Eating food I prepared.
Wearing clothes I conjured.
Bearing a mark that connects her to me regardless of what either of us might prefer.
She'll come to understand what I understand, eventually.
That villains and heroes are simply different approaches to the same fundamental goal—survival in a world that doesn't care about individual preferences. That the line between them is drawn by victors after battles have been won, attributed based on outcome rather than intent. That the same actions can be heroic or villainous depending entirely on who's telling the story afterward.
For now, I'll let her hate me.
Let her believe I'm the obstacle rather than the ally.
Let her maintain the resistance that makes every interaction between us crackle with tension that has nothing to do withgenuine opposition and everything to do with attraction she doesn't want to acknowledge.
It's more fun this way.
For both of us, whether she admits it yet or not.
Villains have the best fun in the realms of love and war.
CHAPTER 11
Possessive Darkness
~GWENIEVERE~
Ican't deny the food is probably the best meal I've had in a really long time.
The admission surfaces with each bite, flavors exploding across my tongue in combinations that seem almost impossible—too perfect, too precisely calibrated to what my depleted body craves. The steak practically melts against my teeth, juices carrying depth that speaks to preparation methods I can't begin to comprehend. The bread tears with satisfying resistance before revealing interiors soft as clouds, butter melting into warmth that makes my eyes close briefly with involuntary pleasure.
I don't remember when I've eaten such amazing food.
The thought carries weight that extends beyond simple culinary appreciation. WhenhaveI eaten like this? Not at the Academy, where meals arrive as fuel rather than experience—nutrition calculated to sustain bodies through trials designed to break them. Not before enrollment, during the years I spent surviving rather than living, scraping existence from margins that left no room for indulgence.
I'm not a foodie.
Never had the luxury of becoming one, really. Survival mode doesn't permit the contemplation of flavor profiles orpresentation aesthetics. You eat what's available, what won't kill you, what provides enough energy to face whatever threat waits around the next corner. Appreciation is a privilege reserved for those who've never wondered where their next meal might come from.
Butthis...
This is satisfaction that extends past simple sustenance into something closer to healing. Each bite seems to address deficits I didn't consciously register—minerals and vitamins and magical components that my hybrid biology has been screaming for without my awareness. The food doesn't just feed me; itrestoresme, filling hollows I've carried so long I'd forgotten they existed.
Even the persistent thirst—the vampire hunger that lurks beneath every other sensation, demanding blood with the particular insistence of needs too fundamental to ignore—seems manageable in the face of such extraordinary cuisine. I can last until I figure out that particular requirement. The blood packs in that mini fridge tasted like disappointment distilled into liquid form, but surely there are better options available somewhere in this Academy.
Surely.
I look up from my plate.
Yoshiro—Koishii, I remind myself, though the full name feels foreign on my mental tongue—sits across the table with the particular stillness of someone who has perfected the art of waiting. A teacup rests in his elegant fingers, steam curling upward in patterns that seem almost deliberate, and his attention is fixed on the window that dominates the library's far wall.
There's nothing there.
Just darkness—the particular absence of light that defines spaces between stars, between realms, between moments that haven't yet decided what they want to become. The windowreveals nothing but void, yet he stares into it with the particular intensity of someone witnessing entire universes unfold.
What does he see that I don't?
What knowledge do those shifting eyes possess that mine lack?
