"Ruin does not arrive with trumpets. Sometimes, it runs its fingers through your hair."
—The Zabini Estate Grimoire, p. 46
Before dinner, he came to her door.
He didn't knock. He only stood there, silent for a moment, his fingers brushing along the doorframe like they were testing the grain of the wood, as if trying to decide whether he would pretend at courtesy or step past the threshold as though he had always belonged inside.
Then, finally, he stepped through.
She was by the window, seated with her legs folded neatly beneath her, her posture impossibly straight for someone at rest, her eyes fixed on something beyond the glass. She didn't startle when he entered. Didn't turn in surprise or show any visible reaction. She only looked at him, steady and quiet, as though she had been expecting him all along.
He didn't move toward her immediately. There was a line drawn across the room and he didn't cross it. Not yet. He let the warm amber light of the chandelier settle over his shoulders, let his gaze adjust to the soft haze that filled the space like candle smoke, and spoke in a voice low enough to fold into the quiet.
"Come have dinner with me."
She turned her head slightly, the movement smooth, delicate, something not quite human in its precision. There was no question in her face. No hesitation. Just stillness, and then a single word.
"Okay."
He stepped forward, only a pace or two, still careful not to make her feel penned in. The room had a particular gravity tonight, something hushed and tender at the edges, and he did not want to break it with force.
"Do you want to change?" he asked.
She looked down at what she wore already. A pale dress, loose at the sleeves and hem, made of something soft and breathable that whispered when she moved. It was not elegant. Not sensual. It was comfort made visible, and it made her look like something distant and domestic, like a memory pressed into linen.
"Should I?" she asked, her voice soft and clear, without a trace of humor or offense, as if she were genuinely unsure whether the question had an answer.
"If you are comfortable like this," he said, slowly, "then never."
She lifted her eyes. There was something sharp in them now. Not anger, not even curiosity. Just clarity.
"It's not for your liking?"
He didn't flinch. Didn't correct her. The corner of his mouth pulled into something that resembled a smile, but it held no kindness. Only honesty.
"It isn't," he said. "But it's not about that. This is your house too. You may do whatever you please."
She didn't reply. She only watched him for another long second, then turned without speaking and walked to the wardrobe in the corner.
The doors creaked slightly as they opened, the hinges stiff from disuse. He turned away instinctively. Not out of embarrassment or chivalry, but because she hadn't needed to ask him to. Because the space between them still required that kind of reverence.
Behind him, he heard the soft slide of fabric over skin, the breath of cloth drawn from hangers, the rustling deliberation of her choosing. She didn't hurry. There was no performance in it. Only ritual.
Then her voice, calm and clear from behind him.
"This one is your color."
He turned.
She stood before him in a gown the color of deep forest, rich and liquid in the light, clinging to her frame like ivy climbing the spine of an old cathedral. The fabric shimmered faintly with every breath she took, though the cut of the dress was modest—long sleeves, high neckline, the hem grazing the tops of her bare feet.
Still, there was nothing shy in the way she wore it. Her shoulders were squared. Her chin tilted just slightly upward, not in defiance, but in deliberate poise. There was a sense of ritual in her stillness, a silent challenge disguised as grace.
"For your pleasure," she said, voice as calm as the space between heartbeats.
He didn't respond right away. He didn't even blink. He only looked, his gaze slow and unhurried, taking her in from the hollow of her throat to the quiet fold of the fabric near her ankles, then back again. There was no hunger in his eyes. No heat. Just attention.
When he finally spoke, his voice was low and steady, each word clear and precise, as though they had already been weighed and measured before being offered.
"We've built something between us," he said. "A foundation. And it's not silence or politeness or the performance of civility. It's honesty. That's what we agreed on. Isn't it?"
She nodded once, her gaze never leaving his.
He stepped toward her, slow and deliberate, the distance between them folding in half. Close enough now to catch the scent that rose faintly from her skin beneath the perfume—something soft, like crushed violets, layered with something stranger, more difficult to name.
His hand rose halfway, fingers hovering near her elbow, so close that she could feel the warmth of him through the sleeve, but he never touched her. He didn't need to.
"It's not your color, little witch," he said, barely more than a breath.
Her eyes flickered, the faintest crack in her stillness.
"You look better in pink."
She held his gaze for a moment longer. Her face betrayed nothing. Then, without a word, she turned and walked back toward the wardrobe with the same deliberate calm she had worn like a second skin since the day she arrived.
He turned away once more, because something in her presence demanded privacy, even in silence. This time, he closed his eyes. Not tightly. Just enough to stop looking, to listen instead. Behind him, he heard the rustle of fabric, the sigh of drawers being pulled open and the creak of old hinges. He didn't turn until the sound stopped.
She returned quietly, no announcement in her steps. The dress she wore now was the first one. Simple, soft, a pale pink that made her look less like a guest and more like someone who had always belonged here. The hem fluttered faintly as she moved, and though it offered nothing in the way of seduction, she looked more dangerous like this. More real.
He opened his arm to her, a quiet offer extended without ceremony. She looked at it, then at him. She didn't take it.
But when they stepped into the hallway together, she let him match her pace.
They moved through the corridor without speaking, their bodies aligned as though their silence had weight of its own. Their arms didn't touch, but the air between them shifted with each step, charged with something not quite named. Their feet struck the stone floor in unison, a quiet rhythm that made the walls feel less empty, as though the house itself was listening.
