"You came like a storm, a forbidden fire I knew would ruin me.
But still, I wanted it—the ache, the destruction, the sweet unraveling.

You were a whispered temptation, a promise that shattered my soul,
and I, willingly lost in the wreckage, longed to be consumed by you.

Now, I am but a hollow echo, drowned in the burn of what we could never have.
You were everything and nothing, and I, undone, still ache for the ruin you left behind."

The ride back to the house was slow, unhurried — a soft weaving through the golden meadow as the sun bent low, setting fire to the edges of the world. Selene moved beneath me like a thought made flesh, her hooves whispering against the earth, her breath misting into the cooling air. Above, the sky unfurled in molten ribbons — gold melting into rose, rose deepening into the first bruises of night.

I leaned forward once, pressing my palm to the warmth of her neck, feeling her steady heartbeat thrum against my hand — tethering me to something achingly real. The mansion, distant but waiting, caught the last light like a cathedral adrift in dreams. Its windows blazed with fleeting fire, then softened to dusk.

At the steps, Selene slowed to a halt, her ears flickering once in farewell. I slid from the saddle, my boots crunching against the graveled path. I pressed a lingering kiss between her ears, a silent gratitude, before letting her wander free into the fields. The great doors swung open before I could raise a hand. There he stood, Mr. Everard, framed by the fading glow, his silver hair kissed by the remnants of sunlight, his form etched against the shadows gathering within.

His posture was the same-dignified, immovable. And yet, something in the tilt of his head, the faint tension coiled in his gloved hands, betrayed the stirrings of worry. I stepped into the threshold, the cool air of the house folding around me like an old sigh. Without preamble, my voice found the hush between us.

"Mr. Everard," I said, each word placed carefully, "Please see that no one enters the upper floor tonight. Not the maids. Not the staff. No one."

For a heartbeat too long, he was still. The golden light framed his face, carving lines into his otherwise unreadable mask. And then — a flicker. A faint tightening around his eyes. Recognition. He knew. This was not the first time he had heard this request. For a breath, I thought he might speak — thought he might unburden some long-kept warning. But instead, he inclined his head with a grace carved of silence, and murmured, "As you wish, Lady Adina."

Yet I saw it. The faint ghost of remembrance in his gaze, the unspoken echo of history folding quietly around us both.

I moved past him without another word, the soles of my boots muffled against the Persian rugs as I climbed the wide staircase, my hand gliding along the cool banister. The house exhaled around me, the setting sun threading through stained glass, casting fractured jewels along the marble floors. Each step was a pulse against my ribs — excitement, yes, but also something finer, thinner, like the sharpness just before breaking.

Tonight. Tonight would be different. I reached the piano hall without pause.

The great carved doors yielded to my touch, sighing open as if they too had been waiting. The last blush of day spilled across the gleaming parquet floor, igniting the mirrors along the walls with embers of dying light. Curtains stirred with the hush of ancient breath, and somewhere deep within the silence, I could feel it — him. Not in the way of footsteps or sound, but in the way the very air shaped itself differently around my body. An attentiveness, a gravity.

But I knew — he would not come to me simply because I stood here. No. He was older than impatience. Older than wanting. He would wait. And so, I would too.

I turned — deliberately — and pressed the heavy door closed, feeling the finality of the lock sliding into place. The sound echoed once, folding into the velvet hush of the room. Alone, but not alone. Never alone in Zenith.

I let my feet move of their own will, wandering through the vastness of the hall, my skirts brushing against the floor, the faint rustle barely a breath. The mirrors caught slivers of me — fragmented glimpses of light and shadow, eyes wide, hair spilling like ink over my shoulders. The chandeliers overhead shivered in the last drafts of day, scattering flecks of dying gold like blessings. I trailed my fingers along the edges of a grand frame, then over the heavy brocade of the curtains — feeling the textures of history against my skin.

And then, inevitably, my hand found the piano.

The lacquered black surface hummed beneath my touch, still warm from a sun that had long since dipped below the horizon. My fingertips hovered over the keys, breath held in the soft cage of my chest. Outside, the evening deepened — a slow exhale of blue swallowing the last threads of pink and amber. Inside, the light kissed my fingers, danced along the fine bones of my hands, made small stars out of the pearls sewn into my cuffs. It brushed my hair with molten whispers, found the curve of my cheekbone, set my eyes aglow with something too soft to name.

