The Peace in Her Arms
Pairing: god!Jaehyun (koschei!Jaehyun) x priestess!reader
Genre: Dark romance, fantasy, slow burn, smut.
Word count: 30.1k
Summary: After winning the war against Death, Jaehyun, the Lord of Life, finds himself a lovely wife to enjoy peace, but is soon met with a violent rematch that forces him to send his wife away. Two years later, after carrying his victory with him on the way back home, he finds out that the mournings and havocs of conflict don’t even compare to the pain of his wife not taking him back.
Warnings: this fic contains detailed descriptions of sex (involving praise and breeding kinks), mentions of violence, as well as references to religions and divinities.
N/A: Hi there! This plot was solemnly based on Deathless, by Catherynne M. Valente (highly recommend the book if you like the plot!) and the entire Russian mythology towards Koschei, the Deathless. Basically, Jaehyun will suffer a lot for his wife and will be on full husband material.
© This fic is an original work by jaevie, 2023.
The night was starry as though the moon had kissed the darkest of dusks to light up the ceremony. The breeze was fresh and gentle enough not to blow out the uncountable candles decorating the garden in front of the manor. White tents were set for the guests to comfortably sit. Women wore their most elegant dresses, and men had that respectful look on their faces, one that unconsciously mixed with relief now that another war was over. Roses impregnated the atmosphere with their red warmth, attracting the tiniest bees and other adorable bugs, all invited to witness the Lord of Life getting married.
Both you and Jaehyun had considered a small and intimate ceremony, but the guest list was not going to be cut shorter. You were too known for your own good: you for being a popular priestess, with healing hands and a brain graced with mythical knowledge; and your soon to be husband for creating life and everything it owned.
“You look stunning,” Vasilisa whispered under her honest breath, looking at your image in the mirror. The servant had been your faithful confidant all the time you stood in Koschei’s manor. “White really suits you, m’Lady.”
You looked over your shoulder, face covered by a lace hood.
“We’ve talked about the m’Lady thing before, Val. That is not necessary,” you hummed, meeting a wicked grin.
“You’re too humble for your own good, m’Lady.”
You took a deep, cool breath, turning your face to the tall mirror in front of you. Vasilisa was right. You felt stunning, the white dress smoothly hugging your silhouette, outlining the shape of your waist and breasts. Even your thighs could be guessed under the silky fabric. The hood was part of an entire cape that touched the floor, with the delicate work of seamstresses on its length.
“Come, it’s time,” Vasilisa offered you her dainty hand as the other passed you a small bouquet of white lilies.
With a quickened heartbeat, you followed her down the manor, to the garden. Everyone awaited you. On the other hand, you only had eyes for the tall figure waiting for you on the other side, under the mesmerizing night sky.
While you were cladded in vibrant white, Jaehyun wore pitch black, with red details on his suit. The Lord of Life had a romantic and dark figure, with hair as dark as the eye holes of one’s skull, winter skin and long lashes that caught your attention the first time you landed your eyes on him. He had the appearance of a young man even though he had seen more years than everyone in that garden combined — a detail everyone forgot the second he smiled, sharp teeth adding charm to his face. A lonely dimple popped out too, adorably.
The man who breathed life into every little being, who saw it all, who tasted it all — that man was bare to his soul in front of you, surrendered to love. Tears glistened in his eyes while you walked down the pathway to the altar. “I couldn’t begin to tell you how breathtaking you are,” Jaehyun mouthed, tangling your arms.
You wiped his tears away and kissed his cheek. “So are you, my love.”
The High Priestess cleared her throat before initiating her speech. Not only she knew the secrets of the heart, but how to seal Jaehyun’s soul to yours with the blessing of all divinities. Not that Jaehyun actually needed permission from others: Koschei the Deathless created every little being, including other gods. But he respected you and your religion, and it was both polite and symbolic to follow the script.
“Time to make your vows,” the High Priestess breathed.
“A marriage is a very private thing,” Jaehyun started, his large eyes soft and frank. “I don’t intend on making my vows comprehensive and reasonable to others, just you. You, my light in the dark. My beautiful priestess. A husband is not a husband if he can’t be his wife’s best friend and her most ardent lover. If he can’t be at her feet, begging for her love, as I am now. As I will always be. I will feed you when you’re hungry. I’ll make the world go silent when you’re tired. Build a hole in the world just for you when you wish to escape, and wait until you’re comfortable enough to come out. Because a husband is not to confine, a husband is to free. My love for you desires nothing but to let you dare. Let you be. I am as cruel and demanding as a god can be, but for you, and only you, I will be your faithful husband.”
And like that, you were lost forever.
“You met me at the battlefields.” You still remembered how you had been that day: dress stained with blood and mud, face sweaty from the rush, two strands of oily hair escaping your ponytail. The agony screams were background music as you made the soldiers swallow potions and worked on bandages that smelled like mauve, aloe and rue. “I had always thought love itself was a battlefield in which women had no freedom at all. To me, marriage had never been for lovers, but for the heartless and the selfish. Today, I take those words back. I couldn’t be happier to be your dear wife, your confidant, your partner. I give myself to you in love and anger, in peace and chaos, in light and dark. I am yours, Koschei. Yours truly. And for you I keep fighting. And for you I put my weapons down.”
The both of you slid the thin silver rings on each other’s finger, looking at each other with overflowing adoration. Jaehyun’s hand cupped your jawline, his thumb rubbed your cheek and he smiled when your lips touched.
“I love you,” Jaehyun whispered. “Eagerly.”
You smiled, grabbing his chin with assertiveness and placing a loud kiss to his dimple. “I love you,” you repeated. “Restlessly.”
As husband and wife, you followed to the reception. You saw many familiar faces amongst the crowd: Taeyong the Lord of Word; the oldest of the old witches, Baba Yaga; the poor and terrifying Bauk, and the otherworldly Lord of Beauty, Ten. Jaehyun’s second in command, John the Knight, was there too, making good use of his politeness to charm the village girls.
Bliss and wonder filled the atmosphere. The guests ate and drank, relishing in food so colorful and luscious one could eat it with their eyes and be satiated. Traditional music was played by a local girl band you knew from your tavern adventures, and a collective delight was felt.
Jaehyun slid his hand under the table, intertwining his fingers with yours. Your gazes locked right with such fulfillment it made you chuckle out of joy.
It was what everyone deserved after the war. After Koschei, the Lord of Life, defeated Yuta, the Lord of Death.
Except peace was a very dangerous thing to believe in.
The candles were the first signal, suddenly blown out, even if there was no wind. Only the moon and the stars lit the tents now. A cold shiver ran down your spine.
Jaehyun tightened his grip on your hand. He looked away from your face into the deep darkness ahead of the manor, where the oak trees shook with the piercingly cold breeze.
The night got darker. The guests went silent. The world took a deep breath. And then, the shadows of Death came out to play, laughing like sharp icicles falling from the sky. They moved so fast you lost track of their localization. When you blinked an eye, one of them was by your side, right after Vasilisa.
You remember looking down to your shoes, stained in lively red blood, blood that didn’t belong to you, but to Vasilisa’s slaughtered throat. The sound of her body meeting the floor would haunt you until the last of your days.
You looked over at Jaehyun. A cruel stillness shielded him like armory, and you knew your husband was once again a general. He was not Jaehyun. He was Koschei. The Lord of Life, never scared, unbroken. Deathless.
His eyes were cold when he met yours.
Before you could stop it, Koschei had made one single command to John. John, who put you on the horse and rode you back to the mortal realms. John, whose chest you hurt with your fists, commanding that he rode you back to your husband. In vain, of course.
-
The war had ended.
Confident, the sun shone twice as bright between the orange clouds, like water mixing with streams of blood. The birds sang graceful melodies, children ran freely on the cobblestone streets, flowers bloomed in silent laughter, and mothers welcomed their daughters and sons for a warm afternoon that smelled like cakes and coffee. Everything felt alive with pleasure.
You looked over the street through sunglasses slipping down your nose, carefully watching the euphoria as the newspaper boy screamed with full lungs that THE WAR IS OVER! PEACE IS FINALLY HERE! THE WAR IS OVER!
Everything about that day… Everything reminded you of him. Jaehyun.
Forcing yourself to distract your mind, you turned on your heels to keep walking. It was a perfect day to lock up inside the coziness of your home, where nothing would disturb your heart. No news about life, no news about death.
At the corner of your street, you overheard a little girl praying with her fists together, so concentrated in her genuine words that perhaps she didn’t notice how loud she sounded.
“Dear Koschei, I thank you, loving Father, for this day. Thank you for putting an end to this horrible war,” she repeated like a mantra. Behind her back, the ruins of a school stood still, silent and absolute.
“Hey, girl,” you called curtly.
She opened her eyes, caramel and expecting.
You held her gaze. “What exactly are you doing?”
“I’m thanking the Lord of Life, our darling Papa Koschei, for winning the war,” she readily replied. “I know the war was fought by humans, but at the Holy Land of the Lords, Koschei fought for us, and we won, so I am grateful to him.”
The Holy Land of the Lords. The immortal realm. The details of that place remained in your every fiber. Every oak tree, every rook, every crystal river making rocks roll softly under their flows.
A bitter chuckle left your lips. “Is that what you believe in?”
“I know it!” The girl passionately replied, her lower lip nearly pouty. “I know Papa Koschei takes good care of us and would never ever let us die! He is the strongest god out there!”
Now that the girl so fiercely defended her Lord, you understood why you’d stopped in front of her in the first place. You still wanted to hear about him; still thrived on seeing people indulge into having faith in him, because Koschei the Deathless brought them hope.
What killed you inside was that he had not been as generous to you.
Jaehyun had given you up in the name of war.
The little girl was right. He wouldn’t let her die.
Even if it cost him his marriage.
Once you stepped into the small apartment you now called home, removing your red scarf, it wasn’t particularly hard to notice the old lady sitting by the kitchen table, her nose buried in the newspaper.
“The war is over,” Baba Yaga hummed. Her face was wrinkled by years and magic, her spine curved into itself, making her look shorter than average people. Still, her presence was loud and tragic, like a strident mischievous laugh in the depths of the world. Her cat eyes as young as a newborn’s. “Jaehyun won. Now he will come for you, to finally be your husband.”
“Koschei stopped being my husband the moment he sent me here,” your reply was blunt and definitive.
Baba Yaga rolled her eyes. “Two years later, you’re still the same stubborn, spoiled bride. Don’t you understand he did that to keep you safe?”
“The war was his as much as it was mine,” you retorted, all your emotional scars bleeding and flooding the old rug on the kitchen floor. “I was his wife.”
“You are human,” the oldest of the old witches corrected you, her lips hard in a thin line. “Too precious for Jaehyun to risk. He had sent you here, to the mortal realm, to keep you safe with me. Or do you think I spent the last two years happy that my obligation was to look after someone as rebellious as you?”
Her gaze pierced you like a needle that knew precisely where to stitch.
“Plus, he did send you letters,” she remembered.
Up to some point, you agreed with Baba Yaga’s reasoning: once the Lord of Death made his bloody rematch known at your wedding, both the immortal and mortal realms went into war. A war between Life and Death had a direct impact on the mortal realm: diseases that spread fast, countries that devastated others in the name of progress, genocides motivated by greed and power.
That was the way of the world.
Koschei had sent you back into the mortal realm, where the civil war took place, because even if humans battled and killed each other, you would be safer there, with Baba Yaga, the most powerful of witches, right by your side, keeping death away from you.
His letters, though, were burned after you read them. Jaehyun promised a lot, but delivered nothing. No empty words were going to make you feel like a wife.
Taking a deep breath, you looked over the window. Now, the sky was a deep violet, like the first flower to blossom after winter.
“Did you ever understand me, granny?” you asked, even if Baba Yaga hated being called that. “You were there. You listened to our vows. He promised to let me be, that I was going to have as much freedom as a woman could, and I promised to fight for him, because it was the wish of my heart. The first thing he did when Yuta was back was to send me back here. Koschei didn’t give me the tiniest chance to help, to be by his side when he needed me the most. He acted exactly like the husbands I always despised. Koschei confined me.”
Baba Yaga looked over at you with those firm, impossible to intimidate eyes, much similar to rocks, dark amethysts that saw through your spirit. You felt both acceptance and opposition, refuge and danger, understanding and disdain. That woman held the world in the palm of her calloused hands. She forgave no one.
“Dead wives can’t do anything, child. I respect your hate, and your pride, but stupidity has never made me pity anyone. Love is way more complex than you wish to comprehend.”
You were about to open your mouth to defend yourself when a knock was heard on the door.
Your heart jumped in your chest, as if it desired to climb up your throat and run out into the world. You exchanged a gaze with the old witch, registering how a smirk was formed in her almost non-existing lips.
“As I said, Papa Koschei is coming for you.”
A tall silhouette stood behind the door, seen through the blurred glass decoration. A shadow you could recognize amongst millions; one whose body you knew like a patriot knew the map of her country, like a gypsy intimately knew the meaning of each tarot card.
You could even feel his scent: amburana notes filling your nostrils with the many memories you kept buried in the deepest coffin of your reminiscence. The same perfume you so welcomed inside your lungs that fateful night, before the shadows came.
Jaehyun.
He had come personally to see you.
Breath got stuck in your throat. Your stomach trembled. You were going to vomit. You were going to panic. You were going to die.
Gathering every fragile piece of fiber, you breathed deeply before staring into Baga Yaga’s stone eyes again.
“Tell him there is nothing he can possibly do to ever make me want to see him again,” you determined before cowardly walking to your room, your legs melting like butter in a frying pan.
-
Death came to everyone. It wasn’t a secret, nor a surprise. It was simply the way of the world. Every creature, once born, had no choice but to perish. Some did it very quickly, while others had a long life before being embraced by the numbing hug of death.
There was only one creature that couldn’t die: Koschei, the Deathless, who hid his Death.
It was said that it was hidden inside a needle, which was in an egg, which was in a duck, which was in a black hound, which was in an iron chest, which was buried under an oak tree, in the distant immortal realm, in the island of Buyan.
Only someone who possessed Koschei’s hound could have him in their power.
You knew the legend. Everyone did. Life and Death fought endlessly, and their continuous conflict inflicted rivalries in the mortal realms just the same. Life had never been peaceful. You remembered it well.
You always knew you would grow up to become a priestess. It was in your blood: you learned from your grandmother how to make potions and to summon spiritual guides; your mother, in addition, was more than proud to teach you how to heal people through the sharpest use of herbs. You studied their methods and absorbed their knowledge eagerly, burying your tiny nose in books and devouring every little thing you could learn about magic.
Plants needed to be activated with mantras, candles needed to be lightened with intention, incense burning to keep the energy level, and your spirit needed to be taken care of. Your altar must be kept clean and holy, fed with prayers and meditation, as the holy images of saints watched for you.
You worshiped many saints: the Holy Lady of Apparition, Yemojá mother of the seas, Ọ̀ṣun mother of the river, Ọ̀ṣọ́ọ̀sì the king of the forests, and the Holy Sara Kali. It was as though they all knew you, tending to your knees like parents to a child.
You felt so comfortable when connecting with your spirituality there was nothing else you could choose as an occupation than being a priestess with a temple inherited from your ancestors. A temple in which people would step into, searching for healing — a temple so cozy and nice people would walk out feeling their feet in the clouds, their hearts lighter with the feather weight of hope.
Yes, that was what you wished for!
Except war got in the way. It was not in the temple that people needed your help, but in the battlefields. Instead of aiding people with spiritual problems — such as insomnia, haunting, chronic headaches, loneliness and such —, you were needed to nurse those after a battle. Men and women who screamed and bled, burned and cried, and closed their eyes right in front of you, never to open them again.
When you volunteered for war, you thought you were doing something noble, but as the bombs fell from the sky and families were forever destroyed… When young men witnessed their friends and lovers covered in blood and death, you wish that type of nobleness was never necessary in the first place.
Perhaps, if the Lord of Life and the Lord of Death stopped fighting… If they only could live at peace, others could too.
Not that you expected to ever find out. Few were the people sent to the immortal realm that returned to tell the story. It wasn’t usual for a human to face a Lord or Lady and make their wishes in person.
But you had your chance.
“You’re recruiting nurses for the immortal realm?” Your eyes widened as you grabbed the flier, looking over at the young boy who just had handed it to you.
“Not nurses. Priestesses,” he corrected. “As one, you’ll assist Koschei’s army personally.”
“But aren’t his soldiers immortal?” you voiced your ignorance.
“No. Only Koschei can’t be killed. His soldiers can. That’s why we need priests and priestesses, not nurses. To stitch them up.”
It wasn’t hard to make your decision. Your grandmother had passed away years ago, and your mother disappeared in the North, raising suspicions that she was caught by wicked witch hunters. You had no one.
You had nothing but the hope to stop that pointless war.
You grabbed an old, crumbly leather suitcase, and put your clothes and personal items there. The boy had not specified how the trip to the immortal realm was going to take place, but you still met him at the park two days later, under an oak tree, as he had told you to do.
“His death is hidden inside a needle, which is in an egg, which is in a duck, which is in a black hound, which is in an iron chest, which is buried under an oak tree…” you whispered to yourself, watching as the leaves danced the choreography of the wind.
The boy that recruited you showed up in a war truck and motioned for you to come inside. At the back, six people were already in, including a young man with a soft appearance, whose side you sat at.
The boy started driving, causing the truck to shake on the paving stones. “How can a boy drive?” You asked, not low enough to keep the question private.
“He’s not an ordinary boy,” the man by your side murmured politely. “That’s Jisung, the Lord of Choices.”
Your eyes widened. “A Lord? Have I just met a Lord?”
“You have,” the man chuckled, then offered his hand. “I’m Mark, by the way.”
“Y/N,” you shook his hand.
“First time being recruited?”
“Yes. What about you?”
“Third time.”
“But you’re so young!”
“Well, my mother served Koschei her entire life. She occasionally came to the mortal realm for some fun, that’s how she met my dad… And the rest is history.”
“So you know him?” you hummed. “Koschei?”
“I’ve seen him, yes. You’ll see him quite a lot on the battlefield, commanding the army.”
You wondered what Koschei’s army looked like. Poor souls that wandered the fields in shining armor, fighting against the lethal shadows of Death.
The truck continued to bounce: its sway had you drowning in your own thoughts. How would Koschei be? Was he an old wizard with a long white beard and protuberant bones, as the fairytales presumed? Or was he the handsome man that stole girls from villages to satisfy his needs? Was he capable of happiness, or after so many wars and losses, he was blind to anything else? Was he kind? Stern? Did he regret hiding his death? Was he lonely?
You didn’t know how much time had passed as you occupied yourself with your imagination, but you suddenly noticed the road was now smooth and the sky outside darker. In your heart, magic surrounded you.
You looked at Mark, searching for answers.
“It’s just like that. Magic,” he nodded, confirming that you were now in the immortal realm.
Mountains howled at the moonlight. Red birds cut the night. Witches rode the sky in their brooms. Flowers blossomed nonstop — roses, lilies, tulips, dahlias, buttercups, orchids, begonias —, filling the air with the richness of their perfume. Children were born. Women and men loved women and men. Dogs barked, cats purred, butterflies batted their colorful wings, rabbits hid from foxes. Sailors arrived wandering drunkenly at the harbor, and merchants came to inspect the ships. A circus had just arrived and planned their first night of intense presentations, with lion tamers, tightrope walkers and magicians. Food barracks were set to feed the city, as the steam of the cooking ascended to the vivid atmosphere. Everywhere you went, there was laughter and… And life.
“I thought I was coming for war…” you only managed to murmur.
“You are, don’t be mistaken. But this is the land of Koschei. Life has no boundaries, does it?”
The truck came to a stop and two of the people in the back jumped out. Then, the trip continued as you distanced from the city, diving into a road adorned by trees and silence.
“Koschei keeps the city safe. It is where citizens live,” Mark added.
“Does he live there too?”
“Oh, no. He lives in Buyan, the island.”
You let the answer sink in before making another question.
“Why did you volunteer again, Mark, if I may ask?”
He turned his face to the side, as though he didn’t want you to see the sparkle in his eye. “I’m coming for the woman I love.”
It nearly made you sigh, how honestly he said it. “That’s lovely. What’s her name?”
“Vasilisa. She is one of Koschei’s personal servants.”
You stood silent for a while. “Isn’t it hard, loving someone that lives in a different dimension? I mean, don’t you miss her?”
Mark grinned, looking down at the way his nervous hands played with each other. “We miss each other all the time, yes. But that’s love. And that’s life. We care about nothing else when we’re together, and respect each other when life gets rough.”
You had no idea how many hours it took for the truck to reach its final destination, but it felt like it would never end. The atmosphere got tight as though a hand wrapped around its throat, suffocating. Your sharp sensibility skills perceived the pain, the sadness, the fear that hung in the air like a portrait on a wall, impossible to ignore.
“We arrived,” the Lord of Choices announced.
You jumped out of the truck after Mark, taking an honest look around. The sky was gray and red, its colors mixed with the extension of the open field, smoke and dust contrasting with the artillery fire. Soldiers, men and women alike, slept and ate at a tent nearby, all wore in camouflage. You outlined the trenches and barriers ahead, as well as a line of covered bodies that had to be evacuated.
Your stomach stilled. You felt like a knot was being tightly tied in your guts.
It came to your knowledge that the Lord of Choices was speaking to you. “Come to the infirmary. Your work is immediately needed.”
You followed obediently, carrying your old suitcase. The infirmary was improvised in what seemed like a warehouse. Many hammocks were distributed in the length of the room, where priests and priestesses previously recruited transitioned from one to the other, as people grunted and cried, their sobs echoing through the walls.
Instinctively, you knew what to do. You had brought healing potions, as well as candles to evoke the power of your saints. Much to your luck, the infirmary was equipped with many herbs, more than you have seen your entire life. It made you feel confident that you were going to give your best and save as many souls as you could.
But as you first came to lock eyes with a man whose leg was cut off… When he held your hand so tight it could have been broken, begging for the Lord of Life to give him more time… When his aching eyes lost their shine, you sobbed, desperately wishing to go back to the mortal realm.
-
Jaehyun came for you every day, for an entire month, but you never opened the door for him. It was like playing a role in a theater: whenever he knocked on the door, your body shock circuited, your pride burned in deadly flames, and you locked yourself in your room, only daring to come out once he was long gone.
