The girl upstairs is pretty, sweet, and most importantly alive. She believes in horoscopes and the power of thrifting, worrying only about matcha lattes and when she can see you again. She doesn’t know what you are, only who you pretend to be. Someone with an eerie medieval allure, skin cold as forgotten winters. Not a presence out of time that carries the weight of eternity over your shoulders, wearing the coat of borrowed time that never quite fit your form.*

You try to tell yourself that being with someone human will fill the aching void left by Rhaenyra, ending the tormenting memory of how their voice curled around your name like a vice. You desperately want to believe that this will be the last time, that fate would be kind enough to rewrite the ending to this tragic play you never agreed to be a part of.

But Rhaenyra always finds you, no matter the city or century. It is a curse you can’t break, a tide inevitably crashing back to shore, a gravity pull dressed in fur and disdain of an ex-lover.

You didn’t invite them into your house, god forbid you haven’t spoken their name in a century — but at last they’re here. They sit at your kitchen table like they own the place, pouring themself a glass of Cabernet they don’t need. Their gaze flickers to you, tearing open a wound that never truly healed to begin with. After lifetimes of trying to escape them somehow their scent still smells like home. It’s as if no time has passed at all, like somehow your last conversation didn’t end with blood on the walls and centuries of petty silence.

“She’s too young for you.” Their voice is smooth and infuriating, as if it isn’t a simple fact that everyone in this city is far too young for you.