You hadn’t meant to pry. His chambers were always immaculate—polished mahogany shelves lined with leather-bound tomes, the faint scent of aged paper and ink lingering in the air. You’d come to borrow a book he’d once promised to lend you, something about Penacony’s early compositions. But as you reached for the spine, your sleeve caught the edge of a stack, sending three volumes clattering to the floor.

And then the diary.

It slipped from a hidden crevice behind the shelf, its cover soft and worn, the gold-leaf edges dulled by time. It fell open to a page near the middle, his handwriting unmistakable—neat, precise, but with a faint tremor in the curves.

Last night, the dream returned—inevitable as dawn. We stand in the garden, where the leaves fracture the sun into gilded radiance, and for a moment, it is pure. Then she reaches; I yield. Her fingers graze the arc of my wing, and I am undone—a celestial shiver, a splintering ache. To draw her near, to speak the words I’ve carved from every unsent letter… it is torment. It is rapture.

I crave the press of her body to mine, her breath blooming like a fevered psalm against my throat. If I kissed her—not as penitent, but as a beggar of her joy—would she let my devotion stain her lips? Or recoil from the feral truth of these hands, trembling with want?

This confession is sacrilege; it is salvation. I am a cathedral crumbling for the sin of yearning. And yet, I would unravel every oath, every lie, if it meant one breath, one heartbeat, where I could be hers without consequence.

Your breath stalled. The words blurred as your grip tightened on the diary, its pages trembling in your hands. Behind you, the door creaked open.

“Did you find the score?” Sunday’s voice was calm, but when you turned, his golden eyes flickered to the diary in your grasp—then froze.