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Lord Inquisitor Heinrix van Calox has spent decades, in realspace and the Immaterium, tracking every last minute to make sure it’s spent in service of the Imperium. He finds it impossible to do that here, in this world of sunlight and fruit trees. Time passes imperceptibly in her presence.
Well, almost.
Heinrix closes the book she had pushed into his hands, sitting up straighter. Rejuvenat treatments and the powers of a biomancer were no match for time, and his back aches from being curled up under a great oak with her.
He hears her chuckle.
“Back aching again, old man?” Aylin rubs his knee.
He scoffs, indignant, and taps her lightly on the head with her little book of poems.
“You’re one to talk.”
That just makes her laugh harder, the lines around her eyes folding into their familiar positions when she smiles. How many of them had he missed? He looks into her eyes, one hand gently cupping her cheek, his thumb running along the underside of her eye. Warm brown like amasec, like the cherry wood Regicide set he kept in his office, even when he no longer had time to play, because the color of the pieces matched her eyes.
His interrogator had remarked on it. Why did the Lord Inquisitor keep a Regicide board he never seemed interested in playing with? Was it out of need to signal to his office’s visitors that he was a civil man, one that could be reasoned with if they obeyed the Lex Imperialis?
Heinrix humored him. Allowed the young man, whose heart still burned with a zeal of service that had been replaced in him years ago, to believe that the Lord Inquisitor was the Lord Inquisitor, and not Heinrix van Calox.
And when he asked to play a round against his master, Heinrix turned him down.
He leans over her, his calloused fingers curling into her soft, brown hair, the same brown as her eyes, the same brown as the Regicide board sitting in his office at this very moment, witnessing the careful facade of his life be raided and burned.
Heinrix did want to play a round. But not with him.
When the sun lowers over the sky, he’s reminded again of how fast time flies around her. He offers her his coat, even though with age, he has become more susceptible to the cold. As they walk back to the house with the yellow door-
“Lemon.” Aylin corrects him, “I didn’t spend years digging up ancient texts for you to call my door yellow.”
He pulls her closer to his side and doesn’t argue about the fact that he had been the one to spend hours painting it, his back hunched and aching in the hot summer afternoon.
Instead, he presses a kiss to the top of her head, “I wanted to write you a poem for two days now.”
When they sit down that evening, huddled together at the kitchen table over a game of Regicide, he decides to read his sorry attempt at art to her. She doesn’t tell him whether she finds it good or bad.
Only a, “What inspired you?”
“Yesterday, the sunshine made the air glow around your hair. I thought it looked like a halo.”