The corridor still carried the echo of what had happened and what hadn't been said. It hung in the air like smoke that refused to clear, a residue of magic too stubborn to fade with morning. The stones held it, the torches hummed with it, even the air seemed shaped by it. Beneath the scent of old parchment and crushed violets, there was that faint metallic taste of magic straining against its leash. And threaded through all of it was that same pull—the strange, magnetic weight that always seemed to drag them back into orbit, no matter how far they tried to walk.
Her handprint was still visible on his face. A bright flare of red against the pale cut of his cheekbone, fingers marked clear as flame, heat frozen into skin. It looked both holy and profane, a bruise of honesty against someone who had built a life out of composure. He hadn't lifted a hand to touch it. He hadn't even flinched when it landed. Now it remained as the only proof that he was made of flesh and not marble, the only evidence that she had reached him.
He stood without moving, each breath coming sharp and uneven, as if his ribs were unsure how to work without her pressed against them. His posture stayed rigid, an act of control that looked almost painful. His eyes—cold, restrained, perpetually guarded—never left hers. Not her mouth. Not the curve of her throat. Just her eyes, that steady place he kept returning to when everything else in him was breaking apart.
She turned.
The motion was slow, almost regal, like someone reclaiming her body after too much surrender. Her bare feet made no sound on the stone. Her robe slipped from one shoulder, light catching on her collarbone as she walked, and for a fleeting moment she looked untouchable, something caught between vision and memory. She moved with no anger left in her, only quiet resolve. It wasn't retreat. It was the soft, devastating decision to leave.
And that was what broke him.
His hand found her waist before he could stop himself. It wasn't rough, but it was absolute. The world contracted to the single act of reaching for her. He turned her toward him, the fabric of her robe catching between them, her hair fanning in a pale arc through the air. Then her back met the wall.
He didn't shove her. He pressed her there with a certainty that stole the air from the room. His body leaned in close enough for her to feel his heartbeat, steady and wild against her chest. The warmth of him moved through the thin layers between them, grounding and suffocating all at once.
He didn't kiss her. Not yet.
His breath moved against her skin, warm where her pulse jumped beneath his mouth. He stayed close enough for her to feel every word when he finally spoke. His voice was low, rough, and shaped by the kind of restraint that trembles at the edge of breaking.
"You wanted his hands, or mine?"
It wasn't really a question. It was something older than speech, heavy with accusation and longing. The sound of it cut through her, threaded through her ribs, slipped under her skin. It was a truth and a wound all at once.
Her lips parted, but the words caught before they could form. She couldn't answer, not with thought, not with reason. The silence between them filled with heartbeat and breath and the faint hum of magic still trapped in the walls.
Then his hands moved.
They found her hips with a certainty that spoke of memory rather than thought. His touch wasn't cruel. It wasn't gentle either. It was desperate. It carried the ache of someone who had been starving quietly for too long and had finally stopped pretending he could survive it.
He shifted his weight, slow and deliberate, his hand sliding between her thighs until the heat of her pulse met his palm. The movement was small but devastating. He pressed upward just enough to make her remember. Where she was. Who she was with. What she had been asking for all along without ever speaking it aloud.
Not to hurt. Not to prove power. Just to remind.
It was enough.
Enough to pull a breath from her throat. Enough to make her spine arch until her head found the wall again, her neck exposed to the air, the skin there trembling with the ache of want.
He stayed still.
He didn't thrust, didn't grind, didn't move beyond that held breath between contact and denial. He simply kept her there, caught in the narrow space where restraint feels like worship.
One hand hovered near her throat, tracing the rhythm of her pulse, steady and alive under his fingers. The other lingered lower, brushing the edge of silk, knuckles grazing warmth that made her knees weaken. He didn't touch her where she wanted it most. He only outlined the possibility, drawing the shape of her need without crossing into it. It was patience. It was cruelty. It was devotion disguised as control.
The air in the corridor thickened. Even the magic felt awake, charged and restless, humming between them like static before a storm. It wrapped around them both, neither binding nor burning, only waiting for the smallest command.
When he spoke again, his voice came rough and quiet, stripped bare of everything but the truth.
