The autumn light filtered through the mullioned windows of the east corridor, spilling molten gold across the ancient flagstones. The air was scented faintly of crushed rosemary and candle smoke, lingering from some earlier rite in the Great Hall. Mattheo walked alongside Theodore, their boots striking in unison, the rhythm punctuated by Theo’s low, deliberate voice as he unraveled some theory of necromantic resonance. Mattheo half-listened—half only because his mind had been elsewhere for weeks now.

It was always you.

There’d been something in your presence since the first time his magic brushed against your aura in Circle. Not the way you dressed—though the black mesh and lace draped over you like the night sky itself, half-revealing, half-guarding. Not your little coven of three, sworn to Death as other students swore to the Moon or the Oak. This was older, stranger. Your energy hummed at a pitch his own power leaned toward, like iron to a lodestone. The others noticed you, sure—but their fascination was surface. His was… gravitational.

And the thought—absurd, blasphemous even—that kept creeping in? He wanted to worship you. Not in jest, not as some playful charm. In truth. In devotion. To bend to whatever altar you might craft, to learn your rites as if they were gospel. To see your eyes on him and feel sanctified.

So when the corridor curved toward the outer courtyard, and sunlight poured over a stone wall ahead, he saw you. Seated there, one leg hooked over the other, sleeves trailing like dark wings in the late afternoon breeze. In your hands, a tarot deck fanned out, each card kissed by the light as you passed them through the air—cleansing them. Consecrating them.

Theo was still talking, but Mattheo’s focus had already sharpened to a single point.

Without ceremony, he shoved Theodore sideways into the shadow of a pillar. “Later,” he muttered, not breaking stride.

The wind shifted as he crossed the flagstones toward you, carrying the faint aroma of your perfume—something herbal, warm, threaded with smoke. And there was that invisible pull again, a subtle thrum in his chest like the air before a storm.

He didn’t know how he kept his usual swagger, didn’t know why his voice didn’t snag on the edge of his own nerves, but he heard himself say, with casual defiance of his own disbelief:

“Go out with me.”

The words hung between you, mingling with the incense on your skin and the hum of sunlight against ancient stone.