The beach below the cliffs smelled sharp, the air damp and heavy with salt. Morning mist clung low, curling around their ankles as they made their slow way across the uneven stones. The first light hadn't yet broken the horizon, and the whole world felt pale and silver, like it hadn't decided if it was awake.
Theo kept a few steps behind Luna, boots slipping now and then on patches of slick moss, but she moved easily, barefoot and graceful, as if she belonged to the tide itself. Her hair was wild, her dress loose and catching in the wind, and she hummed under her breath—a soft, wandering sound that didn't seem to belong to any song he recognized.
"This really couldn't wait until the sun was up?" he asked eventually, his breath coming out in a visible puff.
Luna glanced back, eyes bright but unreadable. "The salt is better before sunrise," she said. "It remembers the moon better than it remembers us."
Theo raised an eyebrow. "So the salt has… feelings?"
She gave a small shrug. "Most things do."
It wasn't worth arguing. It never was, with her. He simply kept following, his boots crunching against the damp rocks while Luna moved with the sort of focus that made him feel like an intruder just for being there.
When she bent over a shallow tidepool, fingers skimming just above the water's surface, he took a moment to study her from behind. She touched everything gently, reverently, as if greeting old friends. The tide lapped at her ankles, froth clinging to her skin like it didn't want to let her go.
He shoved his hands into his coat pockets, exhaling hard through his nose. "You could have at least warned me that the seafoam is apparently in love with you," he muttered.
Luna smiled without turning. "Jealous?"
He huffed. "Of the tide? Maybe."
A few more minutes passed in quiet. She crouched low, gathering salt that had formed in pale, crusted veins along the jagged rocks. Every time she collected some into a small glass vial, she paused and whispered something low and quiet, as if blessing it—or bargaining.
Theo didn't ask what she was saying. He didn't really want to know. But the longer they stayed, the heavier the air felt. Not cold exactly, but dense. Close.
When Luna stumbled near a tidepool, her foot slipping on an unseen ridge, he reacted before thinking. His hand shot out, catching her elbow firmly, steadying her before she could fall.
She turned toward him, close enough that her hair brushed against his cheek, her expression soft but strange. "You always catch me," she murmured.
Theo held her gaze a little longer than was necessary. "Someone has to," he said quietly.
Then she smiled again, that maddening, knowing smile of hers, and moved away as if nothing had happened, crouching once more over another patch of salt.
But something had shifted. He felt it as he walked a little slower, trailing her more deliberately now. The mist was thickening, curling tightly around their legs, but moving wrong. It wasn't drifting. It was curling. Twisting.
Theo stopped at the edge of a narrow outcrop, narrowing his eyes at the horizon. The sea and sky blurred together, all gray and silver and uncertain. And in that uncertainty, he heard it—a sound that wasn't wind or wave, but something lower, something older. It wrapped around his ribs, cold and soft.
He tensed, hand brushing the hilt of his wand.
Without turning, without looking up from where she was kneeling, Luna spoke, her voice soft, calm, and terribly certain.
"Not everything that watches means harm."
Her palm lifted from the sand, fingers pale in the half-light, grains of salt clinging to her skin like frost.
She didn't say more. She didn't look back.
Theo stayed where he was, his muscles tight, his pulse loud in his ears.
The mist pressed closer.
~~~
Her library felt more like a hidden hollow than a room, round and quiet, tucked at the very back of the house where even the walls seemed to breathe slower. The air inside was thick with the scent of paper and old wax, with something herbal underneath, soft but persistent. It didn't feel lifeless or still. It felt like stepping inside something that was awake and watching, though it didn't speak.
Books didn't wait politely on their shelves here. They drifted through the air with a lazy grace, pages fluttering like birds preening themselves. The scrolls, tied up in threads as fine as hair, rearranged themselves on the high shelves whenever Theo wasn't looking, as though the library itself had ideas about how things should be kept. Along one wall, maps were layered almost carelessly, pinned with gold studs into the wood, their ink lines shifting when he got too close. Sometimes he thought he heard them murmur — little warnings or names of forgotten places.
He had come here for a reason. His notes were tucked under his arm, his expression set, his thoughts sharp. There were anomalies in the outer wards, and he intended to trace them properly, methodically. But before he could even sit down, Luna appeared at his side. Barefoot, quiet as breath, holding two mismatched mugs that steamed in the dim light. The smell of mint and sea salt drifted from them as she held one out to him, fingers brushing his just enough to make it feel deliberate.
"Tea?" she said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
He took the mug without a word, though his brow furrowed slightly as he watched her settle next to him without a care for his papers, without hesitation or apology. She sat as if this was her usual spot, folding herself down easily, hair still damp from the sea, smelling faintly of rosemary and salt air. One knee bumped lightly into his leg, but she didn't seem to notice, or if she did, she didn't care.
The table between them served as a workbench and altar, and apparently also as her preferred tea spot. She didn't glance at the documents he had spread there. Her fingers curled around her mug, shoulders relaxed, entirely at home. It felt less like she had joined him, and more like he had stumbled into a rhythm she had already been living.
Luna folded her legs beneath her with practiced ease, sinking into the cushion of the floor as if it had been shaped for her alone. Her knee brushed lightly against his without the slightest sign of awareness or concern. The scent of salt and rosemary clung to her damp hair, loose strands catching along the back of her neck as she bent forward to sip from her tea.
The room seemed to breathe around them, scrolls gently shifting their places in midair, candles flickering higher whenever attention drifted their way. They sat in a silence that felt thick but not uncomfortable, dense with unspoken things, the air almost expectant. Minutes passed, maybe longer — it was hard to tell in this strange, timeless space.
Then, wordlessly, Luna rose. She moved with that same fluid grace as before, crossing to a shelf that Theo was almost certain hadn't existed a moment ago. Her fingers trailed across the worn spines of the books as if they recognized her touch. She paused, her hand resting on a slim, black volume bound in cracked leather and stitched at the edges with shimmering silver thread.
When she returned, she laid the book down between them, careful but casual, as though it were an old friend she was introducing. Theo felt a strange prickle crawl along his spine.
Without hesitation, Luna flipped through its pages, scanning as if she knew exactly where she was going. She stopped suddenly, her fingers coming to rest on a delicate diagram drawn in ink that shimmered faintly despite the book's age.
"This," she murmured, her voice soft, distant, like she was speaking through water, "I saw it once. When I was dead."
Theo froze. For a beat, he couldn't tell if he'd misheard her. "You were dead?" he asked, slowly turning to face her.
She nodded, her gaze still fixed on the diagram as if it might speak back if she stayed quiet long enough. "Briefly. It didn't stick."
