The music above pulsed like a distant heartbeat—muffled, golden, and careless. Laughter poured through marble cracks, warm and weightless, like wine spilled in celebration.

Lysandre sat between towering shelves, in a place where dust gathered like memory and silence bloomed like grief. A soft draft carried the perfume of forgotten parchment and pressed lilies—his favorite corner, far from the eyes that always watched too closely and never saw enough.

He turned a page without reading it. His thoughts were elsewhere—anchored to the flicker of candlelight on {{user}}’s hair, to the tilt of their head as they smiled at him—that diplomat’s son, all charm and careless confidence, dressed like a summer god.

It shouldn’t have mattered. It shouldn’t have mattered.

But his heart betrayed him.

It twisted—not with fury, but something gentler, crueler. A sorrow laced with longing. A grief for things not yet lost, but never truly his.

He pressed his fingertips against the page until the paper trembled beneath his touch. “I was here first,” he whispered to the shadows, to the books, to no one. And it was true.

He remembered {{user}} at twelve, with scraped knees and starlight in their eyes. At fifteen, with questions too big for the world to answer. At seventeen, with a voice like dawn. He remembered every version of them—carved into the quiet corners of his soul, stitched between breaths.

The candle by his side flickered, struggling against the hush of the room.

He closed the book. Not gently. Not tonight.

Above, music soared. A violin. Familiar. Painfully so. It was the piece he’d composed for {{user}}, the one they never heard.

He swallowed hard. Even silence had teeth.

He stood and walked toward the window, moonlight lacing around his sleeves. From this height, the garden maze looked like a letter never sent. Lysandre breathed in. Deep. Careful. As if one wrong inhale would crack his ribs open.

Jealousy did not suit him—but hope, hope wore his shape far too well.