Upstairs, in the hush-draped sanctum of August's chamber, the light had begun to shift.
Not golden, not bright, but softened—like candlelight through linen, like a prayer whispered through glass. The air carried the delicate ache of lavender and something faintly metallic beneath—the scent of fever, the ghost of pain.
Elias sat near the far window, spine stiff yet tired, his silhouette carved in silhouette by the slow, curling light. He had not left the chamber. Not even for a breath of air.
Duty had rooted him there—no, not duty. Devotion. That quiet, agonizing sort that bore no name but burned like scripture written behind the ribs.
August stirred.
A breath—too thin. A murmur—too faint. But Elias heard it. Like the way a violin string quivers just before music.
He rose, half-startled by hope, and nearly turned to call out—he's waking—but—
Then came a sound that cleaved through the stillness.
"…Elias…"
The name was not spoken with strength, but with yearning. It slipped from August's lips like a dream still clinging to the tongue. A fragment of something deeper. Softer. Holy.
Elias stopped, turned—slowly.
August's hand was reaching, pale and trembling, not for a thing, but for someone. For him. His fingers curled against the empty space beside him, as though searching through the veil of dream for a touch that had once been there.
Elias froze.
His name still hung in the room like incense, and something within him stilled—torn between reverence and fear.
He stood there, unfixed.
Unworthy. Unready.
But August moved again—his lips parted, lashes fluttered. That fevered, precious boy lay as if between life and myth, and still—
"Elias…"
A plea now, soft and crumbling.
And Elias could not resist it any longer.
He stepped forward. Slowly, as one might approach an altar. His boots were near soundless across the rugs, his breath caught somewhere between his chest and his throat.
He knelt.
Leaned close.
His voice was a hush made flesh.
"I'm here," he whispered.
August's brow furrowed faintly, as though straining to hold onto the shape of the world. His hand moved again, this time brushing the edge of Elias's shirt. His fingers, so thin and frail, caught fabric like a drowning man catching driftwood.
"You were there," August breathed, eyes still closed. "In the dark… you were there…"
Elias said. "remain silent"
August's lashes trembled—white-gold moons across his cheeks.
"I thought… I lost you…"
Elias swallowed. He did not speak.
Instead, he leaned closer, until his forehead almost touched August's temple, and his hand—broad, calloused, steady—lifted and covered August's reaching one.
"You didn't," he said softly. "You never did."
And in that still chamber, where time hung like a curtain, August finally exhaled. A breath not of agony, but something nearer peace. The fever did not break. The pain did not end.
But in that moment—there was him.
Elias remained there, bent like a vow. Watching the boy he could not remember—but somehow could never forget.
Because love, even lost to memory, still knows where to return.
The morning light filtered through the tall windows like the touch of a hesitant hand—fragile, filtered, fractured by gauze and silence.
Time had not yet reclaimed the chamber; it lingered still, like breath caught in the hollow of a prayer.
August stirred again.
His lashes—those pale silver threads—fluttered faintly before lifting with agonizing slowness, as though even the act of waking were a weight he resented. His eyelids resisted the light, not out of weakness, but defiance. Even my eyes betray me, he thought bitterly.
Everything ached. Even the light. Even the act of sight.
But he opened them anyway—because fragility was something he had never allowed himself, and never would. Not while breath still clawed its way into his chest.
Beside him, Elias shifted slightly.
August's gaze found him—shadowed in the softened hush of the room, his eyes watchful, solemn, unslept. The boy with the loyal hands and that unspoken thing behind his silence.
August blinked again, jaw tight.
He pushed his palm down onto the coverlet, tried to lift himself. A strain passed through him like silk tearing—but he refused to falter.
"Don't," Elias said quickly, leaning forward. "Keep yourself still—stay down,"
"I am not some fragile porcelain," August muttered, voice hoarse and sharp as rusted silver. "Nor do I intend to lie like an invalid."
