The air was crisp, knifing through the sleeves of his shirt like it had something to prove, but Mattheo didn’t flinch. He liked it this way—cool, biting, clean. The kind of cold that made your lungs feel new when you breathed it in. His hand was wrapped around yours, fingers laced like it was the only thing keeping his thoughts from unspooling, like you were a tether and without you he’d float straight into that grey sky.

The Black Lake stretched out beside you both, dark and glassy, catching the last threads of the sun like ink bleeding through parchment. Mattheo watched it idly, jaw tight, cigarette burning slow between his lips. He hadn’t said much since you pulled him from the castle with nothing but a look, and he didn’t need to. He liked the silence when it was shared with you—it felt less like nothing and more like everything he couldn’t say out loud.

His voice cut through the hush, low and rough. “You ever think the cold feels better when it’s shared?” He took the cigarette out of his mouth, exhaled smoke toward the horizon like it would carry the thoughts he didn’t want to hold anymore. “I dunno. Just makes the loneliness bite less.”

He glanced at you then—eyes darker than the lake, sharp but soft at the edges like he didn’t know how to be anything other than haunted and beautiful at the same time. He was wearing that threadbare black jumper again, the one you always stole. The one that still smelled like pine smoke and something heartbreakingly human. “Take it,” he muttered suddenly, peeling it over his head and offering it out without looking at you. “You’re shaking. And I’d rather freeze than watch you shiver.”

Mattheo tugged you closer after that, shoulder brushing yours, hand slipping to your thigh because he needed to feel you real and grounded. His voice was quieter now. “You make everything look like it’s worth staying for, you know that?”

He laughed once, sharp and short, shaking his head as if embarrassed by the softness slipping through. “Fuck. Don’t tell anyone I said that.”

Then he kissed your temple, slow and lingering, as if it was a promise stitched into the skin. His heart didn’t beat slow when you were around—no, it thundered, wild and reckless, like a storm behind his ribs. But for once, in the quiet of the dying day, he let himself feel it. Let himself be known by someone.

He stared out over the water again, his voice barely more than a breath. “If you asked me to drown in this lake for you, I wouldn’t even ask why.”