"Tell me no." He swallowed, his breath catching against her ear. "Tell me you don't want this. Tell me to stop, and I will."
She knew he meant it. It was there in the tension of his arms, in the effort it took for him to stay still when every part of him wanted to move. If she said no, he would let her go. He would turn away. He would destroy himself before he risked destroying her.
But she couldn't.
Her voice was gone, caught somewhere between her lungs and the tremor that ran down her spine. Her body had stopped listening to her mind. Every thought dissolved into the warmth pooling low in her stomach, into the ache that pulsed where his fingers hovered. Her hands found his sleeve, holding tight, desperate for something solid. The teacup from earlier had shattered quietly on the floor, forgotten.
Her silence became its own answer.
Her hips moved first, a small, helpless motion, slow enough to look accidental, deep enough to betray her. The contact made her gasp, and that single sound undid him more than any word could have.
Her hands clutched the front of his shirt. Not to fight. To anchor. The fabric bunched in her fists, her knuckles whitening as she held him there, grounding herself in the shape of him. He was warmth. He was weight. He was the only steady thing in a world that had gone to pieces around them.
Her grip trembled. Her breath broke. And then she said his name.
"Draco."
It was barely a whisper, but it hit him like prayer.
He didn't kiss her. He didn't need to.
What followed wasn't tenderness. It wasn't cruelty either. It was hunger turned to language. Every breath he took, every shift of his hands, spoke what his mouth refused to admit. He touched her the way a man confesses without words, the way someone starved finally lets himself eat.
His fingers slid up the inside of her cunt, fingers parting silk with reverence and cruelty entwined, slow like worship, firm like a claim. Each inch he ascended was deliberate, unhurried, like he was reacquainting himself with sacred ground, the pads of his fingers brushing along the curve of her leg with an intimacy that bordered on reverence. He mapped. As if every tremble beneath his hand wrote a truth he had always known: that this body, this heat, this need was his to know, and his alone.
He moved with no softness. No apology.
His fingers were certain, precise, unbearably slow—not rough, never rough, but purposeful in a way that unraveled her more completely than violence ever could.
This was where she broke.
Not in Blaise's hands.
Not in flirtation or fantasy. Not in laughter or longing or the polite affection of someone who wanted pieces of her.
But here.
With him.
She gasped when he found her—his hand beneath her knickers now, warm and devastatingly sure, cupping her like he was cradling something fragile and furious.
His fingers moved in soft, devastating strokes, slow at first, then more focused, a rhythm coaxed from her body like music he already knew by heart. He didn't fumble. Didn't rush. He just learned her in real time, like he'd been waiting for this knowledge, this closeness, his whole life.
The heel of his palm pressed in slow, precise circles against that aching point, each movement drawn with the kind of focus that made her feel studied—known. He wasn't rushing. He didn't need to. Every motion was deliberate, every stroke designed to pull her apart by degrees. That rhythmic pressure sent shivers up her spine, but it was the flicks of his fingers that made her body arch instinctively into his hand, like he was pulling pleasure from her in layers, one breathless gasp at a time.
His fingers slid lower, slick with her arousal, parting her with a reverent ease that made her tremble. He stroked through her folds, then back up, circling that swollen bud of nerves with the barest graze of his touch. She whimpered, and gods, he noticed. Every twitch, every shudder, every soft inhale, he read them like language, adjusted to them like instinct.
He pressed two fingers inside slowly, not to fill, not yet—but to feel. The stretch was just enough to make her hips jerk, her thighs clench, but he didn't push further. Not until she was already pulsing around the intrusion, already breathless from his palm still rolling firm and steady against her clit.
Then, and only then, he curled his fingers and found the spot inside her that made her whole body seize with heat.
He rocked. Deep, slow drags of his fingers against that sweet, aching place while his palm coaxed her higher, until she was clinging to him, gasping his name like a secret too hot to keep.
Her legs trembled, her hips moving against his hand in slow, instinctive rolls that had nothing to do with control and everything to do with need. Her hands gripped his shirt harder now, anchoring herself to the steady weight of him as the tension inside her built with frightening speed, climbing and climbing, like a tide she could no longer resist.
She buried her face in the curve of his neck, teeth grazing fabric, body tensing and trembling and drowning.