Every day, Jaehyun left small things on the kitchen table. Sometimes, it was a white lily. Other times, it was a peach, a firebird feather, a wild flower from the immortal realm.
You never touched his presents. You didn’t even allow yourself to stare at them for too long.
Sometimes, you could listen to his voice in the kitchen, as he freely spoke with Baba Yaga. Deep velvet dripping from his tongue, crowning the world with the grace of his tone.
You boiled with how violently your body desired to come out and join the conversation. Deep inside, all you wanted was to tell Baba Yaga to go for a walk and stay alone with Jaehyun in the humble apartment, so different from his manor, to face him properly, looking into those dark eyes, demanding that he begged for your forgiveness. But you were not only a coward, but thrived on the thought of revenge. Let him suffer. Why not? Whenever you thought about opening the door and letting him see you, talk to you, touch you, you remembered the woman that was sent to this world two years ago, still in her wedding dress, desperately crying, punching and kicking the door and the walls, screaming for Jaehyun to come take her back.
You remembered her sorrow, her despair, her loss, her desolation. And because you still carried that woman inside you, you decided to continue locked.
Unconsciously, you confined yourself.
Jaehyun was too respectful to force you to come out. He knew you well enough to tell any attempt to drag you to the kitchen would infuriate you. Plus, Baba Yaga had already updated him on your tantrums, the uncontrolled outbursts of extreme frustration and helplessness that took over you and made you seem like a little girl.
“So many women you could choose, and you decided you wanted the most stubborn one,” she grunted lowly.
Jaehyun almost smiled. “A rose without a thorn is the most boring thing. We both know that,” he concluded calmly. “I am aware that I caused her too much pain. I can imagine her suffering.”
“I’m afraid that’s a lie,” Baba Yaga retorted, catching Koschei’s confused gaze. “You’re a Lord, Jaehyun. Someone with power beyond reason, the visceral combination of everything that exists: the excess and the lack, creation and destruction, father and son. Nonetheless, you’re still a man. You had never been in a woman’s shoes. You might think you know women well enough, but that would be the first time you’re mistaken.”
She leaned over towards his face as they sat at the kitchen, having some tea. Her warm breath got to his face when she spoke. It smelled like the past.
“You have never witnessed such suffering. War and starvation, disaster and death, treachery and deceit. Only a fool would say you’re not an expert on those things. But suffering as a woman is an entire different thing. A suffering that makes you blind and numb. It takes your breath away, and plays with your silliness, and makes you feel inferior, forever imprinted with the mark of mediocrity and weakness. That suffering laughs at your face. I know you suffered too, my boy, but you were the one to make a choice. Your wife didn’t have that privilege. You turned her biggest fear into reality. To save her, I know. We all do. Still, she suffered. And to get her back, you’ll suffer twice as much.”
-
You had no rest. There was always way too much work to be done, so you hardly gave yourself the chance to fall asleep. Mark and you did a really good job together, though. He was taught a different kind of magic, but one that worked just as fine. You took shifts sometimes, covering each other when you needed a few minutes to eat and breathe.
It was Mark’s company that made those first days tolerable, as well as those you managed to save and heal. People in the immortal realm were built differently from humans, even if they, too, had a human appearance: their constitution was almost entirely soul, and the rest was body. When healing them, you dealt with their soul: by healing their essence, the small part that represented the matter recovered as well. Some of them, on the other hand… Some of them were too far into the darkness to have their souls saved.
“Sometimes I think this is a metaphor,” Mark admitted one day, with a painfully sleepy voice. “Only the death of the soul matters.”
“Go to sleep, Mark,” you instructed, putting a wet cloth on his forehead.
Oftenly, you and Mark listened to the noises in the battlefield, meaning a battle was taking place. The Death shadows stood away from the infirmary, but you could always tell when they were there: like sadness was closer, its lips whispering dangerous, hopeless words into your ear.
After one of those occasions, the Lord of Choices came back. “We suffered a severe attack. Many of the soldiers need your assistance, but can’t be moved. You ought to go to the battlefield.”
Your legs hurt all the way, but you resisted even when your lungs were filled with the aroma of death. Mark was right by your side — even if you had not known each other for long, he was already a dear friend to you, someone that gave you strength as you stepped into the open, deadly field, rushing to tend to those whose chest moved even the slightest bit, signaling that they were merely alive.
For the very first time, you didn’t feel the sobs climbing up your throat, because you simply had no time to surrender to the minimum sign of weakness.
War was a restless, wicked and cruel thing. Like an emptiness in the world, like a soul sucked out of one’s body never to return. Like someone that forgets how to laugh. Even time was uncertain, as the thickness of the dark sky almost didn’t shift when the sun rose. All that existed was the nonstop exercise to jump from soldier to soldier, stitching their wounds, removing body parts that were too damaged to be saved, and paying respects as you closed the eyes of the soulless.
Nine hours passed after you and Mark arrived when you two had the chance to climb up a timid hill to rest before going back to the infirmary. Mark offered himself to grab some water for you to drink on your way back. You stood back, watching the heavy sky.
Your mind was in a state foreign to you, one that played with the limits of tiredness and doubt. You often thought about going back to the mortal realm, swallowing guilty at the influence of your selfishness, but only a liar would say the battlefields and the work at the infirmary was never to be questioned. Still, as hard as it was, you held onto the expectations of your childhood with tooth and nail. “That’s a job for a priestess. A very good one,” you sighed, resting your back against the dirty grass.
As you stared into the tragic shades of the sky, your line of thinking wandered through the heavy clouds with possibilities of peace. As a child, you had witnessed a war that lasted five years, You remember how unfair you judged life to be back then. How it revolted you. As time went by, you seemed to get to the conclusion that the world was like that, and there was nothing you could possibly do to change it. Your role would be forever a healer’s. But now, as your exhaustion mixed with consciousness, you really wondered if the world had to be the way it was.
What if you could change it? What if you could make your voice heard, provoking the Lords and Ladies to change their minds? To actually embrace the idea of a different way of living, where men experienced less violence, where women were happy and not raped, where children had more smiles than sorrow?
Your right ear captured the sound of heavy boots standing close to you, and you got up completely startled, scared that a shadow was after you.
It was not a shadow. It was a man one head taller than you, whose composure immediately turned him in as someone of power. His brown eyes reflected brighter under the white thundering of the sky, and thick eyebrows gifted his face with the privilege of a deep expression. His hair was as dark as the clothing we wore: a velvet suit so rich in details he looked like a noble. A strand of hair fell like a comma onto his small and pale forehead. Even if he was human, he reminded you of a lonely hunting wolf.
“You scared me, sir,” you placed one hand to your chest. The tip of your fingers told you exactly how dirty you and your clothes were after those exhausting hours. Two oily strands of hair fell in front of your face, too rebellious to stay kept in your ponytail.
“I apologize,” the man leaned forward for a moment, respectfully. “I assume you’re one of the new priestesses?”
“Yes. I arrived last week.”
His eyes carefully examined you, his plump lips pressed to each other. There was something in those irises, a mystery hidden in the confines of time and space. “What’s your name?”
“Y/N. What is yours?”
“They call me Koschei, but I only tell my real name to those who are dear to me.”
You nearly choked on your own tongue, as your mouth was too dry to have saliva in it. “My Lord,” you grabbed the skirt of your dress to kneel, but he stopped you with a single move of his hand.
“That’s not necessary. If anyone should bend, it is me, as you might have given up many things to come here and save my army.”
His words surprised you as much as his face. Koschei was young in appearance, gentle voiced, and seemed like he was considerate. He was nothing like some books defined: a tall, thin, old man with a long beard and livid eyes, covered by a black cape, a creature so worn out by time and circumstance that he didn’t ever resemble the life he carried in his title.
“How many people have we lost today?” he then inquired.
“Around a hundred.”
You had the impression that the number physically hurt him, as Koschei hissed lowly. “I wish it didn’t have to be this way,” it was what he said, looking down at his hand. An open wound was closing, deathless. “But we had to let them get very close. It was the only way to get some advantage.”
“Do you think you’ll defeat the Lord of Death one more time?”
Koschei lifted his gaze to meet yours. “I don’t wish to defeat him. I only wish to end the war.”
Your eyebrows clenched. “By defeating Death, wouldn’t you end the war for all?” You fought not to call him lord again. “Wouldn’t it be better for people if you and Death stopped fighting?”
Your question nearly had him smiling at the corner of his lips. “Life without death would be unbearable. Things need to die, Y/N, so others can be born. I created Death before creating anything else. Even before Time. Yuta is my oldest brother. He is also my oldest enemy. Life and Death will never stop fighting.”
Yuta. The Lord of Death had a real name.
“Then, the mortal and immortal realms will always be fighting too,” you stated.
“Indeed. Think about a baby. It starts its way to death as soon as it is born.”
You breathed deeply, trying to make your next question as polite as you could. “Isn’t it unfair that people are destined to always be at conflict? Don’t you think it would be better for everyone if they could just have some peace?”
Koschei the Deathless scanned your eyes with admiration — so beautiful, alive and pure, he thought — and shook his head shortly.
“In loneliness, we act in the name of love. In war, we act in the name of survival. I love my brother dearly, so I can’t kill him. And he can’t kill me, because no one can,” he replied firmly. “Plus, I am not to blame alone. I created the mortal realm, and the human souls that thrive there. Your books only tell how the Lords influence human life, but never how you mortals influence us.” His eyes didn’t leave yours. “Humans start wars. They kill, deceive and make mischievous plans to conquer power and prestige, no matter how many have to perish for them to succeed.”
Koschei took one step closer. You merely registered the red lightning that cut the sky like the blade of a knife behind his back.
“But they also love and aid,” he continued. “They have passions, and a wild, fertile imagination. Art, music, food, traditions, religions, family, sex, redemption… Humans are so beautifully alive. As a loving father, I can only fight for them.”
“You’re the Lord that created everything. You could as well create a Lord or Lady of Peace,” you retorted, fighting not to stumble in front of his grandiosity. “Isn’t the pain enough reason to spare the ones you love?”
His eyes allured you like flames. “Pain and death are part of life too, priestess.”
The closer he got, the more you felt blood rushing in your veins, your heart so fast as though it had a race to win. Your body screamed that it was alive, that it wanted to seize eternity with possibilities, love, happiness and euphoria.
That was Koschei’s first effect on you.
“But you only know pain,” you boldly stated, determined to offer him a new point of view. “Even if you do witness the death of others, as I did here everyday since I arrived, you don’t know your own.”
The Lord of Life was so close by now that his shadow circled you like the wings of an angel.
“You do wish to change the world, don’t you?” he inquired.
“I am not opposed to contradictions, but I do believe a loving father would do anything to keep his children safe and happy,” you replied, holding the intensity of his gaze. “Happiness is as important to Life as Death.”
Koschei allowed your opinion to sink in. After a few seconds, that seemed to last longer, he offered you a gentle smile. “Join me for dinner, miss. I’ll be more than content to take a deeper dive into your thoughts.”
-
The failed visits Jaehyun paid to your apartment kept going for a few more days until Baba Yaga came to knock on your room’s door.
“Tell him I am not coming out,” you warned.
“It is not your husband who came this time,” she announced.
You lifted your chin from the bed.
“Who is it, then? One of his servants?”
Your heart ached at that. What had happened to Vasilisa remained a mystery to you. You could only guess she’d been buried with the rest of the wedding’s victims.
“Not one of his servants, definitely. Why don’t you come out and see?” It was Baba Yaga’s reply before her steps distanced from the door.
Driven by curiosity, you complied. It rained outside, the droplets making a calm melody at the ceiling, muffling the volume of your breath when you opened the door. One turn right at the end of the hall, and you were face to face with a thin man in red clothes, his heavy boots wet with rain, his eyes like blood.
The Lord of Death.
“What a nerve you have coming here after ruining my wedding,” you calmly observed. Even if you were in front of Koschei’s fatal enemy, the person who was guilty of slaughtering Vasilisa, you knew the rules of the world well enough to act otherwise. Yuta was dangerous, like a tiger to a rabbit. Killing was in his nature. Nothing you said and did was going to change that.
Yuta bent softly to you, causing the attentive Baba Yaga to snort.
“I wish I could apologize, m’Lady, but one can only be what faith reserved. I agree your wedding perhaps wasn’t the best choice, but I love a little family drama.”
“I almost didn’t notice,” you breathed, eyeing him carefully. “What do you want?”
“As you might have noticed, I lost the war. Your husband came out victorious, and some of our brothers and sisters gathered to put me on trial. I came to personally invite you to be one of the witnesses.”
“A witness against your war crimes?” you clenched an eyebrow.
“A witness against my crimes on your wedding,” Yuta specified. “Koschei sued me. Not for my war crimes — he knows I would never be punished for that. He sued me for ruining your ceremony, and what followed.”
Oh, you could so clearly see it. How mad Jaehyun had gotten, exactly? What was the size of his fury to be once again involved in war strategies, and not in a bed you kept warm, lustful, never ending?
A war he could forgive. But what happened at your wedding was a different story.
Your eyes nearly softened at the news, but you were quick to clear your throat and recompose yourself. “When?”
“Tomorrow.”
“And I suppose you’ll be taking me back to the immortal realm?”
Yuta’s eyes sparkled, cunning. “I would love to, m’Lady, but Koschei would never allow that. The old witch can help you with that.”
You turned to Baba Yaga with the speed of sunlight, your eyes tight and your tone accusing. “You could have taken me back! All this time!”
“Not a fight worth buying against your husband,” she simply replied. “Koschei’s trust is too dear to me to lose it.”
You hated it. How much power Jaehyun had. How everyone adored him. How little girls prayed to him and thanked him for his kindness. How he had left your wedding ring at the table the previous day: the same wedding ring you threw at the river, one year ago, in a tantrum so strong you got a fever and Baba Yaga made you soup for a whole week.
If you really intended on never seeing Jaehyun again, you would have turned to Yuta and declined. But your heart was bleeding to have justice made, and your poor emotional state considered that Jaehyun deserved the revenge of seeing the version of you that hated him. He deserved to suffer too, didn’t he?
You turned your face to the Lord of Death.
“I’ll be there.”
-
“If you can take me to the immortal realm, then you’re a Lady,” you risked as Baba Yaga made you jump inside a small carriage, one that already felt inadequate compared to the first few cars that ran the city’s streets.
“Lady of Nunnery,” she replied ironically.
“Don’t be so mean, granny,” you cooed, arranging your light blue gown that you so carefully chose for the trial, one with long sleeves and a tight skirt. “Aren’t you happy that you might return to your own life and catch up on whatever else you wish to do, instead of watching me?”
“I’m too old and wise to allow myself to have hope,” Baba Yaga concluded. With a small, mostly inaudible hiss of her lips, she commanded the two black horses to ride, and with that the carriage began to move.
The trip to the immortal realm was as smooth as the first time. In the blink of an eye, the pavement the sun shone brighter, music filled the air, and the food barracks set an abundant diversity of colors and smells, so much your mouth watered. Everything tasted better in the immortal realm.
Now that you were back, you realized how badly you had missed it. It felt like being home after the longest of journeys. Like coming back to the arms of a mother. You were too drawn in your thoughts to speak for the rest of the trip as the carriage took you to the Palace of Justice. You had only been there once, to accompany Koschei in the judgment of a failed attempt of robbery in Buyan, when a very talented robber tried breaking in to search for his death.
It was a marvelous construction, as palaces are. Everything was clean and immaculate, the marble on the walls, the tall windows and the solemn ambience of silence and wisdom. You and Baba Yaga handed the carriage to a young girl and walked inside calmly. She limped on one foot, so you kept yourself close to her, even if the old witch wouldn’t ever ask for help.
“You know what to do, right?” she spoke.
“Be honest and merciless,” you mocked.
“Be clever, girl. You have cried for this day to come, to be reunited with Koschei, and have some peace. Enjoy it now that you have the chance.”
You took a closer look at the surroundings, at the spotless carpet, the vivid and dramatic paintings, the employees… The life you wish you could have right there. “I don’t think it is that simple, granny,” you replied, as you came to face a tall door that was opened for both of you.
The courtroom was wide as everything in the immortal realm. That land belonged to Koschei, meaning it was a full expression of everything life could be: the chairs gracefully decorated with silver flowers, the ceiling made of glass in a garden of multiple colors, the judge bench imponent and high, where the gorgeous Lady of Justice sat. She looked like an angel, tall and firm, her white gown contrasting with the holy blackness of her skin.
As you walked in, familiar faces turned to look at you. You caught how Ten the Lord of Beauty offered you a friendly smile, and how Taeyong the Lord of Word tilted his head in respect. John the Knight was there too, with the same apologetic look he gave you the last time you met, as you ordained he brought you back. They were at your wedding, as well as other Lords and Ladies that had already found their seats. The Lord of Death was there too, clad in his deep red clothes and cunning gaze. Jaehyun had not arrived yet.
You and Baba Yaga made your way to the first row of seats, in front of the Lady of Justice. It instantly came to your mind how it was said that the Lord of Beauty was entirely enamored with her, and with one look you knew it was true. Ten had always been smitten for beautiful things, and the Lady of Justice was easily one of the most dazzling creatures you had ever put your eyes on. As Justice itself, she was severe and rigid, but also welcoming, strong, and undeniable.
Each person that walked inside the courtroom had your heart throbbing in your chest. Unconsciously, you waited for Jaehyun to arrive, and your body knew it, making you wish to pick at your nails, bounce your feet to the floor and look at your back, searching for him. Your body never failed to betray you. Both you and Jaehyun knew it well. The moment you felt your heart racing, your veins blooming, your head spinning with the force of a tornado, you knew he had arrived.
His effects on you never failed.
Your head started a war with your heart, as you forced yourself not to look over your shoulder. You sensed your husband approaching you with every step, until his silhouette stood right in front of your eyes. Without further choices, you lifted your gaze to meet his.
How absolutely cruel life was to you, giving you such a handsome, perfect man, and making him so irresistible your heart weighed twice its weight in your chest, nearly pulling you to stay on your knees and kiss his hands, his thighs, beg for him to let you in, to invade you, to love and fuck you, to utterly and gutturally ravish you, to take you home and make you his wife again and again.
But you refrained. You refrained even though your eyes tried their hardest to delight him with your weakness.
“Y/N, my wife,” Jaehyun said, his voice almost like a plea, eyes frankly in love, wanting and admiring.
“I can hardly be called that, Koschei.”
“Jaehyun,” he interfered, eyes tightened, as though you calling him Koschei physically stung. “That’s how I told you to call me.”
“Please, take your seat. Trial is about to start,” you calmly enunciated.
His austere reaction was successful in hiding precisely how much pain you brought him with your coldness, but you both knew two things: you loved Jaehyun, and Jaehyun loved you.
You were expecting he would find a seat somewhere else, but much to your surprise, the Lord of Life locked a meaningful gaze with Baba Yaga.
“An old lady has got no peace in this fucking world,” she complained, getting up for Koschei to sit down by your side.
You quickly grabbed her wrist. “Don’t go, gran-”
“Shut up, child. I don’t take orders from you,” she hissed like a fox, slipping from your touch and stonily finding herself another seat at the third row.
Jaehyun, then, sat by your side. Those excruciatingly dear amburana notes filled your lungs, and you had to clench your thighs to keep still. Thankfully, the Lady of Justice spoke next, opening the session.
“You haven’t replied to my letters,” Jaehyun murmured.
“You haven’t kept your vows,” you returned just as lowly. “You confined me.”
“For your own fucking good. Did you wish to be killed?”
“I wished to be with you.”
“It was too dangerous here. I thankfully had time to rebuild the city before you arrived, to spare you the chaos.”
So the city, the place he always did his best to keep safe, was attacked.
“You didn’t have to do that all by yourself.”
“I wouldn’t risk losing you, Y/N,” he looked over at you, discreetly at the corner of his eye. “You’re too loved by me.”
Everytime his mouth spoke of love, you shuddered.
“Yuta wouldn’t dare kill me,” you risked. Only a guess.
“You know nothing about Lords and Ladies,” Jaehyun nearly rubbed his face in frustration. “Yuta doesn’t have a trustworthy sense of morals, Y/N. If he had the chance to take your death with him, he would.”
“Wouldn’t you be capable of rescuing me?” Your question let him know that, time after time, as you had been away in the mortal realm, you had thought about the possibilities over and over. “To breathe life into me after I was gone?”
“For that, you’d have to be born again.”
“So be it.”
You immediately noticed how his hand, placed on his thigh, clenched into a fist.
“You think too little of my love for you,” Jaehyun growled. “If you were born again, you wouldn’t be as you are now. And as you are now is how I want you. Every day and every night. I can’t tolerate a world emptied of you, Y/N… I hav-”
“Koschei, the Lord of Life, will contribute as our first witness,” the Lady of Justice announced in a voice two volumes louder, breaking your conversation. Jaehyun smoothly got up, looking over at you dearly before he moved over to the front of the judge's bench.
“Can you tell us what happened that night?” the Lady of Justice asked.
“It was the night of my wedding. As you all know, I had never been married before, but fell in love with a priestess. She’s right there,” he pointed at you with pride in his eyes, and even a smile to his lips, making you want to shrink until you disappeared. He was so in love. Fuck, he still was so in love… “We had just won the war against Death, but Death then decided to strike back that same night, causing sixty of our guests to find a violent end on our dinner table. I had to send my wife to the mortal realm, for her own sake, and since that day we didn’t get to properly live as husband and wife. That’s why I sued Death. If he had had the decency of waiting, then perhaps my first wedding days would have been happier.”
You looked over at Yuta, and how his face was soft and calm, relaxed even, with a mocking grin to his lips, and you couldn’t help but feel the trial regarded the wrong subject. Yes, he should be addressed for what he did to your wedding. But shouldn’t he be addressed for way more crimes than that?
Without further thinking, you stood up. “Permission to speak, my Lady,” your voice politely asked.
The Lady of Justice complied with a nod.
“Permission granted, priestess. Please, come closer.”
