Archive of Our Own

Every heat Qifrey spent with Olruggio was a mistake. It was a line he had sworn never to cross again. 

Neither regretted crossing it. They only regretted how impossible it became to stay on either side afterward.

In his twenties, his first heat came while he was travelling alone in a village where no one knew his name. It was bearable. It hurt, but hurt was familiar to him. With the curse, pain had become a kind of tenderness, something that kept his body heavy and his mind clear. He rode it out in a rented room with the shutters drawn and his teeth clenched, and when it passed he washed his face and kept walking.

But even that solitude was comfort enough for the silverwood to grow. On the third morning of his heat, he felt it in the hollow of his eye: it pulsed a faint pressure, a thread of warmth that shouldn't have been there. The seed didn't care whether the comfort came from another person or from the absence of one. Safety was safety. Contentment was contentment. 

He understood then that staying away did nothing but break his promise with Olruggio.

So he went back. But staying close to Olruggio was worse in a different way. The next cycle arrived weeks ahead of schedule, it was so violent that it leave him doubled over in the middle of an otherwise forgettable afternoon. Proximity had become its own trigger.

He shut himself in his room, didn't come out for two days. Olruggio knocked on the first evening. Qifrey told him he was fine. On the third day, Olruggio stopped knocking and opened the door.

The scent hit them both at the same time. Qifrey saw Olruggio's hand tightened on the doorframe, his breath caught and his whole body went rigid with the effort of not stepping forward. Qifrey was on the bed, shaking, aching and soaked through his undershirt, and he couldn't speak. 

Couldn't tell him to leave, couldn't tell him to stay. His hands were fisted in the sheets and every inch of him was pulling toward the man in the doorway.

Olruggio crossed the room slowly. He knelt beside the bed. His hands were shaking too, but he kept them open at his sides until Qifrey reached for him first. His attempt was a blind, desperate grab at Olruggio's sleeve that was closer to drowning than desire.

They were clumsy with each other. Neither of them knew what they were doing. Olruggio’s hands were too careful at first, sliding under the damp shirt to map his too warm skin, then lower, his fingers brushing through the wetness pooled between Qifrey's legs. Olruggio touched him with careful, patient hands, and Qifrey drew a shaky breath at the unfamiliar stretch. His hips lifted on instinct, seeking the warmth, and Olruggio swallowed hard, struck less by the moment itself than by the trust Qifrey had placed in him.

When the last distance between them disappeared, he paused, searching Qifrey's face before moving again. Qifrey answered by wrapping his arms around him, a quiet sound escaping him as he buried his face against Olruggio's neck and held on. The silverwood continued its slow work beneath his skin, roots pressing deeper into the hollow of his eye, but Olruggio's warmth drowned it out. For now, the root wasn't the loudest thing inside him.

Olruggio held him through the worst of it, and when Qifrey's teeth grazed his throat on instinct, Olruggio tilted his head away. He didn't bite either. They both knew what a bond mark meant, and neither of them was ready for what couldn't be undone.

Afterward, the room smelled like Olruggio's vanilla and citrus and his own musk and cedarwood. Olruggio's hand was in his hair, his fingers threaded through Qifrey's hair absently. Until both their breathing steadied, Olruggio kissed him. Slowly. Like he was asking a question.

"We could be together," Olruggio said.

Qifrey closed his eyes. The silverwood pulsed again behind his eyes.  He leaned into Olruggio's hand for one second, letting himself imagine what yes would feel like. Then he pulled away.

"I can't, Olru. I'm sorry," His voice came out scraped thin. He wanted to say yes. More than anything, he wanted to. Which was why he had to refuse, "I'm so sorry."

Olruggio's arm tightened around him. He pressed his lips to Qifrey's cheek. It didn't feel like lust or a kiss. It was more like a seal. Another promise placed against his skin. 

Qifrey closed his eyes. He already carried too many promises with Olruggio. He didn't know how to bear another.

"Don't be sorry," he said. "I'm not asking you to marry me tomorrow. I'm not in a hurry."

"You've already given me too many promises."

"Then keep only today's."

"They don't stay separate, Olly."

Olruggio didn't answer that. He just held on. And that was the thing that unleash the silverwood inside him. It ruined everything, took away the warmth and the fragile little moment where Qifrey had almost allowed himself to believe. It was the Olruggio's gentleness. It was always him. No one had loved him more gently than Olruggio. No one made it hurt more than Olruggio could ever do.

Which meant Qifrey would have to take it away. Another memory, another sin added to the collection he already carried.

  ｡ ＿＿＿ °‧ 𓆝 𓆞 ·｡ ＿＿＿ ｡

After the first time, Olruggio came back different.

Qifrey had made sure there was nothing left to remember, he took away the night and the promise on Olruggio's lips.

But somehow, something remained. Olruggio still joked, still argued, still complained about his work habits, still the same stubbornness. But he stopped reaching for Qifrey first. He stopped leaning against Qifrey's shoulder when they read together, stopped falling asleep beside him during late nights in the workshop. 

He waited for permission where there had never needed to be any. He treated every bit of closeness like something Qifrey might regret. Qifrey had erased the memory, but he couldn't erase the wound.

Still, Qifrey believed he had learned his lesson. The next time his heat came, he would know what to do. He would survive it and take the memory away before it could become another thing Olruggio lost.

So when the second time arrived, Qifrey thought he already knew how the story ended. Heat, Olruggio, regret, a memory spell before morning. What else could it be? He had lived this once before. But no, he was wrong. So, so wrong.

His heat came early, it always came early or too late, as his cycles ruined by whatever the Brimmed Caps had done to him as a child. He'd tried to manage it. He used heat inducers to force regularity, tried suppressants to blunt the edge and maintain careful distance from Olruggio in the days leading up. None of it worked the way it was supposed to. His body didn't follow schedules obediently as it followed Olruggio.

He'd built a nest this time. It was Olruggio's idea; he'd handed Qifrey his coat and an old shirt without meeting his eyes and said, "Use these. It'll help."

Qifrey had taken them. He laid the coat flat on the bed, folded the shirt beside it, and pulled his own blanket over the top. Then he sat on the edge and looked at it. It looked like laundry.

He didn't know what he was doing. He had spent every heat before this alone, deliberately refusing any kind of comfort. No one had ever taught him how to nest, and he had never wanted to learn. If nesting was supposed to bring comfort, then it was exactly the kind of thing he would try to avoid.

So Qifrey laid on top of the laundry like that. Olruggio came to check on him an hour later. He opened the door, looked at the bed and stopped.

"What is that."

"A nest," Qifrey said, with as much dignity as he could manage.

Olruggio stared at it the way he stared at a badly drawn sigil, then he crossed the room, stripped the bed without a word, and started over.

He folded the coat into a crescent at the head, layered the shirt beneath the pillow where the scent would rise with body heat, then built the blankets into walls on three sides, tucking the edges under the mattress so they held their shape. He dragged a spare cloak from the wardrobe and rolled it into a bolster for the open side. Every movement was efficient and refused to meet Qifrey's eyes.

"Get in," he said.

Qifrey climbed into it. His face soften as the coat cradled his shoulders and the vanilla and citrus rose around him in a warm current.

"You've done this before," Qifrey observed.

Olruggio was already at the door. "I read about it." He paused with his hand on the frame. "You should have asked."

He closed the door behind him. Qifrey pressed his face into the pillow and breathed in, and for a while it almost was enough. It dulled the ache to something bearable, enough to trick his body into thinking Olruggio was closer than he was. Wrapped in his coat, surrounded by his scent, Qifrey could almost pretend he was being held.

He felt safe, and safety was dangerous. The silverwood stirred beneath his skin the moment he relaxed, reminding him that even this small comfort came with a price.

So he threw the coat away before the roots could push any further. Later, when the silverwood finally retreated, Qifrey reached for the coat again. This time, he didn't dare wrap himself in it. He only held it against his chest. Like something he loved but could never keep.

But even that didn't last long. By the second evening the scent had gone thin and cold, worn out from too much breathing in, and underneath it Qifrey could still smell himself. The coat wasn't Olly. It had never been going to be Olly.

When Olruggio came to check on him and Qifrey didn't reach for his sleeve this time. He pushed the nest aside, crossed the room on unsteady legs, and pressed himself against Olruggio's chest. He fisted his hands in the fabric at Olruggio's back and breathed in.  His body was saying it in every language it knew.

Olruggio stood frozen. His arms stayed locked at his sides, but Qifrey could feel the war being fought right there against his chest. Then Olruggio said, "We shouldn't."

"Olly—" Qifrey pressed closer, chasing the heat of him, and felt him shudder.

"No." Olruggio's throat worked. His hands twitched at his sides, half-lifting before he caught them and forced them back down. "Don't do that."

"Why?" Qifrey's fingers curled tighter into his shirt, dragging him half an inch closer whether Olruggio wanted it or not.

"Because I am not going to be the thing you regret in the morning again," 

Oh, Olly. How could he never understand? How could he never know that Qifrey had regretted many things in his life but never this? Never him.

"So that's it?" Qifrey asked, "You're just going to leave me like this?"

Olruggio stared at him, then he closed his eyes for a long moment, clearly fighting in his head, then he opened those again and said, "Fine." The word came out through his teeth. His hands finally moved, gripping Qifrey's shoulders like he'd stopped fighting himself and started fighting for him instead. "Fine. Get in the damn room."

Olruggio’s grip on his shoulders was warm, pulsing through the thin fabric of Qifrey’s clothes. He looked like he might still pull away, but that was before Qifrey gave his belt a soft tug. And then he walked Qifrey backward into the room, one careful step at a time, until the backs of Qifrey’s knees hit the edge of the bed.

"Are you sure?" Olruggio asked again.

Qifrey nodded against his face. He had never been surer of anything. It was terrifying.

Olruggio's hands came up slowly, one of his hand rested at the small of his back and the other at the base of his skull. Qifrey felt the last wall between what he wanted and what he allowed himself to have unlock and give way. He pulled Olruggio down onto the bed and the nest scattered around them, useless. The thing Qifrey needed had never been the clothes.

