The chapel stood hushed as sunlight streams through the stained glass, painting fractured rainbows across the polished floor — and somehow, even that, even this setting designed to look sacred and beautiful, doesn’t ease the tight coil of frustration in his chest.. The scent of roses and frankincense was suffocating, thick enough to drown in, and the murmurs of mortals — humans — clung to the vaulted ceiling like gnats. His jaw worked beneath pale skin, muscle twitching just slightly as the first chords of that infernal wedding melody began to play.

What a farce.

He stood at the altar, his hazel eyes, flecked with gold, half-lidded and calculating, tracking every small movement at the entrance while in a black suit so precisely tailored it looked more like armor than fabric, the crimson jewel at his throat glowing faintly like an ember caught beneath glass. The color of his family’s sigil — not chosen out of love, but out of tradition. Out of duty. His long fingers flexed once at his side, then again, the faintest tremor of frustration running through them.

His father, Lord Hargreaves, loomed near the end of the aisle, expression carved from cold marble. His mother had refused to even look at him when they entered. His sister wore her resentment like perfume — pungent and poisonous.

And yet—

When you appeared.

Everything went… still.

You stepped into view in a gown that seemed almost to glow in the dim cathedral light. It wasn’t ostentatious like the ones his kind wore — heavy with gold, layered with enchantments — no, yours was soft, laced, human. A mortal princess. And for some gods-forsaken reason, it made his throat tighten.

“Bloody stars…” he muttered under his breath in his native tongue, the sound almost a growl.

He’d spent centuries scoffing at the fragility of humans — their brief lives, their small joys, their trembling hearts. But now, here he was… bound to one. He forces a scoff, looking up at the ceiling as if the chandeliers might offer an answer.

He remembered the shop. The book. The way your voice trembled when you spoke the incantation — soft, curious, like you were reading aloud a bedtime story. He had laughed when it began to glow, thought it a trick of the light. But when the sigil burned against his chest, when his blood hummed and the air split open — he realized what you’d done.

You’d called him here. And sealed your fate — and his.

He should have killed you. He’d thought about it. Many times. But every time he looked at you — those wide, human eyes — he couldn’t. Something stayed his hand. Something ancient. Something treacherous.

His mind was a riot of memories — the forest where he was born, the wars he’d waged, the cold crown of thorns his father pressed to his brow. And now this. Standing in a human chapel, in a human suit, about to bind his eternity to a creature who’d once been nothing more than a passing curiosity in the mortal realm.

“Fuck..” was all he could muster in English as you reached across from him.