You obeyed, readily standing by Jaehyun’s side. “I do believe the Lord of Death did us wrong by ruining our wedding, and as Koschei told you, I did suffer a lot, being sent to the mortal realm. I have belonged here since I first stepped into this realm, to aid during the war. Death’s revenge on my wedding will perhaps be something I will never entirely get over, but…” your eyes tightened a little, “but I believe we are addressing the wrong thing. My suffering was not individual. Many suffered from the effects of the war. Families were taken apart, destroyed, many kids never had the chance to grow up. My dear friend Vasilisa was murdered in front of my own eyes,” at that, you looked over at Yuta. “Life was assaulted and humiliated in several ways, and it would be selfish of me to stand here to defend myself against a single tragedy when so many lost their lives and hopes. Their souls.”
The entire room looked at you amusedly.
“So what you mean is that this trial should be against war itself?” the Lady of Justice asked to clarify.
“I’m not sure a trial is going to entirely solve the issue,” you replied calmly. “I suggest that, instead, we discuss peace.”
You caught the way Jaehyun looked at you. How enamored he was. How he could have put you on a pedestal.
“Peace?” Ten the Lord of Beauty tasted the word in his tongue.
“Peace is at a state of mind, at its best,” Taeyong the Lord of Words hummed. His pure and big eyes stared into the air as if he was reading the word over and over.
“It could be a state of reality too,” you added. “Peace and war are opposites: as death exists to balance life, peace should exist to balance war. There’s where Koschei comes in,” you presented your idea smoothly. It wasn’t the first time you discussed such matters with Jaehyun. When he first invited you over to dinner, you had mentioned the idea. “As Lord of Life he can create someone to manage peace as he did to each of you.”
You and Jaehyun eyed each other. You couldn’t tell if he was more proud or challenged: he had never agreed on creating peace in the first place, but if you could bargain with him, that was your request.
“I think it is fair,” Justice agreed. “But it is my job to make sure we reach the final goal of this trial. Koschei, do you wish to continue with it?”
Jaehyun slowly averted his eyes from you to her. “Let’s do as my wife says,” he decided. “But I have a condition for the trial on Death to be canceled.”
“We are all ears, Life,” Yuta cooed.
“Let me rescue Vasilisa from the realms of Death and make her be born again,” Jaehyun breathed. “And Mark too.”
-
You could say you and Koschei were getting closer. After the first dinner in the manor, where he carefully listened to your ideas — to your surprise, without ever mocking you or lowering your reasoning —, it was frequent that the Lord of Life searched for you. Once together, you never stopped talking about diverse subjects. Sometimes, you even had the impression he consciously wanted your point of view and advice, like he treasured your way of thinking, so rich in complexity and imagination.
“It’s like the first day of spring,” Koschei explained while you took a walk at the manor’s garden a few weeks after your first encounter. War continued, but the battlefields were calmer: Death had a lot of work to do with a new local disease that was taking many lives away in the mortal realm. Even Mark had a moment to travel to Buyan and meet Vasilisa. “Not spring itself, but the first day, when the weather is warmer and the flowers stretch, blossoming…”
“What?” you asked with interest.
“Talking to you.”
Your cheeks burned. “Oh, we humans just have smart ideas,” you humbled, unaware that you were reducing yourself because of your shyness. “The majority of us are very smart. We even have artists such as Frida Kahlo and Remedios Varo. Are you familiar with them?”
“I know everything my kids do, miss,” Koschei chuckled.
“So…” you bit your cheek,“did you know me before I arrived?”
“Not like that,” he admitted, his expression going slightly serious as he stopped to admire the white roses. Big and with rich, thick perfume. “I personally made the first men and women, and let them be, so I didn’t have the time to catch up on them individually, but I know what goes on. Humans are free to make their choices and populate the mortal realm, mate with whoever they want to. I’d say the Lady of Desire plays a huge role in that.”
“Never heard of her. What is she like?” you tilted your head, focusing on the big lilies that smelled like heaven. Life really flourished differently in Koschei’s land.
“Entirely convincing. Dangerous, even. Once in her presence, your head is easily messed up with,” his voice was like a song as you slipped down the garden, unable that, everywhere you went on the obsidian pathway, Koschei followed, attracted to your natural scent like a bee to a flower.
“She might be very alluring,” you commented. “I sometimes wonder if desire could be a law.”
“How so?”
“One could only have another if there was any desire,” you clarified. “It would certainly avoid women from getting raped.”
Koschei stopped in awe. “You can’t help but care about others, can you?”
“As you should,” your tone was light, but sincere. “Thinking the world is the way it is leaves no imagination for creation and improvement. I was kind of disappointed to know you’re a bit selfish.”
He swallowed. “Selfish?”
“Yes. You know, children pray for you. And still they mourn their families in war. The idea of an omnipresent, benevolent Lord isn’t exactly real.”
“That’s a version humans created of me. To have hope, perhaps. It is like saying that every woman was born to be a tender mother,” Koschei reasoned, and when he passed you by, his side brushed yours, leaving soft goosebumps under the fabric of your dress.
He smelled like the loveliest amburana tree.
“I am not immune to desire,” he continued, holding your gaze as though it was needed in such an exposure. “I can’t ignore the wishes of my heart, and by nature I am cruel, demanding, and utterly unforgiving. But I can also be gentle, loving, and nurturing. Just like life is, sometimes.”
If you said you were not attracted by the contradiction he held at the tip of his tongue, and at every fiber of his being, you would be shamelessly lying.
You stopped underneath a gazebo, near a black water fountain, where water was continuously spilled from the mouth of a hound. Symbolic. “Is it true that you had many lovers?” you felt bold in asking.
Koschei picked a deep red apple from the nearest tree, supporting his weight on the gazebo before replying. “I was a lover countless times,” he removed a knife from the pocket of his suit — the blade had delicate decorated eggs imprinted on it — and cut a slice out of the fruit. “And I have loved too, more than anyone.”
“Did you really steal girls from villages to make them yours?”
“That sounds like rape to me.”
“Did you?” you insisted.
“No,” Koschei handed you the apple slice. You easily accepted it. “I didn’t have to.”
With all his looks and conversation skills, you trusted he was speaking the truth. You bit down on the apple, enjoying the sugar on your tongue.
“By the way, the boys searched for me as well. And I loved them all,” Koschei added, and at that you chuckled, placing your hand on your lips. You still had food in your mouth.
Smoothly, Koschei grabbed your fist and put it down. “Don’t hide your smile,” he hummed with such chivalry and admiration you went silent, your pupils widening. “It is one of the most beautiful things in you.”
Sometimes, in the deepest secrets of the night, you wondered if Koschei the Deathless meant the way he looked at you. Could he really be interested in what you had to offer? Your ideas, your mind, your beauty? You liked yourself quite right, and saw yourself as pretty in your own way.
Lately, with the way Koschei gazed at you, so tenderly, so happy even, when you caught him looking, well… It felt like he was attracted to you.
Now he was just admitting that he found your smile to be beautiful.
Automatically, you looked away, unsure. Understanding, Koschei removed his hand and returned to cutting a slice for himself. “What about you, miss? Did you have many lovers?”
“A few,” you hummed, staring at the effortless moves of his hands. “I had a school sweetheart, but we didn’t last. After him, it was all fun.” You considered whether you shared extra information. “By the way, I have loved girls too.”
At your reveal, Koschei nearly cut his thumb.
As if to save you from further embarrassment, one of Koschei’s servants approached you, bending to him in respect before speaking. “My Lord, I’ve got news from the city.”
“Go ahead.”
“One of our priests was murdered by shadows. His girlfriend came all the way from the City to report the crime herself.”
That was how you lost Mark. That was how you met Vasilisa.
-
“Vasilisa and Mark will be born again,” Baba Yaga concluded after the trial was over, as you waited for the carriage. “Take them as apprentices. Teach them your magic.”
“For that to happen, I will have to stay in the immortal realm.”
“Wasn’t that your plan all along? Or do you wish to return?”
“Well, granny, we are waiting for the carriage to take us back.”
The old witch frowned. “I have never said that I was going to take you back! Papa Koschei’s orders were to bring you here. The carriage will take me back to my realm. You go back to Buyan, where you belong.”
You couldn’t say you were surprised, but the slightest stubborn hope of your heart wished you could punish Koschei for longer.
The boy came with the carriage and Baba Yaga was so eager to leave she nearly kicked him away.
“Cruel woman,” you teased.
“After spending so much time with you? Absolutely!” She jumped in, her hand on the door. “Be safe, child.”
And with that, Baba Yaga left. The last thing you registered was how the yellow and brown leaves danced with the cold wind as the night approached and her carriage disappeared into the blooming horizon.
“She is the Lady of Luck,” Koschei’s voice right behind your back startled you, making your shoulders jump. “I’m sorry, love. Didn’t intend on scaring you.”
“Don’t call me that,” you growled.
Noticing the goosebumps on your skin, Koschei immediately removed his coat and landed it on your shoulders. You felt instantly warmer. “What else is a poor husband to call his wife? No matter how hard I had it, my vows were made. You’re mine as much as I am yours.”
“You already know my opinion on the effectiveness of your vows.”
“Not even you kept them fully,” his tone wasn’t accusing, but it made you frown, offended. “You promised to let your weapons down for me.”
“I did!”
“Not freely.”
“You forced me, Koschei.”
“And you’re mad about it. I understand it,” he searched for your hand, and this time you couldn’t pull away. His slender fingers had always felt magical on yours: long digits compared to tiny ones. Jaehyun placed your hand on his chest, right where his deathless heart beat. “All I ask is for you to let me be who I wanted to, two years ago. Give me the chance to be your loving, faithful husband, and I’ll make it up to you. Every little punch on the wall, every scream of my name… I’ll make up to you, wife.”
You were still angry, fuming, and hurt. But as life’s contradictions itself, you were eager, desperate to love, and ready to make the Lord of Life fall to his knees in front of you, begging, crying, sobbing.
“Take me to Buyan.”
-
The loss of a close friend felt like a knife transpassing your heart. Not only you got deeply affected by the news, but surrendered to the strongest fever you ever had, so devastating Koschei insisted you were taken to Buyan, where he could keep a close eye on you.
You insisted Vasilisa joined you: the sweet girl was already like a little sister, so loyal she stood by your side all the time you were treated in the luxurious manor Koschei the Deathless resided in.
At least, you had someone to mourn with.
The doctors said the fever was closely related to the state of your soul: in the immortal realm, your soul commanded, and your body obeyed. You were so sad and broken at the loss of Mark, so young, lively and willing, that your body simply couldn’t take it.
Koschei constantly came to visit, sometimes staying by your bed when Vasilisa needed to rest or to tend to her own pain.
Three weeks after Mark’s passing, Life and Death came to an agreement and the war was over. You were already fully recovered, but still mourning, when the news came in like the sun at the beginning of a fresh morning. With it, you considered your options.
Going back to the mortal realm was your original plan. But did it make any sense? What awaited you on the other side? Your job as a priestess would certainly help people, but it wasn’t like you were going to be useless in the immortal realm. Souls there were way more sensitive, and perhaps the healing touch of your hand would bring them some comfort.
In the immortal realms, at least, you had Vasilisa.
And Koschei.
You couldn’t deny your heart had grown affectionate towards him. The Lord of Life was thrilling, alluring and simple, as a man should be. He listened carefully to your thoughts and took you seriously. He protected you. He shared the wonderfulness of his mind and creations, and you liked that, more and more, he took your opinions into consideration before making a move.
If love ever bloomed in you, then you wished it was for and with someone like him.
Obviously, your limited human brain went skeptical: Koschei, the Lord of Life, didn’t need you. With the end of the war, he would return to his own interests, and you were going to be dismissed, to carry on with your own matters too.
You grabbed your old, crumbly suitcase, and started putting your few belongings inside.
“Are you really making a decision before talking to him?” Vasilisa crossed her arms, her gaze piercing as she stood by the doorframe of your temporary room. You understood why Mark fell in love with her. She was one of a brave kind.
Koschei was going to know. But, you were sure, nothing would change. “I’ll talk to him at dinner.”
When night fell, you took your last chance to wander through the manor. It was twice as luxurious as the one described in school books, filled with colorful windows, flowers, paintings, plants, stairs, libraries, and secret rooms. Koschei lived there by himself, with a dozen servants that kept the place neat. You couldn’t help but imagine how lonely it must have been for him, living in such a huge place, without a family or a pet. Perhaps you could write him letters, to help him pass the time, now that peace was made.
You took your time admiring the paintings on the walls and facing the loving garden through the windows as the sky got darker with each second. Birds sang the softest melody; tree tops swayed with the warm wind coming from the South.
You were going to miss that place. But you have made your decision.
You wore a plain soft pink dress that squeezed your waist just right. You weren’t used to how expensive you looked in silk, but the options in the manor were just as elegant. Vasilisa insisted you wore a pair of garnet gem earrings, which made you feel the closest to a princess, but still you.
Usually, you and Koschei had dinner at his particular office, where the cozy atmosphere suited your conversations. And, as always, when you lifted your hand to knock on the door, just right before you did it, he opened it for you.
But this time, Koschei didn’t hide how marvelous you looked. “Holy shit,” he whispered under his breath, eyes traveling from your face to your cleavage to your waist.
You heard how hard your heartbeat was in your own ears.
“Fuck, I’m sorry,” Koschei nervously looked back into your eyes. “You look… You look so insanely beautiful I couldn’t hold back.”
Even if with burning cheeks, you managed to laugh it off. “That's very human of you, Koschei.”
There was a simple meal for you two, a stew so delicious it reminded you of your granny, and wine to swallow it down. You took a sip before gathering courage to introduce the subject you had to discuss.
“What are your plans now that war is over?”
“Keeping things alive,” he replied shortly. “Making sure the population is multiplied. I already contacted Desire.”
“It’s time you create the Lady of Consent.”
“I already have, miss.”
“Really?” You merely could hide your surprise.
“Really. One day you’ll meet her.”
You were expecting him to ask what you would do, but the question didn’t come, so spoke. “I was expecting to return to the mortal realm now that my work here is done.”
Koschei put the fork down and stared into your eyes as if you were speaking another language. Slowly, you could see his face was hiding its own expression. He didn’t want to seem offended. “Why do you say that? Aren’t you happy here?”
“On the c-contrary, I am!” you stuttered, realizing his question made you think harder about what you truly wanted. “But I guessed that, with the end of the war, the recruits were going to be sent back to their homes.”
Koschei leaned back on the chair. His eyes were still on yours, analyzing what seemed to be a secret enigma. “Have I failed in showing my affection for you so badly that you think of yourself as an ordinary recruit?”
Your jaw nearly dropped. “I mean, I am!” Your gaze faltered until you, finally, stared down at your lap, embarrassed.
Koschei nodded, carefully choosing his words.
“I don’t want you to go back.”
You looked back up. Such beautiful eyes he had.
“I want you to stay. Have been for a while now. I was going to ask you tonight.”
Your words escaped your mouth without a filter, and you sounded demanding, but also eager. “Then ask me.”
You almost gasped with how Koschei slowly stood up only to kneel in front of you, grabbing your anxious hands in his.
“Y/N, the time we spent together brought me much joy, and I believe I’ve made you happy too. It’d be a torture to watch you leave my realm, and twice a torture to watch you leave me,” he spoke every word out loud and honest. “I am not on my knees to beg only as Lord of Life. I am on my knees to beg as a man. Please, consider the possibility of staying.” Koschei brought your hand to his lips and planted a chaste kiss on your skin. The sincerity of his eyes reflected the flames on the fireplace. “Consider the possibility of being mine.”
He handed the power right into your hold, a decision for you to make.
You felt so wanted, so dear, so scandalously beautiful, and your heart for once relaxed, your blood warm on your veins, your lips itchy. “Koschei, I-“
“Call me Jaehyun. That’s my name.”
Your eyes sparkled.
Gently, your hand reached for his face, brushing his hair back before cupping his cheek. You didn’t say a word. All you did was lean over and press your lips to his.
-
The manor was very much like it had been committed to your memory, with the piercing difference that all the servants you once knew were dead.
The war, you started to notice, had been crueler than the previous. So many deaths, so many changes. Jaehyun himself had an older look on his face, even though a certain new joy was keeping it alight.
His eyes sparkled in content whenever he saw you at the manor, where you were expected since the day of your wedding. He had the servants prepare your favorite foods. Had gotten the most beautiful lilies to decorate your room — your, not his, not yours, as you insisted on sleeping alone. Even before your marriage, he had built you a temple at the manor, a broad and dark room with an altar for your saints, with all the materials you needed for your rituals and magic, and the temple was at your full disposal. You spent most of your time there, and quickly opened the temple to the public, so people could come in and be healed by your talented hands.
It brought you tremendous joy to help those souls, so much your days were filled with work. Which meant Jaehyun’s dinner invitations were politely refused. You kept a collected composure in front of him, even if it hurt as much as having a needle pushed inside your eyeball.
Deep inside, you were tremendously scared of your feelings. Both you and Jaehyun knew it.
The only further interaction you had was about how much progress he had with creating Peace. All the times you had asked, Jaehyun simply said he was working on it. Just like that, your conversations were over.
It was a rainy day outside when you started your day, making your prayers and opening the temple. Everything was made by your own hands, so no servants helped you around. Usually, a line was formed into the manor’s main hall, and you came to personally pick your patients and take them inside. That day, as thunder echoed in the sky, and violent rain hit the ceiling, you came to find out there was no one to attend.
“Oh, that’s sad,” you breathed, turning around to return to your refuge when you bumped into a very familiar chest.
The expression on Jaehyun’s face explained why the weather was so bad.
Eventually, when Koschei was not able to control his own emotions, the weather in Buyan could feel it. Sunny days meant a visceral happiness that made his face smiley; springy weather meant he was especially romantic, with his head on the clouds and his heart where his brain should be; and heavy rainy days meant he was frustrated and angry, sad and way too deep into his defense mechanism.
“Dear saints, you’re going to make it snow!” you brought your hand to your heart.
“You’re being mean to me. I am hurt,” Jaehyun admitted, his lower lip nearly jumping out in a pout. Cute.
“Not my problem,” you lifted your shoulders quickly, passing him by. Jaehyun started following you. “What are you doing?” you asked without turning around.
“I’m heading to my appointment.”
“I don’t think you are. I’m busy today.”
“Well, I am a soul too. I deserve healing,” Jaehyun retorted. “Even if my wife wishes to torture me forever in the name of revenge.”
His childish, spoiled tone almost made you laugh. You knew better than to make fun of him, though. Plus, you were not proud to make him suffer. You just preferred he got hurt than allowing yourself such pain again.
Sincerity was surely one of your biggest qualities. And a defect too, depending on the situation.
After a deep sigh, you agreed with a nod. “Fine.”
Jaehyun had not been in your temple since you started working there, simply because you really had been busy and because you didn’t give him the friendliest of looks whenever he came to check on you. So, when he first walked inside, his lovely jawline dropped a little.
Every priestess and priest had the freedom to decide what gods and saints they were going to worship. You had decorated your altar with their images and elements that somehow represented their power: two small and crossed wood hammers for Ṣàngó, a beautifully crafted bronze mirror for Ọ̀ṣun, a dark seashell for Yemọja and cowries for Èsù, the Lord of Discipline, Communication and Order. Candles burned for them all the time, as you closely committed to lighting up new ones when the old have blown out. Incense burned too, filling the air with the scent of black surinam cherries. Fresh flowers brightened up the dark altar with vivid colors. The atmosphere was dense but friendly, full of mystery between the cold stone walls.
There was a simple table with two chairs on each of its sides, reserved for the appointments. You signaled for Jaehyun to sit on one chair, taking the other in front of him.
“I think I’ve got a severe spiritual problem,” he announced, so dramatic it amused you.
You hummed in reply, lighting up a cinnamon incense with a lighter, moving it around Jaehyun’s sides before placing it in a set of small stones you kept on the table. Next, you grabbed the set of your favorite and most loyal gypsy cards. “I’ll check what the oracle tells me.”
Your hands worked on spreading fourteen cards so smoothly it felt as though you spent your entire life doing that.
Jaehyun observed quietly, noticing how your hand seemed empty without your wedding ring. He still wore his, not even taking it off when he slept.
You turned the cards around slowly, analyzing the entire context they were telling you. For the sake of suspense, it took a while for you to speak. “I don’t see anything spiritual. You’re probably too powerful for ghosts or any type of enemy to try something on you. But you do have a heartache.”
“How can I solve it?” His voice came out impatient.
You puckered your lips in thought before replying. Everything related to Jaehyun’s heart involved his feelings for you, and there was no way to speak about it without taking the entire context in consideration. “I see you might be frustrated because you’re being denied. Perhaps you’re not used to disappointment, but,” you pointed at the book card, “it is the perfect opportunity to use your repertory and learn.”
Jaehyun crossed his arms. You pretended not to notice his biceps slightly bulking within his shirt. “I am trying, but the more you deny me, the more I find it difficult to deal with what we have become,” he confessed. “I understand you’re upset, and I respect your opinion. You know that, if I had any safer options, I would have kept you by my side. But I did what I thought best to keep you safe and be with you later. I won the war. For you.”
You believed it: Jaehyun fighting battle after battle, motivated by the idea of being back with you… It was highly probable, and that you could respect. For that, your heart melted.
“I know. I know you’re being sincere as much as I know your love for me is real. I hope you understand I still have true feelings for you just as I did back then,” you mustered all of your maturity to evoke those words, resisting the urge to close your eyes and hide from the bleeding truth. “But I need to get over how powerless you made me feel.”
“I thought there was no space in love for power,” Jaehyun frowned.
“But you still had power over me, didn’t you?” your tone was a lot calmer now. That was not a confrontation, but simply a statement of how things went. “My main issue is that I could not choose. You interfered directly into my free will, and I will not tolerate that in marriage. If I am your wife, then let me have the same choices you do.”
His eyes analyzed you closely. “That would make you tremendously powerful.”
“I don’t seek to be powerful, I seek to be equal. Until I don’t have such a guarantee, I will continue to fight against the position of being your helpless wife.”
Your gazes burned in orange flames, heated by how he just got what you meant. Jaehyun always did.
“What do the cards recommend I do?” he asked.
You placed your finger on the mountain card. “Your journey might be long and rough, but you have to push yourself towards your goal.”
“So I should continue to be unconditionally faithful to my wife. Let her aspire to all the things she desires. Learn how to deal with my frustration alone, as I make sure she can trust me,” he perfectly wrapped up.
“Those are my conditions,” you nodded.
