The world had narrowed again.
To stone.
To chains.
To breath that ached like knives beneath his ribs.
He did not know how long he had been unconscious—only that the shackles once again held him like a constellation pinned against a dying sky. Arms stretched, wrists bruised anew, throat dry with the taste of rust. His white hair clung to his shoulders, damp with sweat, heavy as snowfall before a storm.
The prison was unchanged.
And that, somehow, was worse.
He blinked once. The darkness blinked back.
There were no footsteps now. No cruel whip. No rasping voice offering commands dressed as threats. Only silence—thick, hollow, like the echo of a cathedral after its god has fled.
His spine pulsed, raw beneath fresh cloth.
Someone had wrapped him.
Someone had dared.
August's breath came slow, shallow. He tilted his head forward, white strands falling across his face like a veil torn from mourning silk. Beneath the new linen tied around his waist, his skin burned with the tender ache of half-healed agony—flesh that had been lashed, then gently washed. Not scrubbed. Tended.
It was that care he couldn't forgive.
He remembered nothing beyond the voice that ordered him to turn around—and his refusal. The hand that struck the back of his neck had been fast, precise, practiced. That was the last thing he remembered before darkness took him like a door slammed shut.
Now, lightless and chained once more, he was left with the aftermath.
> Bandages on a body never meant to be pitied.
Kindness offered where pain belonged.
Touch, unasked for. Unwelcome. Unforgiven.
His eyes lifted, slow, unblinking.
No one stood beyond the bars.
But the scent remained—faint and clinging. Water. Cloth. Lavender. Guilt.
He knew who had touched him. That boy. That fumbling excuse for mercy who had once screamed under August's teeth in the carriage. Who now returned with trembling hands and soft water like it could undo the red carved into his back.
August's lip curled. A fine crack reopened at the edge.
"If he returns…"
The words tasted of rust and silk, spoken not as a threat, but a promise.
"…I will kill him with the same hands he dared to heal."
He let his head fall back against the stone.
Let the ache rise again in waves.
He did not cry. He never cried.
He only closed his eyes—and waited.
Not for help. Not for hope.
But for the sound of that boy's steps in the hall again.
And when they came, he would be ready.
Not to plead.
But to punish.
The silence held its breath again.
Then the door groaned open.
Not loudly—no. It was the kind of sound that belonged to dreams and dungeons, the hush of metal sliding against stone like a warning half-whispered. Light flickered against the wet walls, and a shadow stretched long before the man who stepped in.
August stirred like a blade pulled from frost.
The moment the door opened, his wrists twisted within the iron manacles, pulling hard—deliberate, merciless. The pain was sharp. The flesh beneath tore. Blood slid down his arm like ink from a severed quill.
He didn't flinch.
He only stared—eyes narrowed, mouth curled in disgust. He knew that walk. Not Kellian. Not Elysian. This one was new.
Or worse—less.
A man in a cloak stepped into the dim light, taller than Kellian, lean, almost languid. The black cloak he wore had no silver embroidery, no rank, no declaration of prestige. Just dark fabric and darker intent. His gloved hands rested at his sides, relaxed—too relaxed.
His hair was short, dark, and tousled with one disobedient bang falling just across his brow, giving him the careless charm of a rogue who hadn't decided yet if he'd be kind or cruel. And his eyes—
Brown.
Warm at first glance, but wrong. Too still. Too knowing.
They fixed on August like a man inspecting a stained glass window from a ruined chapel.
August bared his teeth.
"You bastard," he hissed, voice hoarse but coiled tight with fury. "How dare you touch me. How dare you lay your filthy hands on—"
The man raised one gloved finger to his lips.
"Shhh," he said, voice like velvet drawn over a knife. "Sleeping beauty, someone might hear you."
That smile. That barely-there smirk that tugged at the corner of his mouth, like he found all this vaguely entertaining—the blood, the fury, the nobility bound to a wall.
August pulled again against the chains. Harder this time.
The bite of metal into his wrist deepened. Blood bloomed like red blossoms against pale skin.
But he didn't stop.
He refused to let this man—this creature in borrowed silk and shadow—stand there and smile at him like some god amused by its puppet.
"Touch me again," August said lowly, "and I will rip the smile off your face and wear it as a warning."
The man tilted his head, blinking slowly.
Then—softly, with mock astonishment—"You look like a cat. You know that?"
August froze.
"What?"
"A cat," the man said, stepping forward with no fear. "The kind that looks elegant and untouchable until you corner it, and it nearly takes your eye out."
He knelt—not close, but enough that his shadow fell across August's chained feet.
"You're trembling," he whispered.
