Chapter 15 #2
Glancing up toward the trees, he looked thoughtful. His voice, when it came, was lower. Like a thread pulled from a place most people don’t look anymore. “There was a time,” he said, “when I thought maybe I’d write books.”
I blinked. That… was not the answer I’d expected. “Stories?” I asked, cautiously.
He nodded. “Not for the world. Just for… someone. A few people. To pass the time. To remember. I used to write in margins, on scraps, when no one was watching. Little myths. Alternate endings. Stories where choices mattered more than fate. It felt like cheating, at first. Later, it felt like… dreaming.”
He didn’t look away from the sunlight.
“But I stopped,” he said quietly. “I told myself I didn’t have the time, or the right. That the hours were better spent elsewhere. The stories stayed in my head. They always do.”
I stared at him, unsure why my throat felt tight. Maybe because I could picture it so vividly. Him, alone in some forgotten hour, spinning worlds no one else would see. Holding his own stories like breath in his lungs.
“I think you should still write them,” I said before I could stop myself. “Even if it’s just for you.”
His gaze returned to mine. Something about the way he looked at me then, like I’d touched a place inside him even he didn’t visit often, made it suddenly very hard to hold eye contact.
“I gave you mine,” he said softly. “Now yours.”
Right. My truth. I took a deep breath. Let it out slow.
“When I was a kid, I used to sneak into the gardens behind the museums,” I said.
“Not just for the plants. For the quiet. For the way it made me feel like I belonged somewhere, even if I didn’t fit with the people around me.
” I smiled, a little lopsided. “I used to imagine I was the guardian of all of it. That if I sat still long enough, the trees would talk to me. That I could feel the earth breathe.”
Graven’s expression didn’t change, yet something softened in him.
“I guess I never really stopped doing that,” I added, almost shyly. “Trying to make sense of the world by listening to things that don’t talk back.”
“They do,” he said, voice reverent. “You’ve just never needed translation.”
A beat passed.
Then another.
The space between us bloomed—dense, golden, alive with things unspoken.
And I didn’t pull away.
I smiled into my coffee, feeling the heat of it warm my palms as I watched him.
“I have another one,” I said, letting the moment stretch just long enough to feel deliberate.
Graven arched an eyebrow, the faintest suggestion of curiosity playing along the corners of his mouth. “Another truth?”
I nodded. “You said you used to want to write stories. But do you actually… like them? Reading them? Watching them? Do you enjoy stories that aren’t yours?”
Something flickered behind his eyes. Something nearly boyish. Almost private. “I do,” he said, and the honesty was so immediate, so pure , it disarmed me. Then he added, “The quiet ones. The ones about memory. About things that don’t shout to matter. Not just epics. Not just endings.”
I tilted my head. “So, what? Indie films and literary fiction?”
The smile that ghosted across his mouth was surprisingly real. “Sometimes,” he said. “But I’m not above a good fantasy series either. There’s something… comforting about seeing magic treated as ordinary. As a truth the world just accepts.”
My chest ached a little. Maybe because he said it like he missed that world. Or maybe because I did too, and didn’t know it until now.
“I like that,” I said quietly. “The idea of magic being accepted.”
His gaze lingered on me. With a slow shift in his weight, he leaned slightly forward, both hands folded loosely around his mug. “My turn.”
A subtle shift. Not predatory. But intent.
I swallowed. “All right.”
Graven’s voice dropped, soft but steady. “If you could do anything— be anything—without limits or barriers… What would you do?”
The question landed like thunder in a quiet room. The puppy, lying half-curled at my feet, let out a small whine and leaned gently against my boot again, grounding me. Like he felt it too.
I blinked. My mouth opened, but no words came.
“I don’t mean in theory,” Graven said, gentler now, almost coaxing. “Not what’s safe. Not what you’ve already settled for. I mean the thing that sits at the back of your mind like a door you’ve never let yourself open.”
My fingers curled slightly around the cup. I didn’t answer right away. Because I didn’t know. Or maybe I did. Maybe I always had. But I’d never been brave enough to name it. Something moved in my chest. Like a vine brushing the edge of a memory. Something old. Something sacred .
“I think…” I began, hesitantly, “I’d build something. Not a company or a brand. Not even a museum. Something alive. A place.”
He didn’t interrupt.
“A sanctuary,” I said, the word trembling on my tongue. “Something part garden, part temple. Part archive. I don’t even know what I’d call it. I just know I’d want it to remember. And I’d want it to welcome people who don’t know where they belong and people who don’t have a place to rest.”
I looked at him then, and everything in me was raw and wide open.
“I’d want to make that place real,” I whispered. “Even if no one believed it could be.”
The silence between us split wide—sacred, shimmering, and full of things we didn’t say. For the first time since I met him, Graven looked like he didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t sure whether it was because he didn’t believe it or if it was because he did.
Graven hadn’t spoken in over a minute. Yet the silence didn’t feel empty—it felt charged with understanding. A stillness that settled over us like dust in a long-undisturbed room.