I lowered myself slowly onto the bench. The wood sighed beneath my weight, familiar yet not. Not the same girl who had once sat here. Not the same heart. A tremor ran through me, so slight it might have been imagined. I lifted my hands — hovered them above the keys — feeling the charged stillness wrap around me, a second skin woven of expectation and something perilously close to longing.

The first note, when it came, was not struck. It was born. Soft, aching — the sound of a door opening somewhere in the dark. A note not played, but found. The echoes unfurled around me like ghosted ribbons, threading through the marble air, stirring dust that had waited too long for breath. I played another, and another — slow, careful — each one a step deeper into a place without maps, without names. The room did not just listen. It leaned closer.

And somewhere within the silence that bloomed between the notes —I knew he was listening too.

The song that poured from my fingers was not mine, not wholly; it rose from some hidden fracture in the air itself, spilling soft and golden into the dying light. Each note carried something unbearably young, luminous—stitched from memory, hunger, and a sweetness so piercing it hurt to breathe. And I played because I could not stop. The moment had chosen me, dragging me into it with tender, ruthless hands. I barely noticed, barely understood, when the air thickened, when the room shivered, and something ancient, vast, crossed the threshold of existence beside me.

Not a whisper this time, but flesh—a man not made for living, a ruin too beautiful to survive. He came not with thunder, but with the hush between heartbeats, the ache between silences. When I glanced—half-possessed, half-blind—he was there, his body a cathedral of sorrow carved into shape. Black hair fell in restless waves, golden eyes molten with a grief so profound it was almost reverence. He did not speak. He did not dare. But he reached.

The long, veined fingers of his hand—hands meant for a different world—hovered, trembling, over the keys beside mine. And then he played. The piano, that faithful betrayer, welcomed him like a prodigal thing, our sounds fusing into something so painfully sweet it unmade me from the inside out. His music was not careful, not kind. It was desperate, frantic—worshipping ruin even as he tried, helplessly, to save it. Every note he touched bled memory, old wounds splitting open with terrible beauty.

Though I did not know him, had no names to whisper against the rushing dark, he knew me—or rather, he knew the echo I carried. The ghost stitched into my blood. The impossible, dangerous girl who had once loved him with too much light, too much trust—who had reached into his ribcage and made a home there without permission.

And I was not her. I was something worse, something stronger, something that would not beg, would not tremble. I was something that played with a will that could break gods if left unchecked. I was more determined. He knew it. I saw it in the trembling of his jaw, the way his breath stuttered between phrases as our hands tangled over the keys. Together, we built a melody so thick with longing it could barely carry its own weight. And yet we built it anyway, note after bleeding note, knowing it would fall, knowing it was already falling.

And it was unbearable. It was everything. It was a ruin so exquisite, even he—ancient, exhausted, drowning in old regrets—could not turn away, could not refuse it. He could only follow the fall, could only lay himself open again and again beneath the blades of it. Because to do anything less would be a greater death than any silence. He knew he couldn't survive this.

I played with my whole body, my whole hunger. The gold light burned my skin, setting my hair aflame, and the evening melted into violet outside the windows. Still, we did not stop. We could not stop. Somewhere in the breaking, he had remembered what it meant to need, and I had never learned how not to.

When our shoulders brushed, it was as if the earth itself forgot its name. When his breath slipped ragged and human against my temple, I did not flinch. I did not move. I only played harder, faster, dragging him with me down into the place where beauty and grief are the same thing—where wanting and ruination braid together so tightly they are indistinguishable.

And somewhere beneath the collapsing cathedral of sound, I felt it. Felt him. Surrendering again to the one truth he had never been able to survive—the truth that some things are too beautiful to be saved. That some loves, some longings, are meant only to ruin you. And that even knowing this, you will reach for them anyway. You will drown willingly. You will call it a miracle. And still beg for more.

And then, it happened.

The music cracked. It did not fall in a slow, soft descent—no, it shattered. Like glass against stone, each note fractured into its own echo, its own soundless scream. The melody, once so full of impossible light and aching beauty, unraveled in one violent, breathless sweep. It was not a simple end—it was the end of everything.