Her casual tone made the words hit differently, and he felt the air shift between them. His instinct was to push, to ask questions until he had an answer that made sense — but instead, he reached out, fingertips brushing the edge of the strange inked sigil. The parchment warmed beneath his hand, not burning, but gentle, like breath fogging against skin.
"What kind of dead are we talking about here, Lovegood?" His voice was low, careful now.
She finally turned to look at him, her expression calm but unreadable, her mouth curling into something that was almost but not quite a smile. "The kind where everything stops," she said quietly. "The kind where this house cried for three days. The kind where I saw something smiling back at me from beyond the veil."
Theo swallowed, throat suddenly dry. "That supposed to reassure me?"
"No," she said simply. "But it wasn't cruel. And that matters."
His gaze drifted back to the diagram, watching as it seemed to pulse faintly beneath his fingers, as if reacting to her words. "So this... this came back with you?" he asked.
Luna shook her head, finally pulling her gaze from the page to meet his. "I remembered it," she said. "It was written on the walls. Not like this, though. Messier. Alive. I wrote it down the next day. The book found me later."
He let out a slow breath, finally lifting his hand from the page, though the warmth lingered on his skin. "You keep things like this just sitting here? In your personal collection? Casual death-magic?"
She tilted her head slightly, eyes clear and steady. "It's not death-magic," she said softly. "It's what comes between. Like a bridge. Like breath after a scream."
Theo didn't press further. The words scraped against something inside him, but before he could decide what to say, the house itself seemed to shift around them. The walls exhaled gently. The floor beneath them pulsed, slow and steady, as if something large and sleeping had just turned in its bed. The pressure in the air changed, warm and oddly comforting, as though the house itself agreed with her.
A subtle shiver ran along the edge of Theo's jaw, and for one disorienting breath, he felt like he didn't quite belong in his own skin. The library felt too alive, the air too close, the sigil on the page pulsing gently beneath his gaze.
"You're scaring me, to be honest," he muttered at last, keeping his eyes on the glowing ink. His voice dipped low, softer than before, as if raising it might wake something neither of them could control. "You were strange at school... but this? This is worse."
Luna turned her head toward him with slow deliberation, her expression impossible to read, a faint catch of light glinting in her eyes that made them look almost silver. "Thank you," she said calmly.
He blinked once. "That wasn't meant as a compliment."
She dipped her chin in a small, almost prim nod, as if accepting a perfectly wrapped present. "I know."
Theo let out a long breath, annoyance creeping into his chest without a clear reason, his gaze returning to the diagram that continued to pulse softly between them. "You're impossible."
"You're welcome to stay in your room if you'd prefer peace," Luna replied lightly. "I won't stop you. The walls might, but I won't."
That made him finally turn his head to look at her properly. Frustration tightened behind his eyes. "I'm not here for peace, Lovegood. I'm here to protect you."
The silence that followed felt sharp, immediate, intimate in a way that made the air between them hum. She tilted her head just a little, her gaze softening around the edges like a curtain slowly pulling back.
"I see," she said at last, her voice low and steady. "Then, unfortunately for you, you'll need to listen to me."
Theo exhaled sharply through his nose, a sound caught somewhere between breath and bitter amusement. "Unfortunately."
Her lips curved slightly, a smile barely there, and the page resting between them seemed to pulse again, slow and deliberate.
Somewhere beneath their feet, the house itself felt like it was listening too.
~~~
It began with a low creak, not sharp or sudden but long and aching, like the groan of something ancient shifting after being still for far too long. The sound stretched out just as Theo passed beneath the archway leading from the dining room into the deeper corridors. He froze mid-step, fingers twitching toward his wand but not quite drawing it. It wasn't just the sound of an old house settling. No. This felt deliberate, like something brushing the edge of the world just enough to leave a ripple behind.
By the time he reached the hall that led to her bedroom, the air itself had changed. The walls seemed to hum, quiet but insistent, as if the stone was remembering something it had tried to forget.
Luna was already there. She stood perfectly still in the low light of the sconces, directly in front of an old oval mirror framed in black iron and wood, one that Theo remembered from the family records — it had belonged to her mother. She didn't turn as he entered. She didn't speak.
Her gaze was fixed on the glass as if whatever she was seeing wasn't her reflection at all, as if something deeper lived in the silver backing. The air was colder here, the floor beneath his boots pulsing once in a way that felt too intentional to ignore.
"You shouldn't provoke the house," Theo said quietly. His voice carried more than he meant it to, soft but steady, and the stone walls caught it, letting it echo back to him like they were waiting for more.
Luna didn't react, didn't so much as blink. Her arms hung loosely at her sides, fingers relaxed, her spine lit in a soft line by candlelight. Finally, she spoke, and her voice was quiet but clear. "I didn't provoke anything," she said simply. "You did."
His brow furrowed as he took a careful step forward. "By doing what, exactly?"
That was when she turned, slowly, gracefully, like the sea pulling itself back onto shore. Her eyes met his easily, without hesitation, and when she spoke again her voice was calm, steady, and strange in its certainty. "By thinking too loudly."
And as if summoned by the very sound of her words, the mirror cracked.
Just once.
A single, clean fracture split the glass straight down the middle. The sound was almost too soft to hear, but it felt final in a way that made Theo's breath catch.
Behind him, the sconces flickered, dimmed, then flared again, their glow uneven and sharp, like a heartbeat under strain.
The crack didn't spread. It simply stayed there, cutting the reflection neatly in two, silent and watching them both.
Theo took another step forward, pulse beginning to quicken, not out of fear but from the heavy pressure that seemed to be curling right into his skin, right between his shoulder blades, as if the house itself was leaning in. It felt too close. Too heavy. Like it was listening not just to his words but to his thoughts.
"Is this your way of telling me you know everything?" he asked. His voice had turned sharper without him meaning it to, tight around the edges.
Luna's answer came soft, almost like a sigh. "No. It's the house telling you I know enough."
He let out a breath slowly, his jaw tightening as he glanced around them. The air felt thicker with every second, heavy with salt and iron, humming faintly. A rune carved into the doorframe near her bedroom glowed softly, heat rising from it, not burning but aching, like something that had waited too long to speak.
"You keep acting like this place is alive," he said. "Like it listens to you."
Her head tilted slightly, her gaze steady. "It doesn't listen the way you mean. It listens for truth."
Theo moved closer again, closing the distance between them so that barely a foot separated them now. The whole house felt like it had stopped breathing, like it was waiting.
"What does that even mean?" he asked, quieter now.
Luna's eyes flicked to the cracked mirror beside them, to the thin, perfect line down the center of the glass. "It means you can't lie here. Not to me. Not to yourself. Not to the walls."
His laugh came out as a sharp, breathless thing, more reflex than amusement. "I'm not lying."