"I am bleeding," August corrected. "There's a difference."
The man let out a small laugh under his breath.
August stared at him, and for a moment, his breath caught—not from pain, but from the strangeness of this one. He didn't smell of cruelty like Killian. He didn't drip silence like Elysian. This one—
This one smiled too easily.
Too comfortably.
Like a man who knew he was already written into the next chapter, and liked what came next.
Not from pain—no, he had long since silenced that part of himself—but from the sheer gall of the creature before him. The arrogance. The casual way he existed, as if the blood on August's wrists were perfume, as if standing before a shackled heir was no more remarkable than watching a moth flutter near a flame.
The assassin still crouched—calm, composed, brown eyes laced with that same insolent amusement. He tilted his head again, this time leaning in with theatrical slowness.
"What a sight," he murmured, his voice dropping to something mockingly reverent. "So lovely even in fury."
August's eyes burned like cold silver under moonlight.
Then, with gloved fingers, the assassin reached out—slowly, deliberately—and placed a single fingertip beneath August's chin. The touch was almost delicate. Almost reverent. As though August were some cursed relic he wished to admire before it shattered.
"You—" the assassin began.
But he got no further.
August surged forward with the strength of pure fury—chains screaming taut—and slammed his forehead into the man's with a crack that echoed through stone like a bell rung for war.
The assassin recoiled with a sharp grunt, the smirk finally wiped from his lips.
August's voice cut through the quiet like the crack of a whip.
"You Filthy Creature"
The question wasn't a cry. It was a curse.
The assassin staggered back, hand pressed to his brow, not quite laughing—but close.
August wasn't done.
With a snarl born of insult and disdain, he tried to lunge again—limited by the manacles, yes, but vicious nonetheless. One hand lifted, reaching for the man's hair, fingers ready to twist and tear—
—only to halt just before they touched.
He didn't know why.
Maybe it was the stillness in the other's eyes.
Maybe it was how close he'd already let him come.
Or maybe—maybe it was the echo of that last moment of mercy, the one August still hadn't buried.
His hand trembled. Not with fear. With fury.
He lowered it slowly, breath ragged, chest heaving.
And once again, he fought the chains.
He pulled with everything left in him, shoulders straining, wrists biting against iron. The cuffs did not budge. Blood slid down his arms now, warm and bright against the pallor of his skin, and yet he didn't stop. His jaw clenched, the corner of his lip split anew, and his teeth gritted as if to grind down the very walls.
The assassin watched—this time, quiet.
No smirk. No mockery.
Just watching.
And when August finally slumped against the wall again, breath harsh, limbs shaking—not with weakness, but with fury denied—he whispered low, not to the man, not even to himself, but to the void that kept listening:
"I will not die in chains.
I will not be touched again."
The assassin didn't speak.
He merely stood there for a breath longer, eyes unreadable now—no smirk, no cruelty, no pity. Just a glance. A few small glances, quick and deliberate, like one might offer a fire before leaving it to burn alone.
And then he turned.
No words.
No farewell.
His cloak whispered faintly as he passed through the door.
And August was alone again.
The sound of his own breathing returned—slow, uneven, edged with iron and dust. His wrists still throbbed. His back pulsed beneath the linen like a second heartbeat, raw and distant. But it was not the pain that stayed with him.
It was the insult.
He leaned as much as the chains allowed, letting his forehead rest lightly against the cold wall, eyes closed.
And it came then—
Soft.
Sudden.
Like the hush between lightning and thunder.
A memory.
Not of blood.
Not of chains.
Not of violence.
But of Elias.
The way he once brushed a strand of hair from August's cheek—
clumsy, reverent, like it was the first time he'd ever dared to touch anything sacred.
August remembered that touch. Not because it hurt, but because it didn't.
Because Elias didn't reach for him like he was something to conquer.
He touched him like he wanted to be allowed.
"Only him," August whispered, barely audible. "Only him…"
His voice cracked—once, quiet as a dying candle.
His hands curled slowly into fists, knuckles white against the blood-streaked cuffs. Not from rage now, but from something older. Lonelier.
He missed him.
That was the ache no one could bandage.
The wound they had no name for.
He missed Elias—not as a sword misses its sheath, but as the moon might miss its ocean.
The silence thickened, and August's throat tightened.
The prison was still, but Elias's presence filled it now—not in body, but in the spaces between memory and skin.
"You're the only one allowed to touch me."
"The only one who ever did without breaking me first."
A single breath escaped him. Not a sob. Not a sigh.
Just the kind of breath that came before a man remembered what he was fighting for.
And August, chained and bloodied, lifted his head once more.
Not because he was strong.
But because he missed him.