The room went still, the air so thick it pressed against my skin, heavier than the weight of the silence. His hand trembled beside mine, poised in the air, as if the universe itself had held its breath just as we had, waiting for this one final moment. He did not pull away. He did not retreat. His fingers hovered, yearning, trembling, as if they still sought the broken fragments of the sound we had made.

But the piano was empty now, its hollow frame echoing nothing but the remnants of a song that had been too beautiful, too dangerous to survive. The space between us pulsed with the devastation we had wrought, and neither of us could breathe, could speak. I could feel his chest rising, falling beside mine, a frantic rhythm matching my own, as if we were both waiting for something—anything—to break the stillness.

It was a moment so vast, it stretched beyond time. Beyond thought. His gaze, golden and molten, was fixed on me now, and I felt it—the weight of a thousand years of longing, regret, and endless surrender pressing against me. It was too much to bear, too heavy to hold.

I could not move. Could not breathe. We were frozen, suspended between what we had been and what we could never be. His eyes closed, just for a moment, and in that fleeting darkness, I saw it—the exhaustion. The acceptance. The knowing. The truth that had always been there between us: that we were both ruins, drawn to one another, each of us too broken, too filled with fire, too filled with things that could never be undone.

And then, finally, the air seemed to release, as if it had been holding something too fragile for too long. It collapsed, too, folding in on itself with a brutal slowness. Silence fell like a weight, crushing everything beneath it. There was nothing left now, nothing but the space between our bodies—the raw, trembling void where the music had been. The ache, the hunger, the need for something we could never have, and yet we had tasted it, even if only for a moment.

I could feel his breath, ragged and close, against my cheek. I could feel the heat of his presence, the tremor in his hands, still hovering in the air as if they, too, couldn't let go of what had just been.

But we both knew. We both felt it—the music was gone. And so was everything else.

I closed my eyes, my fingers still hovering over the keys, the space where the music had been an empty, aching void. It would never return. We had reached the end of what could be and what could never be, and all that was left was the aftermath.

The room, once filled with the golden thread of sound, was now still. The only thing that moved was the faint, stuttering rise and fall of our breaths, mingling in the weight of the silence that followed.

And in that silence, I knew something else. Something that slipped into me without asking, without permission. That the world would break itself, would tear itself apart, before either of us would turn away. Because we had touched something too beautiful to leave behind. And even though it would ruin us—especially because it would ruin us—we would never be able to stop.

We could not survive this. Not in the way we once thought. But there was no turning back now. There never had been.

And then, as if the silence itself had deepened into something darker, his voice slid through it, smooth and dangerous—velvet and flame. "What do you think you're doing?"

The words didn't come as a question. They were a weight, each syllable wrapped in a kind of quiet disbelief, an invitation to something deeper, something more perilous than anything either of us could have imagined.

I didn't move. Didn't speak. The tremor in my hands was the only thing that betrayed the storm that raged inside me. His voice had been a thread, delicate and dangerous, pulling me further into a place where I wasn't sure I would ever be able to escape.

Slowly, I lifted my eyes to meet his. And in that moment, I saw it—the very thing I had known, had felt, but couldn't fully grasp. It was there, hidden beneath the molten gold of his gaze, burning with something too familiar. Too close.

"You—" He paused, his breath caught somewhere between anger and something else, something darker, something that burned with a need that he was desperately trying to deny. "You don't know what you're playing with. You don't understand the cost of this."

The music still lingered in the air, in the stillness, a ghost that refused to die, refusing to let us forget what we had done, what we had touched. And even as he spoke, his fingers remained poised in the air, trembling, as if he wanted to touch, but feared the very thing he craved.

I didn't answer. Couldn't.

He leaned closer, the air between us charged, so thick I could taste it. His voice lowered, so soft, so dangerous. "You have no idea what you've awoken. What you've set in motion."

His words were not threats. Not accusations. They were something much more dangerous—warnings wrapped in longing, suffused with a sadness so deep it threatened to drown us both. And still, despite it all, I could hear it in the sharp intake of his breath, feel it in the way his chest moved so erratically against mine: he wanted this.

He wanted me. And even if it would destroy him—especially if it would destroy him—he couldn't let go.

