Finn leaned back, arms resting on the stone ledge. “Well, I don’t exactly announce it in every tavern I visit. But…I figured you should know.”
Cedric wasn’t sure what to say about that. Did he want to know? Yes. Did it complicate things? Also yes.
The star-dappled sky stretched wide and endless, but Finn was right there. Close enough that Cedric could feel his warmth, even with space between them.
He should look away. He should say something. Something safe, something neutral.
Instead, he looked at Finn.
Really looked at him.
The way the moonlight softened the sharp angles of his face. The quiet steadiness in his eyes, like he wasn’t expecting anything—but he wasn’t running from this either.
“…Thank you,” Cedric murmured. The words felt too small for what he meant, but they were all he had.
Finn’s gaze searched his, as if trying to read between the lines. “For what?”
For telling me. For trusting me. For making me feel—gods, I don’t even know what I’m feeling. But all Cedric said was, “For being here.”
The wind whispered around them, cool against Cedric’s flushed skin. Finn’s lips parted slightly. The quiet between them wasn’t empty—it was heavy and charged.
Finn was so close now. Close enough that Cedric could see the way his breath slowed, the way his pupils dilated, the way his hand—resting so casually on the ledge—clenched, as if resisting the urge to move.
It would be so easy. Too easy. And yet, the thought of closing that distance didn’t feel reckless. It didn’t feel like a mistake.
It felt inevitable.
Before Cedric could overthink it, he swooped in. His hand came up to cup Finn’s jaw, the knight’s stubble rough against his palm. Their lips met in a tentative brush that quickly turned into more when Finn responded.
He leaned in, deepening the kiss, and Cedric felt as if he might catch fire from the inside out. The world narrowed, the cold night air vanishing beneath the searing heat blazing through him.
Finn’s hand came up, fingers tangling in Cedric’s long hair. He memorized the way Finn tasted, the way he breathed against him, the way every worry, every wall, every carefully kept secret momentarily melted away into nothingness.
For the first time in years, Cedric allowed himself to forget. To want. To simply feel.
The warmth of Finn’s lips still burned against Cedric’s own when reality returned, as sudden as a kick to the head.
He jerked back, air punching from his lungs. His back hit the cold stone, hands splayed as if to brace against the world tilting beneath him. His breath came hard, ragged, like he’d been running.
Idiot.
Cedric’s pulse roared in his ears, drowning out the sounds of the night. “I’m sorry,” he choked out, the words like ash on his tongue. What have I done?
Finn’s hand caught his. “Don’t apologize.” Finn’s voice was gravel wrapped in velvet, low enough to make Cedric’s traitorous heart lurch. “I wanted that, too.”
Cedric’s heart soared at those words—and promptly plummeted, torn between impossible hope and crushing dread. The unshaken look in Finn’s eyes carved through him, deep and aching. Cedric wanted to believe it. Gods, he wanted.
He wanted to pull Finn in again, to drown in the warmth of him, to forget for just one more moment that he was a monster. But his mind screamed at him to stop. To protect them both.
“Finn, I...” His voice fractured. The confession tore at him—dragon, curse, monster—but fear sealed his lips, cold as iron shackles. ”There’s so much you don’t know about me.”
“Then tell me.” Finn’s thumb traced the curve of Cedric’s palm. ”Whatever it is, you can trust me.”
Tell him how your bones snap and reshape at dawn. How the very tower we stand on blurs into clouds beneath your wings.
How you scorched your own parents to cinders.
Cedric’s golden-brown hair clung to his damp temples as he shook his head, hard, too hard, like he could shake off the truth itself. A loose strand caught on his lashes. He swiped it away, voice little more than a whisper. “I can’t.”
