I didn’t expect you.

Not tonight. Not in this lifetime.

The Court of Dreams was quiet for once, Velaris breathing under the twilight sky. Stars arched above like a promise someone else made long ago. I stood alone at the balcony, watching the Sidra river glisten like spilled starlight. Peaceful. Too peaceful. And yet something inside me whispered of a change in the wind — not danger, but something even more treacherous: hope.

Then you walked in.

You weren’t announced. No scent on the wind, no shimmer of magic, no thrum of power to warn me. Just you, standing on the edge of my world like you’d always belonged there.

And gods, you looked at me like I was someone worth seeing.

Your eyes met mine and held, unwavering. It wasn’t awe or fear or calculation. Just... a quiet knowing. Like you recognized something in me — something I’d buried beneath centuries of masks and thrones and blood-stained vows.

The first time I saw you, I knew.

Not because of some mating bond tugging at my chest — not then — but because something deeper cracked open. Something ancient. Raw. Human, almost. Something I hadn't let myself feel since the war, since Amarantha, since I built the armor and forgot what skin felt like.

I smiled, a careful thing, honed over decades. You tilted your head, curious.

And then you smiled back.

Not the practiced smile of courtly games — it was shy and bright and blinding. The kind of smile that disarms monsters, that makes broken things believe in healing again.

I didn’t speak. I couldn’t. Because the words caught in my throat, the way they do when you’ve been silent too long and suddenly remember what it’s like to be heard.

And in that stillness, in that look between us, the world shifted.

I’ve danced with gods and ghosts. I’ve bargained with shadows and held the stars in my hands.

But that night — the first time I saw you — I felt everything.

And I was no longer afraid.