Page 58 of The Vespertine Treaty

I froze, turning slowly toward the sound. The nickname jarred me, not because it was disrespectful, but because it sounded... fond.

"Why do you call me that?" The question left my mouth, raw and unplanned, pushed out by the sheer desperation of my situation and the sudden, aching need for kindness in a house built on cruelty.

The gargoyle paused. The silence from the spire was unnerving. I could hear the wind whistling through the cracks in his stone hide.

"You look little," he finally scraped out, the voice quiet and surprisingly vulnerable, vibrating through the window frame. "From up here, against the darkness of the Master’s shadow... you look very small. The way you move, clutching your familiar. The way you stare out over the gardens—I sometimes catch you looking at nothing, and you look so deeply sad. Like a child waiting for a blow that never lands."

His honesty hit me harder than Cain’s magic.

The sheer, unvarnished acknowledgement of my invisible pain—from a creature made of granite, no less—broke the final piece of my control. My throat tightened until it burned. My eyes stung.

I didn't think. I sprinted toward the window, throwing the sash up so hard it banged against the frame. I scrambled onto thewide stone ledge, the wind whipping my hair across my face. I didn't care about the drop or the cold.

"Thank you, Friddi," I choked out, the tears finally starting, soaking into the grey dust of his ankle. I reached up and awkwardly wrapped my arms around the cold, dusty stone of his immense, chipped gargoyle foot. It was rough against my cheek, smelling of centuries of rain and moss, but it was solid. It was real. "Thank you for seeing me. Thank you for being here."

A profound, chaotic tremor ran through the stone structure beneath me. It wasn't an earthquake; it was the gargoyle shuddering.

Friedrik's voice was reduced to a soft, almost panicked rubble. “F-Friddi? My Lady... surely you jest. No one—in 847 years of sentient service to this crumbling, miserable House—no one has ever given me a pet name. I am a Grotesque. I am designed to terrify.”

I pulled back, wiping my face. My hands came away streaked with tears and ancient stone dust.

"You need a friend too, Friddi," I whispered, looking up at his massive, ugly, beautiful face. "And right now, I desperately need a messenger. I need Aemelia to know about this mission.”

Friedrik remained motionless, silent. The magnitude of the appeal—and the unexpected tenderness of the nickname—seemed to be paralysing his enchantments.

"Ophelia..." he rumbled, the sound low and mournful. "That is treason. I am bound to the Alistair bloodline. And the Master is already awake. He senses disturbances in the air like a spider senses a fly."

"It is survival, Friddi… for all of us,” I insisted, scrambling back off the ledge, rushing to the desk. I grabbed a sheet of thick parchment and a heavy ink pen. "He is taking me across the Threshold at dawn. He is using me to stabilise his Void. If he loses control out there, in the human realm or the wild lands, there will be no one left to guard the estate. I need you to take this letter. It's addressed to Aemelia in the Scholars’ District, the spire. It is the key to perhaps saving everyone, including him.”

I wrote furiously, the pen scratching loud and harsh against the paper. My handwriting was jagged, stripped of its usual elegance.

Aemelia,

The timeline has collapsed. We leave at dawn. He is taking me on the mission, but it is a cover. He is unstable. He is using the bond as a siphon for his corruption.

Ensure that Caspian remains away; he has to forget me. If Cain senses him, he will kill him. Tell him I am gone.

I am fine; Cain has not forced himself on me physically, but the psychological containment is absolute. He is using me as a filter. You must research ‘Void Manifestations’ and ‘Stabiliser Protocols’ in the restricted archives. There has to be something that can help us understand how the Void works. Perhaps a ritual that unbinds the nervous system?

Do not try to play hero Em, just try to find some answers.

- Oph, the family you choose

I sealed the letter with a drop of crimson wax, pressing my thumb into it before it could cool. I returned to the window, extending the small, tightly rolled scroll toward the giant stone foot hanging over the ledge.

"I need you to send this out of the estate. Now. Please, Friddi. You are my only chance."

Friedrik groaned—a sound like grinding tectonic plates, no longer sarcastic, but weighed down by impossible morality. His glowing yellow eyes narrowed, looking from the scroll to my face.

"You ask me to betray the boy I watched become a monster, to save the female he needs to survive," he murmured. "The irony is excruciating, Little Ophie.”

He didn't refuse.

Slowly, agonisingly, a massive stone claw descended. I felt the cold, rough tip of his finger brush my palm as he carefully, delicately lifted the small scroll. It looked like a toothpick in his grasp.

"If he finds out," Friedrik rumbled, his voice low and solemn, vibrating with genuine fear, "he will not just destroy me. He will disassemble me one granite chip at a time and scatter me across the Void."

"Then we both have something to fight for," I whispered, relief washing over me, cold and absolute.