Season 1: Awakening the Viliness

  Ch 8: The Man Who’s Already Burned

  The garden was cooler than she remembered, but maybe that was the gauze draped along the arching ribs of the gazebo, softening the light until it felt less like sun and more like candle-glow. Mira sat with her hands folded around a porcein teacup, the steam curling upward in delicate spirals she pretended to study. The table had been set perfectly—sliced fruit, tiny sugared cakes, pale tea poured to the exact halfway mark. Across from her, a second cup cooled untouched, a ghost’s pce.

  She wasn’t reading the book id open beside her. It had been a prop from the moment she arrived.

  Her dress was pale rose silk, long-sleeved and high-necked, trimmed with pearl buttons down the wrists and a line of fine embroidery like vines climbing the hem. It clung where it was meant to and flowed where it fttered. The gloves were ivory today, soft as breath. Her silver hair, too long for her old life, had been brushed smooth and pulled back with twin combs shaped like thorns.

  She looked like a woman carved out of moonlight and judgement. And she still didn’t feel real in it.

  The guards were stationed along the stone paths of the eastern garden, subtle but present, hands resting lightly on hilts or folded behind backs. Mira hadn’t given them instructions beyond standard protocol. She hadn’t needed to. Everyone knew what today was. Luceran’s walk. An hour of permitted movement. No leash, no chains. Just guards and silence and sunlight.

  She hadn’t pnned to be out here when it happened. Or at least, that was what she’d told herself.

  In truth, she’d woken before dawn and couldn’t bring herself to stay inside. The bed felt too cold. The air too still. Her thoughts were crowded, loud, spinning around a centre that always looked like him.

  So she chose the gazebo. Neutral territory. Somewhere she could sit—visible, untouchable—and remind herself that mercy didn’t always have to be a performance. That maybe being near him without hurting him could help. That maybe he needed more than silence, but less than command.

  Distance, she thought, would make it easier. Safer. A woman taking tea, a man taking a walk. Proximity without pressure. That’s all it had to be.

  She heard him before she saw him—quiet footfalls against the stone path, light and measured, the kind of silence you only learned from punishment. Mira didn’t turn her head. Not immediately. She reached for her tea, lifted it with gloved fingers, and sipped. Slow. Steady. Like she hadn’t been waiting for this moment since she’d sat down.

  He emerged between two trimmed hedges, framed by arching white blossoms that should’ve made him look soft.

  They didn’t.

  Luceran walked into the garden steady and controlled. Unshackled, yes—but still bound by posture, by precision, by the memory of leash and colr. His clothes were the same as yesterday: bck linen, fitted and quietly expensive, the kind of garment that clung without clinging. His sleeves were rolled to his forearms, revealing pale skin marked faintly with faded sigils, no longer burning but still there, like scars of magic that never wanted to let go.

  He didn’t falter when he saw her. Didn’t lower his eyes. Didn’t bow.

  He paused.

  Not in hesitation. In calcution.

  His silver eyes met hers across the garden. Not challenging. Not submissive.

  Curious.

  Mira held his gaze, her cup poised between table and lip, the warmth bleeding faintly through her gloves. She didn’t smile. Neither did he.

  He took one step forward.

  The nearest guard shifted, hand on the hilt of his sword. Another started to move.

  Luceran stopped. Still not bowing. Still not breaking. Just waiting to see what would happen next.

  “You’ve never taken tea in the garden before.”

  His voice cut through the stillness—low, even, deliberate. Not deferential. Not mocking. Just… observational. Like he was naming a detail he’d noticed across a hundred mornings. A fact, not a challenge.

  The words nded with the weight of something sacred being out of pce.

  The guards moved instantly. One stepped forward, hand snapping out to grab Luceran’s arm. Another reached for the whip they weren’t supposed to need. Eyes narrowed, muscle tensed—the reflex of a system trained to punish him for breathing out of turn.

  Mira stood.

  “Stop,” she said. Her voice didn’t rise. It didn’t need to. The word rang out like a bell anyway, clean and hard and final. The guards froze mid-motion, caught between command and confusion.

  She let the moment hold. Then, calmly, she added, “Return to the edge of the garden. You may observe from there. If I require you, I will call.”