When they landed, Olruggio braced himself on one forearm so he wouldn’t crush him, but Qifrey pulled harder, craving the full weight, the solid press of Olruggio against his overheated body.

Their clothes failed. Qifrey ended up on his back with Olruggio above him, and when Olruggio pressed in, Qifrey looked up into his eyes and expected to see tenderness. But his eyes were guarded now, holding a caution that hadn't existed before. The sight hurt more than Qifrey expected. But beneath it was the same blue. And Qifrey let go.

He stopped fighting the current, he lost himself there. In Olruggio. In their rhythm and the low sounds he made and the way his hands held his hips like he was something worth keeping. 

Afterward, Qifrey lay still and felt the silverwood moved relentless. The familiar pressure behind his eye, the thin heat of roots reaching. He stared at the ceiling.

"Why did you agree?"

Olruggio was quiet for a moment. He lay on his back beside Qifrey, not touching him. The gap between their bodies was six inches of cold sheet.

"Thought it was my duty," he said. "As a Watchful Eye."

His voice was even. He was hiding something, and Qifrey didn't press. Not when he carried much secrets himself. 

The silverwood had never come back faster. It surged behind his eye, roots threading deeper into the socket, and the pain of it made his breath catch. But the pain was a confirmation: this arrangement was not the safe distance Qifrey had calculated it to be.

Qifrey didn't need to erase his memory. He wasn't sure if that was a mercy or just a different kind of cruelty.

  ｡ ＿＿＿ °‧ 𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆟 𓆝 𓆞·｡ ＿＿＿ ｡

"Master Qifrey. Master Qifrey?"

The voice pulled him back. Ten years on, the memory still surfaced whole and uninvited, usually when he least expected it. He looked down and found Tetia was standing at the edge of the garden, her practice quire tucked under her arm, watching him; from her expression, she'd been calling for a while.

"Yes, Tetia?"

"Are you okay?"

"Perfectly." He straightened from where he'd been leaning against the fence post. His legs ached. His whole body ached. He kept his hands still at his sides. "Have you finished practicing your spell?"

"I did." She held up the quire, showing him the rows of sigils, her linework was improving. Then she glanced toward the atelier. "Where's Master Olly? I haven't seen him for two days."

"He has unfinished commissions," Qifrey said. "Why don't you help me make something for him? He'll be hungry."

Tetia brightened immediately—she always did when cooking was involved—and followed him inside. Qifrey set her to work on the sword carrots while he laid out the chrysanthonions. The sword carrots were stubborn things, and Tetia attacked them with the peeler in short determined strokes, tongue between her teeth, shavings piling around her like orange snow.

"Master Qifrey, the skin won't come off evenly."

"Press lighter. Let the blade do the work." He reached over and adjusted her grip, guiding her thumb lower on the handle. 

She tried again, better this time. Qifrey peeled the chrysanthonions beside her. They came apart in papery layers, each one releasing a faint floral bitterness that stung his eyes. He blinked and kept peeling. Tetia chattered about her spell practice, Qifrey listened, answered and corrected gently, but his thought had drifted.

He cut the vegetables and dropped them into the pot with the clams. The broth was already simmering.

"Can I bring it to him?" Tetia asked.

"I'll take it. You can go wash up."

She looked like she wanted to argue, then didn't. Qifrey ladled the soup into a bowl, set it on a tray with a spoon and a cup of water, then carried it upstairs.

His bedroom door was closed. He opened it with his elbow.

Olruggio was on the bed, spread flat on his back, arms and legs still flung out. His hair was a wreck. His shirt was rucked up on one side, showing a strip of soft stomach. He didn't move when the door opened.

Two days. Qifrey's heat had been in its second day, and Olruggio had helped. He always helped now. Unlike the first time, Qifrey didn't need to erase his memory afterward. Because there was nothing to erase. Olruggio had never confessed again, never once he said we could be together. Now it was just duty, he framed it as a function of his role as Watchful Eye. Somehow, Qifrey had gotten exactly what he wanted and still felt unbearably empty.

He set the tray on the nightstand. "Olly. It's past noon."

Olruggio opened one eye. "I can't feel my hips," he said, by way of greeting. "Or my back."

Qifrey's hand went to his own neck. The skin there was unmarked; despite Qifrey neither stopped him nor turned away, Olruggio was always careful about that, and when he wasn't, he had always stopped himself in time.

"Sorry." 

"Don't be." Olruggio sighed dramatically. "Be impressed."

"...By what?"

"That I'm still alive," he closed his eye again. "Have you been suppressing for years or something?"

Qifrey opened his mouth. The honest answer was yes. Always. But the truth was never just the truth. It came with questions, and questions always found their way to the secret he had sworn to protect. That road ended the same way every time. Qifrey couldn't bear to watch him make that choice again. He would leave Olruggio with as much of himself as he could.

Olruggio didn't wait for a response. He opened both eyes, looked at Qifrey standing there with the tray and the silence, then waved him off. "Go take care of the girls. I can feed myself."

Qifrey nodded. He turned toward the door. It would be a lie to say he wasn't disappointed. But this was the thing keeping them both intact. This was better. Safer.

He closed the door behind him and went downstairs to check Tetia's wind sigils.

°‧ 𓆝

By evening, Olruggio had left the room and gone back to his workshop to finish his commission. Qifrey heard the door across the hall open and close, then the familiar tread on the stairs, heavier on the left foot, and then nothing. 

He came to his own bed that night and found it stripped clean. The sheets were fresh and the pillow had been turned. The air smelled like soap and nothing else, it no longer carried the trace of vanilla and citrus that clung to Olruggio's skin after exertion. Every sign of him had been scrubbed away.

It was always like this. Sometimes Qifrey wondered if any of it was real, or if his mind had simply begun inventing comfort on its own.

He lay on his side and pulled the blanket to his face. He breathed in and immediately felt disappointed. Only his own scent remained: cedarwood and the musk his body couldn't shed for days after a heat. No Olruggio. The absence registered in his chest before his mind caught up; it was an animal distress that had nothing to do with reason. His body wanted its alpha close, it didn't understand why it was alone. Qifrey closed his eyes and let exhaustion take him.

Sleep came unevenly, in shallow waves, and when the dream found him it wore the shape of memory. He was back in the same rooms ten years ago, sheets damp with sweat with Olruggio’s warmth pressed against his back.

“We could be together,” Olruggio said, lips brushing his cheek.

This time, Qifrey didn't say I can't. He didn't say I'm sorry. He turned his face into Olruggio's palm and said yes. He let himself be kissed and the ache in his body dissolved. It no longer hurt, and for one perfect moment there was nothing wrong with him at all. He was himself.

Olruggio's face broke open, he had braced for a rejection and received a hand instead. He pulled Qifrey against him and buried his face in Qifrey's hair.

"I was starting to think I'd have to wait another ten years."

Qifrey had smile. Even in the dream, he knew it was too good to be real. Still, he let himself believe it completely. He felt Olruggio's heartbeat against his chest and his own matching it, their lines were blurring. So this was the feeling people spent lifetimes trying to name, finding home inside another person.

He woke flushed and content. The feeling lasted three seconds before his eyes throbbed. A sharp heat flared behind his right eye, bright and sudden, and he felt the roots shift, thin threads pressing outward against his bone, reaching, growing, fed by the warmth he'd let in. The contentment that still sat in his chest was feeding it. The dream was feeding it. 

Qifrey threw the blankets off and crossed the room. His hands were steady but his breathing wasn't. He drew a bath as cold as the water would give him and lowered himself in. The shock of it hit his lungs first, then his skin, then the place behind his eye where the silverwood pulsed. He gripped the edges of the tub and held himself there until the warmth bled out of him and the roots went quiet again.

In the cold and the silence, his mind went where it always went to the Brimmed Hat. They had stolen his past. That was done. But sitting in cold water at dawn, shivering the silverwood back to sleep, Qifrey was reminded that it wasn't only the past they'd taken. 

Every heat spent with Olruggio and then erased, every morning after where the room smelled like nothing, every time he said I can't when he meant I want to; that was the future they'd stolen.

He stayed in the bath until the water warmed to room temperature and his fingers pruned, until the ache behind his eye was just an ache again.

Then he got out, dried himself and get dressed.

°‧𓆟

Qifrey burned the eggs in a moment's inattention, his eyes drifting closed over the skillet, and then the smell of char pulling him back. He scraped the pan and started over. His hands were steady when the rest of him was not.

He'd slept two hours. Maybe three. The bath had quieted the silverwood but not his mind, and every time he closed his eyes the dream came back and the roots stirred. By the time dawn came through the window he'd given up and gone downstairs.

The second batch was better. He plated the eggs with bread, sliced greens and a pot of tea. By the time the girls came down, the kitchen looked like a kitchen and Qifrey looked like a teacher again.

Coco was first, as always. She sat down and studied his face with directness that made her impossible to deflect: "Master Qifrey, did you sleep?"

"I did."

"You don't look like you did."

He set a cup in front of her. "I had a bad dream."

"What about?"

"I don't remember." He smiled. It was a good smile, perfectly calibrated to end a line of questioning. "Eat your eggs before they get cold."

Tetia arrived next, then Agott with a book under her arm, then Richeh trailing behind. They sat and began to eat. Olruggio appeared in the kitchen doorway ten minutes later, his hair pressed flat on one side from falling asleep at his workbench. He dropped into the empty chair, pulled a plate toward him, and said, "The Hornbill commission is going to kill me."

"Good morning to you too, Olly."

"It's not a good morning. It's a morning where I have to calibrate sixteen heat-transfer sigils on a piece of metal the size of my thumbnail." He bit into the bread and chewed angrily.

"You designed it," Qifrey said.

"Yes, and now I have to suffer the consequences of my own brilliance." 

Tetia giggled. Olruggio pointed his bread at her. "Don't laugh, or you'll helping me sand the casings after practice."

"I don't mind!"

"You will after the first hour."

