about the fatigue in your muscles.
People scurry off the floor as new couples take their places. So, you curtsy with a dip of your head, and he bows in return.
“I have somewhere to show you.” He whispers.
“Let’s go.”
You find yourself in this familiar situation once again: your hand encased by Phainon’s as he leads you along, this contact an unspoken safety net as you walk through hallways, up staircases, until eventually, you reach a door.
The isolation of this area is not lost on you, there is not another soul in the nearby vicinity as all of them should be downstairs, dancing. You can faintly hear the live band from where you stand. “Are we allowed to be here?”
He shrugs, “we’ll find out if we get caught.”
“Phainon!”
“I’ve been here every year so far and no one’s caught me. Just trust me, okay? I’ll cover for you if anything bad happens.”
You look into his eyes that swim with sincerity and brace for the dive. “Fine.”
He pushes open the door and you gasp, hand covering your mouth. This balcony overlooks the horizon of the Holy City, providing a perfect view of all the festivities occurring beneath. The light of carnival games, the illumination of flower garlands, a ferris wheel that sits in the distance, it looks so alive and vibrant; a warm reminder of all the life and happiness and commemorations that occur in Okhema, something you have taken for granted over the years.
You step out first, stopping just before the tall, stone railings and gazing out at every speck of light you can see, as the wind gently weaves through your hair. It’s so pretty, you can’t tear your eyes away.
A heavy weight drapes on your back and arms wrap around your waist, bringing you into a warm embrace that you recognise to be Phainon’s. You lean back against him, holding his hands with yours as he rests his chin on the juncture of your shoulder.
You pray he can’t feel the way your heart hammers in your chest, so you fake nonchalance as you gaze out at the horizon instead, content to simply stand and admire… until you feel a pair of eyes staring at the side of your face.
So, you turn to look at him and almost flinch at how your noses brush. He doesn’t move away.
“Hey, you,” you whisper.
He smiles, the corners of his eyes creasing. “Hi.”
“It’s so… breathtaking,” you look back at the view and ignore the way his grasp tightens around you. “This is a new perspective I’ve never seen of the Kephale Festival.”
“Then, I’m honoured to be the one to show it to you.”
You feel his chin retract from your shoulder, but his hand then snakes up, obstructing your view of the city as you feel cool fingers on your cheek, gently guiding your face to look at him. “Phainon, what-”
“-You’re beautiful,” he interrupts, breath fanning against your lips. “I… I don’t think I’ve told you enough.”
“That’s unnecessary.”
“It’s not, I haven’t been able to take my eyes off you all damn night” his fingers lightly tremble against your face, but his gaze is resolute and firm, never straying from yours. The intensity alone compels you to maintain it, to see where this moment will lead, and if the buildup of anticipation in your gut is correct.
His gaze flickers to your lips and your chest crumbles. What you want is so close, literally breathing down your face, yet he is still so unreachable because you ache to close the gap but fear the unknown of the other side.
“You’re unreal,” he whispers as his face slowly inches towards yours. Your hammering heart impatiently beats against your ribcage, aching to feel the–
Boom!
You jump away from Phainon in surprise, shocked by interruption, only for you to sigh in relief when you realise it was a firework that is now fizzling out. Then, because you can never just set one off, a barrage of them follow, lighting up the night sky with a series of colours and patterns. One explodes in the shape of Kephale bearing the world, another in the shape of a chimera head– and oh, a purple dromas firework!
Throughout the display, your partner is uncharacteristically silent, his commentary minimal as you point out fun ones.
After a few minutes, it was finally over, and silence settles over you like a heavy blanket. You’re still held tightly in Phainon’s arms, but his lacking eagerness does not sit right, a sense of anxiety creeping in as you think of something to snap him out of this displeased gaze.
“Is something wrong, Phainon?”
He blinks to look back at you, subtle frustration softening into a gentler expression. “Everything’s fine!”
“Really?”
“Really.”
You scramble through your brain in search of something appropriate to say. What would he even want to hear?
Kephale, You can’t even think straight, not with the way he’s holding you so… possessively, so close to him that it makes your stomach flip helplessly. This, paired with the gentle way he held your cheek, and the sweet words he said to you- you need ten business days to process it all.
But tonight seems to be the day of badly timed interruptions, because there’s a small ding notification from your phone. Fishing it out, the reminder ‘be home before parents get mad!’ is written very clearly on your screen.