As they reached the curve of the hall that led toward the dining wing, the sounds of other people began to bleed through the stillness—quiet conversation, the soft scrape of cutlery against porcelain, a faint, clipped laugh that faded almost as soon as it rose.
She stopped walking.
He felt it before he saw it—the sudden absence of motion beside him, the way the silence changed shape. He turned his head slightly, not fully, just enough to see the tension in her frame, the way her eyes were fixed on the door ahead as if it were a threshold she wasn't sure she was meant to cross.
"It's only the groundskeeper," he said, gently, his voice stripped of sharpness. "He takes his meals here. Comes. Goes. Nothing more."
She said nothing. Only nodded, the movement barely perceptible, and stood still for another moment before she started walking again.
This time, she went first.
He followed behind her with a gaze that never left her shoulders. And when they reached the door, he reached for it without hesitation, not offering any further explanation, not asking permission.
He opened it.
And let her step inside before him.
Not like a guest.
But like someone the house had already chosen.
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The room was awash in the dim light of early morning, that quiet, silver-drenched glow that filtered sideways through the sheer curtains and cast long, softened shapes across the floor. It was the sort of light that made familiar objects feel distant, like they belonged to another time, or to someone else entirely.
Luna opened her eyes slowly, her lashes dragging against her skin as if waking was something to be negotiated rather than obeyed. The air around her was thick, not with heat, but with a stillness that carried the weight of something just left behind.
She didn't even shift beneath the blanket. Instead, she lay there in perfect stillness, her body folded gently against the mattress, eyes fixed on the ceiling above her as if listening for something that might never come.
There was no wind. No birdsong. No distant voices carried through the stone. Only that peculiar silence that pressed in from all sides, the kind that made her feel like the whole house was holding its breath.
And then she noticed the door.
It wasn't wide open. Just ajar, barely enough to let in the thinnest sliver of shadow that did not belong. A wedge of dark that broke the shape of the room in a way she would have noticed had it been like that the night before. She hadn't left it open. She was certain of that. But there was no sign that anyone had come or gone—no creak of floorboards, no soft hush of fabric brushing along the carpet, no shift in the air to suggest someone else's presence had passed through.
Still, something had changed.
Across the room, near the vanity, the candle she had left untouched the night before now burned with a quiet, steady flame, small and flickering softly inside its glass holder, casting the faintest glow against the wall behind it. It had not been lit when she fell asleep. Of that, she was sure.
And yet now it burned.
She rose slowly, the motion fluid and unhurried, like she was waking into a memory rather than a new day. Her legs slid over the edge of the bed in a quiet sweep, her bare feet meeting the floor with a hush so gentle it seemed practiced, the kind of movement you learn after too many mornings where silence felt safer than sound. The rug beneath her toes was cool to the touch, woven tight and flat, holding the chill of the stone beneath it like a secret.
She crossed the room in small steps and reached for the door, her fingers brushing the edge of the frame before pressing the wood closed. She did it slowly, carefully, as though she might startle something waiting just outside the threshold if she moved too fast. Her palm remained against the door longer than it needed to. Then her hand slipped down to the bolt, and she turned it until she heard the soft, final sound of the lock sliding into place.
She didn't go back to the bed.
When she laid the dress across the back of the chair beside her bed, it was with the same kind of delicate, deliberate care one might give to preparing a garment not for wear, but for remembrance. The way a mourner might smooth the fabric of something lost, not ready to bury it, not trying to cleanse it of its weight or its meaning, but simply choosing to keep it near.
The room around her remained still, wrapped in a hush so complete that it seemed to breathe with her, each inhale and exhale the only movement left. The faint crackle of the candle wick burned steady in its glass holder, barely audible beneath the silence, but there nonetheless, like a heartbeat too soft to disturb the air.
There were no voices. No footsteps. No sudden shift in the house around her. Only the lingering presence of a door that had once been left ajar, and the quiet, undeniable truth that some cages never needed keys to keep someone inside.
Sometimes, all it took was the illusion of safety.
Sometimes, all it took was permission to stay.
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He didn't knock. He simply pushed the door open with a quiet, controlled force that felt more like inevitability than intrusion, the sound of the old wood groaning softly as it dragged against the stone threshold, the hinges sighing under the weight of movement they hadn't been asked to bear in years. The door gave way slowly, almost like it resented being part of this moment, and for a brief second the room remained unchanged, holding its breath around him.
Blaise stepped inside without speaking, his movements fluid, silent, shaped more by instinct than intent, and the air around him seemed to shift as he crossed the threshold, the light catching on the lines of his shoulders and the edge of his jaw. He didn't rush forward. He just stood there, one hand still resting against the edge of the doorframe, as if anchoring himself in place was the only thing keeping him from unraveling.
He had known something was wrong long before his fingers met the handle. The house had told him in the way it always did—through the temperature in the hallway, through the subtle way the walls had begun to echo more than they usually did, through the silence that no longer felt still, but tense, like a breath caught between warning and regret. Now, standing inside the room, seeing her exactly as he had feared, he did not move any closer. He only looked at her, and let the truth settle heavy in his chest.
She was on the floor.