This was them. This was what it looked like when the heat was over and the six-inch gap had widened back into the comfortable distance of two men who'd known each other since childhood. Olruggio complained about his work. Qifrey poured his tea. The girls orbited between them like small moons. No one looking at this table would see anything but a household that functioned, everything in its proper place. Qifrey held onto it with both hands.

After that, Olruggio finished eating and went to collect the post from the front hall. He came back with a stack of letters, thumbing through them as he walked, and dropped half of them directly into the kitchen hearth without opening them.

Tetia's eyes went wide. "Master Olly! You didn't even read those!"

"Didn't need to." He held one of the surviving letters up to the light, squinted at it, and tossed it into the fire too. "I can tell by the seal."

"Tell what?" Coco asked.

Olruggio sat back down and opened the remaining letters with his thumb: commissions, by the look of them, plain envelopes with a wax seal with a signet. He didn't look up. "Clients. And women from town. They keep writing to introduce potential courters. Apparently they have decided I am at the age where I require assistance finding a spouse."

He said it with a shrug, as though the subject bored him. Tetia leaned forward with immediate interest, she said. "For you?" 

"Don't sound so surprise." 

"I think it's sweet, actually. Who are they?"

"Doesn't matter. Not interested." He flicked the last commission open and frowned at its contents.

Qifrey reached across the table and picked up one of the discarded envelopes that hadn't made it to the fire yet. He turned it over. The seal was pressed in lavender wax, and inside, the letter was written in a careful, slanting hand. He scanned it. The writer praised Olruggio's craftsmanship, mentioned her nephew's steady temperament and good prospects, and included a physical description that emphasized the nephew's height and capable hands.

He set the letter down.

"Well?" Olruggio said, not looking up.

Qifrey considered lying, it was the things he was good at, after all. But then the four girls's eyes light up and followed him, he wasn't so sure. 

Richeh reached for the letter, read it and put it down. Then she said, "You should see some of them, Master Olly. You're getting old."

Olruggio's hand flew to his chest. "Old?"

"You have some gray in your beard."

"That's— that is premature. From stress—"

"You're thirty-four," Richeh said.

"Thirty-four is not old!"

"My grandmother was married at nineteen."

The girls exchanged a look of four sidelong glance. It was devastating in the way only children could be devastating: total, unself-conscious, final.

Qifrey pressed his lips together. He stood and began collecting the plates. Olruggio was still sputtering about his beard. Tetia laughed so hard she nearly slipped off her chair. Richeh had already gone back to her tea. At the basin, with his back to the table, Qifrey's hands worked automatically while his thoughts returned to the letters Olruggio had thrown into the fire without reading. He didn't know if that was for him or despite him. 

He didn't let himself wonder for long. The silverwood was listening.

  ｡ ＿＿＿ °‧ 𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆟 𓆝 𓆞·｡ ＿＿＿ ｡

The girls, thankfully, did enough wondering to make up for it. Especially Tetia. She was thirteen and deep in the age where every interaction between two adults was a potential love story. He often found she read romances by candlelight beyond bedtime, dog-eared the pages with confessions and reunions and saw the shape of those narratives everywhere she looked. 

The letters were kindling to a fire that had been waiting for fuel, though first it was harmless. On market days, she stopped skipping ahead to chase pigeons and instead stayed glued to Olruggio's side, watching everyone else instead of the stalls as usual. She watched the baker's daughter wrap Olruggio's loaf once. Then found it wasn't beautiful enough, she unwrap it and wrap it again. Tetia narrowed her eyes.

"Tetia," Qifrey said. "What is it?"

"I'm just looking."

At the herbalist's stall, the apprentice nearly dropped the pouch of dried herbs when Olruggio thanked him. He apologized five times before remembering to take the payment. Tetia narrowed her eyes again.

Qifrey sighed. "Some people are simply nervous around strangers."

"Master Olly isn't a stranger."

"...To him."

Tetia hummed but remained unconvinced. At the fish market, the widower called after Olruggio just as they were leaving: "Master Olly!"

Olruggio turned.

"I forgot to tell you the trout's fresher on Thursdays."

"We're here on Tuesday."

"...Right."

Olruggio thanked him anyway. Tetia kept watching.

Qifrey pinched the bridge of his nose. "Tetia. Have you bought the vegetables I told you?"

"I already did. Here." She looked at the carrots for perhaps three seconds before returning her attention to Olruggio.

By the time they reached the thread shop, she had stopped pretending to be subtle. "Master Olly," she whispered loudly enough for the entire shop to hear, "the lady looked at you four times."

Olruggio glanced back over his shoulder. "Maybe I was blocking her display."

"You weren't." Tetia folded her arms. "She fixed her hair when you walked in."

Coco, noticing everything, nodded, but didn't participate in the conversation. She and went back to examining a bolt of fabric. 

Qifrey cleared his throat. "Tetia, that's Master Olly's business, not ours." 

Tetia pouted but, to Qifrey's relief, said nothing more. He almost admired her powers of observation. In another context, they would have made an excellent witch.

Unfortunately, she had chosen to apply them here. And her observations forced Qifrey to confront a small, selfish part of himself. It didn't want Olruggio to notice those little kindnesses and realize how warmly the world would welcome him if he ever chose to leave this little atelier behind.

Not that Olruggio would. Qifrey knew that. It was simply uncomfortable to be reminded that he could.

He hoped that would be the end of it. It wasn't. Tetia brought it up again during study time. And then again at dinner. Agott, mercifully, had reached the end of her patience.

"Can we discuss something that matters?" 

"Of course this matters," Tetia said, as if the fate of the world depended on it. "It's Master Olly's life." Then she turned back to Olruggio with complete seriousness. "I hard a woman in the market said that if someone waits too long, they can't marry anymore, and then they have to live alone forever."

"That's not true," Qifrey said immediately. 

Olruggio snorted, "I could marry someone perfectly fine if I wanted to."

"Then why don't you?"

"Because I'm busy." He started counting on his fingers. "I have commissions, craft, research. Six mouths to feed. And the workshop needs reorganizing. And the Hornbill order is three weeks overdue. And I haven't fixed the leak in the storage room ceiling, which has been dripping since spring," He ran out of fingers and switched hands. "Things that require my attention."

The girls all looked at him with judging and unimpressed eyes, then Tetia started, "For how long?"

"For however long it takes!"

"That's what her cousin said, and now he lives alone with six cats."

Olruggio opened his mouth, then he looked at Qifrey, requesting rescue. Qifrey had never seen a man so defeated by a thirdteen-year-old. Before Qifrey could think of a way to intervene, Richeh, who had been eating in silence for the entire conversation, spoke without looking up from her plate. "Master Olly doesn't even go outside. He skips meals, drinks too much alcohol, doesn't exercise and too busy to help with chores. Objectively speaking, he's not a very competitive marriage candidate."

Olruggio clutched his chest as though he'd been stabbed. "...Whose side are you on?"

"Richeh on the side of facts."

"Now, girls." Qifrey set his cup down before the conversation could spiral further. "That's not a kind thing to say to an adult."

Coco nodded seriously, then she said, "She's right though. I saw many people in my village, their husbands didn't provide and didn't do chores, and their lives weren't happy. They came to my mother's shop to talk about it. They came to her a lot."

Coco didn't say anything else. She looked down at her plate. The door to her mother, opened by accident, closed again by force. He wanted to reach for her hand. But he didn't, she wouldn't want him to, not here, in front of the others.

Tetia felt that, the energy draining out of her, "Then maybe I should stop. It wouldn't be fair to put that on someone else." She pushed her food around her plate. "But it's sad, isn't it? One day we'll all grow up and leave, and Master Olly will be alone."

Now the room was quiet. Tetia wilted like a punctured balloon, and the girls frowned. 

Richeh said, matter-of-fact, "He's got Master Qifrey."

Tetia brightened immediately. She turned in her chair. "Right, Master Qifrey?"

Five pairs of eyes. Tetia's, wide and expectant. Coco's, quiet. Richeh's, watchful. Agott had looked up from her book, she wasn't interested, but she was paying attention. And Olruggio.

Olruggio, who had denied, protested and deflected everything the girls said; had clutched his chest in theatrical outrage at every suggestion, now was silent. He didn't laugh it off. He sat with his hands around his cup and his eyes on Qifrey's face. Waiting.

Qifrey pressed his lips together. His hands, beneath the table, clenched against his thighs.

The answer sitting so close to the surface that any word he chose would either reveal it or betray it. But the truth was a door he couldn't open, as behind it lived every sins he'd committed to keep the promise survived. He didn't know what this would do to the roots inside him, when he was being loved openly, warmly, by a room full of people who called him family.

The silence lasted too long. He saw Tetia's face begin to falter again and Coco's eyes narrow with the beginning of a question.

And then, Olruggio said lightly, "I'm his Watchful Eye. He's not getting rid of me."

He said it to the girls. But his eyes were on Qifrey. And Qifrey held Olruggio's gaze a beat longer than the moment required. He couldn't tell whether Olruggio had just reduced everything between them to a job title, or whether he'd said I'm not leaving you in the only language their apprentice could hold. 

Still, Qifrey was grateful for the intervention. He showed his gratitude by giving Olruggio an especially generous portion of food for the next three days.

It was easier, sometimes, to answer kindness with small things: a full plate, a cup of tea, a complaint about his sleep schedule, a reminder for him to eat on time. Those things that could be accepted without asking why.

Olruggio never mentioned the conversation again. Neither did Qifrey. But that was how they had always been.

They left important things sitting between them, neither of them dared to pick up, untouched and carefully preserved. Until it was too large to ignore.

  ｡ ＿＿＿ °‧ 𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆟 𓆝 𓆞·｡ ＿＿＿ ｡

Until two months later, Olruggio found him in the garden. Qifrey was on his knees in the herb bed, pulling weeds from around the diadem plants when he heard Olruggio's tread on the path.

"You haven't had your heat in two months," he started. "Did you use inducers?"

Qifrey pulled a root free, shook the dirt loose and set it aside. "No. Mine have always been uneven. You know that."