Sighing, you turn it off.
“Do you have a curfew?” Phainon asks, resting the side of his head against yours.
“It’s not necessarily a curfew. It’s just the latest I can get home without triggering my parents. My dad’s a gentle sleeper so he wakes up at any kind of sound I make, especially on nights where he has work the following day.”
He frowns, then his hands grip you even harder, fingers digging into your flesh. Not enough to make you uncomfortable, but enough to dent your skin.
“I’ve been meaning to ask, and I’m sorry if this makes you uncomfortable but… do you… have a good relationship with your parents?” You freeze in his arms, visibly tense. He’s looking at you- no, analysing you for any kind of changes in your expression that will say what words can’t.
But silence is already a powerful answer and suddenly, your vision of the nightline grows blurry, the lights stretching out into indiscernible lines. Your breathing grows more laboured and the pain that’s accumulated from the last few days come crashing down on you.
The disappointed look in your father’s eyes, the complacency of your mother who really could not care twice about you, the love you’ve been begging for, the acceptance you may never receive-
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you cry!” He frantically dabs at the tears gathering at the corner of your left eye, trying to catch them with his fingers. Then, he begins fanning your face. “Happy thoughts, happy thoughts! I wouldn’t have asked if I knew it’d make you this upset!”
You erupt into a fit of giggles and he halts, gauging your reaction once again.
“I’m sorry, I don’t know what came over me,” you mutter, rubbing your eyes. “I… I think I’m okay to answer your question, as long as you genuinely want to know.”
“Of course, but I’m not forcing an answer out of you.”
You inhale deeply. “My relationship with my parents aren’t the best, it hasn’t been since I was young. They’ve always wanted me to be the best version possible, but it feels as if they don’t… view me as their own child. If anything, our relationship is more transactional; someone they can use to further their position in society,” you tighten your grip on Phainon’s wrist. “If I make any mistakes, they’ll eat my head off because everything that goes wrong is my fault even though they never listen to me. If I don’t fit their own personal image of perfection, then I’m a disappointment and a charity case, they hate that I’m at the Grove, they hate that I haven’t graduated early and started a business, gotten married– they hate that my classmates from high school are… better. They hate raising me without benefits.”
The words are tumbling out freely now and Phainon doesn’t interrupt, giving you the space to be completely honest about these feelings that have been bottled for too long.
“You must wonder why this is my first year returning to Okhema ever since the Grove, right? I don’t want to be here because this city is just a reminder that I will never have a proper home. That I won’t be loved like I am by our friends, or the people I’ve met outside the Holy City. This place brings painful memories of youth, of never being good enough, of keeping my mouth shut and going along with everything my parents wanted because I could handle any challenge as long as it made them happy. I still can- I still just want them to be proud of me.” Your chest shudders with the weight of your confession. “Yes, they’ve given me so many opportunities I am grateful for, and I’m… I wouldn’t be as accomplished as I am without them.”
You crane your neck to look back at him. He’s beautiful, even when your eyesight is all blurry.
“I want to be loved unconditionally.”
It’s quiet for a few moments, your words marinating as silence settles like the fizzle after a sparkler diminishes, after a fire has crackled its last ember, like the last trails of smoke disappearing from a freshly snuffed candle.
Unexpectedly, Phainon turns you around in his arms and pulls you into a hug, one strong arm wrapping around your shoulder, the other around your waist.
He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t need to, this is enough. You return the hug, wrapping your arms around his waist, finally exhaling all of the frustrations you’ve been holding to yourself for years.
“Thank you for listening,” you huff, taking a step out of his embrace.
His expression is achingly soft. “Thank you for trusting me enough to tell me.”
You leave the balcony after a while, deciding it was for the better before security discovered and escorted you out. Going back inside wasn’t appealing enough, so you both take a quick detour to check out one of the markets you passed by on the drive, perhaps get some food after a long night.
Eventually, when the moon is high in the sky and the number of attendees at the festival is finally dwindling, Phainon calls for a driver to send you home together. When you arrive at the gates to your home, he helps you out of the car.
“Wait–” Phainon looks at you as if he has something to say, but you see in real time the way he shuts down his thoughts and closes his mouth. Instead, he reaches for your hand and holds it gently, like a delicate flower he plucked from a garden bed.
He leans down to press his lips against your knuckles.