"You are," she said gently, her voice steady, almost tender. "You pretend this is all duty. That you don't care. That you aren't pulled toward the way this house feels when I'm in it. You lie to your own thoughts. And now they're leaking into the wood."
He stared at her then, fully, feeling that truth land heavier than it should have. The air between them pulsed again, like the house itself agreed.
"You think I want this?" he asked, voice rough.
"I think you don't know what you want," she whispered, her words so soft but so certain. "And that terrifies you."
Silence stretched between them, deeper than before, almost oppressive. The rune on the doorframe brightened, casting a warm amber glow that flickered over her face. The mirror shimmered faintly.
His throat felt dry as he forced out, "If you know so much, then tell me what the house wants."
Her lips curved into the smallest smile, not mocking, not kind, but knowing. "It wants what it's always wanted," she murmured. "Harmony. Truth. Magic that isn't broken."
Theo had no reply for that. None he trusted himself to say.
But she didn't seem to need one. She turned, her fingers brushing lightly against the cracked glass. The fracture didn't vanish, but something in the room shifted all the same. The air softened. The flickering stopped.
And somewhere deep beneath their feet, the house exhaled, long and slow, as though it had finally heard enough.
Theo walked briskly toward the kitchen, moving like a man trying to convince himself that he wasn't rattled. He wasn't frightened, not exactly, but something about that conversation with Lovegood had gotten under his skin. It sat there now, sharp and small, like a splinter he couldn't quite reach. His steps had an urgency to them, as if he could outrun the echo of her voice or shake the memory of her gaze just by moving fast enough.
It was a ridiculous thought. He knew that. But still, his mind kept circling back to her, retracing every word she had said, the impossible way she seemed to know what he was thinking before even he did.
That woman creeped him out. There was no polite way to put it. She was strange, but not in any way that announced itself. No, it was in the quiet between her sentences, in the way her hair didn't shift even when the air moved, in the way her steps didn't creak the floorboards no matter how old they were. She was strange in the way shadows feel strange at the edge of firelight—quiet, soft, but somehow watching.
Even as he told himself he was being irrational, another thought kept sliding in beneath all the others. There was something about her that he couldn't name, something that didn't fit neatly into magic or madness or even into the haunted house that wrapped itself around her like an obedient animal. It felt older than that. Older than spells, older than rules. Like she belonged to something ancient, something raw, as if her very magic had roots that twisted through the ground, deep and wild, untouched by the careful hands of books and teachers.
He rolled up his sleeves. Not because he needed to, but because it gave his hands something to do, a reason to keep moving. He reached for ingredients almost blindly, pulling them from the pantry in a quick, automatic rhythm. He didn't want food. He just needed the act of chopping and boiling and measuring, something tangible to focus on while his thoughts spiraled.
The kitchen was warm, golden with charm-light. It smelled of old wood and faint herbs. Jars shifted themselves into easier reach when he stretched for them. The cutting board slid helpfully across the counter. Even the salt, freshly collected that morning, waited on the table like some quiet reminder. But none of that helped.
His mind was stuck on her.
On the way she had stood before that mirror, motionless and strange, as if her reflection wasn't what she saw at all. On the way she spoke about the house as though it breathed, as though it listened. On the way the mirror had cracked, clean and perfect, splitting the glass in a way that felt like a line drawn straight through him too.
He thought of the way she smiled, soft and secret, at moments when no one should smile.
The pot boiled over. He didn't notice right away. Only when the charm-flame flickered and hissed did he swear under his breath and move to adjust it, steam curling thick and fragrant around him.
He leaned forward, pressing both palms flat against the counter, grounding himself in the solid feel of it. The air smelled of rosemary and garlic, sharp and good and familiar—but all he could really taste was that metallic edge, that sharpness she had left behind somewhere inside him.
He didn't know what Luna Lovegood was.
But whatever she was, she was changing him.
And that, more than anything else, scared him.
~~~
The room didn't have a name, not officially, not in any way that was written down or spoken aloud with any consistency. But like all places touched too often by magic, it had grown into something specific anyway, shaped quietly over time by breath and repetition, by how magic itself settles into corners the way smoke lingers in old fabric. No one called it the ritual room, not because they didn't know what it was, but because naming it out loud felt wrong. Too final. Too small for what it held.
The walls curved just slightly inward, a subtle thing, easy to miss if you weren't paying attention. But the curve made the room feel like it cradled everything inside it, like it had been carved not for comfort but for containment, as though this space had always known it was meant to hold something sacred.
The air was thick with scent. Beeswax clung to the stone walls, sweet and heavy like a second skin. Ash from burned incense had gathered in the corners over years, giving the place a faint, smoky undertone. Sea salt left its sharp, mineral edge near the baseboards, mingling with the softer breath of dried lavender that had been ground into the candle bases. Every breath inside this space tasted of all of it — sweet, sharp, bitter, old.
Candles sat on uneven ledges around the room, not in straight lines or any obvious order, but in a pattern that felt deliberate in ways only magic understood. Their flames flickered, golden and warm, and the shadows they cast trembled as though they were alive, leaning inward the longer you looked at them.
The heat wasn't overwhelming, but it felt close. Intimate. The kind of heat you find beneath a blanket shared too long, the kind that clings after someone whispers something that lingers. The kind that makes the air feel not just warm, but expectant.
Luna sat quietly at the center of the room, poised on a low stool carved from pale driftwood. The surface was worn smooth where countless hands had touched it over time, faint runes still visible but fading, like something slowly forgotten. Her gown, loose and pale, pooled around her in soft folds, the hem trailing over the cool stone floor like spilled milk.
The fabric had slipped from her shoulders, but not with any sense of performance or seduction. It had simply fallen that way, as if she had long stopped caring what her body meant to anyone else. The neckline had loosened, falling open across her back, baring skin that caught the candlelight gently. The slope of her spine and the soft lines of her shoulder blades glowed faintly, as though they had soaked up the light itself. Beneath that smooth skin, something deeper seemed to pulse — the shimmer of magic just under the surface, like runes that hadn't yet been drawn but were already waiting.
Her hair was loosely braided, a silver ribbon of raw silk threaded through it, twisted and pinned without care for neatness. Strands had slipped free, curling damp at the nape of her neck, clinging to her skin as though reluctant to leave.
She didn't speak. She didn't move. Her stillness filled the room more completely than any incantation could have. This was the stillness of someone who was prepared, who had accepted what was to come, who was simply waiting. The air felt heavier for it, almost warm, like breath held too long.
Beside her, resting on a low table carved with ancient sigils for grounding and breath and boundary, was the ceramic bowl they had prepared earlier. Inside it, the salt they had gathered before sunrise had been ground fine, so fine it almost floated when stirred. It had been folded carefully into golden honey, still warm from charm-fire. The mixture glowed softly, but the glow wasn't from heat. It pulsed faintly with something older, like memory. Moonlight and water. Salt drawn from stone. Tidepools touched by quiet hands. The scent of it was sweet, thick, but edged with something sharp, like copper or blood or something more intimate still.