Olruggio stood over him, arms crossed. Qifrey could feel the weight of his gaze without looking. "Okay. Just checking in. Tell me if anything strange happens."

"I will." Qifrey wiped his hands the towel and looked up. The sun was behind Olruggio's head, turning him into a blinding light. "Why are you asking?"

Olruggio shifted his weight. "Your scent. It's different."

"Different how?"

"Sweeter. I thought your heat was coming."

"Ah. I'll keep an eye on it."

"You'd better." 

°‧ 𓆝

For weeks afterward, Olruggio watched him with suspicious eyes. At first, Qifrey pretended not to notice. Then it became harder. Especially when Olruggio was no longer the only one noticing. He was in the kitchen preparing tea when Coco and Tetia came in from practice. Tetia stopped in the doorway. Coco tilted her head. They were both staring at him.

"What is it?" he asked.

"Master Qifrey." Tetia stepped closer, her nose twitching. "Your scent. It's so sweet." She leaned in and inhaled, unself-conscious direct. "Like honey. I love it."

Qifrey set the kettle down. "Sweet?"

"Really sweet. Can't you smell it?" Tetia turned to Coco. "You can smell it, right?"

Coco nodded slowly. She wasn't leaning in the way Tetia was, she was watching Qifrey's face instead, "It's different from normal. Warmer."

Qifrey touched his collar. He couldn't smell it himself. "It might be the dessert. I was working with the pastry."

"It's not the pastry," Tetia said with absolute certainty. "It's you. You smell like ..wood? Master Qifrey, are you feeling unwell?"

"I'm fine, Tetia."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm fine." He softened it with a smile. "I'll keep an eye on it."

Tetia studied him for another moment, clearly unconvinced, but eventually let it go. Qifrey almost relaxed. Then Richeh walked in from the hallway, practice quire tucked beneath her arm, and Tetia immediately grabbed her sleeve. "Richeh. Come here."

Richeh looked down at the hand holding her. "...Why?"

"Smell Master Qifrey."

Qifrey closed his eyes. His headache had arrived.

"What?"

"Just do it. Tell me if he smells sweeter than usual."

Richeh gave Tetia a look, but she stepped forward and inhaled, briefly. "No," she said. "He smells the same as always."

"What? How can you not—" Tetia whipped back to Coco. "You smell it, right?"

Coco hesitated. "I do."

"Then why can't Richeh—"

He had never imagined taking apprentices would be this exhausting. And they weren't even at their most difficult stage yet. Still, he couldn't deny it helped. Their noise, their questions, their endless curiosity, they kept him grounded, the silverwood had been quieter since they came into his life.

Then the door opened, Olruggio walked in, wiping ink from his hands with a rag as he made a beeline for the tea. "I'm starving. Is there anything to eat?"

Qifrey had never been so grateful for a distraction. "There's pastry in the oven," 

Olruggio immediately headed for it. He opened the oven, took one out before it had properly cooled, and bit into it without hesitation. Before he could even reach for the kettle, Tetia grabbed his sleeve: "Master Olly!" Olruggio paused mid-step. "Can you smell Master Qifrey?"

Qifrey closed his eyes. He didn't have the heart to tell her that Olruggio could probably smell him from across the atelier. Ten feet away was nothing. Standing barely a meter apart was already unfair.

"Smell him?" Olruggio repeated. He looked more confused than anything else and Tetia nodded with such fierceness. "All right, all right." He leaned in without a second thought.

Too close. His face stopped an inch from Qifrey's neck, just below his ear, where his scent glands lay. His warm breath ghosted over the sensitive skin, and Qifrey's lungs forgot how to work. His hand, braced against the edge of the counter, tightened until his knuckles blanched.

Then Olruggio drew back, "I smell sweat."

Qifrey blinked, of everything he'd expected, that hadn't even made the list. "I was cooking," he said at once, suddenly defensive. "I'll bathe later."

"Mm." Olruggio nodded solemnly, took another bite of his pastry. "You should."

The girls exchanged bewildered looks. The investigation had, somehow, collapsed entirely. Before anyone could regroup, Tetia spotted the sunshine spilling across the courtyard and seized the pivot. "It's so nice out!" she said. "Let's study outside today!"

"Good idea!" Coco agreed, already gathering her things.

Then the two of them filed out, dragging a thoroughly confused Richeh with them. Their voices faded across the courtyard, Tetia still protesting that she knew what she smelled, Richeh's distant voice telling her to focus on her sigils.

The kitchen finally became quiet again. Qifrey scratched awkwardly at the side of his neck. "...Do I really smell that bad?"

Olruggio looked up from his tea, genuinely perplexed. "No."

Qifrey frowned. "But you just said—"

"Did you honestly expect me to tell a room full of children that you smell sweet?"

"...Oh."

"You do, by the way." Olruggio took another sip of tea. "...Distractingly so."

He said it to the tea, not to Qifrey. Then, as if he hadn't just caused a catastrophic problem, he picked up a second pastry and walked out of the kitchen, leaving Qifrey stood at the counter with his hand on his neck and the roots pulsing more intense behind his eye. He was in so much trouble.

  ｡ ＿＿＿ °‧ 𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆟 𓆝 𓆞·｡ ＿＿＿ ｡

The scent didn't improve. If anything, it deepened. That warm, sweet undertone that clung to his skin no matter how often he bathed, how much he scrubbed, what herbs he pressed against his pulse points to mask it. Tetia had stopped commenting, but she still leaned toward him when they sat close, inhaling like he was a bakery. Of all people, she was the one most pleased by the change. Coco watched him all the times with her curious eyes. Even Agott glanced up from her book once, briefly, then looked away.

Qifrey couldn't ignore it any longer. He decided to go to the medical tower on a Tuesday, when Olruggio was buried in commissions and unlikely to surface before evening. Coco insisted on coming, she appearing at the door with her cloak already fastened and her quire tucked under her arm as though the matter were already settled.

"You don't have to," Qifrey had said.

"But I want to."

"...It might be boring."

"I don't mind."

He almost refused again, instead, he smiled faintly. "All right."

They took the windowway. The tower was quiet at midmorning. Qifrey sat in a chair that was too small and waited with his hands folded in his lap. 

Sinocia was through, she checked his vitals, measured his pulse with her bare hand only. She spoke and Qifrey listened, or tried to. He only caught fragments: Early stage, approximately eight weeks, the scent change is consistent. He nodded when nodding seemed appropriate. 

She recommended rest, certain herbs, a schedule of follow-up visits. Her voice came to him from far away. He thanked her and collected the packet of instructions she pressed into his hands.

His mind was already elsewhere. It had left the room the moment she'd said eight weeks and begun working. Eight weeks. That placed the conception during his last heat. There was no uncertainty about the father. He had spent those days either alone or with Olruggio. This meant the silverwood had a new source of warmth to feed on, one that would grow whether Qifrey wanted it to or not. One he couldn't take a cold bath to silence.

When he walked back into the corridor, Coco was sitting on a bench with her feet swinging playfully above the floor. She looked up, saw his face, and her expression turned serious. "Master Qifrey?"

He didn't answer immediately. He led her to a quiet alcove at the end of the hall, away from the foot traffic, and sat down on the bench there. His hands were shaking. That surprised him. He pressed them flat against his thighs and watched his own fingers tremble as though they belonged to someone else. 

Too many possibilities had already begun arranging themselves in his mind. The child. Olruggio. The girls. The order in which they needed to know things. The order in which they needed to be protected.

Then he said to her, "Shall we come home?"

Coco's face was an expression of dread, her small hand found his coat and clenched to hold him from drifting away, "Master Qifrey, tell me what happened. Let me help you."

"Coco," he said as he gave her a disarming smile, but she refused to  be convinced by that.

He knew he had no reason to tell her, she was a child, she needn't know this. She was too young, she deserved a childhood untouched by his mistakes and his fear.

Lying would have been easy, he had become very good at it. But when Coco looked at him with that worried expression, he found himself unable to do what he had always done.

The silverwood had grown heavy, and carrying these alone had begun to feel impossible. Perhaps Coco's persistence reminded him of a familiar kind of kindness. Someone who had always looked at him and refused to believe the mask. Someone who always found him.

And so, he told her. Coco's eyes widened. She didn't speak for a long time. Then, without a word, she shifted closer on the bench and pressed herself against his side, tucking herself under his arm. Qifrey put his arm around her and held on, comforting her.

"Is it—" She swallowed. "Is it Master Olly's?"

Qifrey closed his eyes. "Yes."

"I thought so." Her voice was very quiet. "You're— I mean, it was— I could tell. That you were close. More than normal adults."

He had nothing to argue with. Apparently, they hadn't been nearly as subtle as they thought. Or perhaps Coco had simply always been better at seeing him than he gave her credit for.

He rested a hand on her head, gently combing his fingers through her hair. They sat in the corridor for a long time, until neither of them had anything left to say. Then Qifrey stood.

"Shall we go home?"

°‧ 𓆝

The weeks that followed were the loneliest of his life. It was also the longest.

The atelier was full as always with four girls' noise, questions and their small daily catastrophes. Olruggio he was there every lunch for breakfast; every evening in his workshop, his tread on the stairs a metronome that kept the household running.

Qifrey was not lonely because he had no one, he was lonely because his body had become a battleground and he couldn't tell a soul why he was losing.

The silverwood had never been this aggressive. Before the child, they had operated on a slow calendar with a pulse after a warm evening, a twinge after a good dream, pressure that built over days and could be managed with cold water. Now it came in sharp, sudden, blinding strikes. The child's presence was a constant source of warmth and hope beneath his ribs, and the roots fed on it.

The first attack came during breakfast. He was pouring tea for Tetia when the pain hit, it started behind his right eye that drove straight through to the back of his skull. His hand locked on the teapot. The pour went long, tea flooding the saucer and pooling across the table before he could release his grip.

"Master Qifrey!" Tetia jumped back.

"Sorry." He set the teapot down and pressed the heel of his hand against his eye.