His hand moved, just a fraction, and I felt the heat of his touch brush against the back of my hand, the faintest whisper of contact. His voice dropped even lower, more velvet, more broken. "What are you doing to me?"

And in that moment, I knew. I knew everything, and yet nothing at all. His voice was a blade, cutting through the silence, carving something new between us—a truth, perhaps, that we both feared and wanted. That we were caught in something that would ruin us both, and we had no choice but to keep moving forward.

"I—" I began, but my voice faltered, the words lost on my lips. He didn't need my explanation. He didn't need my answer.

He already knew. He had always known.

His eyes held mine then, and for the briefest of moments, there was no sound—no music, no words, no space between us. Only the beating of our hearts, echoing too loud in the hollow place where the song had once been.

Then, his fingers found mine, pulling them away from the keys, forcing me to look at him with the kind of intensity that burned away all pretense, all control.

"You have no idea, do you?" he whispered, his lips so close to my ear that I could feel the heat of his breath. "No idea how much of you I've already lost. How much of you I can't bear to lose again."

And I knew. I knew then, with terrifying clarity, that I had already stepped past the point of no return. That whatever came next, whatever we became, it would be a fire that would never burn clean. It would be a ruin, built of passion and pain, of longings that would destroy everything in their wake. And neither of us would have the strength to walk away.

"I'm cursed," he murmured, his voice rough, almost reluctant, as if admitting it was as much a confession as it was a plea. "I'm already cursed."

The words hung in the air like a promise of devastation, lingering in the spaces between us, settling with a weight that made my chest ache. He spoke them not with defiance, but with something deeper, something that twisted in his throat—a resignation so profound, it felt like the very marrow of his bones had been hollowed out by time, by this.

"This is no fairytale," he continued, his golden eyes burning with a kind of ancient sorrow that seemed to stretch back beyond centuries, beyond anything I could understand. "You should know that." His hand, still resting against mine, trembled—just a fraction—fingers closing like they were afraid to hold on, afraid of the power that surged between us.

My breath caught, and the piano, though silent now, seemed to hum in the aftershock of his words. "Your grandmother," he murmured, his voice dropping into a darker, more fragile tone, the edge of his sorrow sharpening. "She too... she left in right time. Before it was too late."

My heart skipped. My grandmother—she knew? Had she known what was happening between them, and now us before I ever could? Had she felt it too? Had she understood the cost of it all? Was that why...

"I would rather not love if my love won't last. Or my lover won't." The words rang in ears, pulling my brain to a half drunk. half dizzy state. Was that what she meant...

My pulse quickened, and my mind raced with the questions I couldn't voice, couldn't bear to ask.

"You should," he whispered, his breath a shudder against the fragile silence that enveloped us, "leave. Before it's too late."

His words sliced through me, not with anger, but with an unbearable tenderness that made my insides twist. He was begging me, not with his hands or his lips, but with that impossible sorrow in his voice. He was begging me to turn away, to leave this broken thing between us before it consumed me too.

But I couldn't.

The need was too strong. The pull between us was too vast, too unyielding. I felt it in every inch of my skin, in every breath I took. How could I walk away from this? How could I leave when the fire burned this brightly, when the longing twisted so tightly around us both that it felt as if the very world itself had bent to make this moment happen?

"I won't," I whispered, the words slipping from my lips before I could stop them. "I can't."

His golden eyes darkened, his jaw tightening, a flicker of pain flashing through them. For a moment, I thought he might pull away—might retreat into that silence again. But instead, he stood up a step away. His voice dropped to a murmur, like the last breath of something dying.

"You think you can survive it?" His gaze held mine, dark and full of something too deep to name. "You think you can survive me?" A strange, volatile fury sparked in his molten golden eyes, burning with a heat that seemed to sear the very air between us.

I didn't answer. There was nothing to say. Because deep down, I knew. I knew what he was offering—what he was warning me about. He was not just speaking of the curse he bore, but of the curse that we had both awakened, the one that would tear us apart, thread by fragile thread, until there was nothing left but ashes.

And still, as I stood there, breathless, shaking from the weight of it, I realized I would never walk away. I couldn't. Not from this—not from him.

"I don't care," I breathed, the words trembling with a fear that matched his own. "I don't care if it destroys me."