One second later, Jaehyun extended his hand over to you. “Deal.”
Accepting his hand in yours came naturally, the feeling of his skin extremely familiar, the little shivers of your touch making you squeeze his hand a little tighter than needed.
“Can I ask for something in return?”
“You can.”
“Have dinner with me.”
“If we openly discuss how you’re making progress with my request on peace, I might.”
Jaehyun nearly chuckled. “Have dinner with me everyday.”
“Will you update me everyday?”
“I will.”
“Deal,” you smiled.
At the sight, Jaehyun brought one hand to his face, flustered as he rubbed his cheeks. “You still have the most beautiful smile,” he praised. “Fuck, how I missed it while you were gone…”
You were going to tease him when a ray of sunshine walked through the window right on your deck of cards. It wasn’t raining anymore.
-
Jaehyun’s hand eagerly slid from your breasts up to your neck as you lied down on his bed. Hungrily, his eyes fed from the gorgeous shape of your body, the innocent white lace bra you wore alluring him into his deepest fantasies.
“You have the most beautiful breasts,” he grunted. “So round and firm and beautiful…”
“You speak like it’s the first time you see them,” you teased, your cheeks and the tip of your nose warm from arousal.
Ever since you decided to stay, Jaehyun loved on you passionately almost every day. He never allowed anything to go missing. By now, after intense weeks of love making, you had grown accustomed to his dedication, and how your body resembled a volcano every time he touched you.
“Not my fault you are so scandalously sublime,” Jaehyun bit his lip before pushing your bra aside, exposing your nipples. He dove in, warm tongue drawing slow circles around each, eventually brushing and biting the hard peaks. When he lifted his face, the cold air left shivers on the wet evidence of where his mouth had been. He easily got rid of your bra, freeing your round, perky breasts, so deliciously voluptuous and busty his mouth salivated. “Have I told you how I made women?”
“Not yet.” You rested your head on the pillow, admiring his bare chest. The defined muscles on his shoulders, arms, and abdomen turned his bareness so attractive to you your toes curled whenever he was naked.
“I created a woman before I created a man,” Jaehyun revealed, moving to pull your skirts down your legs. He kissed the big scar on your right knee, the one you were graced with after falling from a tree when you were only a little girl. “I knew I had to make something unique, intense, intelligent and breathtaking. It was how I wanted life to be at first. Understanding but full of rage, resting but full of ideas, lovely but with the highest ability to deprivation.”
You engaged in his words, sitting down to hover over him. The tips of your fingers caressed his chest in random moves until your hand moved along his trousers, where the volume of his erection was evident. You were turned on too, your white panties transparent where your pussy lips damped with scented juices. “So you made them alluring,” you guessed.
“So fucking tempting,” Jaehyun’s eyes darkened as he watched you. “With a heart to love, tits to bear milk, a womb to carry children…” as he spoke, his hands traveled on said parts, exploring you fervently. “Hips and ass… Those I made for my personal delight,” he admitted, making you smile playfully, shamelessly enjoying how his hands roamed up and down your cheeks.
“No wonder…” teasing, you pulled his pants down, now rubbing your clothed core on his bare dick.
Jaehyun grunted lowly. You loved your effect on him. You loved seeing Koschei going breathless for pussy, moaning heavily and clenching his eyes with pleasure and lust.
With one strategic move, Jaehyun snaked his arm on your waist and effortlessly turned you around. As he now hovered over you, the Lord of Life grabbed the side of your panties. “But my most favorite thing…” he continued, pulling the last piece of fabric that separated you down your legs. Fuck, you were so wet. So hotly soaked your juices stuck to the bottom of your panties in a crystal string, “is right here.”
Your cunt was perfect for him. Big puffy lips that glistened with arousal surrounding a clit swollen in expectation. Folds so inviting his cock ached at the mere sight. Your lips also hid a tiny little hole that felt so right and tight around his cock, as though Jaehyun had personally made it to fit his proportions.
You registered the famine in his eyes. And it made you tremble.
“You did so good,” you praised him, brushing his black hair rewardingly. Every person had preferences that made them weak at the knees. Jaehyun, you figured, liked being praised. “You did so fucking good giving us such beautiful cunts.”
“And clits,” he added, rubbing yours softly with the pad of his thumb. His eyes were on you all the time, swallowing the erotic sight. “The only human organ with the purpose to provide pleasure.”
One of your dainty hands slid down your body and separated your lips to help him have both a better access and view to your cunt.
At your every little action, Jaehyun fell harder for you.
“What did you intend by making it?” you fed the conversation with your curiosity.
He responded by giving a broad and firm lick to your clit, making you moan in sweet pleasure. You were lucky enough to see how his tongue moved on you, his plump lips wrapping around your clit and sucking.
“H-holy shit,” you cursed, back arching on the mattress where he had been fucking you out of your mind for the last three weeks.
Jaehyun smirked, slurping on your soaking folds. He took his time, alternating the long sucks with gentle licks, repeating them countless times until you were breathing fast, grabbing the sheets and getting flustered at the needy sound of your affected voice.
To him, you were perfect from head to toe. All the extension of your skin so soft and smooth, every mark and scar composing the excellence of your being. You even had the proportions he liked, curvy and fertile. By now, Jaehyun had had you in different positions that allowed him nearly pornographic sights, and he was crazy for each one of them. Now, especially, he liked how your face contorted in pleasure, and how your hand held on his nape as he devoured you.
“So beautiful, my lady…The most beautiful I’ve fucked.” His nose brushed your vulva, taking your scent in deep. The signs of your orgasm were pretty clear: your hands clenched into fists, your hole pulsating in vibrations, your ever sober eyes lusty, almost unable to focus…
He could easily make you cum like that, but Jaehyun decided he wanted to prolong the fun. He leaned over you, lips finding yours in a slow and sensual pace, shivering at the needy touch of your hands and nails on his back. You kissed back hungrily — a kiss broken by a wanton moan as you felt the tip of his cock rub your entrance.
“Say I can, my lady,” Jaehyun searched for consent.
You locked eyes with him, once more witnessing how the world resumed to only the both of you. “Jaehyun…” you breathed his name, just because you loved it. “My love… Take me.”
The room was filled with a melodic combination of moans — yours, high and sensual; his, guttural and relieved — as your bodies became one. Your walls wrapped around him, suffocating his girth and clenching so sweetly Jaehyun saw stars at the back of his skull when his eyes closed shut for only a moment, because not to look at you would be the most unforgiving of sins. His hips rolled in a way he got deeper inside you, testing the waters not to hurt you, his most precious being. Your nails carved crescent moons on his shoulders, your mind blurred with desire, barely registering the devoted kisses Jaehyun planed on your shoulderblades as he started a loving, thrusting pace between your legs.
“S-so full,” you sighed in approval. “My pussy is so full.”
“If I knew you’d feel this good, miss, I would have fucking stolen you,” he grunted in your ear, speeding up the pace. “Would have broken into your temple and made your gods witness my love for you… Would have fucked you until you became a saint yourself…”
As twisted as that sounded, you liked it. There was no judgment between the both of you. With lewd, obscene eyes on his, you smirked. “I bet they’re watching now. Why don’t you show them exactly how much you love me?”
Fuck. He did. So deep and fast your hand had to reach for the luxurious headboard to steady yourself against it. Instinctively, Jaehyun placed one hand on the back of your head so you wouldn’t hit it, pushing his girthy member in and out of you with such expertise your breasts bounced right at his face, your sweet pliable body giving in so beautifully Koschei the Deathless could crown you his queen. Seeking to make you feel good, he reached low, rubbing circles on your little clit as his abdomen tensed with the strength of his hips.
“I love how you handle me,” you moaned lewdly, liking how goosebumps raised in the skin of his arms.
“You’re so fertile,” he returned the praise, his breath fast and wanton. “So perfect to breed, my love… I wanna fill you up with my seed.”
You came with a loud cry, that to Jaehyun sounded like an angel singing, your cunt gushing with juices that mixed with his seed. He couldn’t hold it back once you so eagerly gave yourself to him, lost in bliss and cock, your tempting little body trembling into his hold, features so lovely the Lord of Life felt as though he knew nothing about beauty.
When the Lord of Life came inside you, you felt as though the entirety of the world belonged to your womb. Like you carried every possibility of creation in your belly, too fucked out to properly think, only able to smile as you took in the freckles on his face, the foxy shape of his eyes, and the expressiveness of his frowned eyebrows as you gave him one last squeeze.
You never forgot how genuinely happy those days and nights were, how your tender hands played with his hair as Jaehyun listened to your heartbeat.
Those weeks with you were the closest he felt to peace.
-
“I see some sort of spiritual obsession related to her past life,” you announced to the mother whose child waited outside the room. It was your last appointment of the day, and even though you were tired, you tried to be welcoming when breaking such news. “That’s why she’s been having frequent nightmares.”
The mother looked at you with confused blue eyes. “I don’t understand…”
“Some spirits continue to feel the anger they felt in life, after they made the passage through the realms of Death. They become slaves to their own emotions, and might haunt the living until they decide to heal their own pain. I detected a spirit that is angry with your daughter, and it is highly probable that it is giving her nightmares.”
“How do you know that?”
“A priestess never works alone. A spiritual friend told me.”
“A spiritual friend?”
“Yes. I work with souls that decided not to reincarnate, and instead watch over us, guiding our journey.”
“That’s unusual,” her tone was skeptical. You did not blame her.
“In the immortal realm, indeed, but quite common in the mortal realm, if you’d like to know. I bet on the low level of soul acknowledgment.”
“I thought the Lady of Reincarnation and Chances took care of that.”
“Her job is to keep the wheel, not to teach on how to solve spiritual problems, although I admit that would make the world a much more lovely place.”
“What should I do, then?”
“Give your daughter a rue and camomile bath,” you picked up a bit of said herbs and handed it over to her. “I see you’re still skeptical about my methods, but I recommend you come back with her tomorrow. I’ll make contact with one of my friends and open a ritual to weaken the obsession. You will be here at all times, with your daughter. She won’t feel any pain.”
The mother was still unsure, but considering when you opened the door for her to leave. Much to your surprise, Jaehyun was outside with the little girl, clad in black clothing, singing her a song as she clapped her hands.
“My Lord,” the mother respectfully bent.
“Please, that’s not necessary,” Koschei spoke, smiling. He had always loved children. “I was having fun with this smart one,” he hummed, letting the girl jump from his thigh and join her mother. “I hope to see you again soon.”
The mother nodded weakly, keeping her gaze low as she intertwined her daughter’s hand in hers. “Thank you, my Lady. My Lord,” she bowed once again before heading outside, carrying her daughter with her. The lovely girl waved you goodbye.
Jaehyun then turned to you. “What was the diagnosis?”
“Heavy spiritual obsession related to reincarnation.”
“Ouch,” he hissed. “Who will you be calling?”
“Granny Isobel,” you informed. Granny Isobel was one of your closest spiritual guides. Her image was of an ancient black woman, sitting on a low bench and smoking a pipe. Besides from knowing a bunch of complex magics to disassociate spiritual obsessions, her personality was the kindest, the most humble, and even angry spirits got calmer in her presence.
“I love Granny Isobel,” Jaehyun cooed.
He knew the majority of your spiritual guides. You had told him everything when you were still working during the war. Back then, it wasn’t rare to call your guides when you needed extra assistance. They were always working by your side, and sometimes through you. Each of them had unique personalities and skills. They were your spiritual family.
“And I love Gravedigger, and Mary of Roses, and our dear, clever Little Bee…” Jaehyun continued, making you chuckle.
“You’re so flattering.”
“I’m genuine,” he assured, keeping his hands behind his back in a way he looked like a gentleman. “I came to personally escort you to dinner.”
Anxious, you noticed.
“Let me finish my prayers and we can go.”
After you did as you said, you closed the temple’s door, accepting Jaehyun’s arm and letting him guide you through the familiar manor.
“I have dreamed of this day,” he admitted.
“You’ve dreamed about having dinner with me?”
“As your husband?” He tilted his head towards you. “Definitely.”
So had you. Countless times.
Soon, you arrived at the corridor that led to Jaehyun’s office, where you usually had dinner. To your surprise, Jaehyun turned left and not right, pulling you to his side. “We’re not having dinner at the office anymore,” he calmly explained, leading you to the door that anticipated the garden.
Your eyes shone at the splendid sight: the delicate round lights hanging above the table for two, the white lilies breathing perfume through the night, the modest table setting made just for the both of you. Nothing too luxurious, nothing too much. Just a simple dinner outside, to enjoy the stars and the fresh nightly air that caressed your heated cheeks.
“This is beautiful,” you hummed in approval, sitting on the chair Jaehyun pulled for you.
“That’s how I wanted our nights to be after our honeymoon,” he admitted, taking the seat in front of you. His wedding ring shone brighter under the lights. “I know we didn’t have one, but we can. Anytime, any day.”
He was so flirty, so true and so damn smitten you could have smashed his cheeks in your hands and kissed him hard.
“I’ll think about it,” you breathed, intentionally eyeing the table. The growl in your stomach was heard at the smell of freshly baked bread, butter, meat and vegetables.
Some small talk proceeded as you served the food and ate, enjoying the captivating, sweet atmosphere of your encounter, as bees landed on the lilies and cicadas sang in the distance. Life. Everything was so full of life, again.
“I’ve been thinking about your peace proposal,” Jaehyun broke it to you.
“What have you decided?”
“Not much, I admit. Creating a new Lord or Lady is a complex thing, even more in the dynamics we are used to. Peace should be about controlling violence, and we’re too used to how violence tastes.”
“I agree. It has to be someone above life and death.”
“See? Complex.”
“Achievable?”
“In a way, yes. I’m still considering the possibilities.”
“Wanna share?”
“You’ll know eventually. I don’t wish to scare you now.”
“Few things scare me, Koschei.”
The name made Jaehyun’s eyes clench. He hated being called Koschei when you knew his layers a lot deeper, intimately.
“Love, as much as you’re dear to me, I must remind you that you’re not familiar with the dangerous limits between life and death.”
You hummed almost inaudibly, munching on some bread. “I don’t disagree.”
“Good girl,” a smirk blossomed on his kissable lips, just for the sake of fun, and for the sake of fun, too, you decided to tease him back while slicing the bread.
“If I remember correctly, sweet boy, I was not the one who liked being praised,” you noted, eyes sparkling with devilry.”
The way Jaehyun’s hand stilled on the fork had you smiling widely. It was impossible resisting how amazing you felt that you had such an effect on him. The hard swallow of his throat didn’t go unnoticed.
“I suggest you stop teasing me if you have no intentions of ending up on my bed tonight,” his warning was a delectable, adorable mix of danger and fluster that only made you chuckle in amusement. Jaehyun hardened his gaze. “You would not be laughing if you knew how I’ve suffered for the past two years. My hand is nothing compared to your warmth.”
You shouldn’t like it so much when he openly expressed his needs like that, but you still did and there was nothing to do about that.
“Sounds like you think you suffered exclusively,” you analyzed.
“Not what I meant,” Jaehyun took a sip of wine. “But good to know I was not alone.”
Oh, if he only knew. If your lovely husband was aware of the battles you fought against your own body in his absence, with hands whose control didn’t seem to belong to your own mind…
“We both suffered enough, I guess,” you brought a bit of sobriety to the dialogue. You still needed reassurance.
Jaehyun acquiesced, stealing the bread you had just sliced.
“By the way,” he grinned, “Mark and Vasilisa will be reincarnated tomorrow. I’ll make sure to tell you where, so you’re the first to know.”
The news lit up your face, your heart calm and content. They deserved a second chance.
“Thank you, Jaehyun. That means a lot to me.”
Jaehyun. Not Koschei.
-
“Your death… Did you really hide it?”
Your question echoed in the room’s darkness, so silent Jaehyun was able to listen to your heartbeat, as his ear rested on your bare chest, your hand gently caressing his hair.
“Yes,” was his forthright answer. “I hid it inside a needle, which is in an egg, which is in a duck, which is in a black hound, which is in an iron chest, which is buried under an oak tree, in the island we are at now.”
The amburana scent made company to your many thoughts as you hummed, tilting your head to look into his eyes.
“Do you regret it? Making yourself Deathless?”
Jaehyun turned his head, now supporting his chin above your breasts. His hand started drawing random patterns on your left hip, like he was testing your softness at the tip of his fingers. The same fingers who just had explored every inch of you.
“I don’t. Deathless is what I am,” he murmured.
“Doesn’t it mean that you’re destined to watch people die time after time? It must be hard…”
“It is,” he agreed. “I admit I’ve been thinking more about it now that I have you.”
His confession felt like he was carved in your heart like bullets in the flesh, like stars in the clear sky. “Time is passing for you, but it’s stopped for me” Jaehyun caressed your cheek with the back of his hand. “One day, eventually, you’ll get old…”
“You don’t have to think about that now, love” you interfered, because you, yourself, did not want to face the truth.
“If I don’t, then there will come the day you’re gone, and I’ll be suddenly on my own again.” His eyes were filled with tenderness as he uttered every word. Gently, Jaehyun grabbed your hands in his, intertwining your fingers. “I’ll love you until you’re old and need my aid in walking…”
“Why are you saying those things?” you chuckled, wishing both to laugh and cry.
“Because I have to be ready to breathe Life into you after Death takes you away. I can have you reincarnated. Then, I’ll just have to patiently wait a few years until you’re grown enough to be courted.”
The intensity of what he was telling you made your heart skip a beat. What Jaehyun was proposing was living through the thorns of time and pain to be with you, keeping his love for you alive until your last days, and waiting until you were available for his love and care. It overwhelmed you so deeply your eyes watered, and you moved quickly to hide your face in the pillow.
“Don’t,” he chuckled, grabbing your chin lovingly.
“You’re making me cry!” you protested, closing your eyes.
“Silly girl,” Jaehyun sighed, replacing his hand with his lips in an attempt to ease you. “Allow yourself to feel. Love is a beautiful thing.”
“You’re promising me an eternity of love… What if I get so old and senile you won’t ever try going after me again? What if our love wears out?” You placed your insecurities in your mouth.
Jaehyun’s kiss turned into a sudden, slightly painful punishment bite in your lower lip. You opened your mouth to confront him, but he kissed you hard, passionately, hovering over you, his body pressing yours, his scent in your lungs, his hardness against your soaked folds… What he said next echoed in your bones like an earthquake, shaking your every fiber before you melted in his arms once again, like you were always going to. “If that day ever comes, then I’ll be truly dead.”
-
The mother returned with her daughter: their sessions kept you occupied for most of your time, as Granny Isobel demanded. Obsessions demanded more than simply communicating with a guide: you had to incorporate the spirits so they could use your body — it was nothing like a possession, as you were conscious at all moments, sharing your mind with the guides you were so devoted to.
After five sessions, Granny Isobel had it all solved, and the girl could go back home to sleep peacefully.
Jaehyun had asked the mother if he could observe the rituals, and with her approval, he stood inside the temple watching you work. It was truly amazing, how your entire face changed after Granny had arrived, and how you sounded like someone else as Granny smoked her pipe.
When the last session was over, Jaehyun approached her.
“Granny, is there anything else you need? A cup of coffee? Another smoking pipe?” he politely checked, bending to be on your eye level.
“Thank you, my child. I’ve had enough,” Granny replied with a gentle smile that made your eyes tiny under the straw hat. She always called others ‘child’, and Koschei the Deathless was not an exception. “I only wished to talk to you in private.”
“Sure, what is it you want to talk about?”
Speaking as another spirit was in your head was an arduous thing to explain. It felt as though someone else put the words in your brain so you could pronounce them. So, when Granny spoke, you wondered what she meant:
“You’ve been worrying your head over bad news, and I wanted to tell you to share the weight, child. Tell my girl about what’s making you lose your sleep.”
You stood there, in your body, without having a single idea of what Granny Isobel knew. Still, the immediate recognition in Jaehyun’s face told you that he did. “Alright, Granny,” he nodded. “Thank you for your advice..”
“Not at all, my child. You can call me anytime. Granny is always here to help her children.” In slow, trembling movements, Granny removed the hat from your head and placed it on Jaehyun’s. She took a last puff on her pipe and then allowed your head to be still, intertwining your hands and closing your eyes. After long breaths, you noticed the control over your fingers, the saliva in your mouth, your free toes touching the stone ground. Your eyes opened, taking in the worried face in front of you.
“What is it?” was your natural, obvious question.
Jaehyun breathed, removing the hat from his head. “I have to show you something.”
Twenty minutes later, you were on a horse as Jaehyun rode, his chest to your back, to the mortal realm. Magic once again made the passage smooth and almost imperceptible, but you swiftly sensed the difference.
Jaehyun took you to a foreign country with beautiful landscapes. He rode until you reached a bounteous city, where people excitedly talked and interacted over barracks of food, fabric, souvenirs and witchcraft. As you passed them by, Jaehyun held your hand, guiding you through the feverish crowd until you arrived at a square where a middle-aged man dressed in red made a speech so ardent spit escaped from his mouth. Even if the language sounded completely strange to your ears, you understood he was angry and greedy. People around you agreed with him — mostly men, shaking their heads in agreement.
At the middle of his speech, the man pointed to a table where a young boy, dressed as a soldier, waited for new recruits.
You squeezed Jaehyun’s hand, your saliva suddenly too hard to swallow. “Jae, they’re-”
“Preparing for war,” Jaehyun nodded somberly.
You stood back to witness how quickly a line was formed in front of the table, how eagerly men filled their information on paper, how young boys joined their fathers, and how children looked at the future soldiers with adoration widening their pupils. Some even pretended to be carrying guns and shooting around.
There was nothing you and Jaehyun could do about them, as free-will had always been something holy, even to the Lords and the Ladies. You looked around, your gaze ending up on Jaehyun’s grave face. The frown in his complexion turned his apprehension in.
“What now?” you asked.
“Let’s go back,” he decided. “I don’t want others listening.”
The ride back to Buyan seemed to go by slower than the other way around, or maybe it was just your heart’s anxiety. How long until the Lord of Death was knocking on the manor’s door? How long until he striked first, and murdered the servants? How long until he got to you?
You shook those sinister questions away for as long as you could, following Jaehyun inside the manor, up to his office, close to bouncing on your feet out of concern.
It was hard for Jaehyun to face you and speak, to finally share something both occult within his shadows and faithful to his nature. But you deserved to know. You deserved to understand.
