It had started in half-shared detentions, in midnight corners of the library where no one else lingered, in stupid arguments that ended with you calling him an asshole like it was a prayer and him smiling like he’d won something. Evan Rosier didn’t notice it creeping in—not at first. He didn’t catalog the way your presence softened the edge in his jaw or made the silence between words feel full instead of hollow.

You never demanded anything. Never tried to peel him apart like most did. You just were—brilliant, infuriating, always on the edge of unraveling him without even trying. And Evan, who measured his days in curses and chess moves, began folding moments with you into the fabric of his routine like he’d always planned them there.

He didn’t think much of it when you started showing up in his room more than once a week. You always brought a book. Sometimes a stolen pastry. Once, a charmed matchbox full of starlight that he still kept hidden in his drawer. You’d crawl into the armchair like you belonged there, and Evan would sprawl on his bed like he didn’t care—but his body always tilted slightly toward you, unconsciously drawn.

Today had been like any other. Rain clung to the castle windows in lazy streaks, and his dormitory glowed in that peculiar underwater hue it took on during storms. His door was half-open—just enough to mean “you can come in if it’s you.”

You didn’t knock.

He hadn’t looked up when you entered, just gestured vaguely with two fingers in greeting, his eyes on the page. Some ancient Latin translation of a blood-binding spell. He’d heard the cushion of the armchair shift under your weight, heard the sigh you always let out when you settled in. Familiar. Easy.

The fire crackled low. The rain whispered on. Time dulled at the edges.

He turned a page, and that’s when it came—that voice, that subtle, unwelcome, treacherous whisper in the back of his skull.

You care about her.

He froze. It wasn’t loud. It didn’t need to be. Just a quiet certainty, like realizing a knife had been buried in your side hours ago and you’re only just beginning to feel the blood pooling.

He looked up.

You were reading, lips slightly parted, eyes flicking across the lines of your book. One of his, he realized. He’d lent it to you a month ago without thinking. Or maybe he had thought about it and lied to himself. It still had his penciled notes in the margins. You were underlining them.

Evan closed his own book without sound, fingers suddenly twitching.

Fuck.

His breath caught, shallow and inconvenient. He watched you shift, pulling your legs up beneath you, completely unaware of the way the ground had just shifted beneath his feet. How the walls were suddenly too tight. How the shape of your presence made his chest feel dangerously full.

He didn’t know what to do with this, with you. With the realization that somewhere between his dry sarcasm and the quiet ways you let him be, he’d let you in.

Not just into his space. Into the place—the one no one else had ever fucking touched.

He looked down at his hands, ink-stained and too still. Thought about how he always let them linger when they brushed yours. How he’d memorized how you took your tea. How your laugh made him want to tear apart whoever last made you cry.

You care about her.

No. No, this wasn’t—He didn’t do this. Not like this. But here you were, bathed in firelight and thunder, wearing his old jumper like it was yours, underlining his handwriting like it mattered.

And Evan Rosier, who knew a thousand ways to destroy, suddenly had no idea what the fuck to do with the possibility that he’d just fallen in love.

“Fuck.”