It didn't pass. It retreated. The roots pulled back into the socket like something flinching from light, but they left the bone aching and his vision swimming in his remaining eye. He mopped up the tea and finished breakfast. 

It found him again in the garden two days later. He was kneeling to check the carrots when the roots shifted and something behind his eye cracked. The pain dropped him onto his hands. His fingers dug into the soil. He tasted metal at the back of his throat and stayed like that, on all fours in the herb bed, until the pressure released and his arms stopped shaking. 

When he looked up, the garden was empty. He exhaled and wiped his mouth, checked his hand for blood, found none, so he went back to weeding.

He stopped sleeping more than two hours at a stretch. They seemed to grow fastest in the early hours, when his body was relaxed and his defenses lowest. He'd jolt awake with his hand already at his eye, pain radiating through the socket, and lie in the dark until it receded enough for him to unclench his jaw.

So often, he sat in his room at night with both hands in his hair and thought in circles. The silverwood pulsed behind his eye was because the life inside him. Because what was a child if not the purest form of comfort? The purest form of hope? It was everything the roots had been waiting for.

He thought about ending it in the darkest hours, alone in his room. He thought about going back to the medical tower and asking the doctor to undo what his body had done. But hope had already taken root. Unlike the silverwood, he found he couldn't bring himself to tear it out.

So he kept it. For now. Every morning, he went downstairs, made breakfast, checked their quires, answered their questions, smiled when he was supposed to, buying time until he found a solution for this. No one noticed, or no one except Olruggio. He never looked convinced.

Olruggio had always been inconveniently good at seeing the things Qifrey hid. His eyes lingered on Qifrey too long, as though waiting for Qifrey to tell him what had gone wrong.

It was the most infuriating thing about him: his refusal to leave a mystery unsolved, especially when that mystery was Qifrey. The girls accepted smiles at face value. Olruggio never did.

So often Qifrey had caught him looking many times in a single day. At breakfast, he watched when Qifrey's hand paused too long over the teapot. In the hallway, when Qifrey leaned against the wall and closed his eyes for just a moment. In the garden, when Qifrey knelt to pull weeds and didn't stand up for a full minute because his legs wouldn't cooperate. Finally in the kitchen, where the smell of hot oil sent a wave of nausea through him.

Every time, those blue eyes found him.

It was only a matter of time.

°‧ 𓆝

The terrifying part was that some part of him was waiting for it. He waited for Olruggio to ask, waited for the moment he would no longer have to carry this alone.

He lasted a month.

Thirty-one days of breakfast, sigil checks and smiling at the right moments; thirty-one days of the roots shifting relentless behind his eye, fed by the warmth he couldn't starve no matter how many cold baths he took. Thirty-one days of Coco watching him with quiet, worried eyes across the kitchen table, keeping her promise, saying nothing.

On the thirty-second day, he decided to end it. He left the atelier alone, early, before Olruggio surfaced from his workshop. He told Tetia he had errands in town and would be back by midday. She waved him off without suspicion. Coco wasn't in the kitchen. He didn't look for her. If she saw his face, she would know.

The medical tower was twenty-minute by flying. He made it in fifteen. Then he stood outside, watching people moved in and out around him and found he could not make his legs carry him forward.

So he moved to the side of the entrance, out of the flow of foot traffic, and sat down against the wall. The stone was cool against his back. People passed and glanced at him. A man sitting alone outside the medical tower, hands on his knees, staring at nothing was strange enough. A woman stopped and asked if he needed help. Even an elderly man offered him water.

Qifrey shook his head and thanked them, they moved on and he stayed where he was. 

After a while, he found a quieter place, it was a bench against the wall in the small garden beside the tower, half-hidden by an overgrown hedge. He sat. The tower entrance was visible from here. Less than twenty steps away. He could stand up, walk through the door, give his name, and it would be done. No one would ever know. He could go home and make dinner, check Tetia's sigils and sit across the table from Olruggio and never tell him about the thing he'd done.

He pressed his palms flat against his right eyes and breathed.

The child was twelve weeks old. It was too small to feel, too early to show. It was nothing yet, merely a possibility, a cluster of warmth nested beneath his ribs, no bigger than a sigil drawn on a notebook. It didn't have a name. It was barely real.

But it was Olruggio's. Half of it was Olruggio's warmth and Olruggio's stubbornness, and Qifrey had already taken so much from him. Was he going to take this too?

He was so tired of his own lies and secrets. 

He sat on the bench for a long time, drawing spells from water to entertain himself: like sigil that drew water and shaped it into a handful of tiny flowers that bloomed briefly above his palm before dissolving back into droplets. The sun moved across the garden. The shadow of the hedge crept over his feet, then his knees, then his hands.He didn't count the hours.

"There you are."

Qifrey looked up from the little bird he was coaxing, its wings fluttering once before it fell apart into a puddle. Olruggio stood over him, blocking the late afternoon sun. His arms were crossed, his expression caught somewhere between worry and irritation. Somehow, he looked brighter than the sun itself.

"Are you feeling sick?" Olruggio asked.

Qifrey let the water ribbon collapse into the gutter. "No worse than usual."

"Do you ever hear yourself?" 

He tilted his head back against the wall and looked up at Olruggio from below. "You came all this way to check on me?"

"Yeah, because you left four children unsupervised with a hot stove." Olruggio studied him for a moment, then sighed and scratched the back of his head. He pointed at the empty space on the bench. "Move over."

Qifrey shifted and Olruggio sat. He didn't sit close, he left the careful distance between them that had become their unit of measurement, the width of a hand, the length of a lie. They both faced forward, not looking at each other.

"How did you know I was here?" Qifrey asked.

"Came up for lunch and the girls said you'd been gone since morning." Olruggio paused for a moment, then added with clear irritation, "Had to feed them myself."

"You say that like it's a hardship. You eat more than all four of them combined."

"That's not the point and you know it." But his voice had lost its edge. Olruggio continued, "Then I noticed Coco was being weirdly quiet. Wouldn't look at me. I asked her what was wrong and she told me."

Coco. Qifrey closed his eyes. Though he couldn't blame her. She was twelve and she'd been carrying his weight for a month, and he should never have put it on her in the first place.

"Funny," Olruggio said. "I expected to hear it from you. But I guess we're doing things the difficult way."

"When have we ever done things the easy way?"

"Fair point." Olruggio leaned forward, elbows on his knees. His voice changed and the humor left his face. "Was it me?"

Qifrey looked at him in confusion.

"Did I do something wrong?"

"Olly—"

"No." He shook his head. "I'm not stupid, 'Frey. I remember going to check on you. Then there's nothing in between. After that, you couldn't look at me for a week." He scratched the back of his neck. "Doesn't take a genius to fill in that gap."

Qifrey stared at him. He had erased a night, but not its consequences. So that meant all this time, Olruggio had been carrying the belief that he'd hurt him. So that was why he never asked or reached out again.  Qifrey's stomach tightened. He should have accounted for that.

"It wasn't your fault," he said, reaching for Olruggio's elbow. "Olly. It was never your fault."

Olruggio looked at him, he wasn't convinced, "Whose fault it was doesn't matter right now." He stood up and held out his hand. "Let's go home."

The words should have relieved him. Instead, terror curled coldly beneath his ribs. Because he knew what came next. He would tell Olruggio him the things he had hidden, everything he had taken, everything he had done to protect him. And he would have to take it away again. Again.

Olruggio's hand remained outstretched. "Come on," he said, his fingers curled slightly, waiting. "You're going to tell me everything. And this time, you're going to let me help."

Qifrey pressed his lips thin, then he reached out and took his hand and Olruggio pulled him to his feet. Olruggio's grip was firm and warm, it lasted exactly as long as it needed to and not a second longer. Then his hand was gone.

They walked side by side through the evening streets with the tower behind them.

It was supposed to felt like grace and comfort. Instead, Qifrey experienced it as a verdict. Every exit he had built for himself was closing. Every escape route disappearing. Until only one door remained.

The one he had been most afraid to open.

°‧ 𓆝

The atelier was lit when they arrived, there was warm light spilling from the kitchen windows and the sound of voices inside. Olruggio pushed the door open and the smell of something burning hit them both immediately.

"Oh no," Tetia's voice said from somewhere inside. "Oh no oh no oh no—"

They found her at the hearth, waving a cloth at a smoking pan while Agott stood three feet back with her arms crossed and an expression of absolute disdain.

"I told you the heat was too high," Agott said.

"You told me after it started smoking!"

"I told you when you put it on. You weren't listening."

"I was listening! I was also trying to chop the—" Tetia spotted them in the doorway and froze. The panic vanished from her face, replaced instantly by a bright smile. She quickly moved the smoking pan slightly behind her back. It did not hide the smoke. "Master Qifrey! Master Olly! You're back!"

"What happened?" Olruggio said.

"I was making dinner," Tetia said, pouting. "Because you were both gone and I think I could help."

Richeh appeared from the pantry carrying a jar of preserved vegetables. She looked at the smoking pan and Qifrey and Olruggio in the doorway, then she set the jar on the table without comment.

"We're fine," Agott said. "Tetia attempted to cook."

"It was going to be good—"

Qifrey crossed the kitchen and took the pan off the heat. He scraped the burnt remains into the waste bucket and set the pan in the basin. His hands moved automatically, pulling a fresh pan from the shelf and reached for the oil. "Tetia, can you wash the greens for me? And Richeh, please slice the bread. Agott—"

"I'll set the table," Agott said, already moving.

"I'm helping too," Tetia said firmly, positioning herself at the cutting board, refusing to end the evening on a failure. She glanced at Olruggio. "Master Olly, are you staying for dinner this time? You never stay for dinner."

"I stayed five times this month. It is plenty."

"It is not plenty. It's barely anything."

Olruggio dropped into a chair and rubbed his face with both hands. "Fine. I'm staying."

Tetia beamed. Richeh set a plate in front of him without being asked. The kitchen filled with the ordinary noise of a household assembling a meal. Everything was, on the surface, exactly as it should be.