Just seated with her legs neatly folded beneath her, her back held straight despite the weight of everything pressing in from all sides, her hands resting gently on the fabric of her skirt in a posture that could have been meditative, if not for the faint stiffness in her shoulders.
She looked like she had been waiting there for a long time. Her head lifted as his shadow fell across the rug, and she met his eyes with a quiet steadiness that made his breath catch without warning.
She was pale, but not fragile. Her face was too still to be unreadable. It was not blank. It was not cold. It was simply composed, like the surface of a lake just before a storm begins, and as her gaze held his, clear and unwavering, he knew she had expected this moment. He just didn't know if she was glad it had come.
Blood had dried in a slow, uneven trail down the length of her arm, the path beginning just beneath the crease of her sleeve and curving downward like a ribbon of shadow, dark and quiet and long forgotten.
Another stain had bloomed at the hem of her dress, wider and darker still, spreading in a warped oval against the pale linen, like the imprint of a flower that had been pressed too long beneath the weight of a book no one had opened in years. The wound itself was not new. Not open. Not bleeding. But it had never been tended to, never cleansed or acknowledged, only left to stiffen into the fabric of her clothes like a secret someone had tried not to notice.
He didn't ask what had happened, didn't let the question form behind his teeth or rise into the space between them. He didn't scold her for not coming to him. Didn't demand answers or explanations or touch the bolt that still gleamed faintly behind him, turned in the lock as if it had ever meant anything at all.
He only looked at her for the briefest of moments, long enough to understand that she wasn't going to move, wasn't going to explain herself, and then he crossed the room in three measured, deliberate steps.
He knelt.
And without a single word, without hesitation or pause, he gathered her into his arms with a kind of slowness that wasn't gentle exactly, but something else entirely. There was no urgency in the way he lifted her. No softness in the curve of his hands. Only care that had sharpened into precision, into a calm so careful it felt almost inhuman.
She didn't pull away.
Her limbs folded easily against his body, her weight barely noticeable in the crook of his arm. Her cheek rested near his shoulder, close enough to feel the warmth of him, but she never let herself touch it fully. Her eyes remained open. Her lips didn't move. She made no sound. She simply let herself be carried down the corridor like a ghost who had agreed to remain in her shape just a little longer, long enough to be seen.
The water in the bathing chamber was already drawn, still and warm, with steam curling faintly at the surface like breath rising in a room that remembered how to wait.
The candles that surrounded the basin flickered gently against the marble walls, their flames low but steady, and the towels were folded neatly beside them, untouched, untouched and waiting.
He didn't remember giving the order. Didn't recall lighting anything or speaking to anyone. But the room had prepared itself. The house had known. And so, in some quiet, unspoken way, had he.
He placed her carefully on the cushioned bench beside the water, his hands sure now, his fingers steady as they found the curve of her shoulder and the slope of her hip. She didn't tense. She didn't move. She only sat there, silent and still, and let him begin the ritual.
He reached for the fabric.
And slowly, without rush, without anything resembling hesitation, he began to remove her dress.
There was no attempt at gentleness for its own sake, no false softness meant to comfort or console. Only the measured, deliberate care of someone unwrapping something too fragile to be touched directly, the kind of careful effort one might use to ease ancient cloth from an artifact whose surface could not bear the weight of fingers.
He moved with steady hands, his breath low and controlled as he found the first button at the nape of her neck and worked it loose. Then the next. Then another. Each one undone with a slow, practiced precision, until the length of her spine was bare and the stained linen sagged away from her frame like something exhaled. When the fabric finally slipped to the floor, it did so without protest, settling into a heap at her feet that seemed quieter than silence itself.
She did not turn her head.
She did not hide.
And he, in turn, never looked up to meet her gaze. He kept his eyes lowered, focused not out of shame but out of necessity, the tight line of his mouth betraying none of the thoughts coiled beneath the surface. He did not linger. He did not stare. His expression was neutral, his movements unhurried, the discipline in his body honed sharp as a blade.
He saw the blood. He saw the bruises. He saw the faint scratches along her ribcage, thin and silvery and faded now, as though they had been left by claws rather than hands. But he treated them as he would have any injury after a long battle—quietly, efficiently, without comment.
He reached for the cloth.
The water in the basin was still warm, the steam curling into the air between them like breath, slow and deliberate. He dipped the cloth beneath the surface, soaked it through, then wrung it out with careful fingers. He began at her shoulders, the cloth moving in steady circles over skin that did not flinch, did not tremble. He washed her as one might clean a weapon after war, not with affection but with total attention, with that same cold calm he had once used when polishing the hilt of a blade or resetting the runes in a ward he could not afford to fail.
The cloth passed down her back. Around the curve of her throat. He hesitated for only a moment when he reached the hollow just below her jaw, where the beginnings of bruises had begun to rise like dark petals beneath pale skin. His fingers hovered there. Just resting in the space between touch and pause, the breath between violence and tenderness. Her eyes remained open. Her mouth stayed still. And she didn't move.
So he didn't stop.
His hand slid down her arm, the cloth smoothing over the dried blood that cracked and flaked beneath the damp, turning dark rust to red again. The wound on her shoulder was long but shallow, a clean cut, not deep enough to scar if treated, though he suspected it might anyway. He pressed the cloth there and held it still, waiting not for the pain to fade but for the moment to pass, as if something beneath the surface might tell him when it was time to move on. She said nothing. Gave no sign.