Theo knelt behind her slowly, deliberately, every movement quiet and measured. It felt as though even his breath had to be counted now, as though the room itself was holding its breath with him. He didn't speak. There was no ritual phrase, no muttered protective charm. He didn't need to say anything.
His face stayed still, unreadable, a mask carved from control, but something beneath that control hummed. His body was tight, not with fear, but with something quieter and more dangerous. Anticipation, maybe. Or reverence. Or a kind of dread that came wrapped in want. The magic under his skin stirred like static waiting to catch, brushing at the edge of every nerve.
When he reached for the bowl, he did it without hesitation. His fingers dipped into the mixture, and the honey parted around them easily. The warmth of it sank into his skin at once, thick and smooth, laced with tiny grains of salt that gleamed when they caught the candlelight, bright and sharp like stars scattered in gold.
Still, he didn't speak. He didn't take his eyes off her back, pale and bare and impossibly still before him. She didn't flinch. She didn't tense. There was no fear in her posture. Only breath. Only patience.
And in that patience, in the waiting, there was something that felt even more dangerous than any spell.
When he reached for her, his touch was careful in a way that spoke of practice, the quiet, measured precision of someone used to handling dangerous spells, delicate traps, blood-slick seals. But this wasn't that. This wasn't defense. This was an offering.
His hand hovered, just for a breath, before lowering to her back. His fingers pressed gently into the small hollow where her spine curved, warm and smooth and soft beneath his touch. Her skin felt impossibly steady, as if it had been waiting for this, and for a moment he forgot himself entirely.
The first rune he traced was simple but ancient, so old it didn't have a name or translation, only purpose. A mark meant to seal, to contain without caging, to hold the self safely together and keep the soul from unraveling at the edges. The honey moved easily under his fingers, its glow trailing behind each stroke before disappearing into her skin, as though it belonged there, as though it had always belonged there.
Her spine stayed steady beneath his hand. Her shoulders remained relaxed. Her breath stayed deep and slow, so calm it made his chest ache.
The second rune came next, a little higher, right where her shoulder blades met in quiet symmetry. This one was more intricate, a sigil meant to help her discern friend from foe, shadow from light, self from intrusion. He traced it slowly, carefully, letting the curves settle into her, letting the salt and honey mark her in more than protection — letting them say that he saw her, that he acknowledged her.
His fingers moved with a care that didn't come from training but from something else entirely. Reverence, maybe. Devotion, maybe. It felt ancient, as though the memory of this act was older than he was, older than the magic itself. And even as the glow of the rune faded, soaked gently into her skin, he could feel it humming quietly under his fingertips, as steady as a heartbeat.
Then her breath caught.
It was so soft he might have missed it if he hadn't been watching her so closely. Not quite a gasp, not a sigh. Just the smallest hitch in the even rhythm she had kept all along — but it was enough to change everything. That tiny break pulled something tight in his chest, sharp and immediate, a feeling that wasn't fear or surprise, but something far more intimate.
He felt as though her body had spoken to him without words, had let him hear something he wasn't supposed to hear.
But she didn't move. She didn't look back. She didn't offer any comment or question or complaint. She simply kept sitting there, spine bare, skin open, breath slow, presence steady. She was offering herself to this moment, but not in surrender, not passively. It was choice. Pure, deliberate choice. And that distinction pierced deeper than any spell could have.
Theo kept going, his hands moving slowly, reverently, but this reverence wasn't something he had ever been taught. It wasn't part of any Ministry-regulated ritual, no formal sequence of charms or protections.
This felt older. It felt instinctive, rising from somewhere beneath his skin, from blood and bone and memory itself. He didn't understand it completely, but he felt it, humming under his skin, humming under hers.
And it told him that this, whatever this was between them, was already far beyond any spell.
As he shaped each rune across her bare back, the mixture of salt and honey shimmered briefly beneath his fingers. Each symbol he traced lit up for just a moment, a soft, golden glow before fading from sight — not gone, but sinking slowly into her skin, into whatever lay waiting beneath it. Because he could feel it now. Something was watching. Not with eyes, not in any ordinary sense. But with presence. With a kind of awareness that felt close and sharp and impossibly old.
The bowl emptied slowly, though time itself seemed to stretch between them. The candlelight felt thicker, slower. Every breath between them seemed to echo in that hush, drawn long and careful. The honey that had clung so thick to his fingers at the start grew thinner, a delicate sheen now as he worked, the salt glittering faintly along the edges of his nails, caught in the small creases of his palms like dusted stars.
The room didn't breathe. It didn't stir. It simply waited.
Waited like it was listening.
Waited like silence itself was a kind of magic.
And with every new mark he traced, that silence deepened. It sharpened. It wasn't empty, not anymore. It had become a spell in its own right, binding them together more tightly than any charm could.
When he reached the space high between her shoulder blades, right at the meeting point where breath seemed to settle, where memory lived and grief curled quiet beneath the surface, his fingers slowed. His movements lost their smooth, steady rhythm and became careful. Almost hesitant. The magic that had guided him so easily before seemed to pause with him now, recognizing that this final mark mattered more than any that had come before.
This last rune wasn't meant to contain, or bind, or shield. It was simpler than that. It was a mark meant to bear witness. To hold everything else that had been drawn. To keep it safe. To acknowledge, without controlling.
The shape itself was small, just a curve and a line, but it carried the full weight of what this was — the act of touching someone not to claim, but to care.
His fingers lingered as he traced it, moving slowly, letting the last warmth of the honey meet the heat of her skin. And then he simply stayed there, his hand resting quietly against her back, neither of them moving, the moment suspended.
She bowed her head then, just slightly. The movement was small, easy to miss, something that could have been mistaken for nothing more than breath or the pull of gravity. But it wasn't that. It wasn't submission or tiredness or a reaction to the magic itself.
It was something deeper.
It was acceptance.
A quiet, unspoken acceptance that didn't belong to the ritual at all. It belonged to this. To him. To whatever it was they had built together in the hush and heat of that waiting room.
It was permission, clear even without a word.
The last drop of honey disappeared into her skin, absorbed not just by flesh but by spellwork, by intention, by the memory of everything that had come before it. The ceramic bowl sat empty now, scraped clean, its surface cooling in the hush.
The room reacted almost immediately, as if it too had been holding something in its lungs and could finally breathe again. The pulse came first, soft but heavy, a low thrum that moved through the floorboards, through the walls, through their skin.