She was unraveling under him, every breath caught somewhere between a gasp and a plea, her body arched into his touch like it was the only truth she knew. Draco's fingers moved with devastating precision, coaxing her closer and closer with each steady, curling stroke. His thumb circled her clit with that maddening rhythm he knew drove her wild—firm, deliberate, patient, like he wanted her to fall apart slowly.
Her thighs trembled. Her hands gripped his shoulders like she needed to hold onto something, anything, or risk floating away entirely.
"Look at me," he murmured, voice low, rough with want and devotion. "Don't hide from this. I want to see you come for me."
She blinked up at him, eyes glassy, lips parted, a moan slipping free as he pressed deeper, rubbed firmer and everything inside her tightened like a coil ready to snap.
"That's it," he breathed, his forehead brushing against hers.
Her body bucked against his hand, chasing it, begging for release without words, and he felt it—the way her walls fluttered around his fingers, the way her breath hitched in her throat.
"Let go," he whispered, kissing her cheek, her jaw, her neck. "I've got you, doll. Just let it take you."
She cried out as the wave crested, shattered, and consumed her. Her entire body trembled with the force of it, her mouth finding his shoulder, muffling the sob of release as pleasure tore through her in waves. He held her through it, fingers slowing but never leaving, grounding her, murmuring soft praise against her skin.
"Good girl… just like that. So beautiful when you come for me. So perfect."
He kissed her temple, still stroking gently as the tremors faded, his other hand brushing hair from her flushed face, his expression one of awe and utter possession.
"You're mine," he said, voice barely more than a breath. "Every piece of you."
She folded into him like prayer, every limb heavy, her body shaking against his as her release rolled through her in waves—sharp, soft, merciless.
And he never stopped holding her.
Just pressed his forehead to hers and let her fall apart where she was safest.
Her knees gave. Her body shook. Her forehead found his shoulder as if gravity had finally done what pride could not—pulled her down, in, close. Her hands slid up further, still clutching his shirt, fingers curling near his collar now, nails grazing his skin through the shirt like even in her unraveling, she wanted to leave something behind.
She bit him.
She needed something to hold on to. Anything. Because he had taken her apart without ever kissing her.
And still… he didn't.
He didn't press his mouth to hers. Didn't seal it with lips or tongue or even breath.
He held her.
Let her tremble. Let her breathe. Let her fall apart in his arms like something precious being dismantled and not discarded. Like she was being rebuilt in the aftermath of her own silence.
And when her eyes opened he didn't smile.
He leaned in, slow and close, his forehead pressing to hers, so that their breath mingled, so that their magic could tangle again in the space where nothing else could live.
And then, so quietly it could have been mistaken for prayer, he said,
"You don't get to pretend anymore."
She slid to the floor like a spell dissolving midair—slow and boneless, unraveling as if her body had finally remembered its limits after being held too tightly in the fist of something vast and consuming.
There was no spectacle to her collapse. No cry, no drama, no echo of pain that could be named. Only gravity and breath and the quiet ache that comes when a body has been held too tightly for too long. Her back met the wall with a sound barely louder than a sigh, knees folding beneath her as though the strength had simply left. The silk of her dress spilled around her legs, soft and tangled, catching the light in uneven waves that made her look undone and luminous all at once.
She didn't cry. She didn't tremble. She didn't lift her gaze to find his.
Her fingers clutched at her knee as if instinct alone could save her, holding so hard her skin whitened at the knuckles. For a moment she stayed like that, gripping the edge of herself, fighting to remember where she began. Then her hands loosened. The strength went out of them, and they fell into her lap, open and unguarded, as though she had forgotten what she had been holding on to. Her shoulders rose and fell in broken rhythm, each breath unsteady and sharp, the sound of someone relearning how to breathe after forgetting for too long. One breath. Then another. Then stillness.
Draco stood over her, motionless, every muscle locked in the effort of restraint. His fists were tight at his sides, veins standing out along his forearms, nails pressing crescent marks into his palms. His breath came rough through his nose, short and uneven, like it scraped its way out of him each time.
