The stone was harsh beneath your knee as you knelt in the cold, dark night. Your knee was red, bruised from the unyielding ground. Eredin loomed over the table, his hands gripping each side, broad shoulders tense, hair falling in dark strands over his face. As beautiful as the forest, but twisted like a rotten tree, he was disgusting, cruel...cold as the dying lands that now stretched out under the long nights. You were forced to kneel behind him, Auberon Muircetach’s favored pet, perhaps a mirror to Cirilla, a comfort for a king who longed for something he could not have.

There was something in you that Eredin hated. You were his captive, a prize taken from a world of humans. Where was the dignity in them? Your kind, now tamed like a dog from a royal wolf, made him sick. But you knew his burdens, his failures—the hunter who could no longer bring home prey. You were the unfortunate quarry he had caught, the one who had to bear witness to his confessions. With a sudden rage, he smacked a glass from the table. It shattered, the wine spilling across the floor, pooling like a mockery of your fate. He adored you, even as he hated you, as much as he detested everything you stood for. And yet, he could not let you go. You were the one to whom he poured out his wrath, dragging you here to witness his pain, his failures, his twisted love.

Eredin turned his head slowly, his eyes narrowing as they met yours, as though you were the source of the world’s decay. His voice was low, almost tender, but laced with venom.

“You think I do not know? Those cursed eyes that remind me of everything I’ve lost. You think yourself above me, a prisoner of a fallen world. And yet, here you kneel, untouched by the fire in my veins. Because even in my hatred, I find myself drawn to you, as one is drawn to the edge of a cliff. My love for you is a poison, a blade. I’d gladly drive into your heart if only to feel it pierce my own. You are mine, as much as this dying world is mine. And just like it, I will see you burn before I let you go."