Then the candles flickered all at once, not from a draft but from something deeper, as though the air itself had shifted. It felt like the whole room exhaled. A long breath let out from somewhere unseen.
Somewhere in the walls, deep where stone met timber, something else seemed to sigh. Not loud, not even truly audible, but present all the same — the kind of shift that makes skin prickle and breath catch without knowing exactly why.
Neither of them spoke.
Not because there was nothing to say, but because any word would have felt too fragile, too artificial, too small to hold the weight of what had just passed between them.
The silence stretched long and thick, but it didn't feel empty. It was full, dense with the unspoken recognition that they had shared something more than a ritual, more than magic. It trembled just beneath the surface of the quiet, heavy with meaning neither of them could name.
To speak would have shattered it.
To name it would have cheapened it.
The hush that held them now was not the absence of sound, not the ordinary stillness that follows when a spell is complete. This was different. This was a silence that watched, a silence that bore witness to everything they couldn't say yet — everything they might never say.
It was the kind of quiet that wasn't untouched by magic, but shaped by it, sculpted by breath and intention and something older than either of them.
And somewhere in that quiet, in the space where thought and speech no longer mattered, the house itself remained awake. Listening.
~~~
It was late afternoon when it happened, that slow, golden hour when the light softened into something rich and thick, almost like honey, slipping through the tall arched windows of the east hallway. Dust drifted lazily in its path, suspended in the glow like breath held too long.
Theo hadn't planned to find her. He hadn't even really realized he was looking. He'd come to fetch the book she'd mentioned yesterday, the one with the forest-buried runes in the final chapter, the one whose old parchment smelled faintly of moss and ink.
But when he stepped into the small study tucked near the end of the hall, there she was.
Luna crouched low on the floor, barefoot, surrounded by a mess of parchment that looked like it had been pulled straight out of a storm — crumpled, torn, edges darkened by time or flame. Her hair fell loose around her face, her fingers quick and careful as they traced over a half-burned map.
She didn't look up. She never did. But she always knew.
"It's on the second shelf," she said, her voice soft, distracted, almost like she was speaking to herself rather than to him. "But it keeps hiding."
Theo frowned faintly. "Books don't hide."
"That one does."
He didn't argue. He rarely did anymore.
The floor creaked quietly under his steps as he crossed the room, the house holding its breath again the way it always seemed to when they were near each other. And there it was — the book she had spoken of, sitting exactly where she said it would be. Only he could have sworn it hadn't been there a second ago.
He reached for it anyway, fingers brushing the spine, rough and rune-etched and warm under his touch. The leather seemed to hum faintly as if it recognized him.
Without thinking, without ceremony or pause, he turned and offered it to her. The movement felt so natural it was almost reflex, like breathing out after holding breath too long.
He wasn't really looking at her when it happened. Not the way he watched for threats, not with that sharp focus he reserved for things that didn't make sense. He was already turning, already halfway to the door, already pulling that familiar cloak of detachment around himself — the one stitched out of silence and practiced indifference, the one he used to pretend he wasn't rattled.
But then her arm lifted.
The movement was so natural, so easy, the quiet confidence of someone who knew exactly what would happen next. Their hands met in that small space between them — a soft brush of skin and intention that barely lasted longer than a breath. His fingers grazed the inside of her forearm, skin bare and warmer than he expected, warmed by the sunlight pooling around her as if the sun itself had cradled her there.
And the second that contact happened, the world shifted.
It wasn't pain that hit him. It wasn't pleasure either. It was something stranger. He felt it rush through him too fast, filling him up with something that didn't belong, hollowing him out and then overrunning him all at once. Heat shot up from his palm, ran along his wrist, curled into the base of his spine. It felt like a live wire, sharp and electric, threaded with memory and magic together.
Before he could react, before he could ask or pull back or even breathe, he was gone.
The study vanished.
The warmth.
The scent of parchment and dust.
Even the quiet hum of the house fell away.
And when the world steadied again, he was standing somewhere else entirely.
He was standing on a cliff.
The wind tore around him, sharp and wild, carrying salt that felt like razors against his skin. It howled from every direction, slicing the air clean. Below, the sea churned in dark fury, a deep slate color, and the sky hung low, heavy and bruised with clouds.
And there she was.
Younger by years. Almost a child, really. Thin, wild, hair tangled and whipping across her face. Her knees were scraped, hands bleeding. Barefoot. Standing right at the edge of the cliff, as if the wind itself could take her at any moment. Her whole body trembled, but she didn't move. Her wide eyes were fixed on the sea, unblinking, as though she could hear something in it that no one else could, as though the horizon had whispered a promise meant only for her.
Her lips moved.
Not in a spell, not in prayer, but in a soft, broken rhythm, barely audible even before the wind stole the sound away. But he knew what she was saying. He felt it like a pulse in the air.
She was reciting names. One after another. A list of ghosts.
Theo's knees gave out. His breath left him in a rush, like the memory itself had been too much for him to hold. He stumbled back blindly, catching himself on the nearest bookshelf, fingers slick with sweat before he even realized it.
The room came back slowly. Piece by piece.
The smell of dust settled first, thick in his lungs. The faint crackle of a candle burning low followed, soft and sharp at the same time. Then her breathing — quiet, steady, smooth, like nothing had happened at all, like the tide rolling in against a shore that kept its secrets.
She hadn't moved. Not even a shift in posture. Not one muscle.
And somehow that stillness felt more jarring than the memory itself.
When he turned to look at her, his breath caught, sharp in his throat. His pulse thundered in his ears. His hands were shaking, and he couldn't hear anything except that wind. Those names. Still echoing inside him.
"What the fuck was that," he rasped. The words felt torn from him more than spoken, cracked and raw like something had splintered inside his throat. His voice didn't sound like his own.
She blinked at him slowly, completely unbothered. It was that eerie way she had of looking at him without really looking, as if her gaze could move straight through him, as if she wasn't seeing him at all but whatever lay just behind him. Wide and unhurried, her expression didn't carry surprise or concern. It was just watchful — the kind of gaze that belonged to owls or old magic, patient and still.
Then she spoke, her voice soft, almost kind, but there was something about the gentle way she said it that made it feel sharper than it should have been. "The house must like you."
He shook his head. His chest still ached, tight with the ghost of sea spray and the heavy drag of grief that clung to his ribs like something damp and heavy. "That wasn't you," he said, even though part of him already knew it wasn't that simple. The memory still sat inside him like a stone.
She tilted her head slightly, her expression as unreadable as ever, and answered, "Yes and no. It keeps pieces. Sometimes it shares them. Usually only when it thinks someone needs to see."
His fingers tightened around the edge of the bookshelf. His jaw locked, his breath coming fast, sharp through his teeth. "I didn't need to see that."
