Pomefiore with Snow White!Reader
Vil knows poison better than he knows mercy.
That is the first truth you learn about loving him.
The second is that he does not love gently.
You were too lovely from the start—too soft, too pure, too painfully adored by everyone who looked your way. You moved through Night Raven College like a fairytale misplaced in something cruel, with woodland creatures gathering at your feet and students smiling too warmly when you passed.
Your sweetness.
Your softness.
The effortless devotion you inspired in others.
He watched and understood, with cold certainty, that beauty like yours could not survive unattended.
So he made sure it never had to.
At first, it was elegant.
A hand at the small of your back steering you elsewhere.
A smile sharp enough to send others retreating.
A whispered warning in your ear when someone lingered too close.
Tea gone bitter after someone complimented you too boldly.
A classmate too sick to speak after touching your hand.
Rumors spreading with surgical precision until your circle shrank and shrank and shrank.
Each cruelty was clean.
Measured.
Beautiful.
By the time you noticed how lonely the world had become, Vil had already settled himself into every empty space.
He dressed you.
Fed you.
Curated who saw you and when.
Taught you which smiles were safe and which were poison.
And when you cried over how quiet your life had become, Vil only brushed the tears from your cheeks with gloved hands and kissed the corner of your mouth.
“You should thank me,” he murmured. “Do you know how many ugly things I removed before they could stain you?”
You do not understand what he means until the day you find the body.
A boy from another dorm.
Face pale.
Lips violet.
Curled in the garden like something discarded.
Vil finds you staring and sighs like you have inconvenienced him.
Then he steps behind you, silk-smooth and warm, covering your eyes too late to spare you the sight.
“You were never meant to see that,” he says softly.
His voice is almost fond.
“Now look what you made me do.”
That night, he washes your trembling hands himself.
Undresses you himself.
Puts a glass of something sweet to your lips and smiles when you hesitate.
“Drink,” he says, and it is not a request.
You wake the next morning weaker.
Dizzier.
Softer around the edges.
Vil strokes your hair and tells you recovery will take time.
By the time you realize he has started poisoning you too, it is far too late.
Just enough to make you dependent.
Too tired to run.
Too sick to wander.
Too weak to survive beyond the safety of his hands.
He presses a kiss to your temple as you shiver beneath silk sheets.
“Don’t look so frightened,” he murmurs. “I would never ruin you.”
His thumb traces your pulse.
“I’m only making sure you’ll never have the strength to leave.”
Rook falls in love with you like a hunter spots something rare in the woods:
silently,
instantly,
and with the full intent to claim.
You never notice him at first.
Birds go still when he is near.
Rabbits vanish into brush.
The forest quiets in warning while you stand in the center of it, lovely and smiling and far too unaware of what is watching you from between the trees.
Rook memorizes you before he speaks to you.
Your routines.
Your laughter.
The way your lips part when startled.
How your voice softens when you speak to frightened things.
By the time he steps into your life, he has already built a shrine to you in his mind.
A red ribbon tied to your window latch.
Flowers placed on your pillow.
A polished apple left at your bedside despite the locked door.
You should have been frightened then.
Rook thinks that is the moment he truly becomes dangerous.
He begins to follow closer.
Stand nearer.
Touch longer.
He tells you stories about predators in the forest, voice low and warm as he tucks your hair behind your ear.
“You must be careful, mon trésor. Sweet things are always eaten first.”
And slowly, the people around you begin to disappear.
A student who walked you home.
A boy who held your hand too long.
Someone who smiled too fondly.
The school whispers.
Rook smiles.
You begin to notice blood beneath his gloves.
The first time you try to pull away, he does not stop you.
Lets you stumble breathless into the woods.
Lets panic claw your throat raw.
Lets you think, for one glorious moment, that you might escape.
Bits of red in the undergrowth.
A ribbon tangled in branches.
A hand half-buried in the roots with your name carved into the wrist.
You do not scream long before Rook is behind you.
He covers your mouth with one gloved hand, the other curling around your waist as he pulls you back against his chest.
“Shh,” he murmurs, almost tender. “Do not ruin the quiet.”
You sob against his palm.
Rook only nuzzles into your hair and sighs like something lovesick.
“I warned them,” he says. “Each one.”
“But they kept reaching for what was mine.”
He takes you deeper into the woods after that.
To the place where the walls are lined with your ribbons, your dropped trinkets, your handwriting pinned like pressed flowers.
A collector’s shrine.
A hunter’s nest.
He chains your ankle to the bed that night with hands so gentle it makes you sick.
Then kisses your knee like devotion.
“You needn’t fear the wolves anymore, mon trésor,” he whispers.
“I have already fed them.”
Epel loves you the way starving things love softness.
Messily.
Desperately.
Like he wants to bite.
You were kind to him first.
A smile.
A hand on his arm.
An apple pressed into his palm with that sweet voice and sweeter face and all that softness that made something ugly in him start clawing to the surface.
You looked at him like he was safe.
Epel has never forgiven you for that.
Because once you looked at him that way, he needed to keep it.
Needed it like breath.
Like blood.
Like something holy enough to ruin himself for.
At first, he only scared people off.
A threat here.
A bruise there.
A smile with too many teeth when someone got too close to you.
Then someone kissed your cheek in front of him.
Epel broke three fingers and dislocated the boy’s jaw.
You cried when you found out.
Not for Epel.
For the other boy.
And something in him curdled mean.
After that, he stopped pretending his temper was for your sake.
He started deciding things for you.
Who you spoke to.
Where you went.
How long you were allowed out of his sight.
He dragged you into empty classrooms to hiss sharp warnings in your ear.
Left bruises on your wrists shaped like fingerprints.
Bit your shoulder hard enough to scar when you smiled too sweetly at someone else.
“Quit lookin’ at people like that,” he snapped one night, shoving you down onto his bed hard enough to make you gasp. “You act like the whole world’s safe just ‘cause it smiles at ya.”
His hands shook when they pinned yours.
“You keep makin’ people want things they oughta lose teeth for.”
When you tried to leave, he snapped.
Just a sudden, awful silence before his hands were around your throat and his face was twisted into something terrified and furious and heartbroken all at once.
Just enough to make you understand how easily he could.
Tears streamed down your face.
His hands trembled.
He looked more frightened than you did.
And when he let go, it was only to pull you into his lap and hold you so tightly it hurt.
He buried his face in your neck, breathing hard, half-sick with panic.
“Don’t do that again,” he whispered, voice cracked raw. “Don’t make me be that scared again.”
His fingers slid to the bruises blooming at your throat and stroked them like something tender.
Then he kissed each mark, one by one.
“Next time,” he said, quiet and shaking, “I’ll chain ya up before I let ya try.”