But even as he said it, his arm gave slightly, and he caught himself against the mountain of cushions that had been placed at his back. He leaned, breath shallow, sweat painting a fine shimmer along his temple.
Elias did not argue again.
August's gaze remained fixed ahead, flickering—restless.
"I was in the study," he said lowly, as though chasing a thread of memory through fog. "And the door… it opened…"
But his words trailed off.
Because the door opened again.
This time in the waking world.
Katherine entered with the fury of a storm veiled in velvet. Her posture betrayed both restraint and wrath—a woman undone not by rage, but by silence. She crossed the threshold with breathless urgency, the fabric of her gown sweeping like dark water behind her.
She was prepared to shout. To weep. To demand.
But the moment her eyes fell upon him—
her boy—
conscious, upright, pale but present—
she faltered.
The anger left her in an exhale.
"A–August…"
She crossed the room in swift, elegant strides, and lowering herself to the bedside with the poise of nobility, the tremor of a mother.
He watched her come.
He did not smile.
He did not soften.
And still—she pressed her gloved palm against his cheek, gently, reverently, as though he were sculpted of bone-china and flame.
"How is my child feeling now?" she whispered, her voice thick with grief and grace, with guilt she dared not name aloud.
But August, ever cold, ever distant, leaned slightly from her touch.
His lips parted, and the voice that emerged was rough, bruised by fever and bitterness.
"…Aunt."
A pause.
And then—
"What are you doing here?"
His tone wasn't frightened.
It wasn't grateful.
It was laced with weariness—and something colder. Annoyance.
The words landed like frost.
Katherine did not pull away. Not yet.
She only looked at him—her angel, her recklessness, her ruin—and knew that love, too, had sharp teeth.
The chamber had not yet exhaled.
It held its breath—just as Katherine did.
Not out of fear, but disbelief.
She stared at the boy before her—her boy—the one who had been wrapped in fever and silence only hours ago, nearly stolen from breath by poison and shadows.
And now he sat there—upright, spine straight against the cushions, face pale as snow-washed porcelain, and yet… speaking with a voice that could've belonged to a man on a throne.
The words still echoed in the space between them.
"What are you doing here?"
Not softly.
Not gratefully.
But with the edge of glass.
August did not look at her as a son to a mother, nor even a nephew to his kin. He looked at her like a monarch might regard a trespasser in his court.
And then—he spoke again.
Slower. Sharper.
A cruel drawl dressed in exhaustion.
"Why are you here again?"
The syllables did not lash, but sink—cold, flat, final.
Katherine's breath caught in her chest—not with shock, but with something older. Something that weighed.
She didn't answer.
She couldn't.
Instead, her eyes held his—those smoke-grey eyes, dulled now by fever but burning still with the frost of pride. Her hand slipped from his cheek, falling into her lap like a wilted rose.
And her face—
Her face did not flinch.
But it changed.
A thousand unspoken words passed through her gaze then. Not anger. Not grief. But that soft, hollow look of a woman thinking: So that's what you've become.
Not how dare you,
but so you truly dare.
Do you even know what you did? her silence asked.
Do you truly think you can act as though nothing has been shattered?
Her expression didn't plead. It didn't protest.
It only said: Okay. I see.
Across the room, Elias remained still—rooted to the floor like a statue that had forgotten how to breathe.
He watched them both, saying nothing.
Because what could he say?
August's cruelty was not loud. It was composed. It wore the robes of dignity and the perfume of pride. And though it stung like a blade to the ribs, it did not scream. It simply was.
Katherine finally drew in a breath, slow and quiet, as if to remind her lungs how to move.
She looked at him for one more moment.
Then—
She nodded.
Not with agreement.
But understanding.
A soft, wordless gesture that said: If this is the fortress you wish to hide behind, so be it. But do not forget… I helped build the walls.
She rose without another word, her skirts whispering as they fell back into motion.
The room did not shiver.
It mourned.
Katherine did not look back.
Not once.