He continued downward.
To her knees, her calves, the delicate bones of her ankles. He bathed her wrists. Her temples. The skin behind her ears. Every place where pain might have lingered unseen. Every space that might have held a story the house had kept from him. His movements never faltered. He did not treat her like something breakable. He treated her like something that had already broken and was still here anyway.
When it was done, when the cloth had grown heavy with water and gone still in his hand, he set it aside and reached for the towel. He wrapped her in it slowly, like someone dressing the dead—ceremonial, with reverence neither admitted nor named. The scent of it lingered faintly between them. Moss. Myrrh. The soft weight of something sacred pressed into fabric.
He lifted her again.
This time, she let her head settle against his collarbone, the slope of her body yielding into his with a kind of quiet that made the corridor feel even darker as they walked. Her breath moved in slow, steady rhythm near his throat, and she made no effort to hold herself apart. There was no resistance in her limbs, no question in her silence. Only that eerie calm she wore like a second skin, as if she had long since surrendered to the house and now waited for it to do what it wished.
He carried her toward her bedroom, where the bedsheets still held the faint impression of where she had sat before he came.
He laid her down without speaking, without ceremony, as one might return something sacred to its resting place. Not worshipping. Not offering. Just returning. Just placing.
And when he pulled the blanket over her shoulders, his fingers hovered just above the hollow of her throat, not quite touching, but close enough that she could feel the heat of his skin. Close enough that it could have been a caress. Or a threat.
His voice came low, almost too quiet to catch at first, the kind of sound that drifted more than it landed, like something spoken not to be heard, but to be released. "I thought after that bath incident, it was over."
The words weren't accusatory. They weren't cold either. They just sat there between them, heavy and quiet, settling into the room like the weight of water on stone.
She simply lay there, her body still beneath the thin blanket, and when she did speak, her voice was steady but threadbare, unraveling one quiet syllable at a time like a seam pulling loose beneath gentle hands. "It wasn't me. Please, you need to believe me."
For a moment, nothing moved. Then his hand pulled back just slightly, not out of suspicion, not even hesitation, but something closer to deliberation, like he was giving her space without really offering it, like he was removing the warmth before she could ask him to keep it.
"I believe you, darling," he said at last, and the word should have sounded tender, should have landed soft in the air between them, but instead it wrapped itself around her like a leash slipping into place, a quiet tether drawn taut. Not affectionate. Not cruel. Just absolute. "You need to tell me who it was."
She didn't answer right away. Her body remained still for another long breath, like she was waiting to make sure the question had truly settled, that it wouldn't change or shift into something worse.
Then, slowly, she sat up, drawing the blanket tighter around her shoulders, tucking it beneath her chin with the kind of grip one usually reserved for armor, as though fabric could somehow protect her from what had already happened, from what had been left behind in the room like an aftertaste.
"When I woke up," she said, the words falling from her lips with a strange calm that only made them more unsettling, "the door was ajar. And my dress was bloody." She paused then, not for effect, but because something in her throat caught, something that didn't belong to fear exactly, but sat very near it. "And it just… got worse from there."
Still, he said nothing. His expression didn't shift. But something in the air around him did. It tightened. Focused. As if a decision had been made in silence, a line crossed that neither of them would acknowledge aloud. And when he finally did speak, his voice came quieter than before, though not gentler, like the calm that settles before a storm begins to rise. "Okay, little witch. I'll look into this further."
He stood with slow precision, each movement deliberate, as though every part of him had been recalibrated in the span of a breath, as if something had clicked into place inside his chest that he could no longer unsee. The tension that followed him felt unnatural in the soft-lit room. It wasn't loud. It wasn't angry. But it pulsed in the space he left behind, a thrum beneath the floorboards, a promise waiting to be fulfilled.
"Please stay in the greenhouse in the meantime," he said, already moving toward the door, already pulling the darkness around him like a second skin. "It won't be long. I promise."
She nodded, not because she believed him, not because she trusted the promise, but because there was nothing else to say. Nothing left between them that hadn't already been folded into silence.
He left without another word.
And the room felt colder for it.
She rose without a word, the blanket still clutched tightly around her shoulders, pulled so close that it felt more like a shield than warmth. Her bare feet touched the stone floor with a soft sound that vanished almost instantly, swallowed by the thick hush that hung over the corridor. The air outside her room was colder than she remembered, or maybe her skin just felt thinner now.
Either way, she didn't pause to find her shoes. She walked in silence, one step after another, careful not to breathe too loudly, careful not to draw the attention of anything watching from the cracks between the walls.
She made her way back toward the only place in the house that had not yet asked anything of her. The only space that had accepted her without expectation, without explanation. The greenhouse.
The air changed before she even reached it. It always did in that part of the manor, softening at the edges, growing warm and wet and strangely sweet, the scent of flowering things rising up from the soil like a memory she didn't own. But today, none of that mattered. The warmth didn't touch her. The sweetness didn't settle in her lungs the way it usually did. She crossed the threshold of the archway with her breath held, as if she was waiting for something to snap.
And then she heard Blaise.
Not near. Not close. Somewhere down the corridor behind her, his voice slicing through the air like it had been waiting in his chest for too long, festering.
But this wasn't the Blaise she had seen at dinner. This wasn't the man who whispered to walls or held silence like a knife. This wasn't velvet-coated gentleman or quiet command.