Jaehyun circled the table, looking at the maps of the immortal realm before speaking.
“It starts by affecting me,” he confessed. “Whenever humans, made by my own doing, fight, I feel. I sense their despair, their anger, their urgency for revenge and destruction. It cuts me so deep as though a knife is carved in my chest, and the more I try to ignore it, the more I bleed,” as he spoke, both Jaehyun and Koschei the Deathless poured their truths to you. “My only power is to create and take care of life, and when war breaks, the need of survival forces me to act. Therefore, the war starts with me, Y/N. I strike first.”
You held his gaze, then took a step forward, and another one. “Have you started feeling anything already?” you demanded.
“Anger. Just a shot.”
“Do you think it will happen again? For real?”
His smile was sad. “It always does, Y/N.”
Shit.
You reached for Jaehyun’s hands, bringing them to your lips. At that moment, you thanked Granny Isobel for seeing through him, for encouraging him to tell you.
“You have to create Peace, Jae,” a severe seriousness was found in both your voice and eyes.
“It’s compl-”
“I know, but it has to be done. You must come up with something that eases your pain when humans fight. You’re not in control of their actions, but you’re in control of yours. If you strike first, the immortal realm is in danger.”
“It still won’t keep Yuta from striking if he has a chance,” he murmured, and you sensed some hesitation in his tone, as if Jaehyun feared your creative brain.
“Use something he is scared of. Something Yuta cherishes so much he will refuse to fight. Tell me,” you lowered your hands, “what does Death fear?”
The silence between you seemed to last hours before Jaehyun spoke again. You were so smart. Too smart for your own good.
“He fears having nothing to fight against. Death fears the lack of life.”
The knowledge left a bitter taste on your tongue. “So Yuta fears your death,” you concluded.
A small, harmless nod, confirmed your theory.
“You were right when you said peace should be above all things. By controlling my death, they will have power over me, and over Yuta.” Never before had you witnessed such a strong glare on Jaehyun’s eyes. Never before such sinister sincerity had clouded his lovely irises.
And even before he said it, you got it. You immediately understood what made the creation of peace so complicated.
“I’ll show you where I hid it, and then you’ll possess my death,” Jaehyun smiled confidently, brushing one hair strand behind your ear. “After it is done, you can be her. You can be the Lady of Peace.”
-
Breathlessly, his hands dug into the humid, cold earth as the night sky glowled with red lightning. The duck was still alive, moving inside the black hound, her long ears up inside the heavy iron chest.
It was Koschei, alone, at the beginning of times, hiding his death.
Because of his loneliness, he breathed life into a deadly brother. Because of life, he was always going to fight him. But Koschei himself could not be killed, as his death meant the end of every kind of life, the eternal termination of humanity itself. And so he dug.
-
The night was dark as if crafted by the solitude of an angel; the cicadas sang their monotony and it echoed through the endless Buyan trees. Jaehyun had you by the hand, confidently walking among the forest shadows, as moonlight only peeked through the few empty holes in the treetops.
“That was not what I asked for,” you breathed so hard it resembled an angry bull, your nostrils swollen. Becoming a Lady, someone with holy powers and immortality, was not on your list, and the mere idea that you would have Jaehyun’s death in your hands, to own him… It overwhelmed you in ways you couldn’t define as inviting or just fucking terrifying. “I can’t- Jaehyun, I can’t be a Lady-”
He laughed your refusal off, canine teeth sharp against his lower lip when he looked over his shoulder. “You’re perfect for the role, sweetheart. I would never hand my death to anyone else.”
It was his docility against your rage.
You finally arrived at a stream in which clear water musically flowed down small rocks, and a few stony, muddy steps took to an old oak tree, with branches so tortured by time and circumstance they were wry.
Rebel goosebumps assaulted your skin, delating the mystery hidden under the heavy, old earth.
“Let’s suppose Death strikes against you, and I have to keep you from fighting back. What if you fail? Will I have to…” The following words felt like a crime, so you did not pronounce them.
“Kill me?” Jaehyun dared, frowning playfully as he stood in front of you. “It won’t come to that, love.”
“How can you be so sure?” you demanded.
“Because of you. You’ll have the ability of peace: it will be anywhere with you. That’s what Ladies and Lords do. Baba Yaga, she controls luck: wherever she is, luck is with her. Why do you think I sent her to protect you? Plus,” your husband hummed, caressing your lower lip with his thumb, “the least thing that would make you is a helpless wife. You’ll be an equal.”
“I’ll be powerful,” you retorted. Jaehyun’s proposal amused and frightened you symmetrically. He was offering you more than just peace. Jaehyun was offering Himself, as the myth promised. You felt the need to remind him: “Only someone who possesses Koschei’s hound can have him in their power.”
As the oak tree top danced freely to the wind, moonlight slid in and reflected the tender, calm brown shade in his eyes.
“Only power can make us equal,” Jaehyun kissed your forehead, arms wrapping around you in a comforting hug. His chest to yours soothed your urge to protest, and you allowed yourself to focus on the simple task of breathing his scent in. “This will satisfy you more than you think, Y/N. And if you believe you’ll be ready to be my wife after that, I’ll be waiting in body and soul.”
Silenced by your own ignorance, you came face to face with the consequences of your desires, clutching to Jaehyun’s embrace not to fall. He trusted you like that, to be the one holding the only thing that could risk not only his life, but the life of everything that existed.
Gently, you parted from his arms, gazing both the sincerity and vulnerability in his eyes. Only power could make you equal.
A slow nod came from your face, and at that Jaehyun grinned. Then, he started digging up, hands dirty with mud, reaching lower and lower until his digits came across the iron chest. He opened it with a key he kept secret in his coat. Inside, you glimpsed a black hound with the longest ears, with eyes as brown as Koschei’s. You returned to the manor with the hound following you closely.
-
Everyone knew Koschei breathed life into the first humans, as he did to the first trees, mountains, seas, and the animals that inhabited the earth. On the other hand, even if the story was familiar, passed from generation to generation, from parents to children, no one had ever witnessed how it was done. How life was created.
Part of you rationally expected Jaehyun to take you to his office, where he spent restless nights scheming war strategies and daydreaming about possibilities. Much to your surprise, he took you to your bedroom. Not his bedroom, not yours, but the room that once belonged to the both of you. Where you made love for the first time. Where you felt the most loved, adored, worshiped.
Jaehyun closed the door and approached you slowly. The hound stood calmly by your side, blinking her eyes without a worry in the world. “She’s been trained to only obey her master,” the Lord of Life’s grave voice caressed the skin of your ear, making you notice exactly how close he stood. Daring and determined, his hands landed on your hips. “She will do anything you want.”
Inside the hound, a duck breathed. Inside the duck, there was an egg, and inside the egg, there was a needle. You could already feel it. The power. And once again, magic never failed to impress you, because it was nothing like you imagined. Everytime you pictured someone powerful, your imagination created images of virility and strength; crowns and servants; realms and governments. But what you now felt was a calm so intricate within your bones nothing could disturb it, a root tangled in the end of the world with its eyes closed in great superiority, as though all problems had a solution.
You felt complete, filled up, unbothered. Soothing.
Suddenly, the hound moved to rest on the armchair by the window, where the curtains swayed with the cool night breeze. You let her be. She was not going to run away from you.
“From this day on, you will always feel her,” Jaehyun murmured, unable to resist the urge to pull your hair from your neck and gently lean over, intoxicated by the ever lovely spring you brought to his lungs. “She’s yours to take care of now.”
You breathed solemnly, your body euphoric, the tip of your fingers numb in sweet expectation.
“How do you do it, Jaehyun?”
He knew exactly what you referred to.
Effortlessly, Jaehyun turned you to him with a swift move of his hands. You had been avoiding your proximity for so long, torturing yourself for weeks, too driven by your stubbornness, only to melt into his arms.
“With a kiss,” he answered, each word punctuated slowly and delicate against the skin of your neck. The sniff Jaehyun took made you tremble. He straightened himself, purposefully looking into your eyes. “But for you, my wife, and only for you, we can do it differently. I can breed life into you.”
You moaned. A low, barely there moan that betrayed you and your untrained instincts.
Fuck.
Quickly, you cleared your throat. “That’s a drastic change I have yet to consider,” you hurried yourself in explaining, looking away to the window in fear desire would take the lead and betray your reasoning.
Jaehyun took a deep breath.
“You’re still mad at me,” he concluded. The way he sounded disappointed made you frown.
“I haven’t, but now that you sound so frustrated, I might. What were you expecting, that I immediately accepted your proposal?” Your voice grew in anger the more you spoke. “Did you bring me here to fuck me and get it done?”
“No!” Jaehyun immediately defended himself, although there was guilt in his eyes. “It’s not like you’re putting in.”
You hummed in disdain.
Jaehyun protested. “I thought this was what you wanted!”
“Jaehyun, I am human! Whatever you thought I wanted is not such a sudden change that will make me live young and long like you gods do!” You could rub your temples, as a headache started growing. “Please, give me time to process things.”
You noticed how the thoughts ran through his head, and how quickly he accepted the idea of taking it easy on you, so when he offered you his arms, you stepped closer. Comforting, his embrace soothed your worries as quickly as a blow in a candle.
“I’m sorry, love. I genuinely thought it was what your heart desired.”
“It’s fine,” you rested your cheek on his chest, gaze crossing the hound’s. “I just need time.”
-
The hound followed you around like a magnet. Wherever you were, she followed religiously, her distant gaze always on what you were doing, as though she had fully understood who her true guardian would be. To say she was always around would imply in admitting the hound spent her time with you in the temple, hidden by the table not to call any attention as people were allowed in and you worked normally. Or so you liked to think, because sincerely, you couldn’t stop thinking about Jaehyun’s proposal.
Your mind was in a constant spiral towards whether you were going to accept it or not, and the consequences. It got to a point where you caught yourself staring into the hound’s eyes time and time again, losing the track of time and space.
A sudden knock on the door made your shoulders jump. You were not expecting anyone, but opened nonetheless.
“Granny!” You cheered at the sight of the old woman with the usual non-pleased look on her face.
“You know I hate it when you call me that,” Baba Yaga walked in without further ceremony, her pointy nose crossing the door before the rest of her body did. She took a careful look around, smelling the room as if to analyze it. “I see you got your temple. Are you finally happy?”
“Yes,” you nodded, making the old witch glare at you.
“But not fully. Why haven’t you accepted Papa Koschei’s offer yet?”
You clenched an eyebrow at her. “Did he send you?”
“No, selfish girl,” she growled, circling the temple until she stopped near the altar. “I came because the luck of the world is about to change. For the first time, we can witness a plain state of peace. No more terrible wars. Wars, as you’re familiar, are unlucky things. You only had what to eat and where to shield because I was there, paying my endless doubt to Koschei, but the rest of the world didn’t have such a blessing. With you as Lady of Peace, I will have to work twice as hard, and I must prepare.”
“So you came to make sure I accept Jaehyun’s offer?”
“You have to,” Baba Yaga simply replied.
“It’s a lot to consider, granny…”
Her cat eyes could have cut you in two like a sharp knife. “Why demand power if you can’t take it, child?” she hissed. “You have the upper hand: you’re finally able to make a choice and bring peace to others. Why hesitate?”
You decided to be sincere. “I guess it’s because I never thought I was going to be the one in charge. The one providing peace. Jaehyun’s offer challenges me. If I accept it, everything will change, even my human nature.”
“It’s not that different, trust me.”
Penetrating, your eyes scanned her. “Have you been human?”
“Human, homeless, broken, abandoned,” Baba Yaga breathed, but her words did not hold any pain or misfortune. “It was a kiss from a young man who saved me.”
Jaehyun.
She kept talking: “You can still be surrounded by humans if you’d like. Eat their food, listen to their music, and help them. In fact, child, you’ll be more of use to humanity if you become something else than human. It has always been like that.”
“The audacity and the nerve of the gods,” playfully, you rolled your eyes. “That’s what I am truly scared of.”
“War is about to start and you’re making everyone lose their time, stupid girl,” Baba Yaga advised. “After everything Papa Koschei has done for you… He won the war, brought you back and offered you a new life, a life full of peace and riches, with endless flavors, and here you are, thinking about it!” she spat, about to open her mouth again, certainly to put you to shame, when the hound walked away from the table, making her eyes widen in surprise. “Oh, my! Is it…?”
You only nodded, petting the top of the hound’s head.
-
The smell of black coffee filled the kitchen in the first morning hours when the explosions shook the ground. Baba Yaga stared at the open window, taking in the details of the ceilings, the beautiful clear, bluest sky, and the absolutely lack of birds. If she closed her eyes, she would be able to see the shotguns and bayonets, the blood running from the uniforms, the broken men wandering the fields, walking towards their death.
Even if she wasn’t human anymore, Baba Yaga despised the inhumanity of war. Her old heart ached when she put her feet outside and saw children all dirty and starving, young mothers with babies in their laps considering selling their bodies for money, and crippled men who returned all fucked up, unsure of how to deal with the pain and the haunting memories. The old witch hated what Koschei had done to her, sending her to the mortal realm to witness the terrible things people did to each other, but her loyalty knew no limits, and so she stayed.
You came into the kitchen all startled. Having woken up with the grave noises outside, you jumped from the bed with a swollen face and your hair all messed up, eyes red from how much you had been silently crying in your room at night.
“Is it t-them? Are the soldiers coming?” you stuttered, taking a look at the same window Baba Yaga had been staring at for long minutes.
“Yes, but don’t you worry,” she responded as though war was nothing but a storm. Heavy and temporary. “They’re not getting to this street.”
You tilted your face to hers. “What do you mean, granny?”
It was so simple you would never believe it, how easily Baba Yaga managed Luck. It took one move of her wrinkled hand for the entire army to ignore there was a certain street, in which lived a young beautiful lady, with a very old woman. There were so many things you didn’t understand, things it was not the time for you to know, so Baba Yaga simply moved her hand and lifted her shoulders.
“Just a guess.”
-
If war was coming, you kept a careful note to watch over Jaehyun.
You did not quite understand how his emotions shifted, but the first sign was as clear as water: his company was as pleasant as ever, but Jaehyun often looked at a specific, invisible spot on the wall and disappeared into his own thoughts, hands clenched into fists on the table. He looked so distant even after he assured you everything was fine, because he didn’t want to influence your decision by showing you how he had already started being affected. Still, you thought it was a bad moment to tell him you had finally made your decision.
You came across the second sign one night, as you and the hound stopped at a very unusual sight: Jaehyun, sat at the stairs to your shared bedroom, sobbing lowly.
“What’s wrong, Jae?” you sat in front of him, your tone worried and assisting as you patted his shaking shoulders.
He lifted his expressive eyes, and by the surprise in them, he had not heard you approaching. “I suddenly felt emotional.”
“What a terrible liar,” you gently wiped his tears with your thumbs. “Is it the war? Has it started?”
He nodded. “I can feel the loss. Mothers crying all day, girls and boys losing their childhood, lovers that won’t ever return...”
Your gaze lowered in time to capture your hand intertwining with his. Slowly, you brought it to your mouth, placing a kiss at the back of it. It amazed him, how you weren’t Lady of Peace, but managed to calm his mind and heart effortlessly with a single touch.
When you spoke again, your tone was definitive. “I’ve made my decision.”
Jaehyun swallowed, suddenly nervous by the determination in your voice. Mercifully, you didn’t wait for him to ask what your decision was, pronouncing every word clearly. “I accept your proposal.”
The only times you had watched Jaehyun’s face light up with such delight was when he asked for your hand in marriage and when he saw you in your impeccable wedding dress. As if in slow motion, his eyes squinted slightly, his cheeks raised, and the soft wrinkles at the corners of his eyes matched the sweet smile blooming in his lips. And just like that, looking very similar to a boy in front of a candy factory, he hugged you.
“Thank you!” Jaehyun poured his gratitude in his voice, pulling you to him with his arms around your neck. “Thank you, my love, for making my life better! For being you, my lovely wife…” He cried and reached for your face, kissing your forehead, then the space between your eyebrows, your nose — oh, he loved your nose —, your cheeks, your chin, and all the way up to your forehead again.
You smiled, amused by another side of the man that created the entirety of the world. It stopped your breath, how much of a loved child he became when he was happy.
“I’ll prepare everything slowly, so you don’t need to hurry,” Jaehyun pulled away, but continued to cup your face, so holy to him. “We can do it tomorrow, in a week or whenever you want. One kiss and it will be done.”
You squeezed your eyes, trying not to smirk. “I beg your pardon, husband, but you promised me way more than a kiss.”
Your words had an instant effect. Jaehyun was not like a boy anymore, as his eyes widened with clouds of lust.
“Would you like that?” he searched for consent. “Being bred?”
“Yes.”
“Have me fill you up, make you drip with my seed, make you my Lady?”
A shiver ran down your belly, warm where it landed. Your pride, which took you two years to build, was nothing compared to the absolute bliss of being once again desired by him, the man you freely gave your heart to. Your pride could never top the realization that Jaehyun, in the solemn act of gifting you his death, trusted you entirely, and you were going to assure, love and care for him. At that moment, even if you tried gathering every little attempt to resist him, it was going to be in vain, because pride was nothing compared to love.
“Yes, my love” you grinned adorably before pressing a peck to his lips, breathing in the manly scent of amburana. “Now.”
As quick and determined as your request, Jaehyun grabbed your hand and took you inside the room. You didn’t have the time to register the orange intensity of the flames in the fireplace, the flowers on the bedside tables — small details Jaehyun arranged last minute, with a breath in the world, to set up the mood. The only thing you could focus on was his desireful eyes after he pushed you flush to him, making you lightheaded with arousal.
Your chests heaved in unison while his hands slid to the strings of your dress. Skilled, long hands that had your thighs clenching in sweet anticipation. The sensation of your breasts inside the loosened fabric nearly made you squirm. To help, you untangled yourself from the sleeves and moved your hips to pull the skirt down to your feet, along with your undies, standing beautifully naked in front of your husband, your heart skipping several beats as he eyed you with so much need it made him look drunk, as if he was consuming you.
The force in which your lips smashed could not be described.
Only now, with his velvety lips on yours, you understood how badly you had missed Jaehyun. How flavorless life had been when he was not around, how incomplete the days were without his love and his arms to hold you.
He lifted you up, allowing you to snake your legs around his waist, while your tongues danced sensually, moans colliding in the lovely mess of lips and saliva. Then, he placed you on the mattress, taking a look at your body in a way it felt like he was committing your image to his memory for eternity.
“You have no idea how I’ve missed you,” he growled, with a line of crystal water flooding his eyes, before burying his face in your chest, kissing your voluminous breasts.
Eagerly, your hands removed his coat and unbuttoned his shirt, touching every inch of skin exposed. “I’ve missed you just the same,” you confessed, cheeks flushing with pleasure at the long sucks of his mouth on your nipples.
Driven by need, Jaehyun proceeded to take off his pants himself while his mouth continued its worship on your tits. The flex of his muscles was divine to you, his broad shoulders perfect for the delicacy of your hands, his hips tailor-made to fit between the warmth of your legs. There was no way you could resist how your gaze fixated on his lower body, heated by what you saw.
“You’re so huge…” You had almost forgotten, the praise making your husband bite his lower lip.
“You can take it. Gotta make sure you’re wet and ready, wife” Jaehyun kissed your jawline, now using his hands to explore your skin. He was a slave to your perfectly crafted body, its godly curves, divine folds, small and strategically located moles he knew by heart. For your body alone he would be on his knees begging, lips devoted to every inch of your skin, and the lovely way you responded to him driving him all kinds of insane.
“I want to take it slow,” he swiftly spread your thighs. The visceral grunt that left his lips at the sight of your soaked entrance reverberated on your bones.
“We have time,” you grinned, lowering your hand to your folds and running two digits against the warm, velvety juices, only to smear them on Jaehyun’s lower lip. “We have all night to make a baby.”
With a growl, Jaehyun’s hands were on the back of your knees, keeping your thighs separated, which meant you were fully spread and exposed for him. He leaned towards your cunt, readily using his wet and hot tongue on you. You moaned his name like both a curse and a prayer.
“Missed this beautiful pussy so much,” he whispered. “My gorgeous girl, my lovely priestess… I’m going to ruin you.”
Shit. You had never been so turned on, dripping right at his tongue. Jaehyun ate you out so well, tongue circling your clit, alternating long and broad licks with quicker ones.
“You’re such a dream,” you complimented breathly, back arching at the slurp on your swollen clit. “I love you so much, Jaehyun. Gonna breed me good, pump me full of c-“ a high-pitched moan cut you off when he sucked on your clit, the heated, sinful sensations between your legs so good you squirted a little.
“Holy shit,” he cursed, only more determined to make you cum in his mouth. “That’s it, baby. Let go.” It didn’t surprise you that his slender finger slid inside you so easily, considering how wet you were. Jaehyun expertly combined the long suction of his mouth with sharp pumps of his fingers, massaging a sensitive spot inside you that made your thighs shake. You came hard and long, closing your eyes shut as your sweet body convulsed.
When you opened your eyes, you noticed the bed was wet, and Jaehyun’s chin dripped with crystal squirt.
You had to touch him.
In no time, you were on your knees with your hands wrapped around his cock, pumping him tortuously firm and slow. Your heart fluttered, because Jaehyun looked at you as if you had personally put the stars in the sky, when you both knew who blew the glow in them in the first place. The way he looked at you… It was just healing, making you feel like the most alluring woman in the world.
“Please,” he begged, balls tense with how much cum he had for you. Your dainty hands on him had always been too much for his sanity to take. “Please, let me in.”
Mercifully, you aligned his cock with your entrance and swiftly took all of his girth at once. The burning stretch, after so long, pulled a pornographic moan out of your throat, one that mixed with the grave groan Jaehyun let out. Your eyes locked with pleasure before you lifted your hips and sank down on him again, aware of how tight your walls gripped his length, like a vice.
“I love you,” Jaehyun threw his head back with a hiss, exposing his neck for your lips. As you kissed him there, his calloused hands grabbed your hips in adoration, helping the firm pace you set. “I love you madly, my dear, my wife- so pretty bouncing on my cock, ready to be filled.”
You thrived on the praise, speeding your hips and drinking from the bliss on his face. “I’m yours, Jae,” your foreheads touched, lips brushing in passion. “I’m yours, my husband.”