He hadn't moved. Not one inch. But the tension in him was visible, a living thing. His spine stayed straight, his jaw set hard enough to ache, his eyes burning with the kind of focus that hurt to witness. The color had not yet left his face. His pulse beat at the base of his throat, visible beneath the collar of his shirt, as if it wanted to escape the skin that contained it.
He watched her.
And he could not stop.
Every look was a wound he gave himself, every second an act of penance. The magic in him had not quieted. It glowed faintly beneath his skin, restless and dangerous, painting the air between them in shades of heat and regret.
She stayed still, her face turned away, her silence a wall he did not know how to climb.
Neither spoke. Not a word. There were no explanations that would have meant anything, no apology that would not sound like a lie. The space between them was full of breath and heartbeat and the weight of what could never be undone.
It wasn't absence that filled the silence. It was everything.
The air shimmered with everything they hadn't said, everything they hadn't managed to stop themselves from doing. What lingered between them was not peace. It was the aftermath, the strange, suspended quiet that follows when something sacred burns itself away.
It pulsed between them, thick and heavy, alive with the ghosts of words that had never found breath. It felt like standing inside a spell that had never finished casting, the air dense with tension and truth. They breathed it in without meaning to, trapped in the same unbearable stillness, until time began to move again—or maybe it didn't.
The only sound was the rough, uneven catch of their breathing.
She moved first.
Her palm met the wall behind her, fingers spread wide as if she needed the stone to remind her of what was solid. She pushed herself upright, her legs trembling under the effort. They had carried her through worse, through nights full of defiance and laughter, but now they shook beneath the weight of something too new to name. Her movement wasn't graceful. It wasn't steady. It was the small, painful kind of real that comes after breaking.
Every inch of her resisted leaving that spot, the place where she had been unmade and remade all at once. Her skin still hummed with the echo of him, the heat of his hands, the rasp of his voice. She stood anyway, spine straightening inch by inch, the act itself a quiet rebellion against what had just consumed her.
The dress clung where it chose to, loose in some places, tight in others, slipping from one shoulder to reveal flushed skin and the faint trace of his touch. It wasn't a bruise. It wasn't tenderness either. It was a mark of something that had lived between them for one impossible heartbeat too long. Her throat carried its own memory, a ghost of pressure where his palm had rested, where his thumb had waited—not to claim, but to understand.
Her hair had come undone, strands tangled and damp against her neck. Light caught on them like a halo trying to rebuild itself. Her face was flushed, her lips parted, her breath still uneven. She looked alive in a way that was almost unbearable—half chaos, half prayer.
And yet, her expression was unreadable. It didn't shake. It didn't soften. It didn't reveal what it cost her to hold herself together. It was composed in the way that quiet grief sometimes is, every emotion sealed neatly behind the door she had built inside herself. Not slammed. Not locked in panic. Just closed with care.
She turned.
And walked past him.
Each step she took was a quiet act of defiance, a slow refusal to fall apart again. Her bare feet moved across the cold stone, the sound so soft it could have been imagined, yet it filled the space between them like a heartbeat he could not silence. The hem of her dress brushed against her calves, loose and shifting, betraying no trace of the hands that had held her minutes before. Her arms hung at her sides, open but unsteady, her fingers trembling just enough for him to notice—because he noticed everything.
Her scent lingered as she passed, that unmistakable blend of tea leaves and rain and the faint sweetness of crushed flowers. It followed her like a spell she didn't mean to cast, an invisible thread that tied him to the space she was leaving behind. When she reached the place where their bodies had collided, where everything had changed, she didn't pause. Not even for a breath.
She walked straight through it, steady and silent, like someone crossing the site of their own undoing.
Draco stayed where he was. His chest rose and fell too fast. His palms burned where his fingers had dug into his own skin. His jaw ached from the force of restraint. He let her go. Not because he wanted to. Because he had no choice. Because to reach for her now would have meant surrendering everything he was still trying to protect.
She had meant to hit him.
Not to wound. Not to perform. But to reach him. The strike had come from a place far deeper than anger, from that desperate, terrible kind of love that hurts more than hate ever could. She had raised her hand not to punish, but to wake him—to break through the mask, to remind him that he was still human beneath all the fury and fear.
She had wanted to stop him before the darkness could swallow him whole. To pull him back from the edge. To make him remember what she saw when she looked at him.
