Black petals edged with silver, purple hearts that seem to absorb light rather than reflect it, each flower carrying frost that crystallizes along their edges with delicate precision. The ice formations glitter like diamonds scattered across velvet, cold beauty that should conflict with my warmth but somehow doesn't.
The vines move toward each other.
Mine reaching for his, his reaching for mine, polar opposites that should repel, finding instead attraction that transcends conscious control. They intertwine with the particular intimacy of lovers reuniting after long separation, thorns catching and releasing, leaves brushing in whispers that sound almost like words.
The combined aroma hits with force that makes my entire body relax.
Rose and frost, warmth and cold, light and dark—the scents merge into something that speaks directly to parts of me I didn't know existed. Tension I've been carrying for what feels like years simply... dissolves. Muscles that have held defensive positions for so long they'd forgotten any other state suddenly remember what peace feels like.
My eyes lock onto his.
The marking I noticed on my forehead—the thorns and rosebuds traced across my skin—appears on him as well. But where mine lies flat against flesh, his rises with dimensional presence. Thorn patchwork that creates texture, shadows that suggest depth, the pattern forming a crown that sits upon his head with the particular authority of something earned rather than given.
A crown of thorns.
Dark and silver and purple.
Matching his roses.
Matching his magic.
Matching... me.
"Now, my Queen."
His voice carries command that my body responds to before my mind can object, the words settling into my bones with weight that feels ancient.
"Try again."
My throat tightens.
The realization crashes through me with force that threatens to shatter whatever composure I've managed to maintain. The vines, the roses, the incantations bleeding across both our skins—this magic has a name. A heritage. A legacy that extends beyond simple witchcraft into something far more ancient, far more powerful, far more complicated.
I've seen similar displays before.
In Nikolai, when his nature surfaces past the masks he usually wears.
In the old stories, the ones that speak of courts and kingdoms and power that shaped the supernatural world before vampires or witches or any of the other races claimed their pieces of immortal territory.
"Fae."
The word emerges as whisper, single syllable carrying the weight of everything I thought I understood about myself crumbling into dust.
His expression transforms into pride so radiant it borders on worship.
"Faerie would be singing hymns of praise to know one has finally acknowledged their awakened potential."
CHAPTER 10
The Villain's Patience
~KOISHII~
"Admiring perfection up close has always been a hobby of mine."
The whisper escapes me before conscious thought can intervene, the words carrying weight accumulated across centuries of anticipation finally reaching their intended recipient. She sits upon my lap—present, tangible,real—and the sensation threatens to overwhelm senses that have grown numb from too long spent waiting in the hollow spaces between prophecy and fulfillment.
Gwenievere.