Jaehyun was easily the luckiest man alive, graced with such words combined to the tightness of your heavenly walls. The image of you on top of him, calling him husband, the scent of your arousal soaking the bed, your lovely breasts bouncing, the spasms of your cunt nearly milking him dry… It was all driving him crazy to breed you full and not let any drip of cum escape.
Impulsively, he rolled your bodies on the bed and lifted your hips before he was pounding you hard and fast, your calves resting above his shoulders as he reached deep inside, repeatedly hitting your cervix. You took the chance to admire him, aroused by how his muscles clenched, black hair falling onto his forehead, his beautiful face contorted in the pleasure of taking you to himself. The position also allowed a constant friction against your clit, and you could already feel another orgasm lurking.
“You’ll be mine forever,” Jaehyun grinned with delight, keeping your legs against his chest as his hips met yours. Differently from all the times you had sex before, you sensed he was deeper this time, as though his own cells mixed with yours, as if you shared the same blood… Like he was making you fertile, full of life. “My Lady of Peace, above everything, above everyone. Mine to love, mine to rule me..”
You nodded, absolutely in love with how it sounded. You were so lucky, so damn lucky it was hard to believe. A needy moan escaped your mouth right into his when his cock reached all the right places. You tensed, closing your eyes as the pleasure grew beyond measure.
“Eyes on me,” Jaehyun commanded, and you obeyed, taking every thrust as your body rocked underneath his. “I want you to look at me when I breed life into you.”
It felt so desperately good, so out of any world and realm, that you sank your nails in the skin of his shoulders, a victim of how your pussy clenched and pulsated around his cock until you were cumming hard, trembling, holding his gaze as yours faltered, full of ecstasy and pleasure.
The alluring sight of your orgasm edged Jaehyun on, and you thanked that your eyes were open, blessed with the image of your husband cumming inside you: with pupils so blown out his irises were almost black, a furrow in his lovely brows, and a moan so deep in his throat your own orgasm lasted a little longer, squirting juices mixing with thick, pearly seed that coated your cunt.
You remained tied with each other, your forehead on his shoulder and one of his arms supporting your weight, until your breaths calmed down and the aftershocks smoothened. There was nothing but happiness in your eyes, nothing but fulfillment as you laughed, high on love. Buried in your warmth, Jaehyun took his time feeling you, caressing your face with the back of his hand with shooting stars in his eyes. He had waited so long for the day where he could be with you like that, silent on a bed, just taking in every detail of your face — and now, not only you were where he’d dreamed of, but you were his Lady: someone who possessed his death as much as his life, someone that belonged to eternity as every other Lord and Lady he had created.
No words were needed. You just had to enjoy every second, allowing yourselves to be allured, to surrender to the love you were promised to. And to give into the peace that started flourishing in your chest like a white lily.
-
It was past noon when your eyes opened. Your body woke up slowly, muscles growing aware of small aches left by love making, that unconsciously spread your lips in a blooming smile. Stretching on the mattress, you got aware of the toned arms on your waist, and the heavy breath on your neck.
Much to your delight, the face you landed your eyes on belonged to the only person you ever wished to share your mornings with. Jaehyun slept peacefully, with a glimpse of satisfaction on his undisturbed complexion. It made you smile, how happy he seemed, how gentle and warm his aura was while you caressed his face, brushing his hair back.
Shortly after, he opened his eyes, immediately surrendering to a wide smile. “Am I dreaming?” your husband hummed in a sleepy tone.
“Not this time,” you nested yourself in his bare chest. “I’m right here.”
“Yes,” he cheered lowly and secured the grip of his arms around you. “Did my wife sleep well?”
“Perfectly. What about my husband?”
“Better than the Lord of Sleep himself.”
You chuckled together, Jaehyun’s dimples showing up in a sweet display. “Does it mean you feel better?”
“I feel…” Jaehyun chose the right words, “I feel comfortably peaceful.”
You felt it too. A state of calm, quiet and amity: a delicate reflex of the purest easiness.
“So no loss, no rage, no need to strike first?” you asked to make sure.
Jaehyun shook his head. Calm flooded his eyes — you wondered if it had anything to do with you. As if he could read your mind, he grinned, running his hand through your hair. “Even your aura is different now. Clearer. You’ve got a power that belongs to you only, and you’ll learn how to use it. So far, though, you’re doing amazing.”
“I think I have to try with someone else. You’re too smitten not to be influenced by me,” you teased, instantly rewarded with a slap on your ass cheek.
“I’m sure Yuta or Baba Yaga will offer you a much greater challenge.”
Indeed. Tougher minds for you to easy, but you were confident you would manage.
Your side sank slightly on the mattress when Jaehyun reached for the bedside table, where his coat had landed. You watched his hand slip inside the pocket and return with a familiar silver wedding ring on his palm. “Can I put it back?” Jaehyun carefully asked, his tender and big eyes asking for the sweetest of permissions.
A genuine smile blossomed on your lips. You softly lifted your hand, keeping it in place for him to put the ring back on. The metal was warm as though Jaehyun had been wearing it for you. As if his love guarded the ring with flames.
-
My name is Baba Yaga and this story belongs to me, so I will tell it.
Lucky times, those were, when at the dawn of war, men pulled their bayonets down and went back home, to the arms of their parents and loved ones. Graceful days, with once compromised by rage politicians calmly negotiating with their deadly enemies — men, usually so built up in the narrative of rage, became reasonable and easier to deal with. Fewer people died. The world was a tranquil, welcoming place.
They said it was because of a Lady, crafted in serenity, whose kiss soothed the heart of humans and gods. A woman dressed in white, crowned with sunlight, her hair free and wild with the wind, her eyes alluring, and a smile so contagious it reminded people of their own joy. Peace was nothing but a great state of self satisfaction, and the Lady understood it well, working peace with her fingers as spiders weaved webs.
The Lady of Peace had a black hound, people said. They also said that she had Koschei the Deathless eating right from her hand, like a dog. That he stood in front of her on his knees, black hair like a rook's wings on his face, as the Lady of Peace went through her maps, always aware of where she needed to strike first. That Koschei, the Lord of Life, stood as a servant at her disposal, his shadows submitting to her holy light. She had a sharp eye, a sharper mind, and a fatal way to slide into people’s bloodstream with the calmest of touches.
Obviously, the ones who thrived on violent games were against her existence, but the Lady of Peace was not an ordinary opponent: every attempt to fight her was met with sweet carelessness, and soon enough those who tried taking her down moved on with their lives as though they had not been angry in the first place.
“I have never been so bored,” confessed Death once, when I invited him over for tea. “Can’t even do my job properly.”
“Hush,” I spat. “You still have the accidented, the sick and the old. Good thing that ambitious woman let you have them too.”
“Love makes a fool of us all.”
“It does,” I agreed, “but it also brings out the best of us.”
Never before have I had so much work to get done. Luck and peace walked hand in hand, like sisters. If I had to be completely honest, seeing people happy pleased me, so much so that I did not complain about the workload. Perhaps I was more peaceful myself.
Until that day, of course. The day the black hound was stolen.
-
“Magic doesn’t happen when you light a candle simply,” you explained as the attentive eyes of Mark and Vasilisa watched. “You have to activate the flame, using your words and intentions. The spiritual guides are always by your side to help, but you have to do your part and be specific about what you want.”
You had taken Baba Yaga’s advice and accepted both children as your apprentices. Six years had passed from the day you were crowned Lady of Peace, which gave the reincarnated souls — that were so dear to you — time to grow and be able to understand a few principles of magic. What you did was a serious job, and thankfully they were pretty much interested in everything you had to say.
“Can I try?” Mark politely lifted his hand.
With a short nod, you complied. “Sure.”
The little boy gathered his hands in front of his face, palms against each other, and closed his eyes. “Please, Granny Isobel, let us have a good harvest of watermelons so I can eat them everyday for breakfast.”
You had to retain the chuckle on your lips, instead keeping a serious expression.
“Good! Anything else you want, Mark?”
He opened his eyes. “Pudding for dessert.”
“Anything besides food, perhaps?”
“Oh, intelligence. And health.”
“Go ahead, ask granny. What about you, Val?”
Vasilisa hummed, placing the tip of her finger against her lips. “I just wish to grow up and become an independent, strong woman.”
Your heart fluttered. “That’s a very reasonable wish. Go on, make your wish.”
Both children stood in front of white candles, one for each, and made their prayers. Through the silence in the temple, you sensed two different presences: the black hound, always so close if felt as though she was part of you, and your husband, by the door.
“Papa Koschei!” Both Mark and Vasilisa yelled joyously, running to Jaehyun. As if the children weighted nothing, he picked them up on his sides.
God, he was going to make such a lovely father.
“I came in to check how your classes are going. Are you learning a lot?”
“Yes!” Vasilisa replied. “We’re learning to activate candles!”
“And earlier this week, miss Y/N taught us how to summon the light spirits!” Mark added.
“Wow, that’s huge!” Jaehyun praised, brown eyes glowing with content. “I bet you have an amazing teacher.”
“We do!” The kids hummed in unison before they were put down on the ground. Your husband approached you, placing a kiss on your lips. You kissed him back, a grin blooming where your mouths touched.
“Kids, you’re free to go,” you cooed without looking away.
“Any homework, miss?” Mark asked.
“Activate your candles and talk to your spiritual guides. Then tell me what you felt when you did it,” you instructed.
“Got it! Goodbye, miss! Goodbye, Papa Koschei!”
Soon, you and Jaehyun were alone in the temple. “Did I ever tell you…” he started, forming a trail of kisses from your hand to your arm, “that you look absolutely attractive when teaching?”
“In the past year I might have heard that enough to use it as a weapon,” you shamelessly admitted, palming his chest with the hand that was free. Slowly, said hand started slipping lower.
Jaehyun’s breath got caught in his throat, and he had to remind himself to inhale when your hand reached the volume between his legs.
“Your dick seems tight inside your pants,” you noted with a soft whisper. “Poor boy… Do you want relief?”
His fists clenched around the fabric of your skirt. “That’s the only thing in my mind.”
You smiled peacefully. “Just as I thought.”
Minutes later, you were on your knees with one of your hands at the base of his cock, while your mouth sucked him nice and long, as if in a display of how much of him you could swallow. Jaehyun held onto the table, moving his hips only slightly, his pupils wide at the perfect sight of your mouth taking him whole, lush lips brushing the entirety of his length.
“Fuck, you’re so perfect taking my dick like that,” he groaned, lost in your velvet tongue while trying his best to control his hips from going further. “Let me finish inside you, wife.”
That was a request you never felt like saying no, readily sitting at the edge of the table and removing your — ruined — panties. Jaehyun didn’t take long to spread your legs and bury himself in you, his moan making you tremble in awe as his fingers sank in the meat of your thighs.
You loved that position, how destined your bodies were in each deeper encounter, how Jaehyun’s breath caressed your throat, how his black hair lifted a little after you had brushed it back, a demanding hand on his nape as you kissed him hard, so hard your teeth hurt. It was the only type of violence and excitement you allowed yourself: being fucked with love and care, being filled up with seed that ran from your thighs to the floor, taking your husband’s every facade, whether he was Jaehyun or Koschei the Deathless.
You held the moment of your chests pressed together like it was made of glass, offering your husband an open smile after you were done.
He placed a gentle kiss to the tip of your nose, still inside you even when the aftershocks had passed. It was Jaehyun’s favorite place to be. “Look at us, sinning in your temple,” he chuckled.
“I don’t believe in sins,” you retorted sweetly. “I believe in love.” It was not the first time Jaehyun heard you say those words, and he loved the sound of them a little more every time you pronounced them.
“Are you ready for dinner tonight?” he asked.
“To face all the Lords and Ladies you created when bored?” you teased like a cat. “To listen to their complaints on how dull their routines are now that I reign? To once again patiently listen to their proposal of creating a Lord of War?”
“Life is full of contradictions, wife,” Jaehyun cooed, studying your gaze. “My brothers and sisters seek nothing but to be faithful to their nature.”
“As I will be to mine, brother,” you made sure to add, clenching your muscles. Almost instantly, his girth hardened again.
This time, when he looked at you, Jaehyun’s eyes were frank, like life on a deathbed. “Do you understand, right, love? You are smart enough…” he breathed, rubbing his cheek softly against yours, the firmness of his hand on your jawline. “Nothing will ever be permanent. Life has always been about conflict. And you’re part of it now.”
You understood. It just didn’t mean that you agreed with it.
-
I’ll tell you just how it happened.
The Lord of Life and the Lady of Peace threw a dinner party to welcome all the Lords and Ladies, including me. I joined them at the main table, right next to the Lady, and I was proud at how much she had evolved, although I did not say a word. It has always been hard for me to display affection. I did not yet know words of affirmation tasted good on my tongue.
I anticipated something was going to happen, because of the look on Koschei’s face. Life was never permanent, it was never a thin line, and he knew it. But did his wife know? Did she understand after years used to power, after years maintaining the peace?
The hound was stolen during dinner by the Lord of Inconvenience, who fooled the animal with sweet gestures, as Jungwoo himself looked innocent and harmless, causing Papa Koschei’s death to fall into the embrace of a young Lord that only wished to mess up with order.
And once again, with Koschei’s death in the power of such a trickster, the immortal realms face the possibility of war. Not because people were fighting, not because soldiers were being recruited in the front lines at the mortal realms, but because life was a treacherous thing.
The Lady of Peace stood taller than everyone when John the Knight announced the robbery. She had something new with her. Something small, that I sensed too, because I loved her.
-
“I beg you, wife. Let it be,” Jaehyun whispered.
“Get off your knees.” You felt old, perhaps as old as Baba Yaga. A part of you was stolen, violently taken away from you. You loved the hound. You loved Jaehyun’s death as much as you loved his life, and it was your obligation to take care of both.
Jaehyun continued where he was. “Don’t chase the hound,” he insisted. “Don’t try solving things. Don’t bleed for my death. Jungwoo will keep it safe, I know he will. But war may come, and when it does I will build a shelter for you. I will keep you safe and sound. You will never go hungry. You will not suffer. You will not die. Let it be.”
“I refuse,” you replied hoarsely. Now, you had a choice.
“No one can refuse inconvenience.”
“I’ll face it with peace.”
“I wish you meant what you said,” Jaehyun held your gaze, like a needle piercing your heart. “But we both know you’re not peaceful now, wife.” His eyes were soft and welcoming; yours, dark and imperial. “I know,” Jaehyun murmured, romantic eyes slowly sliding from your face to your belly. “I know there is life inside you.”
You could have looked away, but you did not. Of course he knew. The Lord of Life would always be aware of his creations, even more if his child, flesh and bone, grew inside your womb.
“Get off your knees,” you repeated. “I am not a saint for you to kneel.”
As much as you were a saint to him, this time Jaehyun obeyed. He stood way taller than you, his shadow like a cape. At a blink of an eye, you were inside his embrace, inside his destiny, inside his deathless faith. “I love you, Y/N.” A confession so true, a love so genuine, a father speaking to the woman who bore his child. “I love you and I don’t mind where my death is as long as I have you.”
You chuckled dryly and without a drop of humor, ignoring the knot in your throat. “If anyone else but you had my death, would you be in peace?” You asked the most honest, the bloodiest question you were able to muster.
Jaehyun did not think twice before replying. “No.”
You nodded. Now he understood: it didn’t matter what Jaehyun thought Jungwoo would or wouldn’t do with his death. You wouldn’t rest until you had the hound back, because it was the only way to ensure the life of the man that you loved. The man that was, too, the father of your child. And a child deserved to have a full, complete family.
“I love you, Jaehyun,” you closed your eyes, two sister tears running down your cheeks, “and I will get your death back.”
You commanded the servants to prepare your horses. The trip to the realm of Jungwoo would take nearly a whole day, and you had no time to waste.
“Are you sure it’s a good time to ride, my love?” your husband hesitated.
“I am pregnant, not ill,” you spat. Those were exactly the words your grandmother said to the pregnant ladies who walked inside your childhood home, afraid anything they tried would result in losing their babies. You looked over at Jaehyun’s face, and the surprise in it made you quickly apologize. “I didn’t mean to sound that rough.”
“You’re right, though. I am just unused to your rage.”
“So am I,” you admitted. It felt as though something was horribly wrong with you, like a party dress destined for a fox. “When we arrive, let me speak. Don’t interrupt me.”
Jaehyun clenched an eyebrow at you.
“That’s new, isn’t it? Taking my orders,” you simply commented.
“I promised to do so years ago,” Jaehyun spoke just as ordinarily. “A husband is not to confine. A husband is to free. That’s what I said when we got married.”
You gazed at him stunningly, your chest warm where your heart beat.
“I am giving you choices, my Lady,” he continued. “Both because I love and believe you. And also because I am a fool, but I still have my judgment and priorities. Whatever your plan is, all I ask is for you to be careful. If you’re not, I will be. I would already burn the world down for you alone, but now you’re carrying my child. I’ll be as violent as I should.”
Even the conflict between the two of you tasted sweet now.
Jaehyun gave you his hand for you to jump on your horse. You traveled side by side, only stopping for water and a bit of shadow under an apple tree.
Jungwoo’s land was different from everything you had seen so far, filled with a huge diversity of expressions: museums, open antique fairs, circuses and amusement parks; theaters, brothels and taverns so full they seemed like anthills. Every inch of the floor was covered with wine, spit, piss and cum. Not even the weather could decide, as the hottest sun fought against windy storms, causing an enormous rainbow to light up the sky.
The Lord of Inconvenience was already waiting for your arrival, sitting on a throne in his manor, so loud and disorganized as his realm itself, with several crooked paintings on the walls, and a mix of patterns and colors that was too much for the eye. The hound sat by his side, her ears turning to the door when you were announced.
She ran to you immediately, long ears up, her tails wiggling and her wet, cold snout smelling your tummy.
“Brother, sister!” Jungwoo clapped excitedly. Whoever put their eyes on him would never say he was responsible for the trickiest of tricks: the lovely innocence on his face combined to his excellent manners could easily deceive anyone. “You’re twenty minutes late!” he whined.
“Sorry for the inconvenience,” Jaehyun politely stated, making Jungwoo laugh.
“I guess you’re here for your death,” he hummed, indicating the hound with his chin. “Well, there she is. She’s yours.”
You lifted your face, your white cape falling down your shoulders.
“The hound is here indeed, but the rest isn’t,” you observed. The duck, the egg and the needle were missing. You had spent too much time with the hound to know every inch of her.
Jungwoo’s eyes glimmered with adrenaline.
“I genuinely expected to fool you,” he pouted again. “Don’t take it personally, sister. It’s my nature.”
Years ago, you would have blamed him. But now, all you could do was to accept that life had its own ways of expression. Jaehyun had quite an imagination, and you loved him whole: the good and the bad creations equally.
“I can forgive you if you show me where the rest is,” you calmly argumented.
Jungwoo tapped his lower lip with his finger in thought, considering.
“But that would end the fun, wouldn’t it?” he relaxed back on his throne, patting the pad of his bare feet against the ground. “Ah, whatever, you might find out soon!” he leaned over again, putting his hand secretly at the side of his mouth. “It is with Yuta.”
“Yuta?” Jaehyun repeated.
You sensed the Lord of Death as he walked the manor’s hall, his straightforward presence spreading over the room like fire in the forest.
It made sense. Only Death would know how to separate the hound from the rest.
“I told you she was going to know, brother,” he said to Jungwoo. “Now, you owe me some of your citizens.”
Jungwoo rolled his eyes.
Gods.
“What do you want with Jaehyun’s death?” you asked, even though you already knew the answer.
“War,” Yuta was as sincere as he could be. “You had your fair share of peace, and it was dull. Now it is time for some fun.”
“Fun?” you frowned. “Do you still think like that? I see you’re still selfish.”
“Oh, but I am not,” Yuta retorted. “I embrace the ones in pain. I serve glory for young women and men who are nothing, and die defending their countries. I provide a long, endless sleep for the ones who decide life isn’t worth it. I am not the bad guy, Y/N. In fact, we are pretty equal sometimes.”
You did not disagree.
Silence was made before Yuta spoke again. “I have a proposal for you, my Lady. Let’s share the world. Pick up the countries you want and make them peaceful before Life and I carve war their way, then restore the ones we have just ravished.”
“It is fair, sister,” Jungwoo agreed, even if his opinion was not required.
You only glared at them, looking less like a peacemaker and more like a pregnant woman with boiling hormones.
“Come on, that will even please your husband,” Yuta argumented. “Admit it, brother. You miss a good fight, don’t you?”
The sound of Jaehyun’s throat swallowing was like a low agreement.
“War is in my nature too,” Jaehyun admitted, turning his gaze to you, “but I am more than the Lord of Life now. I am her husband.”
I am as cruel and demanding as a god can be, but for you, and only you, I will be your faithful husband.
Both the Lords breathed in frustration. There was little your magic could do now, as nature was superior to influence, instincts spoke louder than wishing. You tried analyzing the options coldly: at every diplomatic suggestion your mind came with, there was a counterpoint.
You could not protect the world only. Now, you had to protect your child too.
“What if I tell you I can’t accept your offer?” you asked, chin firmly up. “What if I tell you to return Koschei’s death to me, and accept the way life is now? That I won’t surrender to tricks and violence?”
“Then,” Yuta breathed, “I will tell you that there are two lovely apprentices playing in the garden in Buyan. Two lovely old souls, trapped in children’s bodies, that I will love to bring to my realm.”
Oh, to be vulnerable.
It hurt so fucking much.
“If we share the world, I want Jaehyun’s death back,” you offered. The sacrifice of many instead of the sacrifice of the few you held dear in your heart.
It was the way of the world.
“Let’s share it. You’ll have the hen, and I will have the egg with the needle in it.”
“I want his death back entirely,” you made yourself clearer now.
Yuta blinked, impervious.
Jaehyun stepped forward. “Brother, my death is mine to give.”
“It is death, and death belongs to me.”
“As your life belongs to me,” Jaehyun hardened his tone. “We will fight again as you’d like, but my death shall not submit to you. I am deathless.”
Yuta, impatient, quick, and sudden, made his final requirement known: “I will give it back to you only if we can fight. Let’s start today.”
You boiled like water in a pan.