This was something else.
This was rage.
No. This was ugly. Loud. Real. His voice cracked against the stone like thunder drawn too tightly through a tunnel, too low to be civil, too sharp to be human. It echoed off the high ceilings with a force that made the vines around the arch tremble ever so slightly, as if even the greenhouse had paused to listen.
She could not make out the words. They came too fast, too snarled, a blend of spellwork and fury and something that sounded like a threat meant for the bones beneath someone's skin.
She didn't know if he was speaking to a person, or a creature, or the house itself. She didn't know if the anger was fresh or ancient, if it had been born today or if it had lived in him all along, waiting for the right excuse to open its eyes.
But she knew one thing.
This time, it wasn't the house that made her skin crawl.
It wasn't the hallways or the strange doors or the rooms that never stayed the same.
It was him.
The weight of his voice crashed through the air like something breaking loose inside the manor. Like something that would not go back into its cage. And as she stood at the edge of the greenhouse, hands gripping the frame, the blanket beginning to slip from her shoulders, she felt it settle into her spine like cold water.
For the first time since arriving, Luna was afraid not of being watched, or taken, or forgotten.
She was afraid of him.
He returned just over an hour later, but this time there was no grand entrance. His presence was quieter now, as though the house itself had reminded him to soften. Only the low, steady sound of his footsteps brushing against the stone floor, and the way the air seemed to shift slightly as he approached, like something had been nudged back into place.
She didn't lift her head when she heard him. She didn't stir from her place by the greenhouse window, where the moss beneath her knees had begun to warm from her stillness, its texture soft against the skin of her legs.
She remained where she was, back straight, hands resting in her lap, eyes trained on nothing in particular. The light filtering through the thick glass had turned the space a muted gold, making the leaves seem older, gentler, touched by time.
He did not speak right away. Instead, he lowered himself slowly beside her, careful not to brush her shoulder, not to interrupt the fragile peace of the moment with any unnecessary closeness.
His gaze wandered across the room, over the tangled vines and the hanging flowers and the strange, blooming things that didn't belong anywhere else in the world.
For a long moment, neither of them spoke. The silence between them was not heavy, not yet, but it clung to the air like dust that had settled where no one dared disturb it.
"You'll change rooms," he said at last, his voice low, not commanding, but resolute in a way that left no room for debate. "It will be prettier than this. Brighter. You'll be just across the hall from me. Not far."
She didn't turn to him. She didn't ask why. She only nodded once, the movement so small it might have been mistaken for a trick of the light, a breeze shifting through her hair. Not agreement, exactly. Not submission. Just acknowledgment. The barest flicker of a girl who understood how the game was played, even if she wasn't ready to speak its rules aloud.
"Okay," she said. Her voice was soft, almost soundless, the syllables barely rising above the rustle of the vines around them. If he hadn't been watching her so closely, he might have missed it altogether.
He studied her then. Not just the posture of her body or the angle of her shoulders, but the way the light touched her skin and still failed to reach anything deeper. She seemed carved from something softer than stone, but harder than anything the world could hold for long. There was a quiet strength in the stillness of her, something both unsettling and impossible to look away from.
"What can I bring you," he asked after a pause, the words slower this time, quieter, like he was offering something he didn't yet know how to give, "to make you feel better?"
Her gaze did not shift. Her hands remained folded in her lap, fingers pressed loosely together. She didn't answer right away. And when she did, her voice carried no hesitation.
"Nothing."
He didn't look away. He didn't laugh or sigh or press her for more.
"Tell me, little witch," he said, the endearment slipping out like it had grown from the roots of something he hadn't meant to name, "ask for anything."
Another silence followed. But this one was different. Not hesitant. Just thoughtful. She seemed to turn the question over in her mind like a stone in a riverbed, testing the weight of it, deciding what part of herself she was willing to share.
At last, without lifting her head, she spoke again.
"Tea."
The word was simple. Small. But it landed between them like an anchor.
And for a moment, something in him softened.
"Anything else?" he asked again, more gently this time. Not trying to pull the answer from her, but offering space for it.
She turned her face toward him, slowly, deliberately, her eyes meeting his with a steadiness that surprised him. Not a challenge. Not surrender. Just truth.
"Some company," she said quietly, and then after a pause, "not human."
He blinked. A single shift of expression. "I'm allergic to cats."
Her lips didn't curve. She didn't explain. She only replied, "Mooncalf."
The word didn't sound like a request. It sounded like something she had known she needed for days but hadn't dared say aloud until now. And when it left her mouth, it seemed to change the air between them. The vines around the greenhouse rustled faintly, as if the name of the creature itself had been woven into the magic of the room.
He didn't laugh. He didn't ask why. He only looked at her for a long moment, then nodded once.
"I'll bring it in the afternoon," he said.
He came as the light began to change. Not evening yet, but the sky had taken on that slow, golden haze that made the greenhouse feel like it belonged somewhere outside of time. Luna sat near the window, her knees pulled up, her chin resting on her arms. The tea she had made an hour ago sat forgotten beside her, steam long vanished, the cup cold to the touch.
She felt him before she saw him. The shift in the air. The quiet hum the house made when it recognized its master. But this time, there was something else. A smaller sound. A softer presence.
