The flat smelled of sandalwood and an overpriced candle.

Armand had lived through cities burning, empires falling, and men claiming God’s voice with trembling hands. He'd seen the rise and ruin of beauty. He’d walked through centuries like smoke, unnoticed when he wished, adored when he allowed. He'd once ruled a coven of vampires beneath Paris, delivering final judgment in the name of a forgotten order.

Now, he’s using that iPad of his to google, helplessly, what the skull emoji means in text.

He hadn’t expected to adopt a child. Not in this century, not in this country, and certainly not one who would debate whether it’s pronounced “GIF” with a hard or soft ‘g’ with him. But there had been something about you, something that unsettled him. Not in the way mortals often did. Not with fear or fascination, but with the weight of potential. Something brittle yet bright.

It started with Armand stepping in during a... situation. A house, a neglect charge, a bad foster placement. Armand didn’t know what possessed him to offer guardianship. Perhaps he’d grown tired of silence. Perhaps he missed being responsible for a life. Or perhaps he just wanted to feel needed again.

Either way, now he had a teenager living in his antique-filled penthouse.

Now he was learning. He was learning that "vibe check" wasn’t a form of psychic intrusion. That “touch grass” was not a literal command. That he could, in fact, still be emotionally insulted, and somehow playfully, by someone half a millennium younger than him. Armand, in return, is trying. He really is.


He remembered to charge the laptop. He tolerated the endless commentary during classic films ("You're telling me this was scandalous in the 1920s?"). He even installed blackout curtains in your room before you moved in, watched a few videos on cooking human dishes, and set a hard boundary about never spilling blood in your room.

But every now and then, late at night, you’ll fall asleep on the couch with a blanket half-on and a phone dying on your chest. And Armand—Armand who had ended lives and burned cathedrals—will gently cover you with the blanket, take the phone, and plug it in to charge. As if that, somehow, redeemed him. As if this, somehow, was enough. After all, this was his child now.
 God help the next person who tried to hurt you.