That he was not lost.
Not a beast trapped in his own fire. Not a creature made only of power and ruin.
He was still Draco. And she had struck him to keep it that way.
Her legs still trembled beneath the soft sweep of her dress. Her knees felt unsteady, her bare feet cold against the stone that had pressed against her back only moments ago. The same place he had held her. The same place she had come undone. Her chest ached with that strange confusion where heartbreak and desire begin to sound alike. Her heart beat against her ribs like something trapped, frantic to flee but unwilling to leave the warmth that had burned it alive.
She could still feel the ghost of his hand, the trace of him slick against her thighs. Her breath caught at the memory of his mouth near her ear, his voice spilling through her like a spell whispered in the dark, his touch writing truths on her skin she had never meant to crave.
And now, she wasn't sure anymore.
Not about the slap. That sudden burst of anger she had summoned like a weapon, sharp and sure, meant to draw a boundary. Meant to remind him who he was, and who she refused to let him become.
Not about the lesson either. That fierce need to be understood, to show him that devotion was not ownership, that love could not be taken like land and held by force.
Not about any of it—their parts in the story, the winner or the conquered, the illusion of control either of them thought they had.
Something had shifted. Irrevocably.
And the truth crept in, hot and unwanted, filling her lungs until she could barely breathe. It settled in her stomach like something heavy she would have to carry alone. The truth was this: whatever power she believed she'd reclaimed when her palm struck his cheek, whatever small triumph she thought she'd earned in that sharp moment of defiance, had already slipped away by the time his mouth brushed her ear and he whispered words that could never be taken back.
You chose me.
And she had.
Somewhere inside the tremor of her surrender, in the way her body had moved toward his, in the quiet roll of her hips and the desperate clutch of her hands, she had made a choice she hadn't meant to make. His hands hadn't only undone her. They had answered something buried inside her. Something older than language, something true and terrible.
She hadn't only been taken.
She had taken him too.
Not with her body, not with the breath that trembled against his throat, not even with the silence that followed. But with the simple, devastating act of staying.
She hadn't run.
She had fallen.
She had opened, not just her body, but the part of herself she never meant to show. And standing there in the stillness that followed, she understood.
A line had been crossed.
And there would be no walking back.
***
The house was too quiet.
It was the quiet that comes after something breaks.
The quiet after the world shifts and both people inside it pretend it hasn't.
They didn't speak the next day. It wasn't anger that kept them apart. The heat of rage had cooled into something quieter, stranger, more fragile. There was a softness in the silence now, but it wasn't comfort. It was awareness. They both knew that if they named what had happened, if they reached for it with words, it would become too real to survive.
So they avoided it.
They avoided each other.
She moved through the house like a ghost. Barefoot, as always, her steps barely made a sound on the stone. The fabric of her dress trailed lightly behind her, a whisper of movement that didn't belong to the woman who had clung to him hours before. Her hair hung loose and tangled, still damp in places, catching the light as she passed. Her eyes never met his. They fixed somewhere just beyond him, as if she was following a thread only she could see.
Every time she crossed his path, Draco stopped. He didn't speak. He didn't move. His body locked in place, too afraid that even a shift in breath might undo what thin control he had left. His hands curled at his sides, knuckles white, as if touch itself had become too dangerous to risk. He watched her pass, the sound of her steps fading into a silence that hurt more than shouting ever could.
She never looked back. Not once. She walked by him as though he were nothing more than furniture, as though her mouth had never spoken his name like a prayer, as though her skin didn't still carry the memory of his breath.
He watched her the way a man watches light through water—afraid to blink, afraid it will vanish if he moves. His eyes followed the sway of her dress, the soft trail of her fingers against the wall, the quiet ritual of her movements through the house. She poured tea she didn't drink, opened books she didn't read, touched windows she never looked through. Every gesture seemed designed to fill space, to give shape to her silence.
He haunted her without meaning to.
From doorways, from corners, from the far end of long corridors, he watched her and pretended it was distance. His magic stirred whenever hers passed nearby, restless and unsteady, the two of them bound in a rhythm neither had the strength to break. She felt it too but she gave no sign. She simply carried on, quiet and unreachable, the air around her shimmering faintly with the remnants of what they had done.