He stepped through the archway and paused, one hand resting against the iron frame, the shadows of ivy curling over his wrist like they wanted to keep him there. Something small shifted beside his boot. Then padded forward.
Luna blinked.
It wasn't just small. It was tiny.
A miniature mooncalf, no larger than a loaf of bread, its delicate body covered in downy silver fur that shimmered faintly with each breath. Its eyes were far too big for its face, dark and glistening, and its stubby legs moved with a clumsy wobble, as though it hadn't quite figured out walking yet. There were little spots on its back, shaped like stars, and its ears twitched every few seconds like it was picking up sounds no one else could hear.
Blaise didn't speak.
He only gave a slight incline of his head, a gesture so subtle it might have been imagined, and nudged the tiny creature gently forward with the side of his boot. The mooncalf squeaked once. Then took off at a stumbling gallop across the mossy stone.
Luna's lips parted in surprise.
The mooncalf reached her in moments, tumbled forward, then righted itself with a snuffling sound and pushed its round, too-soft face into the crook of her elbow like it had belonged there forever. She gasped, then let out a sound that might have been a laugh. The tiniest one.
It didn't flinch. It climbed into her lap with a determination that ignored its own clumsiness and curled into a silvery puffball, one ear draped over her wrist. It let out a little sigh.
She ran her fingers through its fur. Down its spine. Along the tiny tail that twitched like a blade of grass caught in the wind. It felt like warm velvet, impossibly soft, impossibly alive. Her entire posture changed—just slightly. Shoulders loose. Eyes gentler. A line in her forehead, gone.
Blaise watched from the threshold.
He hadn't meant to smile.
But he did.
Not a full smile. Not something anyone else might notice. Just the smallest curve of the mouth. A breath of amusement at her delight. At the absurd size of the creature. At the way she looked with something so strange and harmless nestled into her arms like it had chosen her and would never choose again.
She looked up.
Their eyes met across the soft breath of growing things and quiet air, and for a moment it felt like something fragile had found its way into the space between them.
She didn't thank him.
He didn't ask for it.
He stepped back after a few moments, his figure disappearing once more into the long stretch of hall beyond the greenhouse. The door didn't close behind him. It didn't need to.
And Luna stayed where she was, curled around something impossibly small, impossibly soft, her cheek resting lightly against the warm fur of a creature no one else would have thought to bring her. The mooncalf squeaked again and nuzzled closer. She smiled, barely.
But because something in the house had finally asked for nothing but love.
⋆｡ ﾟ☁︎｡ ⋆｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡
Later that day, without meaning to, without planning or even fully registering the act, Blaise found himself standing before the Watching Room once more. The path had unfolded beneath his feet like a memory he didn't realize he still carried—up the northern stairwell where the stone steps grew colder with each ascent, along the hall that no longer bore portraits but still remembered who had once passed through it, past the three doors that only opened when they chose to and had never dared stop him.
His hand closed around the iron handle before his mind caught up with him, the weight of it grounding him for just a breath. The door opened beneath his touch with a low groan, the kind of sound old wood made when disturbed too soon or too often. The air on the other side pressed against him with the intimacy of something long kept shut—cool and stale and quiet, the sort of quiet that felt carved out rather than fallen into.
He stepped into the room like he always did. Like he didn't belong there but had nowhere else to go.
The mirror greeted him without greeting. It dominated the far wall, floor to ceiling, edge to edge, too smooth to be natural, too wide to be just a mirror. The surface remained dark, but not empty. It shimmered faintly with that peculiar kind of light that seemed to come from inside the glass itself, silver veins flickering like something half-asleep, waiting to be stirred.
He didn't speak right away. Words had failed here before. They didn't belong in this room. Not when it was the house that decided who could be seen and who could not.
So he watched.
And he waited.
And he hoped, though he wouldn't have called it that.
The mirror began to shift, slow and rippling like a pond stirred by wind. Scenes bloomed and receded in fragments, as if the house was showing him what it wanted him to see, not what he asked for.
The hallway outside her chamber appeared first, undisturbed and dimly lit. Then the west wing. The long stretch of corridor with the claw-marked door. The one that breathed. The one that wept. The greenhouse, viewed from somewhere high above, its ceiling streaked with afternoon light, vines coiled neatly, not sleeping but still. The reliquary flickered into view, cold and perfect, the glass dome still intact. The moth unmoved.
But not her.
Not even a shadow of her.
Not her bed. Not the edge of her room. Not the folds of her dress or the small, still shape of her seated in thought. Nothing.
The mirror pulsed once. Barely. The faintest flicker of silver beneath the surface. Then it darkened, as if something inside had withdrawn, as if the house had blinked and chosen not to open its eyes again.
He took a step forward.
Then another.
And when the distance between him and the glass had all but disappeared, he raised his hand without thinking and placed his palm flat against it. The surface was cold, smoother than water, smoother than air, but it did not give beneath his touch. It didn't ripple. Didn't shift. Just held him there, his own reflection warped and buried beneath layers of unseen space.
He stood like that for a long while, breathing in the silence, listening for something he couldn't name.
The surface stayed cold beneath his hand, slick as stone left too long in the dark. No warmth. No shimmer. No welcome. Only the subtle tension of stillness, the suggestion of breath behind the glass, faint and untraceable, as though the mirror itself was holding something back—not because it couldn't offer it, but because it chose not to.
