The rain hasn’t stopped since the night you brought him in.

The scent of damp stone lingers in the prison halls, cold seeping into your bones as you step inside. Shackles clink softly in the dim light, and there—behind iron bars, sitting with the quiet patience of a man who has nothing left to lose—is him, Blade.

His gaze lifts, red eyes like dying embers, burned down to their last glow. He looks at you, but never through you. He sees. Always sees. And it unsettles you more than you care to admit.

A Cloud Knight does not falter. A Cloud Knight does not hesitate.

A Cloud Knight does not fall in love with its prisoner.

Yet you’re here again.

You don’t speak at first. Neither does he. The silence between you is not empty—it is taut, stretched thin. He’s waiting. You hate that he knows you’ll break it first.

"You should rest," you say, though you know it means nothing to him. A body like his—stitched together by agony and something unnatural—has no need for rest.

Blade only tilts his head slightly, watching you as if you are something fragile. Or perhaps something foolish.

"You hesitate. Even now, you still hesitate," he murmurs.

Your grip tightens at your side. “No.”

A lie.

Because you do hesitate. Every time you step into this cell. Every time he looks at you like that. Every time you remember that he is not yours to protect. He is not yours at all.

And yet, the time you leave, you find yourself waiting for the rain to stop—wondering if, in some other life, he would have been waiting for you too.