A snippet from my grindeldore fic -
The Hall of Mirrors shimmered with candlelight, a golden world of reflections and revelry. Perfumed laughter drifted through the air, mingling with the clinking of crystal goblets and the low murmur of intrigue. Beneath chandeliers that burned like captured constellations, nobles swayed in elaborate silks, their powdered wigs nodding with feigned indifference, their lips curling around whispered betrayals.
Albus had never felt more out of place.
He stood at the edge of the celebration, dressed in fine but unembellished garments, his physician’s hands restless at his sides. Versailles, for all its grandeur, reeked of sickness. Beneath the rouge and pomade, beneath the gilded brocade, he could hear the shallow, consumptive breaths of men who had feasted too richly on excess. He had come here under the guise of a healer, summoned to treat the Duke d’Orléans, but the court was a web he had no wish to be entangled in.
“You look as though you’d rather be anywhere else, Albus.”
The voice was silk wrapped around steel, a blade hidden beneath velvet.
Albus turned sharply, already knowing who he would find.
Gellert stood before him, clad in a midnight-blue coat embroidered with silver, the high collar framing his sharp, amused features. A half-mask obscured his face, but it did nothing to hide the glint in his eyes—the same glint Albus had seen across centuries, across war-torn cities and plague-ridden streets.
“You should not be here,” Albus murmured, his voice low."
Gellert smiled. “And yet, neither should you.”
He stepped closer, and Albus felt it—the quiet inevitability of it, like the tide pulling against the shore. The scent of bergamot and something darker curled between them. Gellert reached out, gloved fingers tracing the edge of Albus’s mask, as if testing its reality.
“Tell me,” he whispered, “is it exhausting? Carrying all that righteousness?”
Albus swallowed, his pulse a betrayer against his throat. “Is it exhausting, Gellert, carrying all those lives on your conscience?”
Gellert’s lips quirked. “Not at all.”
A waltz began, the strings rising like a held breath. Gellert extended a hand. An invitation. A challenge.
Albus hesitated for only a moment before taking it.
Their fingers laced together, and the room around them blurred into golden haze.
