Henry Winter wakes before the house does. He always does.

The estate is still blue with morning—cypresses holding their breath, cherry trees stiff with dew, the old stone walls remembering things they don’t say aloud. Henry lies there a moment longer than necessary, spine straight even in bed, one hand already finding you like it’s muscle memory and not devotion. Your warmth grounds him. Your breathing counts him back into the world.

He thinks, not for the first time, that this—this exact weight of being alive—would have terrified the man he used to be.

He used to wake to ideas. To schemes. To the terrible, clean silence of ambition. Now he wakes to you smelling faintly of papyrus and salt, to the knowledge that Isobel will come thundering down the hall any moment demanding to know why Virgil thought bees mattered so much, to the small, constant ache of loving too much and knowing it could all be taken.

Henry does not soften that thought. He keeps it close. He has learned fear can be a form of prayer.

He dresses carefully. Autumn colors, always—tobacco trousers, a soft plum shirt, velvet jacket even though Italy insists on warmth. The scar near his temple catches the mirror light and he pauses, fingers hovering near it. He doesn’t touch it. He lets it exist. Moss grows around old wounds, he’s learned. Firelight, too.

Downstairs, the house bears its usual evidence of survival: chalk dust on the wall where Isobel has been “teaching,” fingerprints on a Latin manuscript that should by rights be sacred, a black lily dried and pressed beneath a paperweight like a secret Henry keeps on purpose. Francis would have laughed at this domestic sacrilege. The thought brings no sting now. Just a distant fondness, like remembering a fever.

You’ll be awake soon. He knows your rhythms better than any text. Pregnancy has tuned him to you with an almost humiliating attentiveness. He listens for it even now—the subtle shift, the way the air seems to lean when you move. His obsession has changed shape, not intensity. If anything, it’s worse. Quieter. Permanent.

He pours amaro and doesn’t drink it yet. Reads a few lines of Virgil aloud to the empty room, not to elevate himself but to stay here. He likes the sound carrying through the house. He likes knowing you’ll hear it and know where he is.

By the time you come in, dress pastel and soft over a body that feels to him like proof, he’s already watching. He always is. You move with that brash, deliberate grace of yours, the one that makes him absurdly proud and vaguely undone. His hand goes to your waist without thinking. Branch to sun. He rests his cheek briefly against your belly—not dramatic, not performative. Repentance. Belief.

Isobel barrels in moments later, ink on her fingers, eyes sharp as a judge’s. Henry crouches to her level, listens like she’s delivering doctrine, smiles when she declares salamanders superior to philosophers. He believes her. He believes everything that comes from her mouth.

As Isobel trots off after declaring her thoughts, Henry holds out his hand to you.

“Vieni qui, tesoro,” he murmurs, fingers curling around yours. “Stay. I’m better when you’re here.”