“Thank you for accompanying me tonight,” when he looks up at you, there is nothing short of earnest candidness gleaming in his eyes as his thumb rubs the back of your hand. The faint glow from the full moon illuminates his features, makes him look younger despite his already-lively appearance, and you take a good look at the man who has shaken your world. It’s unfair that he is breathtaking in the moonlight, too.
“Thank you for the night,” you whisper back.
“Sleep well, Y/n.”
“You too, Phainon.”
His hand lingers on yours a little longer before finally dropping it. You wave his car off before retiring for the night, fatigue clinging to your bones like honey, eager to pull you under.
As you undress and peel back all the accessories on your body, you think about the day, about the tenderness Phainon showed you all night, how his hand felt on the side of your face, how he twirled you around, the conversation you had with Aglaea how she said you were the love of Phainon’s life–
Your hands pause.
What?
· · ─ · ☼ · ─ · ·
The mystique of the night is over as soon as morning arrives, because your parents are already waiting for you. This time, however, the atmosphere feels thick and heavy with tension and you eye them cautiously before sitting down on the couch opposite them, trying to prepare for what they might weaponise against you.
There’s a tablet in your mother’s thin hands and she drops it in front of you as soon as you’re seated.
It’s a photo taken of you and Phainon from last night, dancing, obviously meant to be taken from an angle where neither of you would notice. Both of you look terribly happy, your hands interconnected as he spun you around. Interesting, you don’t remembering seeing anyone from your parent’s circle of friends last night, but news and gossip travel fast, there is no point wondering who the culprit is.
“When you said you were attending a gala with someone, did you hide it purposefully from us that it would be with the Goldweaver’s adopted son?” Your mother begins, her sharp eyes boring into you as she spits Aglaea’s business name like it was poison.
You glance up at her, tucking the tablet under your arms, already preempting where this conversation will go. Except, unlike other times, there’s a fiery determination to fight back, to not let their words break and infiltrate your walls and destroy you from the inside out. This time, there’s something to prove, people to defend.
“No. I didn’t think it was important to mention.”
“Did you know that he was her child?”
“Yes. Not at first, but I learnt over time.”
“And you met her?”
“I’ve ate with her, she has welcomed me at her table, she is the one who dressed me for the gala.”
Your mum brings a hand over her chest. “No wonder why you looked so horrid.”
You narrow your eyes. “And yet, it received more compliments than any of the pieces you have dressed me in.”
Your father points an accusatory finger in your face. “Watch your tongue.”
“Watch yours.”
“What is wrong with you? That wretched woman is our rival, the one who has sabotaged our business for multiple quarters, have you no shame?”
“Yes, I’m sure she did it purposefully when in actuality, she simply played her cards better.”
There is steam coming out of your father’s ears. “You insolent, ungrateful brat! After everything we have built for you, you whore around behind our backs.”
“Not just with any vermin, but the Goldweaver’s son, have you no shame?” Your mother’s unempathetic voice grows pitchy; her characteristic nonchalant tone displaying a sound of disbelief that you’ve never heard before.
“His name is Phainon, and you will address him correctly.”
Your mother’s eyebrows raise slightly whilst your father’s head seems seconds away from popping off his shoulders. “Pardon?”
“He is not a vermin, nor undeserving of your respect, call him by his name.”
He laughs, and it sounds more like a guffaw, or maybe that’s how he laughs because you have never heard it before. It’s foreign, and atrocious, and like nails on chalkboard and you wish for your ears to bleed before you have to listen to it again.
“The boy has taught you how to talk back to us! You’re losing it! Our child is losing it! After all of these years of raising you, giving you the best opportunities we could, our child is losing it! Dear Kephale, let this be a mere prank!”
You sigh at the tantrum your father is throwing, pushing yourself up to your feet as you begin to walk out of the room.
The voice of your mother stops you in your tracks. “Y/n, was Phainon the boy you were telling me about? The one you were waiting before your father and I could approve?”
“...Yes,” you lie.
“You had said our approval is important to you, what changed?”
You frown. “I realised I don’t deserve to be chasing your validation for the rest of my life.”
“If you walk out of that door, say goodbye to us forever, don’t even think about turning around,” your father spits, and you ignore the way your mother slaps his shoulder, as if reprimanding him; a sight you have never witnessed in your life.
“All the times you didn’t show up, all my achievements that gather dust in a forgotten box below the stairs, I can not lose people who were never there in the first place.”