Her steps whispered across the chamber like a requiem wrapped in velvet, the fabric of her gown pooling behind her like dusk trailing the last light. The air still clung with August's words—cold, perfumed with quiet disdain—and yet she carried herself as if no blade had pierced her.
Only as she neared the threshold she pause.
Elias stood there—rigid, uncertain, caught between the ache of silence and the ghost of duty.
She turned her head slightly, just enough for the gold halo of morning to strike her cheekbone, and without meeting his eyes, she raised her hand.
It hovered for the briefest breath, then pressed gently—firmly—against his shoulder.
Her touch was not tender.
It was a command dressed as comfort.
"Keep your eyes on him," she murmured.
Not a whisper, not a plea.
But an order from one who had walked through fire and learned never to weep where walls had ears.
Elias, silent still, gave a small nod.
His jaw tightened.
His eyes lowered.
And he obeyed.
As he always did.
Katherine said no more.
She turned.
The door opened with the hush of retreat, and she slipped through it like a chapter closing itself before the final line could be read.
Behind her, Elias remained—
And August watched.
He saw her touch Elias shoulder.
Saw her speak to him.
Saw Elias nod without question.
But said nothing.
No protest.
No pride.
Just silence.
Because something deeper than fever stirred now in the hollows of his chest—
A cold, quiet curiosity.
One that wondered why his name no longer stirred the same devotion.
And yet, he said nothing.
For to speak it aloud…
Would make it real.
August's breath caught.
Like a wire pulled taut beneath the skin.
He had only just begun to lean back into the cushions—only just begun to pretend he was in control of the fevered wreck that was his body—when something surged.
A flash.
A splinter.
A memory.
And then the pain hit.
It was not a slow ache, not a warning wrapped in warmth, but a strike of lightning through marrow—
A blade shoved between thought and breath.
His eyes widened, not in revelation, but in raw, animal recoil.
His jaw clenched so hard the muscles in his neck strained like ropes under siege. His hand shot upward, clutching his head as if trying to keep it from splitting open beneath the weight of what clawed behind his temples.
The dream.
The the glass of milk.
The answers.
The assassin's—
It slammed into him like a cathedral collapsing inward.
"hey?" Elias's voice broke through the haze, sharp and sudden.
He had moved fast—too fast—his chair skidding slightly against the floor as he crossed the space, reaching for him with one hand outstretched.
"What's wrong?" Elias asked again, his voice thick with worry now, the command slipping beneath the fear.
August didn't answer.
He couldn't.
His fingers dug harder against his skull, his breath ragged, as if the air itself had turned to thorns. Every pulse behind his eyes was a scream trying to stay silent. Every flicker of the chandelier's gold light felt like it etched shapes into his vision—ghosts, fragments, pieces of a night he hadn't meant to remember.
Elias knelt beside the bed now, his hand almost brushing August's knee.
he said, lower now. Softer. "What is it? What do you see?"
But August only shook his head once—tight, restrained.
"It's nothing," he rasped, the words gritted out like stone against steel. "Just—just a wave. A wave in my skull."
His throat tightened on the next breath.
"I didn't… expect it."
Elias stared at him, brows drawn, one hand hovering mid-air as though uncertain whether to touch or to wait.
"what is it," he said quietly.
August did not reply.
But his hands slowly fell away from his temples, trembling slightly, and his eyes—those smoke-grey mirrors so often guarded—now shimmered with a wild flicker, not of fear, but fury.
Not at Elias.
Not at the memory.
But at his own body.
For failing.
For trembling.
For remembering when it should have forgotten.
He looked away, breath still uneven, and exhaled like a man setting a fire behind his ribs.
"I'm fine," he murmured, bitterly. "The pain has passed."
But Elias didn't believe it.
And August knew that too.
Still, he would not say more.
Not now.
Not while the memory still tasted like blood behind his teeth.
Not while his dignity still lay curled, fragile, beneath the weight of pain.
So he turned his face to the window.
And endured.