  There was a beat of stunned silence. Then a bow. Two steps back. A third guard exhaled, controlled, and followed. The metal of their weapons gleamed once in the light before vanishing behind hedge and column. They were just far enough away that they wouldn’t overhear them, but close enough that they would be able to get there if she called out for them.

  Luceran didn’t move. He just stood there, watching her, the faintest crease between his brows. Not surprise. Not gratitude.

  Curiosity.

  Mira lowered herself back into her seat, adjusted her gloves with unnecessary care, and looked at him fully. “You may approach,” she said. “Since we’ve already broken the rules.”

  Luceran crossed the garden with quiet steps, steady and unhurried. There was no leash on him today, no blindfold, no colr. He was unbound, but not free. His posture held too much care for that. Even now, when no one touched him, he moved like he expected pain to catch up.

  He stopped a few feet from the table. Mira didn’t speak, didn’t move. She waited.

  His gaze flicked to the tea service, then to her, then down again—not in submission, but something more cautious. His hands stayed loose at his sides. He didn’t sit.

  “You never used to take tea out here,” he said, voice low and even. “Not in the garden.”

  It wasn’t accusation. It wasn’t curiosity, exactly, either. It was a feeler. A test of the air between them.

  Mira kept her hands around the teacup. “I didn’t?”

  “No. You preferred the east sunroom. Curtains drawn. Fewer distractions.” He gnced up briefly. “No one else present.”

  She felt her throat tighten but forced her body to stay still. He was watching her closely now—not for dominance, not for punishment. For difference. For deviation. Like he was trying to fit her into a shape he half-remembered and couldn’t quite find.

  “I suppose I needed the sun today,” she said.

  Luceran gave a slow, almost imperceptible nod. “It’s different,” he murmured. “But not unwelcome.”

  There was a pause. Mira tried to hold the quiet like armour, but it didn’t work. He wasn’t filling the silence. He was waiting in it.

  “You seem more comfortable now,” she offered, carefully.

  His eyes flicked to hers. “No,” he said softly. “Just quieter inside.”

  There was no bitterness in the words, but something else—worn restraint, the kind that came from having too many emotions and not enough space to hold them. He hesitated, as if debating whether to say more. Then, after a beat, “I had a dream st night. It felt... sharp. Like it cut its way in.”

  Mira tensed, but didn’t move.

  He looked at her then, fully, and Mira couldn’t mistake the look in his eyes. It wasn’t crity. It was need. Not lust—not yet—but the deeper kind, the kind that sat in the hollow space beneath the ribs. He wasn’t trying to manipute her. He was trying to understand what kind of world he’d woken into this time.

  “This version of you feels real,” he added, hesitant. “More than the dream. But not like before.”

  Mira didn’t respond. Not right away. She held her expression neutral, carefully built, as if one wrong look might tilt the bance. She didn’t know if he was talking about his dreams because she had asked him that before and he thought that is what she was curious about. She didn’t know what he meant when he said she felt real but also not like before.

  Luceran looked down, voice quieter now. “I don’t know if that means I should be grateful or afraid.”

  Mira didn’t answer him. Couldn’t. Not without giving too much away.

  He stood there, watching her, waiting for something she couldn’t offer—confirmation, denial, a single word to tell him which version of her he was looking at. But she kept her expression smooth, her spine straight, fingers resting lightly on the rim of her teacup like she wasn’t calcuting every breath.

  She didn’t know what would be worse: letting him believe she had changed, or letting him think she hadn’t.

  Luceran watched her a moment longer, then looked away. He turned with the same quiet grace he’d entered with and began to walk back toward the path. Not fast. Not dismissive. Just… done. Like whatever answer he’d come looking for, he knew he wouldn’t get it now.

  Halfway across the grass, he paused again, gaze fixed ahead, voice drifting back without looking at her.

  “There was a fire in the dream,” he said. “Your manor burned down. The garden was already ash when it happened. You were still inside.”

  He didn’t wait for a reaction. He didn’t turn to see her face. He kept walking, silent and unguarded, the guards stepping back into line as he passed.

  Mira stayed seated. Her pulse roared in her ears, but her hands stayed perfectly still.

  She didn’t know about the dream. Not really. Just the image his words painted—the smoke, the blood, the fire, and her body already lifeless behind the gss.

  He’s dreaming of killing me.

  She didn’t finish her tea.