You leave after that, closing the door to end the only conversation where you had the last word.
Phone, phone, where’s your phone? Titans- your hands are shaking, they’re shaking so much, calm yourself, breathe, stop the jitters, you can’t find Phainon’s contact like this, this is unbearable, no, please, stop shaking, pull yourself together.
By some miracle your finger presses the ‘call’ button successfully. It only rings two times, but it feels unimaginably long before you hear Phainon’s voice on the other side.
“Hello?”
You exhale a breath of relief. “Phainon, are you free?”
“Of course, are you okay?”
“Please, just meet me at Marmoreal Park.”
“Y/n,” he demands, and you press your phone closer to your ear. “Breathe, you’re safe, okay?”
His voice gently talks you through your panic, six, five, four, three, two, one. Your vision stops creeping in on the edges, you can feel the shake in your hands cease, rationality slowly seeps back in. You just need to get to Marmoreal Park. Phainon’s insistent on staying on the line until you arrive, even if it’s spent in silence as you sit powerless at the back of a taxi, trying to avoid thinking about what just happened like your life depended on it.
You… you just defied your parents for the first time in your life. Finally severed the reliance you had on appeasing them, all because they slandered Phainon, the friend you’ve relied on like a rock since you arrived at the Grove. The person who always makes you feel wanted in every scenario, who will always save you a seat at every table, who is willing to stay on the line just because you called him in a frenzy, and won’t put it down until he knows you’re safe.
The person you love, and will inevitably lose because he doesn’t feel the same.
Was it worth the hellfire you ignited?
It’s all a mess, your head hurts, and worst of all, you’ve arrived at Marmoreal Park. You pay your driver the fee and leave, nerves running rampant as you hear Phainon’s voice come through your phone.
He’s here and waiting for you, but you see him and start running without thinking.
“Phainon!” You yell and he turns around, eyes widening when he sees you but he opens his arms. You barrel straight into them, needing nothing more than to ground yourself against something physical, to feel the presence of another because you think you just lost everything.
“Y/n…” his hand rubs circles on your lower back. “What happened?”
After a deep inhale, you take a step away and glance away to admire the blooms in the park. There were Crape Myrtles all around the perimeter, the tree’s special pink blossoms beautifully decorating the space, even littered all over the grass.
“I… I had an argument with my parents.”
His gaze darkens, eyebrows furrowing. “What?”
“This might be my last one, though,” you murmur. “I… I think that was the last straw. It’s fine. I’ll survive.”
“What happened?”
“I-It started because of you,” you notice him tense in the corner of your eye. “Someone saw us last night and took a photo for my parents. They didn’t like that I was with you because Aglaea, they despise her, refuse to be associated with her in any way, and that includes having their child be friends with her son.”
“Y/n…”
“They were slandering you, Phai, saying some incredibly disrespectful stuff and I couldn’t stand it.” You sigh.
“You didn’t have to,” he murmurs, “it’s fine if they hate me, I’m not worth this fight.”
“I would have done the same for any of my friends. Castorice, Mydei, Hyacine, wouldn’t you do the same for me?”
“I would.” There’s no hesitation in his voice.
Suddenly, you feel a droplet land. Is the weather was against you today as well? Really? When the weather’s been exceptionally clear for the last three weeks? What is this soap-opera level of pathetic fallacy? There’s another drop, and another, until they come bucketing down, beginning to soak through your shirt.
Using a hand to shield your eyes, Phainon grabs your other one and leads you to a nearby gazebo. Thankfully, the park was reasonably vacant for a weekday morning, so you two were the only one taking shelter. Maybe everyone else but you knew about the incoming summer downpour.
It all feels so ironic. A chill passes up your spine as you listen to the percussion of raindrops hitting the brick roof of the pavilion, watch the torrential downpour grow with no end in sight.
“So… what now?” He asks. “Where do you have to go now?”
You shrug. “I’ll figure that out after this shower passes. Realistically, they can’t be mad at me forever, but now that I’m thinking about it, I can’t say I regret it. It felt good to stand up for myself at least once, and even better to have the last word.” You laugh quietly, shoulders shaking as a decrepit sense of satisfaction creeps up on you. “If anything, I think it’s taught me that I should speak my mind more often.”
“Does that mean you have more left to say?”
You huff. “Is that a bad thing?”