The worst part was how easily she hid it.
She walked as though nothing had changed. As though her body didn't remember the way his hands had learned it. As though her throat hadn't opened around his name in the dark. She looked like herself again, calm and untouchable, the woman who could silence a room with a glance.
But he could see it.
He could see the tension in her shoulders, the pulse in her throat, the way her hands hesitated when she reached for anything delicate. He saw the memory flicker through her like lightning beneath the surface, and it broke him in slow, quiet ways.
For her, it had become something that lived only in shadow, a memory to be folded and hidden away. For him, it was the point of no return. The moment that split his life into before and after.
And now, in the stillness that followed, he lived in the after.
Every time she entered a room, something in him faltered. It wasn't the kind of pause that drew attention or the frozen stillness of a man lost in memory. It was smaller than that, quieter, a betrayal of breath and pulse. His chest tightened without warning, his lungs stuttered once, and the air seemed to resist him. It was not pain exactly, but a soft ache that came from wanting something he no longer had the right to touch. He told himself to breathe, to look away, to stop noticing, but he never did. She moved through rooms like silence made flesh, unaware of the pull she left behind. And each time she passed, she carried a piece of him with her, something she had taken that night without meaning to, something he could never ask her to return.
She wandered the south greenhouse in the hour before dusk, drifting between tall blooms and climbing vines with her usual ease. Her hum was low and tuneless, carried softly through the air, and her fingers moved with the unthinking grace of habit as she gathered small bundles of flowers—violet, feverfew, a sprig of rosemary tied with ribbon. Dirt streaked the smooth skin of her arms, tracing patterns that looked almost deliberate.
Her hair had come loose again, curling against her neck, a few strands falling across her cheek. The hem of her robe was damp, brushing the stone tiles with a faint, whispering sound. To anyone else, she looked unchanged—composed, ethereal, untouched by whatever had broken the night before.
But her hands betrayed her.
When she reached for the silver spoon on the tea tray, her fingers trembled. Not enough to spill, not enough for anyone else to notice, just enough for the spoon to tap twice against the porcelain rim. The sound was soft, barely there, but it stilled her. Her shoulders tensed. She froze, caught in that strange, fleeting moment where the body remembers before the mind allows it to. Then, slowly, she finished stirring the tea. Careful. Steady. Determined to pretend it had happened exactly as intended, as if her hand hadn't betrayed the truth she didn't dare name.
He saw it.
From across the room, where he leaned over a tower of contracts gone brittle with age, pretending to read words that had long lost their meaning, he saw her falter. The ink blurred before his eyes. He could not make sense of the text. His focus had narrowed to her—the slight tremor, the pause, the deliberate recovery. He watched her pull herself back together in real time, chin lifting, spine straightening, her composure reassembled piece by piece until she looked unbreakable again.
It wasn't for him. He knew that. It was for herself.
I'm still whole, her posture said. I'm still here.
He didn't speak. He didn't move. He only watched her until his eyes ached from it. Then he dropped his gaze back to the books and let the words blur into meaninglessness, tracing the dry, faded ink with a finger that shook only slightly. The columns of inheritance law and family oaths became his refuge, their lifeless precision a cage he could hide inside. He told himself that if he read enough, underlined enough, pretended long enough, he might forget the way her voice still lingered in his bones.
But he knew better.
He could still feel her there, quiet and unrelenting, pulsing in the spaces between thought and breath, impossible to unlearn.
His hand moved across the parchment with automatic precision. The quill scratched and sliced, carving dark lines beneath words he didn't see. He kept writing as if repetition could steady him, as if ink and law might somehow explain what it meant to reach for salvation and not know how to hold it. To touch something that felt holy and then pull back, not from fear, but from the old habit of pretending control. To have her open beneath his hands like a question answered, and still retreat into silence, the cowardice dressed up as composure.
Each page grew heavier beneath his touch. The paper dragged against his fingertips, soft and dry, like skin still remembered. He turned page after page, but nothing cleared. The sound of her moan still lived in the corridors of his mind, the memory of her arching against him, the way his name had caught in her throat as if it wasn't meant to be spoken out loud. He underlined clauses, drew careful lines, pretended to study the structure of ancient oaths, but all he felt was her.
