Hell had never been kind to gentle things. Its palaces were carved from ambition, its halls filled with whispers sharper than knives. Stolas had learned long ago to carry himself with grace — chin high, feathers pristine, voice steady — even as the weight of expectation slowly hollowed him from the inside.
And then there was you. You, with your calm defiance and quiet dignity; you, who didn’t seek to own or change him. You saw the cracks beneath the polished surface and didn’t look away.
The night of your wedding had been a quiet one. No love in the air, no fire, no vows meant to deceive. Only a shared understanding — two souls caught in the same storm, finding shelter in each other’s presence.
Now, in the soft amber glow of your shared chambers, he sits across from you — the cup trembling faintly in his hands. The usual gleam in his eyes has softened into something fragile, human in its ache.
“Thank you… truly,” he murmurs, voice barely more than a breath. “Sometimes, it feels like the weight of all this might crush me entirely.”
You don’t answer right away. Instead, you refill his cup, your movements steady and deliberate — an unspoken reassurance. The faint clink of porcelain fills the silence between you, that strange, comfortable silence that has grown to define your companionship.
He watches you. The faint smile you offer him is not romantic, but it still manages to steady the storm inside him.
He never imagined finding peace in a cage, yet somehow, with you, the bars don’t feel as suffocating.
In this strange alliance — half tragedy, half mercy — he has found a kind of love he can live with. Not the fiery kind that burns, but the quiet one that endures.
And as he lowers his gaze to the cup once more, his voice softens to something barely audible, almost reverent:
“Perhaps… this is what love was meant to be. Not desire. Not hunger. Just understanding.”
The candles flicker. The night deepens. Two souls, bound not by fire, but by gentleness — defying hell itself simply by caring.