Aurelia sat on the stool by the window, her movements slow, deliberate.
The moon hung bright and full beyond the glass, a cold, watchful eye in the endless dark. Its light fell across the floor in a pale silver sheet, stopping just short of her feet.
In her hands, she held her journal. The leather cover was cool against her skin, the small silver key still dangling from its silk ribbon. She took up the quill, dipping it into the pot of ink.
There was too much to say.
Too many thoughts,too many fears, too many questions without answers—all tangled inside her like thorns.
She didn't know where to start. She just knew she had to begin.
The tip of the quill hovered over the blank page, a tiny, trembling shadow in the moonlight.
( It is I who writes again.
I know not what has become of me. I am changed—whether by folly or by fate, I cannot say.
There was a moment, fleeting, with Tenebrarum. A moment of… pleasure. A stolen harmony, before the dissonance of his dismissal. He deemed me as—nothing.
Yet what am I, if not something?
Powers stir within me that no mortal should claim. Gifts, or curses, of a bloodline half-spoken.
My mother's words remain fragments, a mosaic without pattern.
Why did she leave the picture unfinished?
I feel the walls not of stone, but of myself.
Today bore its own lash. The serpent… it came to my hand as to a perch.
Am I not also a creature caged? A spectacle for princes?
But let this not linger in despair.
Word came from Calvus.
A path is laid. In two days' time, I quit this gilded prison.
His design: the food carriage at the gate. May Fortuna guide its wheels.
Soon, I shall be free of this place.
And nearer to what was once called home.
But is there actually a home again?
Velmara's betrayal lingers too deep.
I saw the way Matrona was pleased—perhaps witches are always witches... )
THUD!
The door flew open shaking the stillness of the room.
Aurelia jolted, the quill slipping from her fingers.
Her journal tumbled from her lap and struck the stone floor with a soft, shameful slap. Pages splayed open, her secrets bare to the cold air.
Before she could move to hide them, he was already inside.
"Who is that?" she breathed, rising from the stool.
But she knew. Even before her eyes lifted, she knew.
The presence alone was a weight, a chill that filled the space around her. Tenebrarum stood framed in the doorway, his faceless mask a void in the dim light. The quiet of the night shattered around him.
"My lord," she said, her voice carefully smoothed into deference. She did not speak his name. Her gaze remained fixed on the floor, on the scattered pages near his boots. "What brings you here at such an hour?"
For a long moment, he said nothing.
She could feel his stare like a physical pressure.
"You ask me what brings me here?" His voice was low, stripped of all pretense, a blade drawn in the dark. "I should be the one asking questions."
He took a single step forward. The sound of his boot on stone was deliberate, final.
"Why," he said, each word dropping like a stone, "was Kaelen at your door yesterday?"
Kaelen? Is that why he is here?
Her mind spun, grasping for safe footing. "He escorted me to my room," she said, the words too quick. "Nothing else."
"Nothing else?" The mockery in his voice was colder than the night air. "I am not a fool, Flavia. Why was he here?"
He closed the distance in two strides. With a sudden, violent motion, he seized the stool she had been sitting on and hurled it against the wall beside her. It struck with a sharp crack, splintering apart and clattering to the floor.
Her breath hitched, sharp and shallow in the suffocating quiet.
"Nothing," she insisted, the word fraying at the edges. "He was only helping—"
"Only helping."
Before she could flinch, his hand shot out. His fingers clamped hard around her jaw, thumb digging into the soft flesh of her cheek, forcing her face up toward the blank porcelain of his mask. The pressure was bruising, deliberate—a brand of possession.
She struggled, pain tearing through her cheeks, her hands flying up to claw at the iron vise of his wrist, nails scraping against leather and skin. But his grip only tightened, a silent promise of how easily he could break what he held.
"You are nothing," he hissed, the words stripped of all warmth, all humanity. "Nothing to me. But I hate it when anyone touches what is mine—even my trash. Consider this your last warning."
He released her jaw abruptly, as if discarding something unclean.
Her eyes met the darkness behind his mask, wide with disbelief and a stinging, humiliated clarity.
Why did I ever love you?
The thought was a blade she dared not speak aloud.
He had called her nothing. Worthless. Trash.
This will be your last warning, she vowed silently, her heart hardening behind her ribs. I will be gone soon.
Tears welled unbidden, spilling from the corners of her eyes, tracing hot paths down her throbbing cheeks.
"Don't tell me you're crying." His voice was flat, devoid of empathy. "You are so weak."
Something in her broke open then—not in surrender, but in defiance. The question tore from her lips before she could cage it.
"Why do you hate me so much, Tenebrarum? Why?"
He paused. Not because she had spoken his name, but because of the word itself.
Hate.
It was the wrong word. What he felt was not hatred—it was something darker, tighter, more consuming. Obsession.
"What did you say?" he murmured, his voice dangerously soft. He closed the gap between them, backing her gently against the cold stone of the window ledge. Her head tilted back, framed by the night behind her.
She did not look at him. Her gaze stayed fixed on her own bare feet, pale against the dark floor.
Slowly, deliberately, his hand rose again. This time, his touch was not harsh. His fingers traced the line of her cheek, where moments before his grip had bruised her. The contrast was chilling. Her white hair stirred in the night breeze drifting through the open window, strands brushing like ghosts across the impassive surface of his mask.
He leaned in, his voice dropping to a whisper that seemed to merge with the wind.
"I wish I hated you."
Her eyes shot up immediately, meeting the void of his mask as if she could see through it. Slowly, almost without her own will, her hand lifted. Her fingertips brushed the cold, smooth surface where his cheek would be.
Then she remembered the snake in the maze—the way it had rested in her palm, a creature of teeth and terror, yet somehow not a monster at all.
Maybe some things that seem monstrous… aren't.
She could feel the faint, controlled rise and fall of his breath against her wrist.
What if he, too, was trapped?
Not by ivy and hedge, but by crown, by expectation, by whatever darkness had forged him.
What if the mask wasn't a weapon, but a cage?
"I do not want to see you with Kaelen ever again. Am I clear?"
She did not answer immediately. Her hand still hovered near his mask, her thoughts a turbulent sea he could not navigate.
"Am I clear?" he repeated, the words edged like a blade.
"Yes."
The sound of her submission—soft, resigned—should have been a victory. It was the acknowledgment he had come to demand.
Yet, hearing it, he immediately moved away from her touch, breaking the fragile contact as if burned. He had planned to kill her tonight. To end the distraction, the defiance, the weakness she stirred in him. To slice her head from her shoulders and be done with it.
And here he was, lost again.
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To be continued...