°‧ 𓆝

After dinner, Qifrey put the girls to bed early. Tetia protested but she was yawning between objections, Richeh went without argument. Agott was already in her room. And Coco.

Coco stayed behind. Qifrey found her waiting at the threshold of her room, fingers twisting nervously in the hem of her shirt.

"Master Qifrey..." He stopped and Coco lowered her gaze, "I told him. I know you asked me to keep it a secret. I know I promised. But..." She looked up at him, eyes full of worry. "I was worried."

He knelt so they were at the same height. "Coco. It's all right."

"You're not angry?"

Qifrey smiled faintly. "No."

She hesitated. "I thought you'd be upset. Because now Master Olly knows."

"I was afraid," he admitted.

"Of him?"

"No." Qifrey looked down. "Of what I would have to do after."

"That's good. So now you're not afraid anymore?"

"It's no point in afraid anymore." The cycle had already begun. All that was left was to see it through.

"..Okay," she smiled sweetly, relief loosening her shoulders. Then she said goodnight and slipped into her room.

Qifrey watched the door close. Twelve years old, and already she carried more than she should have. Then he stood. There was nothing left to do but face what they'd promised each other.

He climbed the stairs to the rooftop. Olruggio was already there, sitting on the low wall with his legs hanging over the edge, his back to the drop, looking up at the sky. When Qifrey appeared, he nodded. "Took you long enough. I was starting to think you'd find another excuse to avoid me."

Qifrey couldn't pretend the thought had never crossed his mind. He crossed the rooftop and sat beside him with the usual distance, the width they'd agreed on without ever saying so.

"That's surprising. I thought you would be angry."

Olruggio glared at him. "I am mad." He scratched the back of his neck. "I thought it was just normal heat, and it turned out you had been hiding it from me for months. So yes, I'm mad." He stood up, watching the sky. "I'm mad at myself too. Because I couldn't be someone you could rely on. That's why you'd rather keep it alone than tell me."

"It's not like that," Qifrey said quickly. "Believe me or don't, but trust wasn't the problem."

Olruggio clicked his tongue, he turned so quickly Qifrey almost took a step back. "I'm trying very hard to believe you." He looked Qifrey straight in the eye. "But you're making it difficult."

"Look, Olly. I'm not lying about that." Olruggio said nothing. The silence made it clear that wasn't enough. Qifrey closed his eyes for a moment. "All right. Do you remember what I told you at the Tower of Tomes?"

"About how you'd stop seeking your past and you are what you chose to be since then? Yes."

Qifrey walked toward the edge of the rooftop. "I never told you what made me come to that conclusion." His fingers brushed against the ribbon around his wrist. "I learned what the Brimmed Hats had done. They experimented on me."

"What kind of experiment?" Olruggio frowned. He was still angry, but the anger had found a new target.

"They put a seed inside my body." He said, looked down at the garden. "A silverwood seed."

"Huh?"

"A parasite. It lives in my eye socket, the one the Brimmed Caps took. That seed, Olly, is an inconvenient thing. Inside a body, it awakens when the host is injured. It repairs the damage. Then when the host is out of danger and settles somewhere safe, the seed grows."

Olruggio was quiet for a moment. His face was an expression of disbelief before he spurted out, "What sick thing is that?"

Qifrey's face had turned dark and unreadable. The moonlight painted his face in sharp, cold lines. "Isn't it. A seed that feeds on hope and comfort."

Olruggio's face broke, he reached for Qifrey's wrist, "How could I help you?"

"That can't be helped." Qifrey smiled faintly, it never reached his eyes, "Didn't they teach you that in theory, Olly? Once a body has been altered by magic, it doesn't return to what it was." He looked back at the moon. "Not unless you're willing to cross into forbidden knowledge."

"You know if you tell me, I'd go with you—"

Qifrey turned so abruptly that his own wrist slipped from Olruggio's grip. "Don't offer me comfort yet. I came here intending to tell you everything." Olruggio looked taken aback. Qifrey closed his eyes briefly, then spoke more gently. "So let me finish before it takes the choice away from us."

"'Frey—" 

"First, I'll tell you about us. I'm fairly certain that's the answer you've been chasing."

And so, he told Olruggio about the first night, about the heat that came too early, how they'd been clumsy, desperate, and kind with each other. The words came slowly at first. Then faster like a seal had cracked and the pressure behind it was doing the work. He told him about the question Olruggio had asked afterward, pressed against Qifrey's cheek.

He told him he'd said no, and he said: "Now you understand, Olly."

He told him how their promise had begun, and about the many times he'd reached for memory magic whenever Olruggio wandered too close to the secrets. When he finished, there was only silent from the rooftop. Qifrey waited. He had imagined this moment so many times that he almost expected the next words before Olruggio spoke them. Instead, Olruggio only stared at him. He looked as though every memory Qifrey had stolen had found its way back into him through words alone.

Qifrey said, "The rest, you already know." 

Olruggio dragged both hands over his face before burying one in his hair. "That's... that's just wrong." His voice came out hoarse. He shook his head sharply. "They did this to you..." He looked at Qifrey again, his expression caught between fury and grief. "And you thought the right thing to do was carry it alone."

Qifrey ignored that. There was no point telling Olruggio that he was only keeping the promise Olruggio himself had once asked of him. He looked out over the garden of their atelier. For a moment, his expression was unreadable. Only the tightening of his hand betrayed the anger underneath.

"I like it here... It was peaceful. If I had a choice, I would have wanted to see what you looked like when we grew old together." The calm in his voice finally cracked,  revealing the anger sat underneath. "But they took that choice from me."

His eye darkened. He turned toward Olruggio, and whatever softness had been there was gone. "The Brimmed Hats decided my future belonged to them, Olly. And I will never forgive them for that."

At that, Olruggio reached out and seized his wrist. He was irritated. "This wasn't about them."

Qifrey stopped, after a few seconds, he said, "You're right," His gaze dropped to where Olruggio held him, his lips curved into a soft smile, "This is about us."

Then, without warning, Olruggio pulled him into his arms with shaking hands. Qifrey felt it against his own back and he reached for Olruggio's back in return, steadying him. 

"Why did you go to the medical tower today?" Olruggio asked, his voice muffled into his shoulders, "And don't lie to me. I'm done with that. This time, you will let me help."

"Olly—"

"No. I meant it. You don't want me to help you with the Brimmed Hats. Fine. But in this, I need to help you. We're— we're—" He stuttered, reaching for the right word. "We're together. Not official, but in my mind we are. You can't expect me to know and do nothing about this."

Qifrey looked at him, then he sighed, "You're unfair, you know that?" He pressed his hands against Olruggio's back, resting his chin on his crown and closed his eyes.

"The question, Qifrey."

Qifrey smiled. Helpless. He knew Olruggio already knew. When Olruggio had found him he didn't ask "what's wrong" but "are you feeling sick", the question too specific to be a guess. He'd probably suspected for weeks. Maybe even before Qifrey himself had understood what was happening.

He had only been waiting for Qifrey to trust him enough to say it.

Qifrey opened his mouth. The words wouldn't come easily. His throat closed around them, he managed, "I'm pregnant."

Olruggio's hand on his back didn't stop shaking. It kept moving in slow strokes, up and down. "Yeah. I figured. How long?"

"Twelve weeks."

"That explains a lot." Olruggio exhaled through his nose. "It must've been hell to deal with."

The understatement of his life. And still Qifrey shook his head, because here, held against Olruggio, nothing was hard. Nothing hurt. Even the roots had gone quiet, suspended in nihility by the warmth of being held by a man who saw him, knew everything he did and hadn't let go.

It was dangerous. The most dangerous thing Qifrey had ever allowed himself. He pressed closer anyway, right now he was a man dying of thirst who'd found water and couldn't stop drinking even though he knew it was poison.

"What do you need?" Olruggio said.

Qifrey pressed his lips thin. And then, the words came, for the first time in his life: "I need your help, Olly."

Olruggio waited patiently.

"I need to get rid of it."

He expected the flinch, the accusation. But there wasn't even an intake of breath. Olruggio's hand kept moving on his back, and when Qifrey pulled away enough to see his face, he found only a knowing patience.

Because somehow Olruggio was already three steps ahead. Already understood where this conversation had to go.

"Why?" Olruggio asked. The gentleness was unbearable. Worse than anger.

"Because I can't love it, not without the roots taking everything I built with you." His voice dropped. "Its presence comforts me, Olly. Every time it grows, the roots grow with it. Every time like that, it takes a little more. I'm afraid I can't keep our promise."

It was the truth he hadn't admitted to himself, not even in the weeks of sitting alone in his room with his hands in his hair. Olruggio held him through it. Then he pulled back, his eyes were red. He was livid. At Qifrey, for not telling him sooner. At himself, for not pressing sooner, for letting him suffer alone all this time. At the Brimmed Caps, what they'd done. At whatever governed the world, for handing this curse to a man already starving for love.

"You terrify me sometimes," Olruggio said. "You know that?"

"I know."

Olruggio looked away for long a moment, weighting the choice, then he turned back, "Fine," he said. His voice was rough. "Do it. Add it to your collection. Another thing you can blame yourself for."

"Olly."

"But you're not doing it alone." He reached up and gripped Qifrey's jaw to turn his face down slightly so their eyes met. "You hear me? This one's mine too. We're in this together."

Qifrey reached for Olruggio before another thought could stop him, before the thing inside him could remind him what always came next. Their mouths met in a kiss that shook with urgency and desperation; because he didn't know how much time they had before morning would come and take this from them too.    

His hands fisted in Olruggio's coat, mouth against his, shaking and desperate, but certain. If this memory, too, was destined to disappear, then he would make as much of it as he could.

The silverwood surged the instant Olruggio returned the kiss, a bright flare behind his eye, and the roots came. He felt them press through the skin at his temple, pale tendrils branching outward from his skin, threading between their bodies, pushing them apart.

"On my hat," Qifrey said, breathless as the roots surrounding him. "There's an erasure seal."

Olruggio ignored that, he looked at the roots and at Qifrey behind them. Then he reached through, stepped on the roots and shoved the tendrils aside with the flat of his hand impatiently and found Qifrey's face on the other side.

