The night had thickened around Blackwood Manor, cloaking its spires in velvet dark. In the chamber where Elias slept, silence reigned—deep and reverent, broken only by the shallow rhythm of his breath and the distant rustling of trees in wind. August lay in his own room not far, curled on his side, half-shivering beneath sheets he hadn't remembered pulling over himself. His body rested. But his soul—
Was elsewhere.
The dream began as it always did:
With firelight.
Warm, flickering, golden. It danced along the edges of velvet curtains and polished floorboards, brushing the wood-paneled walls of a room he could not remember, but always knew. The scent of lavender and old books. The hush of a quiet evening. And there—
His mother.
Standing by the window in a gown of cream and pale green, holding something in her arms. A bundle. A boy. A child, but blurred—features soft, like watercolors before they've dried. His mother turned her face toward August, the same face from the portraits, the same voice that echoed in forgotten corners of his memory.
"August," she whispered. "You need to protect him."
He blinked, confused. The boy in her arms squirmed faintly. The shadows lengthened behind them.
"Who?" he asked, his voice smaller than he remembered it ever being. "What do you mean?"
She stepped toward him, eyes wide with a fear that didn't belong in her gentle face. She cradled the boy tighter, desperation bleeding into every line of her expression.
"You must save him," she said. "Before it's too late."
And then—
That sound.
A long, slow creak.
Like a door opening where no door should be.
The shadows shifted.
A figure began to emerge behind her—a tall silhouette, long-limbed and hunched, like shadow given bone. His mother turned her head slowly, and terror swallowed her whole.
"August," she said, voice cracking now, "please—please protect him—"
But it was too late.
The fire bloomed behind her, rising like a serpent made of light and hunger. It swallowed the curtains, the wood, the sky. Her figure became a silhouette. Then flame.
"No!" August tried to run to her, tried to move, but his feet were sinking—into ash, into silence, into something far older than fear.
"Save him," she whispered one last time.
And then the fire consumed her.
He screamed—but no sound came.
And—
He woke.
His body jolted upright in bed, breath catching like a blade had been driven through his lungs. His skin slick with sweat. The sheets tangled around his legs. His chest rising and falling too fast. Eyes wide.
The fire still echoed behind his lids.
"Mother…" he whispered.
But she was gone.
Only the silence of the manor answered.
And somewhere, beyond the walls, the boy she spoke of still waited to be saved.
August sat in the dim stillness, chest heaving, sweat slicking the curve of his neck, the sheets clinging to him like ghosts that wouldn't let go. The fire in the hearth had dwindled to glowing coals, their orange light casting soft shadows along the floor. But inside him—everything burned.
He pressed his trembling fingers to his temple.
"What does she mean by saving…?" he whispered to no one, voice hoarse from sleep, from silence. "Why does she always appear holding that child?"
His brows furrowed. He closed his eyes again, trying to chase the edges of the dream, trying to piece together the fragments his mother left him in flames.
"If I'm in the dream… then who—who is the child?"
His breath caught.
The confusion in his chest spread like frost across glass. It wasn't just a dream. Not anymore. It never had been. It was a memory tangled with warning, with something old and waiting.
Then—suddenly—
His mind dropped into another memory.
The other dream.
The assassin. The one cloaked in shadow, the one whose blade had taken both his parents.
And the wardrobe.
The boy.
The boy who hid inside it, protected by his mother— august mother, not a stranger mother. The boy who never saw the killing. Who never emerged until the silence after.
"That boy…" August's voice was almost broken. "Who was he? Why was he there? Why would my dream show me a child I don't know?"
He stood up too fast. The room tilted. His hands braced the bedpost.
"What are you trying to show me?" he asked the air, as if she were still there. "Why do you keep showing him to me, and not his face?"
His heart pounded louder than the wind beyond the windows. In that moment, his grief was second to something else—an ache wrapped in mystery.
A child.
A massacre.
A fire.
And his mother's voice, again and again—
Protect him.
The words echoed through the chamber like prophecy too late to be understood.
But not too late to matter.
The room was quiet again. Too quiet.