The curve of her waist fitting perfectly beneath his hand. The tremor that had shivered through her thighs. The warmth of her breath against his ear. Every movement of the quill became a ghost of her body, and he could no longer tell the difference between work and penance.
The house felt different now. Not just quiet, but alert. The silence pressed against the walls, full of breath and memory. Even the air seemed to listen. The portraits that usually muttered to one another had gone still, their painted faces turned away. The windows stayed shut, as though the wind itself had chosen not to intrude. The wards no longer greeted him with that faint pulse of recognition. They ignored him completely. But when she passed, they bloomed. The walls glowed faintly in her wake, the wards humming softly, betraying their allegiance. He didn't resent them. How could he?
Even the magic seemed to know. Not the details, not the touch, but the truth of it. It carried the echo of what had been done and what had not been undone. It wasn't guilt that weighted him now. It was understanding.
She hadn't pushed him away.
He hadn't forced her closer.
Neither had spoken. Neither had stopped.
What lived between them had not been wrong. It had only been dangerous.
And now it lingered in the house like heat that never dissipated, an unfinished spell waiting for someone to speak the final word. The tension crawled through the corridors, breathing softly in the corners where light could not reach. They passed each other as if they were echoes belonging to different rooms. Her bare feet glided across the floor; his boots stopped too soon. Step. Pause. Turn. Pretend to be occupied. Pretend it hadn't happened. Pretend the world still followed the rules they'd known before that night.
They never touched. They never spoke. They didn't even use names. To name it would give it shape. And shape would make it real. Neither of them was ready for that.
Still, it existed. Between every inhale. Every glance that almost met. Every heartbeat that stumbled when they came too close.
She moved through the quiet as if untouched by it, calm and whole, while he stood at the edges of rooms that had stopped belonging to him. He watched her with the stillness of a man unraveling in silence, not haunted by loss, but by the terrible hope that she might want him too.
***
He made it to his room on instinct, the corridors reduced to a smear of candlelight and his own footfalls. The door closed behind him with a finality that felt like surrender, and he let himself fall onto the bed the way someone gives up on holding themselves upright, folding inward as if the last day had wrapped around his spine and squeezed. He lay there and stared at the carved ceiling, breathing shallow and fast, each inhale a small, sharp thing that would not be soothed, his heart pounding so loudly it seemed to fill the chamber itself until nothing else existed but that sound and the images it dragged behind it.
What had he done kept looping through him, slow and rancid and impossible to quiet. It did not come with neat guilt or tidy remorse. It came as a raw, animal dread that set his skin taut and metallic in the mouth. He had not stepped over a line. He had erased it. Whatever restraint he had left had snapped the moment she said his name, and now there was no undoing the motion that followed.
Still, the memory clung like a scent. Her thighs trembling against his wrist, her breath stuttering near his mouth, the way her voice had broken and given him his name like a benediction. He could taste the echo of her on his fingers and it made him ache to have more, always more, until the hunger felt like its own kind of religion. She was his wife in law and in the strange, terrible places where contracts could not reach. That fact sat beside him in the dark like a promise and like a threat at once.
The thought of Blaise there with her turned his want into a violence of its own. He imagined the hexes he could launch, the curses he could wind into a single word, the locks he could conjure to keep her where he felt she belonged. Those fantasies tasted like madness when he let them sit in his mouth. He knew they were monstrous, and still the idea of anyone else crossing that line with her made something cold and sharp unspool inside him.
Her ring circled her finger with his name hidden beneath the metal. Their magic had threaded together in ways he could feel even now, like an invisible braid tugging at him from across the house. He had kissed her as if he might be saved by it, and she had answered in a way that admitted a choice he had not expected to be given. She had given herself, not through coercion but through an incline of her whole being, and that was what broke him more than any bruise or bite could.
If she walked away, if she turned to someone else, he could not pretend he would bear it. The thought of losing what had just been found, was a weight he could not carry and still breathe. He kept his hands clenched at his sides until his knuckles ached and the room hummed with the quiet of a man who had crossed his own ruin and could not tell whether he had been saved or damned.