“No. Not at all. In fact, I think you should get it all out.”
“Right now?”
“Right now.”
“Even if it may be for the worse?”
“The worst’s already happened, what else could go wrong?”
“Fine.” You turn to face him square-on, steading yourself. “Phainon, of Aedes Elysiae, I like you. There, now I’ve really fucked everything up- mmhg!”
The words are stolen from your mouth by a pair of lips sealing against yours. Your squeal of surprise is muffled, devoured by him as big hands cradle your cheeks, tangling in the tresses of your hair.
Warm. So warm, despite how drenched he is, Phainon feels so warm. His hands are warm, his body pressing up against yours is warm, his lips that are moulding with yours are so warm. Adoration spreads in your body, as if he’s injecting it like the oxygen you need to breathe, letting it trickle like warm, sticky honey that will refuse to leave as it coats your bones.
He’s pulling away and taking the warmth with him too soon. You miss it. You miss it more than you thought you could, which is ironic, because Phainon is right in front of you.
“I’ve waited too long to hear you say that,” he whispers, stealing shorter kisses from your lips by squeezing your cheeks together. “You’ve made me the happiest man alive,” kiss, “I’ll be the best boyfriend ever,” kiss, “I am so happy right now, I could take down an army of Titankin.”
“Wait- wait, let’s talk about this!” You intercept his lips before he could get anymore carried away. “You like me?”
“Holy Kephale, I’ve loved you since I first laid my eyes on you, let me have this moment,” he pulls you in again, bending his neck to meet you halfway. This time, you melt into his touch, letting him lead as he moves his lips against yours.
Faintly, Aglaea’s words ring in your mind: ‘The love of Phainon’s life’... ‘genuine intentions’. You unwillingly smile against his lips, and he takes that as a sign to part but not without a lick against your nose.
“What… what was that?” You stammer.
“Nose kiss.”
“That wasn’t a kiss, weirdo,” you wipe the wetness off as he smiles affectionately at you, not at all apologetic or regretful. It makes your heart flip.
“Your weirdo.”
“It’s too early to pull out that corny line. Plus, we have a lot to talk about: what do you mean you’ve liked me since you first saw me? I… I thought you didn’t like me.”
If it were possible, question marks would have materialised on top of Phainon’s white hair. “I don’t think I could have made it any more obvious. I tried kissing you last night and you thought I didn’t like you?”
“It- it could have been friendly?”
“If you kiss all of your friends then I’m gonna go wrestle Mydei and tear his face off.”
“Phainon!”
“Just kidding!”
You narrow your eyes at him before sighing, leaning against his shoulder. You stay like this for a while, neither of you speaking as the downpour continues, encasing you in your own little bubble.
“And I thought this trip home would be the same as always, a torturous three months that I’d have to endure by a hanging thread,” you muse, scoffing at the unexpected turn this holiday has taken. “This city is the furthest thing from beautiful, or eternal, or holy, but you have shown me that maybe… there are many things to love about it,” you glance up at him, and he’s already looking at you. “Maybe, it was all worth it in the end, the grass is warmer on your side.”
The weather clears not too long afterwards.
· · ─ · ☼ · ─ · ·
“This photo of us is so cute!” Hyacine exclaims, scrolling through her photo album as you and Castorice peer over her shoulder. “I think I want to post this one, thoughts?”
“I like this one a lot, you look so pretty,” Castorice comments. “I’m jealous, I wish I had gone to Okhema as well now, it would have been so incredible exploring the city with you.”
“Hyacine and I had a blast, but at least your sister came to visit, that must have been good,” you try your best to console her.
Your pink-haired friend pipes up with an idea: “we should definitely plan out a trip sometime soon, that would be so fun!”
They both look to you. “Well, I probably will be going home now more often,” you admit sheepishly, and await their reactions.
Before Phainon, Castorice and Hyacine were the only ones with a general understanding of your home life as you would vaguely talk about it with them during late nights spent in each other’s dorms. They knew surface-level information; that you hated going home because of strict parents, so their shock was reasonable.
“What!” Hyacine’s eyes widen and Castorice’s hand comes to her mouth.
“You told me you had to be on your best behaviour for a week so your mum could agree to hang out with me, what changed?”
You barely get a word out before the reason himself comes behind you and unceremoniously drapes himself over your shoulders. The two girls gasp loudly, the second shock of the day arriving in the form of a clingy boyfriend who is loudly proclaiming that he ‘missed youuu’ while wrapping you in a hug so tight, you think he’s squeezing the air out of you.