August stood barefoot on the cold marble floor, a robe draped over his shoulders, his white hair tangled from restless sleep. The fire had died long ago, but the glow of dawn had not yet come. Only the dark lingered—soft, heavy, unkind.
He stood before the great portrait on the wall.
His mother. His father.
And himself.
The three of them, caught in a moment long lost. Her hand on his shoulder, his father's and August toddler in his mother arms, eyes wide and curious and untouched by grief.
It should have brought him comfort.
Instead—
"Who is he?" he whispered.
His voice trembled.
"Tell me who he is…" he said again, louder now, stepping closer to the canvas as if the brushstrokes might open their mouths and answer him.
"I'm your son," he said, voice cracking. "I'm your son!"
His hand clenched at his side, knuckles white.
"Then why…" He looked up at her face, so calm, so serene, as if she knew. As if she had always known.
"Why do I keep seeing you… holding someone else?"
The memory of the dream hit him like cold water.
The child. In her arms. The softness in her voice. The plea—protect him.
Not yourself.
Him.
"I'm right here," August whispered, tears sliding freely down his face now, trailing along the angles of his cheeks like rain carving through marble.
"I've always been right here. So who—who is he?!"
His cry cracked through the chamber like glass.
But the portrait said nothing.
Only smiled.
Only watched.
Something twisted in his chest. Not grief. Not entirely. It was something deeper. Something that whispered:
You weren't meant to know.
His hand lifted slowly and pressed against the painting—his mother's face beneath his fingers. Warmth lived only in memory now, and even that was slipping.
"Please," he breathed. "Tell me it's not a lie."
But the silence… answered like truth.
August sank into the velvet chaise by the window, the same one he had curled in as a boy when the wind howled louder than the voices in his head. The night still clung to the sky, refusing to surrender to morning, and the air tasted of old wood and sorrow. His hands trembled in his lap—pale, slender things that had once held fairy tale books and fire-warmed teacups, now clenched with the weight of a thousand questions that had no answers.
The silence throbbed.
The portrait loomed behind him like a cathedral of memory, but he dared not look again. He had seen enough for one night. More than enough.
He closed his eyes, let his breath steady, and in the stillness—
Elias.
The name came like a tide—unbidden, undeniable.
Elias.
The man who had collapsed into his arms bleeding, broken, smiling still.
August's chest ached, but differently now. He felt the shift, like frost thawing beneath the first kiss of spring. The pain was not from confusion. It was from love.
Why did you come for me? he thought, his fingers curling against the fabric of his gown. Why did you come knowing it was a trap? Knowing you'd bleed for it?
He remembered Elias's hand, so warm even while trembling, pressed against his cheek in that carriage.
"I'm not leaving you," Elias had whispered.
And August had known it was a lie.
But a beautiful one.
Tears burned again, fresh and hot, slipping down his face with no shame now. He didn't care who he had been—what secrets were locked away in bloodlines or shadows. He only knew this:
Elias mattered more than truth. More than memory. More than pride.
The one who stormed into a manor of assassins with nothing but a broken blade and a heart too foolish to quit.
The one who pressed a kiss to his forehead and whispered goodnight even as blood soaked through his shirt.
The one who had never asked him to change, and yet—August would change for him, if only to keep him breathing.
"I can't lose you," he said aloud to the empty chamber.
His voice sounded foreign. Fragile. Like a thing torn from a wound too deep to see.
"I don't care what she meant," he continued, his voice steadier now. "Whoever that boy is… I'll protect him. But not at the cost of you."
His fingers reached up, touched the dried tear tracks on his cheek.
"You're the only thing that makes sense anymore."
The wind outside whispered through the eaves.
August rose slowly from the chaise and crossed the room to the tall windows, where the first hints of dawn bled through the horizon. He pressed his palm to the cold glass, and imagined Elias waking in the room down the hall. Pale, fevered, maybe groaning in pain. Maybe smiling that crooked, stupid smile that made everything feel less sharp.
"I'll be there when you open your eyes," he whispered. "Even if it takes days. Even if you don't remember my name."
He turned from the window, crossing slowly back to the door.
"I'll stay."
His hand rested on the doorknob. He didn't look back at the portrait.
Elias was his future now.
Whatever his past had been—
It could wait.