He knew— really knew—that what I’d said wasn’t just personal. It was structural. A hidden beam beneath everything I am, quiet for years, never named aloud.
His eyes never left mine, and in his steady gaze, I felt something shift—not in him, but in me. Like he held up a mirror to a truth I’d almost forgotten was mine.
Then he murmured, almost like a vow, “You could build it, you know. A place like that.”
“Could I?” I asked, half-laughing, half-hollow.
“You already carry the blueprint,” he said softly. “Some places are people first. They just don’t know it yet.”
It shouldn’t have made my heart beat faster. But it did.
I looked down, biting the edge of my lip. The puppy bumped my ankle again, his tail flicking once like approval. I reached down without thinking and ruffled his ears.
“Okay,” I said, voice quieter now. “Another one.”
Graven tilted his head slightly in acknowledgment. His stillness didn’t unsettle me anymore. It felt like safety.
“If you weren’t doing what you do now…” I trailed off, then smiled faintly. “What would you be if you were allowed to just be? Not a role. Not a job. Just… Graven.”
His eyes softened, then he dropped his gaze to the table like the answer might be hiding in the grain of the wood.
“I’m not sure I remember how to just be,” he said, a thread of something mournful threading his voice. “But if I could… I’d want to be someone who remembers people instead of managing them. Someone who helped them stay tethered to the lives they wanted, not the ones they were told to accept.”
A pause.
Then: “I think I’d want to be a lighthouse.”
I blinked. “A what?”
He looked up again, a hint of a rare, crooked smile ghosting across his face. “Not a person. Just… a fixed point. Something people can use to find their way home.”
I stared at him, every part of me pulling toward that warmth like a tide toward moonlight. That was when the air shifted. It wasn’t dramatic. No lightning. No wind. But the texture of the world changed.
Graven noticed it too. His jaw tightened the barest fraction, and the puppy rose in a silent motion, ears swiveling like a radar dish.
Then—
“Hope I’m not interrupting anything.” The voice came from just behind me, low and dry and unmistakably amused.
I turned, heart already tightening, to see Lukas—with his shining eyes and smile—leaning against the corner railing, arms crossed like he’d been watching for a while.
He raised a hand in lazy greeting. “But then again, you always did like your dramatic pauses, Graven.”
Graven didn’t move, but something about him steeled . Not anger. Just preparation.
I blinked. “Lukas?” They knew each other.
Of course they did. Everyone seemed to know each other.
He straightened with a grin, then looked past me and clucked his tongue. “Still brooding after all this time. Like a dragon’s breath, you’re consistent.”
“Leave it, Lukas,” Graven said without inflection.
“Oh, I will ,” Lukas said easily. “Just as soon as I visit with Irina, and remind you that you’re not the only one who knows the value of time.”
And then, as if summoned by cue?—
“ Hello, loves.”
Oscar’s voice rolled in like sunlight through stained glass, warm and infuriatingly smooth.
I turned to find him rounding a corner with a paper bag in hand along with a to-go cup. He wore another flawless coat, gold-toned this time, with sunglasses perched on his head like he was auditioning for a magazine cover.
“Seriously?” I said under my breath. Had he truly changed in the few hours since he left the Annex?
He beamed. “Miss me?”
Graven rose to his full height, slow and deliberate. “Not now,” he said, quiet but tight. “This isn’t your game.”
Oscar grinned wider. “Sweetheart, I don’t play games. I host them.”
Then the final chill came. “Am I late?” The new voice slithered into the air like a blade slipping from a sheath.
Kassian Harpe. Or… what wore his face walked like he owned gravity. Dressed in a charcoal coat with buttons the color of old blood and his hair wind-swept in a way that looked careless but clearly wasn’t, he smiled at me, even though it didn’t quite reach his eyes.
“Fancy seeing you here,” he said smoothly, “Irina.”
Unease weaved through me and sent a chill rippling over my skin. I rose as well, the puppy pressing close to my leg again like a velvet shield. I wasn’t sure which one of us was trembling or if it was both.
Graven stepped half a pace closer to me, not touching—but there. Present. He didn’t say anything, but it felt like a line had been drawn.
Kassian’s eyes gleamed. “Tense? Don’t worry. I just wanted to say hello.”
Oscar let out a breath like a stage sigh. “And I just wanted pastries. Look what we’ve become.”
Lukas rolled his eyes. “Can we skip the part where everyone postures and pretends they’re not circling the same flame?”
Graven’s voice dropped low, nearly guttural. “You’re all circling the wrong one.”
That silence returned—but it was sharp now. Like a pause before something splintered.
I touched Graven’s arm. Not hard. Just enough.
“Are you alright?” I asked him softly, honestly.
His gaze dropped to me—fast, startled almost—but the moment it found mine, the tension around his mouth loosened.
He nodded once.
“Yes,” he said. “Now I am.” But his hand hovered near mine like he wasn’t quite ready to let go. Behind us, the gods waited.
I might throw-up but yes, they were definitely gods.
Watching.
Ready.
Gods .