“I mean, we both had a hunch based on the pictures you’d send in the groupchat, but… Y/n!” Exclaims Hyacine as Phainon presses two very loud and dramatised kisses against your hairline.
“Phai, please,” you feel heat creeping up your neck at his bold displays of affection. While you don’t necessarily hate it and actually quite like his attention, all of your friends were staring, and they didn’t need to watch you receiving it.
He gently tilts your chin so you look up at him, white hair falling down and tickling your forehead. “Hi angel,” he greets like nothing is wrong before rounding the bench to sit down on the opposite side, beside Mydei, who is very unbothered, expression as neutral as ever as he eats a protein bar.
Castorice speaks up. “Y/n, why didn’t you tell us earlier?”
“There wasn’t a good enough time…”
“Anytime is a good time!” Hyacine squeals, pigtails bouncing. “You can tell us anything, especially something as important as this!”
“I know, I know, I promise I was going to, but there-” you try to explain before your boyfriend interrupts you.
“-tell you what?” He asks innocently. “What’s up?”
“That you and Y/n were dating,” the purple-haired explains calmly.
“What!” Phainon’s gasp is probably louder than both Castorice and Hyacine’s combined as a look of pure shock and betrayal sets on his expression, “why didn’t you tell them?”
You wave your hands defensively, trying to fight a losing battle. “I was going to, I swear, but there was just never a good time, and I’m shy and hate talking about myself for too long and-”
“-I’ve told Mydei three times by now!”
The man in question agrees. “He has. In excruciating detail.”
“Guys!” You whine, “I’m sorry!”
“Wait,” Phainon visibly perks up, like a dog who was just thrown his favorite treat. “If you haven’t told them, then can I tell them?”
“I don’t trust your commentary!”
“What? My commentary is a flawless retelling, you don’t trust your own boyfriend?”
“Let me tell them first, okay?”
He deflates. “Okay.”
After a nice lunch with your friends, all of you catching up and chatting about what you did in the holidays, you and Phainon find yourselves alone once again, sat under the shade of a magnolia tree. He is, as always, laying on your lap, trying to find a comfortable spot for his ‘optimal time of the day’ nap, happily wrapping his arms around your legs and manhandling them as he pleases, while you’re subject to his whims.
“Happy?” You ask when he finally finds a favourable position, which happens to be his head on your thighs while his arms are wrapped around your stomach.
With the way he hums, you’re certain he’s quite content. So, you thread your fingers through his hair and begin playing with the strands; a habit you have after he told you that it helped him fall asleep faster.
As he dozes off, you take the time to think about everything that transpired over summer.
As soon as your feelings for each other were confirmed, Phainon practically dragged you home to tell Aglaea, who was certainly delighted with the new status of your relationship. She was hardly surprised, though, giving you an ‘I told you so’ look before welcoming you as a new member of the family. The hug felt so nice and warm, it was your second best memory from that day.
It is still complicated back home. Your mother has grown more amicable with the idea over time, so much so that she has suggested the idea of bringing Phainon over, but your father is stubborn and refusing to relent. He has always been too preoccupied with work for you to care, though. As long as you did what he was told, he never got in your way.
As a magnolia blossom falls from the tree and lands perfectly in his snow-white hair, you giggle at the placement, threading it to sit behind his ear as he sleeps peacefully.
this progression from start to finish is precisely the kind of fic I've been craving
setting that aside though: the bit about her being the dust on a windowsill and how that descriptor already demonstrates how little she thinks of herself, but then she proceeds to go and get something to wipe it off because dust is something that must be removed. Then the dust plays back in later with Aglea! brilliant
this thing hit really hard and I kinda got misty eyed at some point thinking about how she's chasing for love and affection and just to be seen. that whole "I want to be loved unconditionally" just like yeah - figuratively stab me in the chest why don't you?
