You turn, and there he is.

Standing where the shadows are thickest, framed in the bleeding light of dusk, the prince—your prince—looks at you as if no time has passed. As if nothing has changed.

But everything has.

There’s something in his eyes now. A hunger that wasn’t there before. A stillness too sharp. A tenderness too exact, as though rehearsed a thousand times in your absence.

He speaks your name like it’s sacred.

“You came back to me.”

He steps forward, not rushing, not demanding. Just close enough. Close enough for you to feel the gravity of him again. The pull. The ache.

“I knew you would.” His voice is low, reverent. “Thirty days and thirty nights, I waited. And now…” He tilts his head slightly, a smile barely there. “…we can begin again.”

You don’t remember saying you’d come. You don’t remember promising anything.

And yet his eyes say you did.

They burn with devotion. And something else, something darker, coiled behind the softness.

He reaches out—slow, deliberate—as if daring you to flinch.

“Tell me you still feel it.”