He leaned closer, just enough for his reflection to blur, just enough to see himself not as he was but as something else entirely. The silver didn't yield. It didn't shift to show the rooms he asked for. It didn't part to give him the truth. It only looked back, quiet and unmoved, the surface smooth as ice and just as unkind.
"Where is she," he whispered, the words dragged from somewhere low and half-buried, almost lost before they passed his lips.
The mirror gave him nothing in return. Not even the soft ripple of resistance it sometimes offered when it was deciding whether or not to obey.
His reflection wavered again in the low light. Not quite clear. A pale outline of a man he didn't recognize, tall and sharp-edged, but thinner now, like some of the weight had slipped off him in his sleep and taken something essential with it. The face that stared back held no authority. It did not belong to a master of the house, not anymore. It looked like someone left behind by their own creation.
He swallowed the rest of whatever he meant to say. Let the silence wrap around him like a second skin. The room was still. The air unmoving. Dust settled on the shelves behind him but refused to settle in his lungs.
He let his hand drop slowly, the contact between his palm and the mirror releasing with a faint sound that might have been breath, or might have been grief. He didn't step back. Just stood there, too close to the glass, too far from anything that might matter.
And then, low and quiet, the question surfaced again—this time unspoken.
"Did I hurt her?"
He said it aloud without realizing. His voice caught in his throat halfway through, but the words made it out anyway, raw and dry, stripped of pretense. Not rhetorical. Not accusatory. Just a small and terrible truth that needed air.
Still the mirror said nothing.
The house did not shift. The room did not tilt. No spell cracked beneath his feet. There was only quiet, stretched thin across his shoulders like a weight he had forgotten he was carrying.
Until something moved.
Not an image. Not a shape. Just a glimmer across the glass, fast as a blink and quieter than thought. A flicker like breath across skin, so faint he might've imagined it. But it was real. It was there. Not language, not magic, but something in between—a thread pulled tight inside his chest, words that didn't pass through ears but settled behind the bones instead.
Treat her like the lady of the manor.
That was all.
No image followed it. No glimpse of her, curled in sleep or walking the corridors or standing still in a room that had stopped showing itself to him. There was no proof that she was safe. No reassurance. Just that single sentence, burned into the dark like a law older than his own name.
He did not speak again.
He did not argue.
The mirror had never needed to explain itself. Not to him. Not to anyone.
But this was different. This was refusal. Not an absence, but a withholding. A line drawn.
She was no longer something he could summon with a glance or find with a flick of his fingers. Not something the house would offer up like a secret he had earned. She had passed out of reach.
He let his hand fall fully to his side, slow and deliberate, watching the place where his palm had touched the mirror fade into nothing. Even the smudge of breath he had left behind vanished as if it had never existed. Cleansed. Erased. Not by him.
He stepped back once. Then again.
The room didn't move with him.
He was alone with the mirror now, not beside it, not within it. And the house no longer answered to him the way it once had.
She was no longer his to watch.
Not unless she allowed it. Not unless she opened the door first. And that, he knew, was not a power the house would give back. Not even to him.
Not anymore.
⋆｡ ﾟ☁︎｡ ⋆｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡
She dressed without hurry, moving as if her limbs belonged to another version of herself, one who still believed in mornings. Her hands did not tremble. They worked quietly, without thought, fastening the dress in slow, practiced motions. The wound on her shoulder had stopped bleeding, but the skin remained pulled tight, tender where the fabric grazed it. She didn't wrap it. She didn't protect it. Letting air touch it felt closer to honesty.
When she stepped into the corridor, her bare feet sank softly into the rug, the fibers absorbing each step until it felt like she was walking inside a dream she wasn't sure belonged to her. Behind her, the door eased shut on its own, the sound low and final, like the house had exhaled.
She didn't hesitate. Her path took her forward without ceremony, her eyes half-lowered, her breath steady. The veil door passed on her left, the tattered fabric still pinned to the wood in three places. It had not moved in days. Its edges had begun to curl, the color fading to the kind of yellow that made things look older than they were.
The door with the claw marks stood next, warped and dented where something once wanted out badly enough to leave a message. She glanced at it only once, and even then, there was no fear in the gesture. Just recognition. A nod to what she already knew.
By the time she reached the reliquary, the hush of the corridor felt deeper somehow, thicker in the air around her. She pushed open the heavy door and stepped inside like she had been invited. The scent hit first—dry paper and time, a memory that hadn't fully formed. The light spilled down from the fractured skylight above, falling in uneven patterns across the floor, touching the stone in long, pale streaks like ghosts laying down beside her.
She walked forward. The soles of her feet made soft sounds on the cool tile now, a faint contrast to the stillness. Her movements were deliberate. Not cautious. Not reverent. Just steady.
In the far corner, the pedestal waited.
She knelt in front of it with the kind of ease that comes from returning to something inevitable. Her knees met the floor in quiet surrender, her dress gathering around her like spilled milk. The ache in her joints was familiar. She barely noticed it.
And there, beneath the glass, was the moth.
Its wings were unchanged. One curled inward like it had tried, once, to move. The other lay flat. No dust disturbed its body. No breath had fogged the dome. The smear of blood from the day before was still there, faint now, dulled to rust, drawn in a pattern she couldn't remember making.
She did not reach for it.