And then, finally, she really looked at him. Not vaguely, not with that detached calm she so often carried, but directly. Her eyes narrowed just slightly, like she was weighing him against something only she could see.
"Didn't you?" she asked quietly.
He didn't answer.
He couldn't.
Because what he had seen wasn't just a vision. It wasn't some story from her past to be retold and set aside. It was pain. Pain that had been made into something solid, something he couldn't stop feeling even now.
Grief fossilized in magic.
And somehow it had sunk inside him, anchored itself where he couldn't shake it loose, settled into his ribs like it belonged there.
It wasn't something he could forget.
It wasn't something he could explain or escape.
Because it wasn't just a memory anymore.
It was a wound.
And now it lived in him, too.
~~~
The steam reached him before anything else did, curling slowly through the dim corridor like fingers stretching out from some unseen place. It was thick and warm and carried more than just heat — there was something alive in it, fragrant and strange, almost sacred. The scent clung to the walls as if it had soaked into the house itself, rising now in quiet, steady waves.
Theo paused just outside the door, aware that this wasn't where he'd meant to go. He hadn't come looking for her. He hadn't planned to be here at all. But the house had guided him, as it so often did, bending the hallway subtly until his feet found this path, until every step he thought was his own had led him here instead.
The steam wrapped around him as he stood there. The air was thick with it, scented with crushed lavender and the sharp brightness of citrus rind, but under it all was something darker — something damp and rich and earthy, like moss warmed by moonlight and soil still wet from rain. It didn't just hang in the air. It slid under his collar, pressed into his skin, sank into him.
The warmth was impossible to separate from the feeling itself, the strange sense that this wasn't just heat but invitation. That the house wanted him to stand here. That the house wanted him to see.
He raised his hand to knock. He didn't know why, not really. Habit, maybe.
But before his knuckles could touch the wood, the door creaked open — slow, smooth, and entirely deliberate.
And the steam slipped out into the hallway like a secret that had been waiting for him all along.
And there she was.
It didn't exactly surprise him. The house never let him stumble without intention. But still, the sight of her caught something sharp in his throat and held it there — a moment suspended too delicately to name.
Luna sat half-submerged in the old stone bath, the basin dark, veined granite, its rim etched faintly with protective runes so worn they only showed themselves when candlelight struck at just the right angle, like breath catching on bone.
The water around her was heavy with herbs, clouded pale green and streaked with cloudy white swirls. Ribbons of something soft and translucent drifted lazily across the surface, petals maybe, their shapes blurred but glowing faintly where the light caught them. Steam rose in long curls, wrapping itself around her bare shoulders, her back, her neck, cloaking her in heat and scent and something that felt very close to magic.
The room didn't feel like a bathroom. It felt like the inside of a spell. Sacred. Half-formed.
She didn't startle when he stepped inside. She didn't even look over her shoulder. She just sat there, spine straight, back bare, skin glistening where water and oil clung to her, as if the room itself was breathing against her.
"You're early," she said, voice low, softened by steam, her words drifting toward him as though even the air wanted to hold them. Her hair was swept up carelessly, pinned loosely, with silver strands escaping to curl damp at the nape of her neck. Droplets clung to her skin like glass beads, and Theo felt something twist low in his chest — a quiet discomfort he couldn't easily name.
It wasn't just that she was undressed, or that this was intimate. It was that it didn't feel abstract. It didn't feel conceptual. It was visceral. Present. Too real.
He cleared his throat, but it came out rougher than he intended, a noise he hadn't even meant to make. "I didn't know you were..." He trailed off, unsure if he was about to say bathing, or undressed, or beautiful.
She only hummed in reply, a soft sound that was somehow still an answer. She lifted one hand lazily from the water, droplets sliding down her fingers as she gestured toward the small wooden table nearby. On it sat a vial, small and fragile-looking, its glass surface catching the candlelight, inside a dark liquid threaded through with streaks of iridescent blue, like the distilled remnants of a dream.
"It won't work without the last ingredient," she murmured. "You brought it."
Theo glanced down and felt a flicker of something like dread as he realized he was already holding it. The vial was in his hand. He had no memory of picking it up, no recollection of being given it. But of course he was holding it. The house didn't forget.
And neither did she.
"You want me to add it?" he asked, but the question came out rougher than he wanted, the heat and scent already curling under his skin, winding through his thoughts.
She nodded without opening her eyes. "Just three drops," she said softly. "But you have to kneel. It needs proximity. Skin to water."
He froze. Not from fear, but from the overwhelming need to remind himself this was still just a ritual. Just a spell. Just magic.
Not what it had become in the quiet space between them.
He told himself it was her body, not her. Her back. Her shoulders. Her breath. It couldn't mean anything.
But his feet moved anyway.
He stepped closer, careful and measured, until he reached the edge of the stone bath where the steam curled thick and fragrant around him, wrapping the air in warmth and scent, coaxing him forward like an invitation he could not refuse. The bath was wide and deep, its marble frame softened and worn by years of use and quiet ritual, sunken into the floor like something ancient and patient, waiting for him.
When he knelt, it did not feel like intrusion, not even like he was a guest in this room or in her presence. He knelt as someone caught in something larger, quiet and deliberate, fully aware that whatever this was between them, it had already begun long before he ever stepped into the room, long before he could have named it for what it was becoming.
The vial in his hand trembled slightly, just enough for the dark liquid inside to ripple against the glass. He pulled the cork free with slow precision and the scent that rushed upward struck him harder than he expected, sharp and impossibly clean, with a strange metallic bite that caught at the roof of his mouth and settled there, like silver threads unspooling in the air around him. Beneath that sharpness was something softer, floral and distant, a scent he could not place, something that felt dreamlike and half-forgotten, as though it belonged to a garden that no longer existed anywhere except in memory. The smell was so arresting, so complete, that for a long moment he nearly forgot why he had come, caught instead in the heat rising from the water and the strange pull of the moment unraveling between them.
Luna's breath hitched then, so slight it might have been missed, the barest catch of air that lifted her shoulders a fraction before falling again. Her head tilted toward the scent, though she did not open her eyes, as though some invisible thread had tugged at her from within. When she spoke, her voice was quiet and smooth, softened by the air itself, her words seeming to rise from the water rather than her lips as she reminded him gently, "Three drops."
His hand moved with care, but it was not hesitation exactly. It was something more fragile, a reverence so acute it bordered on fear, the kind of trembling awareness that came when standing at the edge of something sacred. He tilted the vial slowly, breath held, until the first drop swelled at the rim and fell into the bath. The sound of it was impossibly small, instantly swallowed by the steam that swirled around them, but the reaction was immediate. The surface of the water rippled outward in slow spirals, pale light blooming gently where the drop had fallen before fading back into the heat, as if the liquid had sewn itself into the memory of the bath.
