The library of Egeria's sanctuary was vast enough to be mistaken for a cathedral. It was grandiose and ornately crafted in precious stones, marbles and metals. Unlike the rest of the mountaintop sanctuary humble, warm, and quietly divine the library was unapologetically regal, ancient, and otherworldly. Kyle had long suspected it resided in a pocket of its own reality, where hours could slip by unnoticed and books whispered memories to each other when left alone.
He wandered between the polished shelves in silence, hand skimming along spines bound in precious leather and crisply preserved, as if brand new. Eventually, he pulled a volume at random he hadn't even read the title and set it before him on one of the low reading tables beside a wide stained-glass window. It opened to a page written in an archaic tongue he couldn't quite recognize, the script flowing like musical notation across the paper.
He wasn't reading. Not really.
His eyes were on the page, but his mind was a storm of unfinished thoughts, a thousand different emotions and thoughts. They churned and folded over each other, barely untangled.
Squashing most of them he focused on the more pressing one first. Why had he run off from the courtyard in this quite corner?
He was shy.
He had never really interacted with other people much other than visiting Fontaine a few times, visiting Fontaine had felt like peeking into a world he didn't belong to one with too many people and too much noise. He had been content here on the mountain. More than content. He had found meaning in quiet days training under Egeria's watchful eye, in debates and laughter with Buer, in playing chess beneath moonlight, wrapped in silence and a sense of belonging. His heart was full at least, he had believed it was.
But now…
Now there was a fiancée.
He didn't know what to make of her. She was nothing what he expected of her, there was no instant rejection, no haughtiness he expected...mostly from the novels he read, he admitted.
A woman who had stepped into his world with a silk hurricane of laughter and emotion and earnest hope. She had declared herself joyfully unapologetically delighted by the idea of them, by the fantasy of it. No rejection. No formality. No graceful excuse to escape the arrangement.
No, instead there had been stars in her eyes, and her voice so rich with feeling had nearly undone him.
Was it hope? That was the word he'd settled on. She was filled with it. And it terrified him.
She had looked at him like he might be a miracle she hadn't dared ask for.
And he? He didn't even know how to speak to her.
He leaned back with a sigh, closing the book without having turned a page.
She had showed affection towards him quite boldly, one might think he knew how to handle it after dealing with Buer. They would be completely wrong. Because both were not the same. Buer never hoped or asked anything from him, she never demanded. She loved without any expectations.
But Focalors? There were wishes tucked into her smiles. Not demands, no but longings. She wanted to believe in him. She wanted something more.
And he didn't know if he could give it.
Guilt gnawed at him next, sharp and intrusive. How was he to explain to her that he already loved someone? That he had long since fallen for the woman who had raised her, shaped her, protected her for centuries?
Egeria.
How could he tell Focalors that the Water Archon, her mother in all ways but blood had become the quiet rhythm of his soul?
Worse, how could he explain Buer? Who, by technicality and deep emotional intimacy, was Focalors only and favorite aunt? That there was something between them as well? Soft, maybe undefined, but very real.
Did that make him her uncle?
He slumped forward slightly, burying his face in one hand.
"This is a disaster," he muttered aloud.
"You do speak, then."
Kyle froze.
The voice was unmistakable warm, lilting, and theatrically amused, like a harp string plucked too eagerly.
He glanced sideways in shock and found her already there.
Focalors.
Resting her chin delicately on his shoulder as though she had always belonged there. Her seafoam curls cascaded down, shimmering faintly under the golden light of the stained-glass window. She had appeared without a sound, as if the library itself had given her passage in reverence.
"You read most intensely," she murmured, her lips close to his ear, "for one who hath not turned a single page in half an hour."
Kyle blinked. "How long have you been there?"
"Long enough," she said with a dramatic sigh, eyes fluttering half-closed. "Long enough to behold the woeful torment upon thy brow. A most grievous expression, as though burdened by a thousand unspoken tragedies."
"I wasn't—"
She straightened, hands clasped behind her back, and began to pace in a slow, thoughtful circle around his chair like a hawk analyzing a scroll. "Perhaps thou dost hate me already," she continued, melancholic. "Perhaps my joy offends thee. Perhaps I was too bold. Too open-hearted. A foolish maiden chasing moonlight in the form of a betrothal she dared to hope was destiny."
Kyle tried to speak again, but she was already mid-monologue.
"O, cruel fate! To be cast aside ere even the first conversation! To be judged unworthy by a man who hath read more in ancient tongues than in mine eyes! What villainy is this?"
"Focalors—" Kyle tried again, but she whipped back around toward him with an expression of such intense emotional betrayal he nearly stood up.
"Tell me, then!" she cried. "Am I repugnant? Dull? Dost my presence chafe like sea salt on a fresh wound?"
Kyle gaped, half-aghast, half-bewildered. "No! No, of course not!"
"Then why," she asked, folding her arms and tilting her head dramatically, "dost thou flee like a startled fawn from the mere idea of my affection?"
"I didn't flee," he lied unconvincingly.
"You vanished in a blur of awkward bowing and muttered Latin!" she accused, poking him in the chest now.
"It was Ancient Fontanic," he muttered, cheeks aflame.
"Oh, well, that changes everything," she deadpanned.
A pause.
Kyle covered his face. "I don't know how to talk to you," he admitted finally. "You're… a lot."
She blinked.
Then smiled. Softly this time. The melodrama drained away like a receding tide.
"Aye," she said at last. "I am."
And without further ceremony, she walked around the table, sat beside him, and leaned her head against his shoulder again this time more gently, not as a tease, but a confession.
"Forgive me," she murmured. "I have lived too long without love, and far too long dreaming what it might be. When the chance came, I could not help but throw myself into it like a girl intoxicated with fancies."
Kyle stared at the opposite wall for a moment, letting her weight rest against him.
"I don't hate you," he said, quietly.
"Then that is more than many can say upon a first meeting," she replied with a small smile.
He turned his head just enough to glimpse her eyes hopeful, yes, but calm now. Softer than before.
"…You don't make this easy," he said.
"I would rather make it real," she said simply. "We need not rush. But I would know you, Kyle. Not because the world commands it. But because I wish to."
He nodded slowly.
And in that moment, the endless, echoing halls of the ancient library felt smaller. Warmer.
As if, perhaps, the mountain wasn't the only sanctuary left to him.