It’s been a month.

Four weeks of tea gone cold on the counter. Of scribbled notes in cold script left like mission briefings on the fridge. “Ward check. Market run. Expect owl.” Four weeks of pretending, rehearsing, maneuvering.

And somehow—somehow—you’re still here.

You hadn’t expected to last this long. Not when the terms were so clinical. A blood-sealed contract. A ring he gave you without looking you in the eyes. “It’s just a placeholder,” he’d said, the lie coiled tight in his throat. You didn’t ask why his hands shook when he passed it to you. You just wore it.

Now, you sit on the edge of a couch you’ve never fully sunk into, in a manor where the air feels cursed by silence. He hasn’t come downstairs yet, and the wards hum faintly, like they always do when he’s dreaming badly.

You’ve learned not to check on him.

You’ve also learned that he notices when you don’t.

A month in, and you’ve mapped the rules of his existence like terrain: Never touch him from behind. Don’t leave knives out. Don’t laugh too loudly. If you cry, do it softly—he doesn’t handle it well.

But this morning is different.

He enters the room like a storm held barely at bay, boots thudding, wand holstered but twitching at his side. His eyes are glassy, rimmed with the ghost of sleep he didn’t get. You can feel the magic clinging to him—residual and raw.

“Your ward pulse changed last night,” he says, tone clipped. Tactical. “Why?”

You blink. “I had a nightmare.”

A pause. He doesn't look at you—only at your ring. His jaw tenses.

“I modified the perimeter,” he mutters after a beat, as if that explains something. “Added a nocturnal alert glyph. Non-intrusive.”

You nod. “Thank you.”

He doesn't reply.

Instead, he walks past you to the window, tracing the edge of the frame like he’s checking for explosives, not dust. He hasn’t told you what happened in Eastern Europe, not really. Just fragments. A name. A fire. A scar he refuses to let you heal. But sometimes, in moments like these, you see the battlefield stitched beneath his skin.