When you walked out of Jungwoo’s manor, you and Jaehyun looked at each other knowing a blank space was approaching, one that too quickly assaulted your way back home. The shadows of Death chased you to Buyan. Thankfully, you came back safe. Thankfully, Mark, Vasilisa were all alive when you did. Baba Yaga was already there.
-
“What will you call her?” the Lady of Luck asked.
“Who?” you breathed, with battlefield dust on your face. You were at the manor after a long battle that left you covered in smoke, and with slight cuts on your knuckles. Since it was Jaehyun’s turn to command the army, he stood to realign the strategy, and you came back to rest before you were needed again.
“Your daughter.”
Buyan’s night sky shone in brutal shades of red and gray, as it did when you first arrived. All wars had the same color, hysterical, uncontrollable and passionate. That did not change.
“How do you know it is a girl?”
“Papa Koschei has been lucky. He had always wanted a little girl.”
“It feels so wrong… Thinking about a baby name in the middle of the war.”
“Maybe you need some help sharing your attention between battling and being pregnant,” the old woman cooed. “Even Jaehyun is thinking more about your child than about war strategies.”
“That’s why we are losing,” you concluded, petting the hound’s head gently. Ever since you returned, she did not leave your side for a moment, twice as a protector now that you were pregnant. You even gave her a name. Ravan.
“Wars are not for winning or losing, child. They are for surviving.”
Whatever wars served for, Jaehyun and you were losing. The hiatus carved by your peace was now dirty with the blood Death was so thirsty for, and for the first time Yuta did not battle alone. Inconvenience, Revenge, Justice… They all faced Life with their teeth and nails, claiming the realms with the intemperance of the world’s setting. With Baba Yaga on your side, you were luckier, but luckier did not mean invincible. Mostly, it meant alive.
“Will it always be like that, granny?” you asked lowly. So low Baba Yaga almost didn’t hear you.
“It will.”
Your eyes weighed like a dozen ships when you closed them. Your mouth was so dry it hurt when you spoke. “I think… I think I am getting used to it.”
Naturally, you adapted, discovering how peace fit best in war. How the puzzles came together. You could not keep the soldiers from battling, and much less negotiate with the Lords — your husband included — that thrived as blood flooded the earth. But with you on the battlefields, death and despair felt easier. You soothed the helpless souls, numbing their minds, anesthetizing their bodies and closing their eyes as the limbs of Death cradled their destinies.
It was your fighting style. Meanwhile, the others used real weapons, they aimed and shot straight, in the endless battle between Life and Death.
“Your priorities are changing,” Baba Yaga noted cleverly. “I was young and revolutionary once. Then, I had kids. Then, I got old. Aging makes you smarter, child. You learn that you can not control everything.”
“Oh, there are many things I can’t control,” you chuckled bitterly, placing a hand on your belly. Your child had just started kicking, her moves excited and strong, filled with vitality. “I pity men, granny. I pity women. I mostly pity the children. All I wish is to offer them a little calmness.”
“No one blames you for that. Not even Death.” Baba Yaga got up and, at the rarest of occurrences, placed a motherly kiss on your forehead. “You fought bravely. Now it is your time to flow with the world’s contradictions. Help those you can, but feel more for you and less for others. She needs you, m’Lady.”
You took a breath so long your lungs wouldn’t fit it in, letting it go as if you were also allowing your shoulders to carry no weight at all.
When Baba Yaga turned to leave the room, you hummed. “Nina. We will call her Nina.”
-
“My opinion on war, my child?” Granny Isobel pulled the pipe away from her mouth. “That’s no good thing. No good thing,” she shook her head, face hidden by the quality of the thick, undeniable smoke. “But God, our Good Lord, allowed it. I am not saying that it is acceptable because God made it, but… But people like me can only help in a few ways. I welcome the hurt spirits. Sometimes they still feel the bullet in their eye, the lack of a leg or a thumb, and wonder where their friends are. I think it is no good, child. But there is nothing I can do, because my power is of another kind.”
-
When Jaehyun arrived at the manor, his armor was covered in black blood, his face dirty with dust, his knuckles raw from punching. By the marks of war he carried, and with how often you fought together, you guessed every punch, hit, cut and blow thrown his way, that he defended with his sword. He looked paler under all the mud, a deep tiredness imprinted in his features with the black holes under his eyes.
Without a word, you took him to your room, where you helped him out of the armor. The bathtub had water so hot in it the steam drew random curls in the air, but you did not complain, silently pressed to each other, praying for some magic that would remove the tiredness off of you.
The war was going badly. But when was it not?
“You’re doing so good, my love,” your husband managed to murmur, caressing your round belly with the same hands he used to strangle the shadows. “Bearing our child so well…”
“Just like she’s bearing me.” You rested the back of your head on his shoulder. “I think I get it now. Life is at its highest when it is the closest to death. You like the war, for it is where you feel more like yourself.”
Jaehyun could never lie to you. “I do. Don’t you now, too, just a little?”
You shook your head with a tired grin. “I feel needed. Necessary. I still prefer the calm and the quiet, though. I will fight for peace when my time comes again.”
“I will be right by your side when you do” he hummed in your ear, accepting and open. “I hope it takes a few years, though.”
“Inconvenience is a tough, irritating thing. We can’t have any hope.”
Jaehyun tasted the words in his mouth. His hands roamed on your stomach, down your navel. “What if we could?” He sounded like a new idea flourishing.
“It’s too early to give her an occupation,” you protested reasonably, reaching up to caress his face. “Let her choose, when she’s grown enough: Lady of Hope, of Faith, of Nothing… First, Nina will only be our baby.”
He agreed with a kiss on your shoulder. Taking her part into the conversation, Nina kicked right where his hand was.
“Ouch,” Jaehyun chuckled, enamored as he was whenever his daughter interacted with him, making her presence as loud as her will. “I already agreed with mama, you don’t have to kick me that hard…”
Savoring the moment, you nested closer to him. Through the window, the gust of wind carried the red aroma of blood and rain. “Jae, what did you do with your death?”
Already expecting your question, Jaehyun smiled. “I’ll show you where I hid it.”
-
I made this for you, wife. It is yours to run away whenever you want. I created this land from scratch. The Realm of Peace, where we can reside. Since I know you like company, I allowed others to come inside: children, florists, teachers, the butcher and his wife, and the servants — which we know are not servants only, but souls as complete as ours. You and I are the only ones who can allow them inside, but the final word is yours to give.
Open your eyes, look at it.
Do you like it, wife? The greenest sunflower fields, the deepest, shadowy forests that smell like oak and ambunara trees, the clouds dancing in the sky… What about the village? I made it just for you, colorful and thriving up the cobblestone streets, with temples, churches, libraries, bars and a playground for the children. It is safe and hidden, as you can see.
I keep my death here too, but it is not born yet. You understand, right, wife? Where I hid it.
You’re carrying her on your belly. Nina is my death now, because in both you and her, I feel the most alive.
I remain deathless because my death can only be reached here, and you’re the one with the key. A knife in my chest won’t kill me anywhere else. We are only vulnerable here, wife, where you crafted your peace, your nature.
I created your death, and Nina’s, and I hid them too. Here. Where no one else can reach us. Where even the cobblestones breathe peacefully.
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Promise
Summary: Gale learns what it means to love and be loved.
Sequel to Progress - a Professor Dekarios x OC journey through mental illness and recovery.
Word count: 7.9k
Disclaimers: Non-18+, angst with a happy ending, hurt/comfort, mental illness and recovery.
Trigger warnings: Mental illness, eating disorder, body dysmorphia. Please practise self-care.
AO3 link
She looks happy.
She is smiling at you. You are lying in bed, facing each other. Sunlight streaks through your bedroom curtains as dawn breaks. You have to remind yourself that this is not a dream. She is really, truly here.
She closes her eyes as you run your thumb over her freckles, which fan out like stars over the contours of her face. Your fingers dance over her arm, the dip in her waist, the curve of her thighs. She does not shy away from your touch, nor try to hide her flesh from you. Her grey eyes quiver.
“I love you,” she whispers.
You cannot tell whether it is your tears or hers that linger on your tongue as you melt into each other.
---
You can still taste her salt and sweetness as you lie on your back, your arm curled around her as she nestles into your chest. She smells like lavender, soap, and sweat, and you cannot get enough of her scent as you bury your nose into her dark, damp waves. She is playing with the hairs that trail from your chest to your navel, and you shiver from the shadow of her fingers. She notices.
“It’s a new experience, having such an effect on a man. It’s quite…flattering.”
She looks up at you with a small smile.
You chuckle. “You don’t know half of the effect that you’ve had on me, Aurora. I’ve spent two years imagining this moment, and still, my fantasies scarcely touched the surface of the miracle that you are.”
She is blushing, shifting. You kiss her on the tip of her nose, where she has the tiniest scar. You are engraving her every mark on the shrine of your memory.
“So…” She clears her throat. “You’re saying that you’ve been lusting after me since the first day we met? Your eyes met mine across the lecture hall and you thought, ‘This is a maiden I long for’. One glimpse of me was enough to rouse the fire in your loins. Is that it?”
She is playful now, teasing. You are aflame with this new side of her that no one else has seen.
You laugh. “Perhaps I exaggerate. But if not two years, then twenty months at most. I fell in love with you very quickly, Aurora. Much as I resisted it, or denied it to myself.”
Her gaze is evasive now, as though she is embarrassed. You clasp her to you. You need her to know, to feel the truth in your words. She must understand what she means to you. What she has meant to you, all this time.
“I’ve been alone since Mystra cast me off. At times, it’s been immensely lonely. To meet you, a kindred spirit, a soul that touched mine so instantly … that happens very rarely in a lifetime, if at all. Let’s just say that my body and soul yearned for you like water in a desert.”
You do not tell her about the frenzy that so often overcame you, slumped over your desk or under these very same sheets, thinking of her. The appetites of a schoolboy that she restored in you, when those desires had been all but dormant. Some things are better left to the imagination.
She is quiet. You can feel the faint timbre of her heartbeat through your skin.
“These things fluster you,” you observe.
She nods, biting her lip.
“Why? Don’t you believe me?”
“No, Gale, it’s not that.” She shakes her head. “I just find it hard to believe that someone like you could feel that way about me.”
She takes a deep breath.
“When we first met, I thought I’d found my first ever friend. And even that, I struggled to believe. I didn’t want to admit to myself that… well, I didn’t know what love was. Besides, how could it be possible? You’re the best man, the most beautiful person, I’ve ever known.”
You have such an urge to answer her with your mouth, your tongue, your body. But she is hesitant, and you must wait until the doubt passes. You must help her understand.
“But that’s what you are to me, Aurora.”
A frown passes across her brow.
“You’re the one and only.”
You brush your lips over her forehead. She sighs, her features softening.
“Also,” you add. “Little things that you did drove me wild.”
Something glints in her gaze. “Like what?”
She presses herself closer to you.
“Too many to count. The way you bit your lip, for one. How delicately you turned the pages of every book. The way your face lit up talking about an illusion or a poem you loved.”
You can feel a familiar ache building.
“The way you widened your eyes when you looked at me. Like that. What you’re doing now.”
You thought you were spent, but you are already hardening. She runs her tongue over her bottom lip.
“So I’m driving you wild at this very moment?”
You move your mouth closer to hers. “Yes.”
“Well.” She tilts her head. Her hand begins to float downwards from your navel. “It would be cruel to stop at that.”
As you push yourself on top of her, she lets out a little moan.
---
“Are you sure I look acceptable?”
She is fussing at the waistband of her skirt, the buttons on her sleeves. She fidgets with her hair clips, smoothing and re-smoothing her bodice.
“Is this the sort of thing that your mother will expect? Or should I wear something more modest?”
You chuckle. “You’re hardly baring every inch of your flesh to the world, Aurora.”
“Is it too conservative, then? Should I-”
You move closer to snake your hands around her waist. She leans her forehead against your chest.
“You look perfect. Marvellous.”
“I don’t,” she murmurs.
“You’re breathtaking.”
You are playing with the fabric on her shoulder. It torments you, the trail of freckles that drifts down the curve of her cheek, disappearing on the edge of her neck, only to reappear on her collarbone and shoulder blade. Aurora’s freckles are like winding roads in an unchartered territory, waiting to be discovered. Instinctively, your mouth dips down to follow where they lead.
“Gale…”
She looks up, frowning.
“What are you doing?”
You are losing yourself. There is something about having her here with you, in the home that you have occupied for so many years with only Tara for company, readying herself to meet those you cherish most. You never thought such a thing would be possible. You are suddenly dizzy with love and desire. Your tongue swirls against her skin, yearning for more of her.
“Your mother and Tara will be here any moment.”
But you can hear how her breath is hitching. Her eyes are half lidded, her lips parted. That she cannot resist you only fuels your hunger. You slide your hand underneath her skirt. She trembles against it.
“They can let themselves in,” you rasp.
---
Morena and Tara cannot conceal their joy when they see you stumbling down the stairs. The flush on Aurora’s cheeks has not yet receded as you make introductions. It does not escape their eagle eyes, how you repeatedly clear your throats and smooth your clothes and hair. How you rub at your beard again and again. When Aurora bites her lip, the images that rush through your mind make you shift to find your centre. Morena and Tara glance at each other with glee as you sit, sipping at the lukewarm cup of tea that has been waiting for you.
“I’ve heard so much about you from Tara and Gale, dear.” Morena beams. “It’s such a pleasure to meet you at last.”
She clasps Aurora’s hand. Aurora’s eyes widen. She is surprised by your mother’s warmth, just as she was taken aback by yours. You remember that she has never known a mother to give anything but punishment.
“The pleasure is all mine, Mrs Dekarios.”
Morena huffs. “Please, let’s dispense with such formalities. You can call me Morena, and hopefully, one day, you’ll call me Mother.”
You choke on your tea, glaring at Tara as she tuts at you. Aurora strokes you on the back as you cough and sputter, trying to conceal her alarm.
“Mother,” you say when you can breathe again. “Will you have some cake? A cookie? Something to stuff your very empty mouth?”
“My dear son,” she chirps. “It’s so kind of you to worry over your mother’s happiness and comfort. In fact, it brings immeasurable joy to this old heart to see you in your current state. Just look at the two of you. Glowing, positively radiant, with love.”
She claps her hands together with a sigh. Tara joins in with a fluttering of wings.
“Now that I’ve seen you in person, dearest Aurora, I know that all of Tara’s reports are true. You and my son are perfectly matched. You’re a vision.”
Aurora’s cheeks are reddening. Pride surges through you as she speaks.
“That’s very kind of you to say, Mrs- I mean, Morena. Your son is an exceptional man. I’m very lucky to be here with him.”
She interlaces her fingers with yours under the table. You almost wish that Tara and Morena would leave now, so you can keep showing her how exceptional you can be.
Tara and Morena exchange a look. As if on cue, they flash their teeth in a grin.
“You are such a dear.” Morena titters. “Now, I hope you won’t take offence in me pointing this out, but neither of you are getting any younger-”
You bristle, raising a finger. “Mother, may I ask where you’re going with this?”
She pushes your finger down instantly. “My son, I was coming onto the future for the two of you. Tara and I have been waiting for years for-”
“Oh Gods.” You stand, waving your hands around. “Look at the time. I didn’t realise how late it was.”
Morena narrows her eyes.
“Mother, don’t you have an auction or something to hurry off to?”
“I actually-”
You stare at Tara. “And Tara, don’t you need to escort my dear Mother to her next appointment, to make sure she doesn’t get lost? She can be ever so disoriented these days.”
Tara arches her back.
Confusion and panic brim in Aurora’s gaze as it flits between the three of you. There is a long silence. You do not back down. Morena purses her lips and rises to her feet slowly.
“Yes,” she drawls. “I’m in an awful rush. I’m so grateful that you reminded me.”
You give her your sweetest, most innocent smile. You embrace her, kissing her gently on the cheek. She squeezes your shoulder.
“Come on, Tara. Let’s leave the lovebirds to their merrymaking.”
---
“Your mother is…”
“Difficult? Wonderful? Awkward?”
“I was going to say persistent.”
You laugh, whether it is from relief, amusement, or fear, you are not sure.
You are sitting on the sofa in the library. Her head rests on your lap as you untangle the braids from her hair. You had hoped that her first meeting with the inimitable Morena Dekarios would not be catastrophic. From the way that Aurora giggles now, you are reassured that it was not. Though whether this was solely owing to your premature termination of the meeting, you cannot say.
“She likes you,” you remark.
Aurora sighs. “I hope so.”
“It’s clear.” You chuckle. “You would know if she didn’t.”
She nestles further into you. You trace your finger up and down her jawline. How is it possible for a heart to feel so full? Perhaps that is what makes you feel brave.
“What did you think of Mother’s question?” You clear your throat. “About the future?”
She tilts her head. “That depends.”
“On what?” you ask, a little too quickly.
She pauses, and the sorrow in her smile wounds you.
“On how long you can put up with me.”
You pull her up into you. You kiss her so deeply, so desperately, that your flesh aches from where it has touched her. She is shaking when you come apart.
“I don’t want a future that doesn’t have you in it,” you breathe.
She pants into your lips. “Neither do I.”
---
There are good days, and there are bad days.
You expected this. The doctors and nurses warned you. You are prepared for the worst. You told them that nothing could phase you, and you are determined. You love her, and you will do what it takes.
You are an intellectual. You can measure things in the abstract, and see things with an academic’s remove. You know that the good days outweigh the bad days. You can see how she is changing, growing. You can see the chains which she is fighting to break.
Aurora has never lived with anyone but her mother. She has never known freedom, and it is a struggle to adjust. She has shed her glamour, and for the most part, she no longer hides behind the shroud of loose robes. She is full of passion and apprehension as she takes on management of Mr Serpentil’s bookstore. She supplements her income by hosting poetry and novel readings with elaborate shows of illusion. She is building a life for herself, which comes with as many obstacles as gains. There is laughter alongside her tears, hope alongside her despair. Her tenderness for you overflows between and beyond the sheets.
The doctors had wondered if it was too soon, if you were moving too fast. You have only known each other for two years, they warned, and Aurora’s affliction is not for the faint-hearted. Such challenges break even the strongest and most well-established relationships. You rebuffed them. You feel like you have known her your entire life, and you cannot waste any more time. You have suffered much, lost much, and you do not take anything for granted. You want to spend every moment with her.
You want to share everything with her, to bare your soul to her so completely that there are no more secrets between you. You tell her everything about your past, even the things that cause you grief and shame. You give your whole heart to her. It is the only way you know how to love her.
But there are times when the weight of her condition is crushing. When she hides from you, and cannot be touched. When she cannot speak of the fears that claw at her, and retreats to a place you cannot go. When she freezes at the dinner table, stifling tears that come later in bed, when she shrinks away from your embrace.
It does not touch your love, only your resolve.
You know that kindness can overcome the burdens that a person carries. You yourself had friends who stood by you when you were a walking apocalypse, a ticking time bomb. They never abandoned you. They did not leave you to die.
You know that knowledge is the weapon to face any challenge.
You must find a solution, a cure, for her affliction.
---
Birthdays are difficult for her. All they signify is the devastation of yet another wasted year. She has never celebrated them. Her mother certainly never bothered, beyond reminding her of her shame and failures.
So when her birthday comes, you decide to celebrate her as she deserves.
You do what you do best. You array the dining room with candles and floating orbs. You fill the room with the scent of flowers, covering the table with a velvet cloth of rich green, her favourite colour. You spend hours preparing a rich, three course dinner, making sure that you dress the plates just so. You set the piano playing songs that have made Aurora smile. You brim with nervous excitement.
Tara insists that you wear your deep blue doublet and shave your beard, so you look your best. You humour her by doing the former, but you ignore her latter suggestion. From the speed with which Tara leaves, you can tell she thinks this night will involve more than a simple birthday celebration.
When Aurora returns home from the bookshop, shock blooms on her face. You take her hand and lead her into the dining room, where she looks around in bewilderment.
“You did all this for me,” she breathes, her eyes dilated with gratitude and desire.
“Happy birthday,” you reply, drawing her close.
You stumble and sway as your mouths find each other’s. She tastes of peppermint and smells of sea wind. You come apart panting, flushed, and you pull away from her only so you do not burn the food that is cooking. You glimpse a spasm of anxiety on her face, so you pass her your gift as you make your way to the kitchen.
“Gale.” She takes the box from you. “You really shouldn’t have.”
She stands at the boundary of the kitchen door as she unwraps it. You have found first edition copies of the complete works of Lorazelle Staunth, one of Aurora’s favourite romance writers. It took you some wrangling, but you managed to convince a colleague, a distant cousin of Staunth’s, to get them signed by their author. It is difficult to focus on the gravy you are stirring as you watch her out of the corner of your eye. She gasps, beaming, turning each book over in her hands with wonder and reverence, murmuring to herself.
You grin. “You’re welcome.”
She strides into the kitchen, over the invisible border that she has always feared to tread. Your breath catches as she leans into your back and wraps her arms around you. She does not let go, even when you have to walk back and forth to gather the dishes together to serve. Nor do you have the heart to ask her to release you.
You have never loved anyone so completely. You have never felt such happiness.
When you eventually sit down to eat, you take for granted what it is that you are asking. It dawns on you, as her jaw clenches and she grimaces. She tries, so hard, smiling, thanking you, complimenting your efforts. Her cutlery clatters on her plate, her movements are laboured. She tries to follow the thread of conversation, even when her gaze glazes and her words become broken. But in the end, it is too much, and you know you have pushed her too far, too soon.
“I’m sorry,” she gasps.
When she retreats to the bathroom, guilt engulfs you. You leave the untouched dishes, blow out the candles, silence the piano. You follow her, standing outside the locked door, listening to her muffled cries. You want to ask her to let you in. You do not know what to do, what to say. You wait.
How could you have been so foolish, so thoughtless? How could you have caused her such agony? You, who have always taken pride in your wisdom, your keen powers of observation. You have pushed the woman you love off a precipice, because you were selfish and insensitive. She has every right to be angry. To decide that you love her poorly. That you are unworthy.
You should have known better. You must make it up to her. You must find a way.
“This is my fault, Aurora,” you manage. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have… I should have been more mindful… Please forgive me.”
The door creaks open slowly. Her eyes are swollen, her voice is hoarse.
“There’s nothing to forgive. You didn’t do anything wrong, Gale.”