He kissed him again, hard at first, pouring his anger and helplessness in it. Then slowly, his hand cupped the back of Qifrey's skull, thumb resting against the pulse point behind his ear, and he kissed him gently the way he had on that first night. The roots curled around them both, tightening, Olruggio ignored them entirely. His mouth was warm and unhurried against Qifrey's, and his free hand found Qifrey's nape, he held him there.

When they parted, he didn't pull back far. His forehead rested against Qifrey's:

"Do you remember what I asked you? That first night."

Qifrey's breath caught, he nodded, "You said we could be together."

"Right." Olruggio pulled back enough to look at him. Then he said, "So. I'm asking again. Marry me."

Qifrey stared. It was absurd and impulsive for the timing, even the silverwood roots had frozen mid-reach, suspended in the air, directionless, even the parasite itself didn't know what to make of this. "You didn't ask this."

"Same thing."

Qifrey looked offended. "They are not."

"Same thing. It's— look, I'm not saying we have to do anything official. Or tell anyone. Or— I mean, the girls already think we're— that's not the point. The point is—" He stopped himself, scratched the back of his neck, looked away for half a second, then back, "The point is we have a kid. We've been doing this for years. The marriage part is just saying it out loud what everyone already knows."

"You'll forget by morning."

"I won't," Olruggio's answer came without hesitation. "I see you every day, don't I? I would remember this time."

"Liar." The word cracked in half on Qifrey's tongue. Then, quieter: "You don't even have a ring." 

Olruggio glanced around the rooftop as if expecting one to appear. Nothing. Then his eyes found Qifrey's ribbon where it had fallen between the roots. "Right." He reached past the pale tendrils and picked it up. He hesitated only long enough to look at it once before tearing off a strip. Then he took Qifrey's hand. Gently, he turned it palm-up, wrapped the ribbon around his ring finger, and tucked the end beneath itself.

"There," he said, turned Qifrey's hand over under the moon.

Qifrey looked at the ribbon on his finger. For a moment, he could only stare. Then he smiled despite himself. "It's ugly."

"It's what I've got. I could make a better one next time. Assuming I remember," as Olruggio finished the sentence, his smile faded.

Now, he looked like a man standing at the edge of a grim decision he'd already made:

"I'm going to bite you."

The laughter died in Qifrey's throat. "...What?"

"A bond mark. Permanent." Olruggio's thumb found the side of Qifrey's neck, tracing down to where the scent gland sat. "And then you erase my memory," he continued. "I'll wake up tomorrow not knowing any of this. But the mark will still be there." His thumb pressed gently against the pulse point. "I'll know you're mine. I'll know we have a child. And I won't know why."

Qifrey couldn't breathe.

"And you—" Olruggio's voice caught for the first time. He cleared his throat, annoyed with himself more than anything else. "You'll know. You'll wake up every day knowing I chose this for you. I'll touch that mark and not remember putting it there. I'll hold our kid and not remember choosing this. You'll know I did." He looked Qifrey straight in the eyes. "You carry that guilt. And you stay alive with it."

"Stop." Qifrey's voice splintered. "Olly. Stop."

"No. I know what memory erasure does. Every time it happens, I lose a little more of who I was before." He shrugged once. "Fine. If that's what it costs, then that's what it costs." His eyes didn't leave Qifrey's. "But don't make me pay it for nothing."

Qifrey's lips pressed thin, "You don't have to go this far."

"I do," Olruggio's hand rested on the back of his neck. "Stay alive." He said with rough and uneven voice, "That's all I'm asking. Just stay alive."

Qifrey stared at him, "I—"

"And in return, I will give you back the future they stole from you." He glanced downward briefly. "You. Me. Our kid."

Qifrey closed his eyes. And then, slowly, he nodded, because he wants that too. A future with the man he loved. This time, perhaps he could have it. No. There was no perhaps anymore. Olly had already placed that future in his hands. He was giving it to him.

That was all Olruggio needed. He tilted Qifrey's head to the side, pressed his mouth to the junction of neck and shoulder, and bit down.

The pain was sharp, and so bright. Qifrey's back arched and a sound tore from his throat. The roots surged inward in a frenzy, wrapping around Olruggio's arms, his shoulders, his neck, pulling him closer as the bite went deeper. Olruggio held his ground. His jaw locked, his hands gripped Qifrey's nape and he didn't let go until the mark was set.

Then he drew back. He looked at the imprint of his teeth. "There." He touched the unmarked side of his own neck. "When I remember, you owe me one."

"That's unfair," Qifrey whispered, a watery laugh escaped him.

"So is everything you've done for the last twenty years. We match."

Olruggio then reached for Qifrey's hat. He turned it over, and Qifrey watched him study the seal drew into it. "This is the one you've been using?" Olruggio asked.

"Yes." Qifrey answered, though the question felt strangely beside the point now. "Why?"

Olruggio studied the seal instead of him. "No reason. Just checking something."

Qifrey frowned. His spell being scrutinized like a faulty sigil array sat wrong with him. "It works. I've used it before. On others." 

Olruggio stopped, he looked up. "Others. You mean citizen?"

"When necessary."

"Wow," Olruggio muttered. "I don't know why I'm surprised." Before Qifrey could respond, Olruggio took the hat from his hands and set it aside. He pulled his pen and a spare sheet of parchment from his coat and began drawing. "In that case..."

Qifrey watched. From where he sat, he could only make out fragments,  "What are you doing?"

Olruggio didn't answer until the last stroke was finished. He held the page up, squinted at it against the starlight.

Then he placed the seal against his own forehead. He held it there with one hand and looked at Qifrey with the other hand still resting, against the fresh mark on Qifrey's neck.

"If this is something we have to carry, then I'm carrying my half."

He smiled. Then his eyes went blank. His hand slipped from Qifrey's neck. His body pitched forward and Qifrey caught him by waist with both hands. He pulled him close, held his full weight as he went limp against Qifrey's chest.

The roots shuddered almost immediately. Then they retreated, pulling back beneath Qifrey's skin, folding into the eye socket, withdrawing.

Qifrey held Olruggio against him. He pressed his face into Olruggio's hair. It smelled like citrus and faintly underneath vanilla. 

Tomorrow Olruggio would wake up and not know why there were teeth marks on Qifrey's neck. He might ask Qifrey about it. And Qifrey would have to look into those blue eyes and tell him that Olly was the one who put it there. Olly would only look at him and say that he didn't remember. Qifrey would smile and pretend it didn't hurt.

Because what else could he say?
None of this had ever been Olruggio's fault.

Even so... somewhere deep inside, he would still grieve. Grieve for a marriage one of them remembered twice over and the other had never known.

He held on. The stars moved. His arms shook. He held on past the shaking, past the point where his shoulders seized and his fingers cramped. Letting go meant it was over. And he wasn't for it to be over, he wasn't ready for morning.

His tears ran dry before his grip did, and the night had gone cold around them both. Then Qifrey carried him inside and laid him on the bed, pulled the blanket to his chin, and smoothed the hair from his forehead. Olruggio's face in sleep was open and unguarded, his mouth slightly parted, his brow smooth. He looked like a man with nothing to carry.

Qifrey sat on the floor beside the bed with his back against the wall. The ribbon was still wound around his ring finger. He turned his hand in the dark and looked at it. It was now a proposal that existed only in Qifrey's chest.

He didn't sleep. He watched Olruggio's face and listened to him breathe. He waited for the morning. He hated morning. Morning was when he would find out what had been taken.

When the first light finally crept through the window, Olruggio stirred. He blinked slowly. "...Ow." He rubbed at his temple before turning toward Qifrey. "You've been staring."

Qifrey hadn't realized he'd been caught. "...Yes."

Olruggio studied him for a long moment, then frowned. "You didn't sleep." Qifrey shook his head and Olruggio sighed through his nose. "Idiot."

He sat up and looked at Qifrey again. His gaze dropped to Qifrey's hand, still resting on his knee. The ribbon wound around his ring finger.

"What's that?"

Qifrey's stomach dropped. He looked down at the ribbon. He'd forgotten to take it off. He hadn't thought to remove it. "A ribbon," he said.

"I can see that. Why's it on your finger?"

"...I did it myself."

Olruggio squinted at him. The look said: that is the worst lie you've ever told me. But Qifrey also looked like he hadn't slept in days. So Olruggio let it go. "...Fine."

He stood, stretched until something cracked loudly in his back, and winced. He swung his legs off the bed and stood, then headed for the door. "I will make breakfast today," he said over his shoulder. "You should rest."

And that was it. That was morning. Morning was Olruggio's back cracking and Olruggio wanting food and nothing else.

Qifrey looked at the ribbon on his finger. For a long moment, he considered untying it. Tie it back onto the hat where it had always belonged, where it was just a ribbon. Back when they were children, and promises had seemed like simple things to keep. 

But Olruggio had already forgotten. If Qifrey untied the ribbon and let himself forget as well, he would have erased them completely.

At least one of them had to remember.

So he left the ribbon where it was, pressing it to his lips. Then he held his hand against his chest, over the place where his heart was pulsing. It was still beating. Because Olruggio had chosen that it should.

Qifrey stood up and went downstairs. There were still people waiting to be cared for.

  ｡ ＿＿＿ °‧ 𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆟 𓆝 𓆞𓆝 ·｡ ＿＿＿ ｡

Epilogue

Life, it turned out, had a stubborn habit of continuing.

Over the following weeks, the nursery took shape in pieces. It had been the storage room at the end of the upstairs hall, between Olruggio's workshop and the linen closet, where broken instruments and old quires had accumulated over the years.

The moment Qifrey told the girls he was expecting, Tetia declared it would become the baby's room. The announcement was met with varying degrees of surprise. Agott nearly dropped her book. Richeh blinked, then her eyes went wide with realization, while Coco only smiled to herself. Thankfully, none of them asked who the father was.