The second drop followed with a breath's pause, darker than the first, its path through the air deliberate and slow as it curled through the water's surface, moving almost toward her, as if drawn to her skin, as if it recognized her body and had waited to return.
The third drop trembled at the edge of the glass for a long, suspended moment, as though the vial itself hesitated alongside him. When it finally broke free, it fell straight between her shoulder blades, landing so precisely it felt impossible to believe it had not been guided by some unseen force.
This time, the water's response was different. The surface shimmered violently for a breath, a tight quiver of tension, and then it stilled all at once, so completely that even the air seemed to stop moving.
And then the sound came.
Low, full, resonant. A note that seemed to rise from nowhere and everywhere at once, rich and deep, like a bell rung far underwater, or the song of a singing bowl drawn out with slow, loving care. The sound filled the space between them, between thought and breath, saturating the room until there was nothing left except that vibration, and in that moment he could feel the weight of everything that had passed between them settling quietly in his chest.
The steam still curled around him, heavy and fragrant, thick with lavender and citrus, earthy with something older that clung to the corners of the room like memory. And there she was, not a surprise exactly, because the house never let him arrive without intention, but even so she caught him — not just his gaze, but something deeper, something behind his ribs that tightened at the sight of her and refused to let go.
Luna sat half-submerged in the water, the dark stone bath cradling her as if it had been carved just for her shape, the faint glimmer of ancient runes catching at the edges where the candlelight fell. The water itself felt alive, steeped with herbs and oils that turned its surface a cloudy green, laced with translucent petals that swirled lazily around her skin, catching the light in delicate, trembling flashes. Steam rose in slow, curling threads around her shoulders and the long column of her neck, wrapping her in a kind of veil, half-hiding and half-revealing, and the entire space felt less like a room and more like the inside of something sacred — a spell unfolding, a secret that hummed instead of spoke.
She did not glance at him when he stepped closer. She did not shift or speak or even acknowledge him in any way other than to simply continue being, her posture straight and still, her bare back glistening with droplets of water that clung like glass beads to the pale skin along her spine. The curve of her shoulder blades caught the light and something in him ached at the sight, though he told himself it was only the heat, only the strangeness of this house and her magic and this moment that did not belong to him and yet had claimed him nonetheless.
"You're early," she said softly, her voice low, almost lazy, softened by the steam so that her words drifted toward him like smoke curling through the air. Her hair was swept up, not neatly but without care, pinned loosely so that silver strands fell to curl damp at the nape of her neck, catching droplets of water and shimmering faintly where they touched her skin.
He stood there, momentarily struck mute, caught between politeness and awe and something more raw than either. He cleared his throat, the sound rough and uneven. "I didn't know you were…" but he could not finish the thought, unsure if the word he was searching for was bathing or glowing or unmaking him.
She only hummed in reply, a quiet sound that did not ask for words. With a lazy grace she lifted one hand from the water, droplets sliding from her fingers as she gestured toward the table nearby where a small vial sat nestled among dried chamomile blossoms, its glass catching the candlelight in a flicker of oily shimmer. "It won't work without the last ingredient," she murmured, "you brought it."
He looked down, realizing with a slow, creeping awareness that the vial was already in his hand. He could not recall picking it up. He could not remember who had given it to him. But it did not matter. The house remembered, and so did she.
"Three drops," she said, her voice soft and steady, not a command but a truth, something woven into the air itself.
His fingers trembled slightly as he uncorked the vial, and the scent that spilled out was sharp and clean, metallic and herbal at once, with a strange undertone that pressed against the back of his throat and filled his lungs like something pulled from a forgotten dream. Beneath that sharpness was something softer, floral and elusive, a scent he could not name, something old and delicate, the smell of a garden long vanished from any map.
Luna's breath hitched so subtly that he might have missed it if he hadn't already been watching her too closely, her head tilting toward the scent with a quiet, languid grace. She did not open her eyes, but her presence filled the space between them like another breath, thick and weighty and impossible to ignore.
His hand moved slowly, not hesitant but reverent, and the first drop slipped from the vial with a weightless grace that belied its significance. The water accepted it without a sound, but a ripple spiraled outward from where it fell, pale light blooming briefly before fading again into the haze of heat and herbs.
The second drop followed a breath later, darker than the first, its descent deliberate and slow, curling into the surface of the bath as though it knew where to go, as though it was searching for her skin. The water responded gently this time, the light softer, a quiet acknowledgement.
The third drop hesitated at the edge of the glass, trembling there as though the vial itself was reluctant to let it go, and when it finally fell, it landed perfectly in the hollow between her shoulder blades. The effect was immediate. The water shimmered violently for a moment, tension tightening through the air, and then it stilled completely, so perfectly still that the steam itself seemed to pause.
Then the sound began.
It was not loud. It did not rise. It simply existed, low and resonant, a note drawn out as though from deep beneath the water itself, like a bell rung far below the surface, filling the space between breath and thought, saturating the room until there was nothing left but that sound. It moved through him, through her, through the walls of the house, soft and low and impossibly patient, and for a moment it felt as though the whole house was breathing to its rhythm.
Luna exhaled slowly, a release more than a breath, her voice barely a whisper yet clear and unmistakable as it drifted back to him. "It likes you," she said. "It responds better to you."
His hand remained suspended above the water, the empty vial trembling between his fingers, and he could not move, not with her voice in his ears and that sound still filling the room and the heat curling into his skin. The candlelight flickered and in the small mirror across the room he caught sight of their reflection — or rather the absence of one. The mirror showed only fog now, thick and white and blooming outward from its glass, as though even the reflection had decided this was too much to witness.
She tilted her head toward him, slow and graceful, and when she opened her eyes they were not wide or sharp but heavy-lidded, half-closed, steeped in something far older than seduction, far older than anything he could name. She was deep in trance, her gaze unfocused and dark, as though she could see something layered behind the skin of the world itself.
Her voice came again, soft and smooth, not loud but impossibly present. "Do you hear it?"
And though he could not find the words, though his throat was dry and his breath too tight, the answer was already in his chest. He did hear it. Not outside of him, not in the room or in the steam or in the hum of the air, but within him, wrapped around his heartbeat and humming through his bones, a lullaby from something so ancient it could not be named.
She lifted her hand again, not to touch him, not to invite him closer, but simply to place her palm gently into the air between them, occupying that narrow space with the shape of her presence alone, and her next words came thinner, softer, almost belonging more to the water than to her throat. "The water remembers. It always does."
His mouth felt too dry, his voice too rough, but still he managed to ask, his words born more from wonder than intent. "What is it remembering?"