Aglea's warmth in this fic is...phenomenal, and I really enjoy the heart to heart when she's styling the reader character. Aglea saying that Phainon used her to ensnare the girl who is "the love of his life" (and the way that went over her head and so I was like: welp guess it's not that important of a detail - brilliant) like, she knew. She knew what was up and she was like: sure, go ahead, I'll let you guys think you got away with this. what a queen
Phainon's confession has me though. What a sweet, sweet, sweet confession. first the -mmhg and I was like: yeah, he's definitely lost patience and just gone for it and he had. The bit where he's saying things between kisses in adorable, and then this line had me all giddy: “Holy Kephale, I’ve loved you since I first laid my eyes on you, let me have this moment,” pfffffft. He is so sweet, I'm kicking my feet typing this out!
also the bit about fighting Mydei and tearing his face off was hilarious too. not to mention the bit in the end about how he's told Mydei at least 3 times now, and you have Mydei being like: yeah in excruciating detail, like dude has tolerated enough of Phainon's nonsense
speaking of nonsense! him being over the top with physical displays of affection in front of their friends, like yepp, he is happy, these are his friends, of course he will demonstrate his joy and affection in front of them.
oh also the bit about him getting mildly pouty about her not having said anything yet and then him getting excited about being the one to tell the story and then the "don't you trust your boyfriend" was just very entertaining! and saccharine. and sweet. and *huffs* (trying not to screech)
while these specific bits really stood out to me there's a lot else that is starting to become clear as I type this out:
you made Phainon's genuine love very obvious. I really enjoy that his displays aren't classically "romantic". But they are genuine, very real displays of love, they're him being there for her, providing unwavering support, and providing space and being considerate of her needs. One bit I really liked was the: "then say it" because I found the whole, don't share, don't burden thing really relatable and year people will offer, but I will try not to take that offer
(unlike this cool MC of yours I have loose lips unfortunately)
it's the thoughtfulness in bringing her that pomegranate latte, it's the way he's like let me accompany you on your errands, it's the way he so eagerly pulls her into his world, his life. That little checkup when she's at a gala without him too. The way he sends her little chimera photos like he can sense she needs a pick-me up. The way he just holds her when that's what she needs and again doesn't pry.
Phainon's actions have been screaming "I love you, and I care for you," from the very beginning, so when Aglea confirms our suspicions it's like of course, thank you. But when he just about bursts it out on that balcony (again through his actions, even if that "beautiful, and couldn't take my eyes off you bit" were dead giveaways)
speaking of, the other hints were really subtle and I enjoyed them: the sharing drinks and his napping in her lap. I was like: that's not exactly typical friend behavior...I mean my girl friends and I absolutely do this in a strictly-platonic manner, but like...for these two? I was wondering if there was going to be any focus on the fact they were sharing drinks at all, but nope.
I know I am focusing on the shared drinks thing a lot, but it was just such a thoughtful little detail that demonstrated how thoughtful and now that I think about it, how attentive Phainon is. "You like pomegranate right?" like that was a detail he'd taken and chronicled into his memory because it was a detail about her
oh and the topic of Phainon, love the way you preserved his mischief and playfulness, that bit about we'll find out it we're allowed to be up here when we're caught was lovely.
speaking of, is the reason Phainon used Aglea as an excuse, and then that whole we need to fake a relationship, just a part of an elaborate plan to be able to take the "love of his life" (yes I will be using this, thank you Aglea and writer) on dates and potentially woo and charm her, prior to making a real move? like I can see him being this strategic in this regards...
now that I'm in full swing, lemme comment on the juxtaposition of Aglea's styling vs the parents
I really liked that. When I was reading the messages (Pie-non is such a cute name for that cutie-pie) I was thinking about how the parents would cry betrayal later. Then when Aglea dressed her, I wasn't surprised that she felt comfortable. Oh wait I just remembered the bit about the jewelry her parents picked for her "paired with beautiful gems that weigh down your chest and wrists." they sounded like shackles which was brilliant! I was thoroughly enjoying that detail!
HOW COULD I FORGET ABOUT THE KNUCKLE KISS. Listen that was the biggest giveaway and she still missed it. like. the sheer amount of yearning and longing in that one action had meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeed
oh and one descriptor you used more than once that I found really interesting was the idea of things being like honey and sticking to your bones like honey, never seen that before and it's neat! and I like honey (lots of health benefits!) and I associate it with warmth, so it's like this nice warm, healthy stuff clinging to the bones and warming us from the inside out...kinda like Phainon!
ah I really gushed for a while, there were so many neat tidbits and writing choices. I'm a sucker for these more tangible displays of love. Unwavering support, understanding, and kindness just hit differently and you portrayed them so well while remaining true to the character! That's awesome
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turnnoffyourmind
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