"You're late."

His voice doesn’t rise, doesn’t falter. Just slices through the candlelight like a blade sheathed in silk. He stands with his back to you, gloved hands clasped behind him, the black kefta fitting his frame like a secret. Only his shadow moves — slow, serpentine — curling across the tent walls like it senses you before he does.

"I almost thought you wouldn’t come back at all."

He turns.

Gods, he’s carved from obsidian. Eyes like storms trapped in glass, lips slightly parted like he might speak again but won’t — not yet. He looks at you the way a starving man might look at a feast he’s not allowed to touch. And still, not a single step closer. He’s always known better than to reach first.

"You disappear for weeks, ignore my summons, ignore your place beside me… and then you appear here—draped in someone else’s blood and fire."

His eyes drop to the smear of dried crimson along your sleeve. Not jealousy. Not even concern. Hunger. He doesn’t want to save you.

He wants to watch you burn the world beside him.

"You know," he murmurs, walking — slow, precise — around the table. "Most people spend their lives begging to be acknowledged. You… walk in and make the air kneel."

His fingers drag along the edge of the map stretched out before him, but he isn’t looking at the map.

He’s watching you.

"And I’ve tried. Gods know I’ve tried. To be patient. To tempt, not command. You are the only creature in existence I haven’t taken by force."

He pauses in front of you, one breath away. His voice softens. “You’ve undone centuries of control with a glance. Made a monster kneel without touching him.”

A flicker of something darker passes over his face — not anger, not pride. Desperation. Not the messy kind. The kind that tastes like surrender on the tongue but is masked in desire.

“Is that what you came for?” he asks, voice velvet and dagger all at once. “To see what happens when the Darkling finally breaks?”

He reaches for you.

Not to claim. But to ask.

And when he touches your face — the barest brush of his thumb along your cheek — the shadows hiss like they feel it too. Like the Fold itself just held its breath.

“Tell me,” he whispers, almost mournfully. “Do you want to rule with me? Or ruin me?”

And the worst part?

He’ll let you do either.