She smiled then, but it was not for him. It was inward, small and fragile, private, the kind of smile that belonged to grief or longing, a reflection of something too fine to name aloud, and when she finally answered her voice was stripped bare, threadbare with sorrow but not pity, not warning — just the truth itself, offered gently into the quiet. "Everything we don't say aloud."
He didn't notice the moment the vial slipped from his fingers. He didn't hear the soft plunk of it falling into the water, didn't watch as it vanished beneath the surface. It simply left him, the spell no longer needing it, the moment too full to hold anything more.
She leaned back then, slowly, arching her spine against the stone rim of the bath, the last of the light catching at her skin and painting silver curves along her back, the sight of it sharp enough to steal his breath.
And then she hummed, just once, a sound without shape or name, a sound old and low and born of a place no language could reach, and as that tone unfurled into the water and wove itself around the hum already vibrating beneath the surface, he realized there was no way to tell where her voice ended and the water's song began.
Theo remained on his knees at the edge of the bath, still and hollow and full all at once, and behind him the mirrors remained fogged, the condensation heavy and unmoving, as if even the house itself was holding its breath.
~~~
The ceiling offered him nothing, no change, no mercy. It remained flat and pale, shadowless in the faint glow cast by the wards outside, as indifferent as stone, and yet Theo stared at it as if it might crack and give him relief. His body was rigid, trapped in stillness, one arm folded beneath his head, the other draped across his stomach, the fingers curling slightly as if they might still the churn beneath his ribs. Every breath was measured too carefully, pulled slow and shallow through his nose, then exhaled through parted lips, like he was trying to outpace the heat rising inside him.
The cool air did nothing. This was not about temperature. This was him. This was her. Always, somehow, it came back to her.
The bath had ended hours ago. The vial had emptied. The ritual was complete. The candlelight had long since faded, her low hum swallowed by the water itself, vanishing without a trace. But the moment refused to loosen its grip on him. It circled in his mind like a spell cast without a countercharm. He could see it too clearly, every time he blinked — not the structure of the ritual, not the steps he should have memorized and catalogued, but the sight of her. The slow curve of her spine as she leaned into the water, the way droplets clung to her skin, sliding down her shoulder blades like molten pearls, the soft steam rising and curling around her as if it knew her, belonged to her, caressed her in ways no living hand was allowed.
It hadn't been indecent. She had not intended it for him. But it had rooted itself in him all the same, like a sweetness that turned sour too late to spit out.
He turned over with a quiet, frustrated noise, something between a sigh and a curse, dragging his gaze to the bookshelf across the room. The wards above it blinked lazily, their glow tracing slow, even patterns, meant to soothe. He tried to follow their rhythm, willing them to lull his thoughts back into order. It didn't work. The scent of lavender still clung to his skin, sharp and sweet and insistent, as though the bath had branded him without touch. Beneath it, that stranger scent — the metallic bite of the oil, the haunting trace of herbs — curled into the back of his throat. He could still feel it on his fingers, still see it shimmering faintly on his skin when he closed his eyes.
He reached for the book on his nightstand, the one he had been reading the night before. Something dense, dry, reliable. Safe. He read two lines before the words blurred together, refused to hold. Her voice echoed instead, that soft command: just three drops. He turned the page without realizing. He pressed his thumb hard against the spine until the knuckle whitened. He clenched the book tighter, her breath slipping through the edges of memory and curling into the silence around him.
Her skin. That was what stayed most of all — pale, wet, gleaming with heat and light. Every memory seemed stitched into the lines of her throat, her collarbone, the slope of her back. It made his chest ache and his pulse quicken in ways that defied every discipline he had trained himself to master.
The book fell from his hand, hitting the floor harder than he intended, and he sat up suddenly, dragging a hand through his hair. His breath felt wrong, too quick, as though it belonged to someone else, someone drowning in a dream that refused to end.
He told himself again, almost angrily, that it was a ritual. Just a ritual. Magic. Nothing more. Another warding bath, another strange evening in a house that lived on old enchantments and layered secrets. But his body didn't listen. His body remembered.
He lay back down carefully, slowly, almost cautiously, as if any sudden movement might summon her back to him, might conjure her voice from the bath, her humming curling around his ears. The sheets beneath him were clean, cool, untouched — yet his hands gripped them tightly, fingers curling into the fabric as though he needed to anchor himself to something that was still solid, still real.
His eyes closed, not for sleep but in surrender, and still the scene returned, slow and treacherous, slipping beneath thought and reason.
Steam rising in waves. The way candlelight had caressed the curve of her ribs. The delicate motion of her hand above the water, lifted just enough to reach toward him but not touch.
His own breathing now seemed too loud, too fast, as if his lungs were trying to calm a heart that had been hexed into frenzy.
Theo turned onto his side, facing the wall, willing the house to still itself, to silence its many watching eyes, but the house never spoke in silence. The house spoke in the language he couldn't help but understand — the one that hummed beneath his skin and lived in the memories he couldn't exorcise.
The ritual had been brief, a spell so simple it was almost mundane: a bath, a salve, a sequence of runes, a few whispered ingredients, careful timing. He was trained to record such details, to store them precisely. That was what he did. That was how he survived. But none of those details survived now. Only her.
Luna Lovegood had walked into his discipline like a fire set loose in a library, burning through every page, every careful note, until there was nothing left but the smoke curling through his thoughts and the memory of flame.
He had thought he could forget. He had believed that time or sleep or space would blunt the edges of this ache. But it hadn't. The ache sharpened with distance, not dulled. Every hour without her, every breath away from that room only carved it deeper, sharper.
He remembered the way her shoulder had shifted beneath his hand when he traced that final rune. He remembered how the water had sighed beneath her. He remembered the pulse of the house itself, matching his own, as if the very bones of this place wanted to teach him how to ache properly.
And ache he did.
His breath caught. Not because of the memory, but because of what it meant. Because he wasn't thinking about her like someone you protect. He wasn't thinking about her like an assignment, or even a person. He was thinking about her like a problem he couldn't solve. An echo he couldn't silence. A hunger he couldn't name.
He told himself it wasn't about her body. That it was about the magic, the energy that clung to her like perfume, the way she moved like she belonged to something older than the world. But that was a lie. Because he couldn't stop thinking about the exact shape of her back. The way her skin glowed, damp and warm and alive, and the way it had felt under his fingers, like pressing into light.
His nails dug into the sheets again, harder this time. He swallowed, throat dry, and rolled to his back, eyes wide, seeing nothing. His mind was no longer replaying the memory. It was living in it. Building new ones, imaginary ones, where she turned, where she looked at him, where she said something he couldn't bear to hear. Where her hand reached not just toward him, but for him.
He shoved the heel of his hand against his sternum, a hard, silent command to stop. But there was no stopping it. Not now.
He was unraveling.