His eyes darkened further, and a flicker of fury ignited within them, wild and untamed. The air around us thickened with the weight of his emotions, his gaze a storm that was barely contained. He inhaled sharply, his chest rising and falling with a ragged breath, and in that moment, I saw it—the cracks in his resolve, his control splintering beneath the pressure of his own turmoil.

His hand shot out suddenly, grabbing my shoulder with a force that was almost too gentle, yet the touch burned. It was ghostly, as though it belonged to a different world, a different time—tender, but laden with something far darker. His fingers dug into my skin, trembling as if he could feel the weight of every word between us, every second dragging us closer to something we couldn't escape.

"You don't understand," he growled, his voice low and desperate, the sound almost painful as it scraped its way out of his throat. His grip tightened, pulling me closer, his gaze not leaving mine, as if he were willing me to see, to feel what he could no longer hide. "You don't understand... this isn't some fated romance, some fairytale ending... It's a curse. A nightmare that will drag us both under if you don't walk away now."

His eyes flared with a molten intensity, the fire inside him threatening to consume us both. "It would be better," he whispered, his voice raw and broken, "better to separate... than fall to ruin together." The words shattered in the space between us, full of sorrow, full of a desperation that bled through the cracks in his soul.

His gaze held mine, not with the desperation of someone pleading for me to understand, but with the quiet sorrow of someone who had already seen the end. And in that look, I saw it—what he was offering. What he was asking of me.

It was not just a warning. It was a plea.

"You don't know what it would cost," he continued, his voice trembling, a rawness bleeding through the careful restraint he had clung to. "What it would do to you... to your soul... to be caught in this. To be caught with me."

I didn't answer. I couldn't. My heart was too full of the weight of his words, and yet, I knew—I knew—that he was right. Every instinct screamed at me to turn away, to save myself, to live. But there was something else, something deeper that called me to him, something I couldn't refuse.

"Please..." His voice broke then, the sound shattering the stillness between us, "I can't bear to watch you fall into this, not when I already know what it will do to you. To us."

The air thickened around us, a heaviness that made it impossible to breathe, as if the world itself was holding its breath, waiting for me to choose. To decide whether I would walk away, save myself from the ruin he had foreseen, or whether I would step into the abyss with him.

I looked at him, really looked at him for the first time. Not just the man standing before me, but the ruin of him. The wreckage he had become, trying so desperately to hold onto something, anything, to stop from being swallowed by the curse that had claimed him long ago.

And I knew, in that moment, that we were already beyond the point of no return.

"I won't leave you," I whispered, my voice trembling with a courage I didn't know I had. "I can't."

His face twisted in pain, as if my words were both a comfort and a torment. "You don't understand—"

"I understand," I said, my voice quieter now, but resolute. "I understand more than you think. I don't care what it costs."

And just like that, the space between us collapsed. I didn't know if I had made the right choice. But I knew that there would be no turning back now. Whatever was coming, we would face it together. Ruin or redemption, we would face it side by side.

"Tell me," I whispered, my voice quiet but insistent, "about you and my grandmother. A bout the... the curse that separated you."

The question hung in the air like a delicate, frail thing. His gaze shifted slowly from mine as if something inside him had been stirred by the sound of my words. For a long, lingering moment, he didn't speak. His breath seemed to slow, as though he were caught between the present and something far older, something buried too deep to surface.

His eyes, once so focused, began to lose their sharpness. They softened, almost imperceptibly, as if a veil had descended between us and he was seeing something—someone—else.

And then, in a voice that seemed far away, almost as if it belonged to someone else, he spoke, his words coming out in a quiet, reverent murmur.

"It was a different time," he said, barely audible, his gaze drifting, unfocused now, staring through me. "She was... like a spark. A fire that couldn't be contained."

The memory was consuming him, unraveling him from the inside.  His fingers twitched, then hovered over the keys again, as if the touch of them could anchor him to the present. But it was no use. His mind had already wandered, retreating into the past, and I could see it in the way his eyes glazed over, distant and dazed, as if he were no longer truly here. The world around him blurred, and for a moment, he was lost in the shadows of memory.

And in that moment, I understood. Some loves are never meant to be, not because they aren't real, but because they stop just before they can destroy you—leaving you broken but alive, saved only by the cruel mercy of their ending.