The photograph hadn't stopped burning.
Not literally—its edges weren't charred, its paper untouched—but it radiated a strange heat through the lining of Kaelith's coat as if it had absorbed something from the forgotten chamber beneath the asylum. She hadn't looked at it again. She didn't need to. The image was seared behind her eyes: the girl in white, arms raised, mouth parted in either ecstasy or agony, a fire dancing at her feet. Her own face, impossibly young. Impossibly sure.
Kaelith didn't go home.
She didn't sleep.
She wandered the upper corridors of Saint Nerezza like a ghost too restless to return to its grave. The staff didn't question her. They never did. Her presence was too sharply defined, her gaze too cold to welcome interruption. By the time the morning shift began to arrive, she was already standing outside the west wing's observation cell.
Cell 77.
Saevus's door.
She didn't wait for the guard.
Her hand reached for the lock release and keyed in the override code herself. The machine accepted it. No challenge. No delay.
The door clicked open.
And Kaelith stepped inside.
He was restrained today.
Four-point shackles affixed his limbs to the wall, spread just wide enough to be cruel, just tight enough to force submission. A leftover decision from the night staff, no doubt—likely a result of him refusing sleep, or speaking in ways that disturbed the nurses. They always reacted with restraints when they didn't understand a patient's silence.
But Saevus didn't look restrained.
He looked… waiting.
His head was bowed slightly, chin tucked, hair obscuring most of his face. But when she entered, he lifted his eyes.
And smiled.
Not wide. Not smug.
Soft.
Like she was the answer to a question he'd spent decades whispering in his sleep.
"You saw her," he said, voice rasping from disuse.
Kaelith didn't speak. She approached him slowly, methodically, her coat still buttoned up to her throat, gloves still on. She kept her hands at her sides.
Saevus tilted his head, expression gentle. "You went below."
Her gaze narrowed. "How did you know that?"
His smile didn't change. "You smell like her now."
Kaelith's breath caught.
Just for a moment.
Something about the way he said it—calm, reverent, absolute—sank teeth into her spine. Her pulse rose. She didn't know if it was fury, fear, or something worse.
Desire.
She took a step closer. "Why is my face in that photograph?"
"Because it was always yours," he said simply. "They made you forget. But I didn't."
"What was that room?" she asked. "What is down there?"
"A shrine," he murmured. "To what you were. What you still are."
Kaelith stared at him, a tremor threading beneath her skin. "What I was was a child."
"You were a flame," Saevus corrected. "They shaped you into a scalpel. You carved light out of shadows. You spoke to things that had no mouths."
"Stop."
"You don't have to be afraid—"
"I said stop," she snapped.
He did.
But the silence between them vibrated with tension.
Kaelith stepped even closer. Close enough to see the bruises beneath the shackles. The faint smudge of old ink on his wrists—symbols, almost gone now, scrubbed by time.
"I dreamed last night," she said quietly.
Saevus's breath hitched.
She saw it. The faint rise in his chest. His first tell.
Kaelith's lips curled slightly. "I dreamed of someone kneeling. Not to me. With me. In fire."
His voice came soft. "I remember."
"I woke up," she said, "wet."
Saevus closed his eyes, his jaw flexing.
"Say it," he whispered. "Please."
Kaelith didn't know what he wanted her to say. Not really.
But she knew what she wanted to say.
"You're not here for healing," she said, her voice low, dangerous. "You're here because you missed me. Because you need me to be her again. Because you want someone to kneel for."
"No," Saevus said, eyes opening, locking onto hers. "I want someone who makes me kneel."
The words were soft.
But they landed like iron between them.
Kaelith didn't flinch.
She raised one gloved hand. Reached up.
And touched his jaw.
He tensed—but not in resistance.
In something closer to devotion.
Her thumb traced along his cheekbone. Her pulse thundered in her throat. Every inch of her skin felt hypersensitive, like the air itself was burning her alive.
"I don't know who I am anymore," she whispered.
"Yes, you do," he replied.
Kaelith stepped back.
The moment snapped.
She turned sharply, walking to the wall where the control panel for the restraints sat embedded in the concrete.
Saevus watched her, eyes unreadable.
She typed in the override code.
The locks clicked open.
He didn't move.
Didn't even lower his arms.
Kaelith turned back to him, eyes cold.
"You have ten seconds," she said, voice flat.
"To do what?" he asked, still unmoving.
She stepped close again.
Close enough to breathe the same air.
"To prove," she murmured, "you remember more than I do."
Saevus's hands moved.
Slowly.
Deliberately.
He reached out and cupped her face, thumbs ghosting over her cheeks.
And then he knelt.
In silence.
Without a smile.
Without pride.
Not as a man broken.
But as something ancient bowing to its reflection.
Kaelith's breath faltered.
She didn't stop him.
She just watched.
And something inside her—
—something buried and starving—
breathed in.