She simply sat, spine straight, hands resting on her thighs, and let the silence close around her again. Not as punishment. Not even as comfort.
Just as fact.
The moth had not moved.
And neither had she.
But something had shifted.
There was blood now, thin and rusted, drawn in a faint crescent across the glass of the dome. It traced the arc of her own hand, delicate and deliberate, though she could not remember reaching out. Maybe it had happened in the night, in that strange space between waking and sleep where nothing felt entirely real. Maybe she had done it earlier, without noticing. Or maybe the house had taken the memory from her, tucked it away somewhere in its walls where she would not think to look.
The blood was hers. That much she knew without needing proof. She knew the color of her own wounds. This one had dried dark, edging toward brown, the red long since leached out by time and air. It had left a shadow over the moth, like a frame or a seal, something quiet and inevitable. It didn't feel violent. Not now. It just was.
Her throat didn't tighten. Her shoulders didn't shake. Her face didn't fold in on itself the way it used to when pain was still sharp and new. This wasn't grief. It wasn't fear. It was stillness.
She sat with it.
With the dome, the moth, the curved mark of her own body left behind. With the ache blooming low in her knees and the quiet press of air that felt like it had settled there just for her. The silence didn't ask anything of her. It didn't demand a name for what she was feeling. It only wrapped around her, slow and weightless, like a second skin that might never come off.
The candles began to die out one by one.
No draft passed through the room. No hand reached to snuff them. Their flames just flickered for a moment, as if thinking of staying, then gave up entirely, shrinking into themselves until only smoke curled toward the ceiling.
She didn't move.
Even when the last light disappeared and the room fell fully into dusk, she stayed there, unmoving, unblinking, breathing so shallowly it barely counted.
The house did not call her away.
It simply let her remain.
⋆｡ ﾟ☁︎｡ ⋆｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ
It was nearly midnight when he found her.
The new room had been prepared that afternoon. Different from the others. Brighter, softer around the edges. The bed was wide, with linens dyed a shade between rose and rust, warm against the pale stone. There were no mirrors. No locks. The windows opened toward the east gardens, though the moonlight could not reach this far. Only the shadows of the ivy danced on the walls, quiet and slow.
He knocked, twice.
Then, after a moment, he opened the door and stepped through it like someone entering a room he'd already dreamed about.
She was seated on the edge of the bed, her back to him. The light from the fireplace cast a low, flickering glow that curled across the curve of her spine. She was wrapped in a blanket, not fully dressed, her hair undone and loose down her back. Her arms were folded across her knees. Still. Small. Watchful.
He said nothing at first.
Just stood there, letting the silence settle between them like a second layer of dust. Then, slowly, he closed the door behind him, careful not to let it latch too loudly. His steps were soft across the rug, the kind of softness that came from holding power too long and learning how not to use it.
When he reached her, he didn't touch her. Didn't sit. Only crouched down in front of her, his knees folding neatly, his hands resting lightly against his thighs, elbows loose. He looked at her face for a long time before speaking, as if unsure whether words would help or make things worse.
"You don't need to be afraid," he said quietly, but it wasn't a command. It wasn't even meant to reassure. Just something true he wanted her to hear.
She blinked once, then let her eyes meet his.
"I'm not," she said.
He didn't believe her, but he nodded anyway.
He stepped into the room like he'd done it before, like it was already half his. Not out of arrogance, but out of instinct. The curtains had been drawn open, letting in the pale wash of twilight. The little mooncalf was nowhere in sight.
His eyes drifted toward the far door, left slightly ajar.
"Where is your pet?" he asked, voice low, careful not to break the strange, still comfort that had settled between them.
Luna didn't look up from the book in her lap. She turned the page with deliberate gentleness, then murmured, "She hides in the bathroom. She's scared a little bit."
He let out a soft breath, not quite a sigh. His hand came to rest lightly on the back of the nearby chair, thumb tapping the carved wood once, then stilling. "She'll feel at home soon," he said, almost to himself. "She'll realize that this is a safe place for her."
Neither of them said anything for a moment.
They both knew the words weren't really about the mooncalf.
She closed the book slowly, her fingers resting on the cover as if steadying something inside herself.
"Did you choose a name?" he asked, softer this time, his gaze returning to her face.
Her lips twitched into the barest suggestion of a smile. "Bubbles," she said simply.
He blinked, then let out a short, startled chuckle. "Bubbles," he repeated, the word strange in his mouth, like it didn't belong in this house built of secrets and stone.
"You don't like it?" she asked, turning to glance at him now, one eyebrow slightly raised, but not accusing. Just curious. Testing.
He shook his head, but the corner of his mouth was curled in something that almost looked like fondness. "She's your pet. You can name her whatever you like. I think it's a sweet name."
His eyes flicked toward the bathroom door, as if he could see the creature curled inside through the wood. "She is rather cute," he added after a pause, "and funny-looking."
Luna sat up straighter, that familiar spark returning to her voice. "Do not say that," she said firmly. "She's unique."
That made him laugh again, quieter this time. "Yes. Of course she is."
She turned back toward the door, where a faint rustle of movement could be heard, the soft scrape of tiny hooves on tile.
"She'll come out when she's ready," Luna said, folding her hands in her lap.
He watched her for a long moment.
"So will you," he said.
But this time, he didn't laugh.