Olruggio had only officially known for a day, and he was already terrible at pretending nothing had changed. Qifrey had waited three weeks after their conversation on the rooftop before finally telling him about the child. Olruggio had expected it to take longer. If he was honest, he'd braced for Qifrey to say nothing at all and let his own body do the confessing once his belly could no longer hide it.

But Qifrey came sooner than that. Olruggio had been sketching a sigil when he felt Qifrey hovering in the doorway. He noticed but didn't look up, giving Qifrey time to prepare. So he waited. Ten seconds. Twenty. Thirty. A full minute passed.

Finally, Olruggio set down his quill. "You planning to stand there all day?"

Qifrey blinked. "I need to tell you something."

"Go ahead."

Olruggio looked back at his work. Another pause too long that he almost turned around to check if Qifrey had disappeared.

Then Qifrey said, "Do you remember four months ago? The heat we spent together?"

"What about it?" 

"About that..." Qifrey's fingers tightened around the doorframe. "I'm pregnant. It's yours."

The last part was unnecessary. Qifrey had never needed to say it. Olruggio knew exactly who had been there.

Olruggio set down his pen and looked at him. "Yeah. I know." Qifrey blinked. "You smell like a bakery. Have for weeks." He rubbed the back of his neck and looked back his sketch again. "Figured you'd tell me when you were ready. Didn't think it'd be this soon. That's good."

Qifrey nodded, still bracing for something that hadn't come. Then, without looking up from the sketch, Olruggio said, "We could be together. You know that."

At that, Qifrey's face went white. His hand found the doorframe and gripped it hard enough to dent the wood, and for a moment Olruggio thought he'd miscalculated. He didn't press. He went back to the sketch, and after a while Qifrey left without another word. Neither of them brought it up again for the rest of the day.

Two weeks later, though, Qifrey arrived at breakfast with a small box in his coat pocket. He set it on the table between the teapot and the bread, as though it were nothing at all.

Olruggio stared at it. "What is that?"

"Open it."

Inside sat a ring of dark metal, it was simple and unadorned. Olruggio looked at it, then arched a brow. "I said we could be together. I didn't say exchange vows."

Qifrey looked up at him, eye bright, lip caught between his teeth, holding back. "You said it was the same thing."

"When did I say that?" Olruggio's voice was full with disbelief. "In your dream?"

Qifrey's eyes shone, and for a second Olruggio thought he might cry. Pregnancy had made him even more impossible than usual. He had caught Qifrey crying once because the bread didn't rise and the ribbon on his finger got wet while he was washing the dishes. Another time because Olruggio had promised to come to dinner and then forgotten, lost in a commission until well past midnight.  Olruggio found it almost funny, in a terrible way; this was a man who had never cried over the Brimmed Hats, or the eye they'd taken from him.

Now, part of him almost wished Qifrey would cry. Instead, Qifrey swallowed it down.

"Sorry. That was unfair of me," He reached to close the box.

So Olruggio took it from his hands before he could. "Fine." He lifted the ring out and put it on. The metal settled against his skin like it had always belonged there.

Qifrey stared at him. His hand drifted up to his right eye and pressed there gently, checking, as if to make sure this small comfort was allowed to exist.

The rings stayed on.

Even now, hauling crates out of a storage room, Olruggio still wore his.

They started that afternoon. Olruggio took care the heavy things while the girls swept and scrubbed and argued over curtain colors. His arms burned by the second trip down the stairs. His back was worse, it seized on the first. He set the crate down on the landing, braced both hands against the wall, and waited for his spine to remember how joints worked.

This was the cost of a decade hunched over a workbench, skipped meals, drank too much, slept at odd hours, and the sum total of his daily exercise was the walk from his workshop to the kitchen and back. Richeh's assessment had been, as usual, devastatingly correct. He was not a competitive candidate for anything requiring a functioning body.

But Qifrey couldn't lift. The girls couldn't lift. And Olruggio was the only adult in this house, which made his own complaints irrelevant. So he picked the crate back up and kept going.

By the time Qifrey appeared in the doorway, the room was already empty. Olruggio was sitting on the floor with his back against the bare wall, breathing hard.

Qifrey looked at the cleared room, then at Olruggio. "You moved everything."

"Noticed that, did you."

"Why didn't you use magic?"

Olruggio gestured vaguely at the walls. "Levitation sigils in a room this small, with old plaster? I'd crack every surface. Then I'd have to replaster. Then repaint. Then Tetia would want a different color and I'd repaint again." He let his head drop back against the wall. "Carrying was faster."

Qifrey studied him with an expression between concern and amusement. "You look terrible."

"Thank you."

Qifrey disappeared. Olruggio assumed he'd gone back to supervising, or resting, doing whatever he was supposed to do instead of standing in doorways judging him. Five minutes later, Qifrey reappeared carrying an ice bag in one hand and a cup of water in the other. "Lie down. On your stomach." he said.

"I'm fine." 

"Olly."

Olruggio opened his mouth to argue, met Qifrey's expression, so he lay down on the cleared floor without another word. Qifrey knelt beside him, lifted the hem of his shirt and pressed the ice bag against the seized muscle along his lower spine. Olruggio hissed through his teeth.

"Hold still." Qifrey adjusted the angle, one hand bracing the bag while the other pressed flat against Olruggio's hip to keep him from squirming. His touch was careful, he shifted the ice, found the knot, held it there. "Drink your water."

Olruggio drank his water. He didn't have a choice. Qifrey had placed the cup directly beside his face.

"You need to stretch before you lift," Qifrey said, pressing the ice harder. "And eat something with protein first. You've had nothing since breakfast."

"I had a pastry. It had an egg in it."

Qifrey glanced down at him. "The egg was in the batter, Olly. That doesn't count."

There was something deeply humiliating about laying on the floor being iced and cared by a man who was carrying his child. So he muttered, trying to remind Qifrey, "You know, you're the one who's pregnant, right?"

Qifrey looked at him as if he had just said something profoundly stupid. "I'm aware. If I wasn't, I would have carried everything myself and your back wouldn't hurt."

Unfortunately, that was true. Qifrey was lean but deceptively strong, years of sword practice, spellwork, and running after four apprentices had made him stronger than he looked. Olruggio, meanwhile, had determination. A lot of determination and enough determination to compensate for absolutely nothing else.

It was worse when he lifted his head and found all four girls watching from the doorway with identical expressions of judgment. Tetia had her arms folded. Richeh's and Agott's eyebrow was raised. Even Coco, sweet, kind Coco, was looking at him with the gentle pity.

"Hey," he warned them.

Agott turned back to the wall she'd been cleaning. "I didn't say anything."

"I can hear your thoughts from here." They all ignored that and turned back to work.

Nobody came to his defense. Olruggio huffed and looked back at Qifrey, hoping—at the very least—that he looked equally embarrassed. Instead, Qifrey was smiling. It reached his eyes, softening them until they seemed to catch the afternoon light. For a moment, it made him look years younger.

Olruggio forgot whatever he'd been about to say.

His gaze drifted lower without thinking. Qifrey's robes no longer fell straight. Beneath the clothes was the gentle curve of his stomach, still small enough that a stranger might not notice, but it was impossible for Olruggio to miss. His chest tightened. I almost lost this.

This smile. This room full of bickering girls, in an ordinary afternoon with everyone talking over one another while dust floated through the sunlight. The future he'd almost arrived too late to save. His eyes burned.

Qifrey noticed immediately. "Oh, Olly." His smile softened. "Don't cry. They're only teasing you."

°‧ 𓆝

By the second day, the room was starting to look like something. The walls were clean and the floor was swept. 

Tetia's curtains had the color of pale yellow, slightly uneven at the hem, stitched with small white flowers that Coco had added at the last minute. Richeh had placed a small pot of diadem herbs on the windowsill, claiming they "looked less empty."

Qifrey wasn't here today. He'd admitted the cramps were worse, so Olruggio had told him—very firmly—that he was staying downstairs to rest. Supposed to. Olruggio remembered very clearly telling him that. But judging by the smell drifting from the kitchen now, Qifrey had ignored him completely and started cooking instead.

The girls noticed it too, Tetia glanced toward the stairs. "Master Qifrey's cooking," while Richeh said flatly, "Master Qifrey never listens when it's about himself."

Olruggio only muttered. "Tell me about it." 

He sighed and reached for the last box on the shelf. He was pulling down a stack of old seal templates when his coat caught on the edge of the shelf. The movement knocked his notebook loose. It hit the floor. The pages fanned open, and a loose sheet of parchment slipped free, gliding across the floorboards.

Coco picked it up. She turned it over in her hands, studying the linework. Her brow creased. She'd seen this configuration before. She knew what it was. "Master Olly." She held up the page, her expression suddenly worried. "Is this a memory erasure seal? Why would you need one?"

The other girls didn't hear them, Tetia was still talking, Richeh was still sanding, and Agott still cleaning. 

Olruggio took the page from her before anyone else could notice. He glanced instinctively toward the open door. Good. Qifrey was still downstairs. Then he turned back and looked at the seal for a moment, "This? No. The structure's similar, but it wouldn't erase anything. The keystone sigil is wrong." He held it up briefly, pointing to a mark near the center. "See? Without this little line connecting here, the seal has no target. It would activate and do nothing."

Coco frowned. "Then why would you use it?"

Olruggio folded the parchment and tucked it back into his notebook, reminding himself to burn it later, "Not everything has to work to be useful," he said. He dusted off his hands. "Sometimes a spell does its job before you cast it."

"That doesn't make sense."

"Give it a few years."

Coco looked unconvinced. "But if it doesn't do what it's supposed to do..." She hesitated. "Wouldn't that make it a lie?"

"It's not— Well, it is." Olruggio grimaced. "I'm not saying lying's a good thing. Obviously. As a rule. But sometimes..." He rubbed the back of his neck, searching for words. "If telling the truth would only make someone suffer more... and the lie keeps them safe for a little while..." He trailed off, then he heard Qifrey's footsteps on the stairs and his expression softened, a small smile pulling at the corner of his mouth without him noticing:

"It's the kind of lie only someone who loves you would make."