She trudges back to the dining room, and you trail behind her. You can tell from her footsteps that she is exhausted. Adrift. She gestures towards the table.
“Do you mind if we…”
You wrap your arms around her. She stands stiffly. She neither returns nor rejects your embrace. When you step back, she will not look at you.
“I don’t think I can give you what you need, Gale.”
You are taken aback by her words. Panic grows within you.
“What do you mean?”
She bites her lip, shaking her head.
“That’s not true, Aurora.” Your stomach lurches. “Please don’t say such things.”
She stares at you. There is something like coldness in her gaze, but you know it is not that. It is a wall of resignation, shame. There is bitterness in her voice, but it is not directed at you.
“You deserve someone who you can enjoy a dinner that you took such great lengths to prepare. Someone who’s grateful for all the amazing things you do. Someone who can receive the gifts that you give without reservations and certainly without…”
She swipes her hand towards the bathroom, the dining table, herself.
“…This. You deserve more than this shambles.”
“No, Aurora.” Your voice shakes like a plea. “No. I love you, what I deserve is-”
Her face twists.
“What if this is what it’s like, for the rest of my life? What if I can never sit beside you like a normal person and share such a wonderful meal that you so lovingly made? Will that be enough for you? Truly?”
You do not hesitate, not even for a second.
“Yes. Always. You’ll always be enough for me.”
She jerks her head back and forth. She knows you are being genuine, but there is dismay in her reaction.
“It isn’t enough. You deserve better.”
When you reach out to her, she turns away.
---
“Gale.”
There is uncertainty in her voice. She is flicking through the books and papers that clutter your desk as you look up from the letter you are furiously writing. When she last visited, Shadowheart told you about Sister Rose, a cleric at the House of the Moon, reputedly an expert in afflictions of this nature. You are bent on making her acquaintance as soon as possible.
“There’s an awful lot of research here about...”
You nod. She still struggles to give her condition a name.
“What about your own research? Your studies on Illusion?” She frowns. “Do you have time for…all this?”
It is true that you have put your own research on hold for the moment, but it hardly matters. You do not understand why both she and Tara have been asking you about this. You place your quill to one side and stand, crossing over to her. You place one hand on each shoulder, lowering your head to look straight into her eyes.
“This is my only priority right now, Aurora. If there’s anything out there that can help you be free of this burden, then I’ll find it.”
She winces. It stings you. All you want is to show her that you love and care for her more than anything. You do not understand.
“I think it might a bit more complicated than that, Gale.” Her gaze flickers away, then back to you. “I don’t think it’s an equation that can be solved with a simple formula.”
You search her eyes. She is withdrawing, you can sense it. Soon, you will not be able to follow. Desperation bubbles within you. You must show her that you can do it. You can help her.
“Where there’s a will, there’s a way. There’s a wealth of knowledge that I’ve not even touched yet. We’ll find a way out of this together.”
Her features spasm. She closes her eyes.
“This isn’t your burden, Gale. It isn’t your problem to fix.”
You take her face in your hands. Her eyes are misted now, darkening. You feel helpless to stop the clouds that are coming.
“You’re the woman I love. I do this because I love you.”
She presses her hand against yours. It is so small, so cold.
“Gale, your research, your studies-“
“Nothing matters more to me than you.”
She makes a choked sound. There is anguish in it. You need to prove to her that it can be done, that you can find her the keys to freedom. She holds you, and you can feel her shivering slightly. She turns, and you watch, bereft, as she leaves the room.
---
You jolt awake on some nights, clutching your chest where the mark of the orb used to be. Pain still blazes through you after the nightmares, emanating from the orb’s phantom, ripping through every muscle. You grit your teeth and clench the sheets, waiting for it to pass. You do not know if you are imagining it, or if there are traces of the orb which remain. Perhaps Mystra is not fully pleased with you, despite having promised her forgiveness. Perhaps you still disappoint her, and this is the only reprimand that she can be bothered to muster.
Your dreams are black and purple. Gossamer veils and black tentacles wind around you, flooding the chambers of your heart. You are a young boy behind a rose bush, and then you are a man stripped bare by a command, and you are on your knees, undone before the astral abyss. The goddess looms over you, pronouncing your judgment, and you are terrified and alone.
Every time you wake trembling, shouting, she is by your side. She holds you, her dawn light caressing your hands, your chest, your eyes. She cradles you, and her whispers are like healing spells. You are loved. You are safe. You are enough. You are still here.
You wish you could do the same for her, every time the darkness comes.
---
“The dancing figures, and then the dragons that you conjured… the battle that you represented with those floating lights… It was truly spectacular, Aurora, I’ve never seen anything like it.”
You have returned home with Aurora. Your hands are a flurry, and you can barely contain the excitement and pride in your voice. For almost four months she has been working with a collection of poets and playwrights to put together a showcase of their debut works. A small production, but a raving success. That only a modest crowd attended the performance seems to you the greatest injustice.
On the walk back, she has been smiling, nodding, making the occasional sound of agreement. But you can tell that she is not present. You tell yourself it must be post-performance exhaustion, frayed nerves. Perhaps she has not eaten or drunk enough. Maybe she needs more sleep. Her days have been long lately.
Yet there is something in her quietness that gives you pause.
“Aurora, are you alright?” You place a hand on her cheek. “Is something the matter?”
She shakes her head. “I’m fine, Gale.”
You can tell from the way that she hunches into herself, from the wall that has come up behind her eyes, that she is not fine.
“What’s wrong? Was it something I said?”
“No.” She turns away. “You haven’t done anything wrong.”
“Aurora.” You take her hand. “Please, tell me.”
Her lip quivers. She starts and stops. “I can’t. I don’t…”
She closes her eyes. She pushes you away when you try to hold her. Sometimes, it is agonising when she withdraws. When you have shown her your whole soul, and there are parts of herself she hides from you. Tonight, it feels like a rejection. Perhaps it is not that she cannot give you everything, or that she fears to do so. Perhaps she simply does not wish to.
“Do you want me to leave you alone?”
Your voice comes out flat, but inside you are breaking. The torment in her gaze is like a gash in your heart.
“No, I…” She balls her fists. “I just…”
You never thought you would ever wish to have a mindflayer tadpole again. But tonight, you remember how it was, to so easily join your thoughts to another’s, to share their memories and feelings, to see the world through their eyes. Tonight, you wish you both had a tadpole, so you could ask her to let you in. So you could understand her.
But perhaps she still would not wish to open herself to you.
“It’s alright, Aurora. You don’t have to tell me.”
“Gale…”
Old memories are coming to you now. Old wounds, from giving of yourself and asking, then failing to receive. Of waiting, fighting to become worthy. Of being shut behind icy walls, left with nothing but your lack.
“I understand if there are things you don’t wish to share with me.”
She steps towards you. “It’s not that…”
A flood has begun inside you now, and you feel like you may drown.
“I understand if you don’t feel like you can trust me. Perhaps I need to do more to earn your trust.”
She is shaking her head furiously.
“I know that I’ve failed on many occasions to be what you need me to be-”
“Gale, please stop.”
There is such an urgency in her words. You stare at her.
“It’s not your fault.”
A tear rolls down her cheek.
“It’s not that I don’t want to tell you… I just don’t have the words to tell you. Everything inside is just… a mess.”
There is a flash of light inside you. A wave of relief ripples amongst the flood.
“I want you to read my thoughts.”
You are speechless for a moment. You are considering what this means, what she is giving you. The weight of rejection that you no longer have to carry. The fear that you can cast out.
She nods at you, firmly, earnestly.
“I want you to know everything. Please, Gale. Cast the spell.”
---
When you read her thoughts, you see. You feel the anguish that jolts through her, watching the meaningless flirtations that are cast your way. The painted faces and willowy figures flaunted by younger women she believes are more worthy of your attentions. You hear the voices within her, screaming at her for the ways in which she differs from them. Her hair, lank and dark, her skin, blemished and rubbery. Bulges in her flesh where other bodies lay flat. Endless mirrors, laden with shame and anger twisted inwards like a blade, a barbed yearning to be different, better, beautiful.
He is so beautiful, the voice chants, and you are not. He will soon see, and grow weary of you. And then he will leave.
There had been a few women, after the performance, who had thrown themselves at you. You scarcely remembered them, they were so trivial, their chattering so absurd. You had never been one to fawn over such superficial things. Others may consider you attractive, but what of it? You have no eyes for anyone else but her.
But now you see, and you understand. You realise that the frequency of such incidents hurts her. It is not your fault, but she struggles nonetheless.
“Aurora.” You are afraid you might cry from the intensity of her pain. “There’s no one else. You’re the only one I see.”
You are not on your knees, but you feel as though you are begging.
“I love you. Only you. You must believe me. You must see it.”
You can tell how badly she wants to say yes. But she does not.
“What can I do to prove it to you?” you plea. “What more can I do to show you? Because I’ll do it. I’ll do anything for you.”
She takes your face in her hands. She looks at you with love and despair.
“You’ve given me everything, Gale. There’s nothing more you can do.”
---
“Thank you so much for seeing me, Sister.”
Her face crinkles as she smiles. She seems kind enough, but you are uncertain she will be able to give you more than the leading scholars you have harangued. But you are willing to try anything. Even an elderly cleric of Selune who has spoken to you for half an hour about gardening.
“It sounds like you’ve done considerable research into this condition, Professor Dekarios.”
“I have,” you confess. “But I’m aware that you have considerable practical experience in healing individuals with this affliction. And that’s why I’m here, to understand the methods that have given you such success.”
“Oh?” She rests her chin on steepled fingers.
“Yes,” you continue. “I’ve been trying to apply the recommended approaches, Sister, based on the latest advice from the House of Healing in-”
“Approaches?”
You nod. She considers for a moment, her brow furrowed.
“Professor Dekarios,” she begins. “Do you love your fiancé?”
“She’s not my-”
You stop yourself. She is more to you than even that.
“Yes. I do. Very much.”
“And do you show her that, with your words and actions?”
You are not sure where this line of reasoning is leading. But you are reassured by the gentleness in the Sister’s voice.
“Yes. I do.”
She leans forward in her chair.
“When she struggles, do you show her patience, kindness, and respect?”
“Of course.” You frown. You assume this is obvious. How could you not? “And I try, always, to broaden the limits of my understanding.”
She hums. “And when you speak to your fiancé, do you speak to her soul, or her affliction?”
You arch an eyebrow. “I’m not sure what you mean, Sister.”
“Do you truly see her? The truth of her person, beyond the hold that this condition has on her? Who she is, outside of this suffering?”
You remember the way she rocked against you as she wept, that first time she had let you visit her in the House of Healing. ‘This is all I am,’ she had said. ‘This is all I’ve ever been.’ It was not true then, and it is not true now.
“I do, Sister.”
She nods, then leans back again.
“Then you’re doing everything that you can do.”
That cannot be all. You cannot mask the exasperation in your voice.
“Surely there must be something more I can do. There must be a remedy-”
Something steels in her gaze. “May I speak frankly, Professor Dekarios?”
“Of course.”
She draws in a sharp breath.
“What your fiancé suffers from cannot be cured with a spell or a tincture, a scalpel or a course of medicine. She must walk herself through a tangle of vines, and cut them off one by one at the root. It may take her a few months, or it may take her a lifetime. But you can’t do this for her. Neither is it your responsibility to do so.”
She cuts you off before you can interject.
“You can’t cure her. All you can do is love her, and show her what lies beyond the vines. That’s enough, Professor Dekarios.”
Her smile is light, but her words are heavy.
“You’re doing enough.”
---
As soon as you open the front door, the smell of burning assails you. You rush into your home, leaping from room to room, calling out her name. Eventually, her voice comes to you from the kitchen.
You find her there, crouching on the floor amidst a scattering of broken china. She is holding a cloth around her right thumb, drenched in crimson.
“What happened?” you gasp.
You hurry to her side. As you fuss over her injury, gathering up the sharp shards around you, she tries to reassure you that she is fine, everything is fine.
“I wanted to make you something,” she explains. “Something we could share together – I wanted to try, to show you I’m getting better.”
She stares at her bleeding thumb, at the remains of the charred dish she could not prepare. You wrap your arms around her. You do not want her to be crushed by disappointment, feeling she has failed. You want to shield her from it all, forever.
“You have nothing to prove, Aurora.”
“But I do.” She looks up at you with whirling eyes. “I don’t want you to run yourself into the ground, trying to fix me.”
“It’s not like that-”
“But it is, Gale. I love you, and I always will. You don’t need to earn it. You can’t fix me. You don’t need to.”
The words stick in your throat. You are overwhelmed by the knowledge that even in her distress, she has sought to give you comfort. To assure you of her love. In the light of her gaze, the shadows of your old wounds seem to fade.
“I’m not going anywhere.” The resolve in her voice fills you with hope. “And I’ll fight this until the end.”
She curls into you, and you cradle her head against your heart. You are not sure how long you remain there, still and silent, cocooned in each other. You become aware of her lips brushing against the exposed skin of your chest, drifting softly up the side of your neck, over the line of your jaw. You tremble as her tongue flutters on the bristles of your cheek. Her searching mouth opens to yours.
And then, all you can feel and taste and smell is her.
---
“Where did you learn all these things?”
You smirk at the question. Your body drapes over hers like a mantle. There is awe and mischief in her tone. Dusted with pink, her skin gleams with the after-effects of your passion. You cannot get enough of the sight.
“Aurora,” you chide. “A gentleman doesn’t speak of such things.”
She arches an eyebrow. “You aren’t always a gentleman.”
“I suppose not.”
You swipe your tongue around the peak of her nipple. She moans, batting you softly away as you laugh.
“But Gale,” she whines. “I’m curious.”
“Are you?”
“Yes, I am.” Those wide, bright eyes again. You can never refuse them.
“I’ll do my best to sate your curiosity,” you mumble into her neck.
She chews her lip. “I know there were a few others, before Mystra.”
“There were.”
She sighs as you nibble at her collarbone.
“But no one of note, you said.”
You hum, tracing your nose down her shoulder. “Forgettable. Distractions.”
“And then Mystra preferred things abstract, incorporeal…”
“She did.” You are following Aurora’s freckles again, down to the underside of her breast. You can feel the vibrations of her body.
“So how did you gain such proficiency in-”
She sucks in a breath as you lick at the spray of freckles around her navel, meandering down to her centre. Her hips roll ever so slightly. You are surging.
You grin as you look up at her. “I studied and practised.”
---
Your clasp and unclasp your hands behind your back. Your throat is dry, your chest a tangle. In a haze, you scan the smiling faces of all your nearest and dearest, gathered before you with eager anticipation. The scent of lavender drifts from the arch behind you, stilling your thoughts for a moment.
You had been planning to ask her. For weeks you had fretted over the words, the time and place. You had worried that it was too soon, too much. Your research told you that such events could often trigger an exacerbation of her affliction. You did not want to subject her to such agony. And though you knew her love and desire for you, fear still clung to you like your phantom orb. Part of you was still afraid she would not accept.
She had turned up at Blackstaff unexpectedly on your birthday. You had planned to take a stroll into the city together after your classes were over, but she wanted to give you a present before then. With wonder, you unravelled a collection of poems she had written. Entitled “Promise”, the first page was a dedication to you.
Her poems conjured the splendour of stars bursting. It did not take long for you to devour them all. And she had known you would, because the last line of the final poem ended: “Marry me.”
It is true that there were tears, and half-eaten meals, and broken mirrors. You tried to take on as many of the preparations as possible, to shield her from the stress. You reassured her that the wedding could be postponed or cancelled if she was not ready. You could not take away her fears about what she might wear, how she might look. Yet she had promised that she would fight, and fight she did. And now, you are here.
You can see your mother giggling as she whispers to your aunt and uncle, your cousins jostling keenly around them. Nurse Mona sits amongst a small group of druids and bards, Aurora’s closest friends. Elminster bobs his head to the rhythm of the lutist. Karlach glimmers with muted fire, grinning at you and waving. You wave back, extending your greeting to a beaming Halsin beside her. You glimpse Astarion and Tav, fiddling with each other’s collars, and Shadowheart examining a piece of parchment with Xan. Lae’zel watches and listens with silent pride.
It has been years since you have come together with your companions from the old days. Time and distance could not sever the bonds that formed between you so long ago. Yet their absence was a hole inside you that ached to be filled, until today.
To stand here, surrounded by these people you cherish so dearly, knowing you are loved and desired by her so completely – it is overwhelming. You are blinking, rubbing your eyes hard. Wyll squeezes your arm behind you. You turn to face him.
“Remember what we talked about, Gale.”
You inhale sharply, running your fingers through your hair.
“Breathe…” Wyll chants. “Think: Calm. Composed. Dignified.”
“I am calm and composed,” you echo. “I am dignified.”
He nods sagely. “We have the whole day ahead of us.”
“And I can’t be a blubbering mess already.” You clear your throat.
Wyll chuckles. “If anyone can handle this, my friend, it’s you.”
In his gold-embroidered, midnight blue doublet, Wyll exudes courtly bearing. When he and Karlach had returned to Baldur’s Gate, it did not take long for you to rekindle your friendship.
“Thank you for being here, Wyll. I can’t think of a better man to stand by my side.”
His smile is warm as the summer sun.
“Thank you, Gale. The honour is all mine.”
---
When Sister Rose begins her opening remarks, you are barely listening. Your eyes have caught on a flurry of movement in the distance. Your breath hitches.
Tara flutters down the aisle, and comes to rest opposite you and Wyll. Your oldest companion, your most loyal friend. The one who cared for you when you had no one else. Now, she stands by the woman that you love as her most ardent defender, her confidante. You reach out to her. She nuzzles your hand with her cheek. Your vision is beginning to blur.
Everything around you dissolves as Aurora steps forward. She wears her dark waves like a crown. Her face glows in the sunlight, bare except for a flicker of blue kohl on her eyelids and a dusting of glitter on her freckled cheekbones. Her gown is a waterfall of stars at midnight, resting lightly around her waist, cascading around her as she moves. It is a masterful, delicate illusion, but it does not conceal her, nor temper her beauty. She strides towards you with the certainty of hope, the resolve of love.
The tears come, and you cannot stop them.
She does not take her eyes off yours as she approaches. You have never before witnessed such a miracle, nor felt a happiness so bright and raw.
You are both crying as she takes her place. There is a ripple of sighs from the crowd as Wyll passes you a handkerchief and Sister Rose presses a cloth into Aurora’s shaking fingers. You are laughing as you wipe away each other’s tears.
You take hold of her hands, and it begins.
---
“Here he is, the man of the hour.”
You dip your head at Astarion. Tav embraces you.
“I do apologise. I was making a beeline for you, but got accosted by a very merry Elminster, extolling the virtues of our cheese board in painstaking detail.”
“None of us have been able to get near it,” Tav laments. “Or dared to try.”
“Lovely cloak, Astarion. Very… vampiric.”
Astarion arches an eyebrow. “It was either this or not coming at all. Fashion is less important than not frying in the sun, I’m afraid, even for such a momentous occasion.”
You chuckle. “Thank you for coming.”
His fangs glint as he grins. Tav circles an arm around his shoulder.
“We wouldn’t miss it for the world, Gale,” Tav exclaims. “We’re so, so happy for you.”
“We just had the pleasure of your wife’s acquaintance.” Astarion takes a sip of wine. “I didn’t think I would ever meet someone so similar to you in every respect, yet not insufferable at all! Your wife is simply charming. An absolute delight.”
“Astarion,” Tav warns.
You titter. “I think I’ll take that comment in the spirit in which it was intended. She’s exceptional. Remarkable. I agree.”
“I can only imagine how many long and intense discussions you had in the library,” Astarion purrs. “Staring longingly at each other, whispering sweet nothings into each other’s-”
Tav jostles him. “Astarion, stop!”
Astarion cackles.
“What’s so funny?”
You flinch a little from the force of Karlach’s hug. Halsin, deep in conversation with a smiling Aurora, follows behind. She radiates with joy, and you have never wanted her more.
You clasp Halsin’s hand in greeting.
“Just to be clear, Halsin.” You plant a kiss on Aurora’s cheek, intertwining your fingers with hers. “My wife and I are quite happy with our relationship, as it is. Just the two of us.”
Halsin holds his hands up. “I wouldn’t presume otherwise, Gale.”
Aurora looks at you in confusion. You touch your nose to hers.
Karlach chortles. “You two are so fucking sweet.”
---
“So we’ll see you again next month?” Aurora asks hopefully.
“Of course.” Shadowheart takes the wine that you offer her. “I might end up staying longer at the House of the Moon this time. I’ll bring you those scrolls and tinctures that we discussed.”
Aurora’s eyes dance with delight.
“Will you bring the owlbear?” Karlach gushes. “Wyll and I have missed the little guy.”
“Perhaps that would be an opportunity for Xan.” Lae’zel glances at the child. “You wanted to make a sculpture of a great beast of Faerun, did you not?”
Xan nods thoughtfully. He scribbles something in his notebook.
“It would be a great opportunity for us, too, Lae’zel,” you muse. “To hear more of your jokes.”
Lae’zel twitches.
“And to learn about more unconventional uses of Githyanki psionics.” You catch Aurora’s eye, and she bites her lip.
“Observe, Xan,” Lae’zel remarks, gesturing between the two of you. “Waterdhavian mating rituals are indeed more refined than others in Faerun.”
There is the slightest lift of Lae’zel’s eyebrow. You clap your hands together and laugh.
---
How is it possible for a heart to feel so full?
You stand silently, bathing in the light of the stars, buoyed by the song of those you love around you. You search for her, and it does not take long to find her.
She lingers near the central table, admiring the intricate designs on the cake which your mother crafted with tenderness and zeal. Gently, she takes a small slice in her hands, lifting it to her lips.
She takes one bite, and then pauses. She takes another. She smiles.
Her grey eyes meet yours across the expanse. You bound towards her, and she squeals as you lift her up and spin her around. You can taste brandy and chocolate as her mouth glides against yours.
“I think it’s time to go,” you whisper.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Author's note: When I finished Progress, I thought it would be a standalone fic. But I was so in love with Gale and Aurora, and so wanted to give them a happy ending. I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. Thank you so much for taking the time to engage with this story.
Please, feel free to reach out, I'd love to hear from you.
If you liked this fic, you can check out my other work here.
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