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It begins, as most foolish things do, with a glance.
Not the kind one casts at a passing noble or an adversary across the ballroom floor, but something slower. Sharper. The kind that lingers when it should not, that burns at the edges of propriety and curls into the chest like a secret.
Lucas notices it first—because of course he does. He is perceptive in the same way a storm is loud: it is not for lack of trying that he ignores things, only that they refuse to let themselves be unseen.
Ijekiel looks at him like he’s reading a book in a language he once knew but has since forgotten. Like there’s something precious tucked beneath the sarcasm and spellwork. And for reasons Lucas cannot—will not—explain, he lets him look.
They are not friends.
They are not enemies, either, which is somehow worse. Lucas knows how to navigate enemies. He’s spent centuries twisting steel and spells around their necks. But Ijekiel? He is soft in all the wrong ways. Steady. Honest. A sword turned inward.
And he should not be beautiful.
(It is annoying.)
The palace is insufferable in spring.
All flowers and politics and long days of pretending not to have complicated feelings for someone he has no business noticing. Lucas drapes himself in sarcasm and shadows, lets the court whisper about the Emperor’s magician and his unsettling eyes, and pretends he doesn’t see Ijekiel in the gardens, bathed in sunlight that seems to choose him deliberately.
He is worse in daylight. Worse when he laughs. Worse when he speaks to Athanasia with gentle care, worse when he glances over his shoulder like he’s looking for someone he knows won’t be there.
Lucas tells himself he does not care.
(He lies.)
“I don't trust you,” Ijekiel says one evening. They’re alone in the library, and Lucas is watching the way his hands curl around a gilded volume like it might slip through his fingers. “But I don’t hate you either.”
Lucas blinks. “You flatter me.”
“I’m not trying to.”
It’s not a confession. But it’s something.
And Lucas—idiot that he is—takes it and pockets it like a thief. Like a man starving for something he can’t name.
They orbit.
That’s all it is, at first. Glances in passing. Conversations stitched with irritation and too much meaning. Lucas casts a spell once that shimmers too long near Ijekiel’s wrist, a tether fraying at the ends. Ijekiel brushes it off with narrowed eyes, but he doesn’t move away.
The silence between them grows heavy. And Lucas, unaccustomed to silence he hasn’t conjured, doesn’t quite know what to do with it.
It happens in the hallway outside the Princess’s room.
A brush of shoulders. An argument about a minor detail in royal correspondence. A quiet that stretches too long, until Ijekiel turns—too sharply, too close—and says:
“Why do you look at me like that?”
Lucas doesn’t answer.
Because the real answer is: Because you make me feel like the boy I used to be, and I hate you for it.
Instead, he leans in. Lets his voice dip low. “Because you keep looking back.”
It’s not a kiss.
But it’s close enough to singe.
The first kiss is not gentle.
It is not sweet. It is not soft. It is made of fire and fury and every stolen glance forged into a single, desperate moment behind a velvet curtain, breathless and shaking.
Ijekiel’s mouth is warm, too warm, and Lucas tastes defiance and restraint, the kind that has no place in royal palaces and even less in the hands of men like them. Lucas drags him in by the collar and Ijekiel — curse him — lets him.
They part with uneven breathing.
“We shouldn’t,” Ijekiel says.
"I never do,” Lucas answers, and walks away before he does something stupid like tell the truth.
But the thing with yearning is that once it starts, it becomes a language.
They speak it fluently now.
In gloved touches that linger too long, in letters that say nothing important and everything unsaid. In the way Lucas vanishes from the throne room the moment Ijekiel enters, only to reappear in doorways when the other boy is alone.
And always, always, in the way Ijekiel looks at him like he’s asking for something he doesn’t know how to want.
There’s a night—late summer, moonlight spilling like a confession across the marble—that Lucas presses him against a stone pillar and doesn’t stop. Mouth to throat, hand to hip, magic trembling under skin.
Ijekiel arches into it.
And for a moment, there is no court. No duty. No crown or magic or kingdom between them. Just touch and breath and the unbearable knowledge that they will never be just anything.
They are not lovers. Not really.
Not yet.
After, Lucas touches his hand in the dark and says, very softly:
“You ruin me.”
Ijekiel closes his eyes. “You make it so easy.”
It does not end.
It will not end.
They are made of the same storm, after all.
Two boys too careful with their hearts, too reckless with each other.
And in the quiet between war and peace, between what is allowed and what is felt, they build something wordless.
Something dangerous.
Something real.
Some things are never spoken.
Some names are never called aloud.
But when Lucas stands across the ballroom floor, gaze locked with the man who should have been his enemy and is now the only thing he cannot ignore—
He knows.
And so does Ijekiel.
And for now, that is enough.
It’s a month before they speak again.
Not because they want to. Because they mustn't.
Ijekiel avoids him with the kind of discipline that should be applauded. Lucas does not chase, because chasing means needing, and needing means falling—and he’s done that once before, when the world was younger and magic hadn’t yet bled him dry.
But he watches. Of course he watches.
He watches Ijekiel hand Athanasia a fresh stack of royal schedules, eyes kind and voice soft. He watches him stand too tall in rooms that would rather him smaller. Watches the way his hands always curl into fists when he thinks no one’s looking.
(And Lucas, traitor that he is, memorizes each clenched knuckle.)
Then it breaks — like all beautiful things do — on a rain-drenched evening outside the council chambers.
Ijekiel’s voice is low, tight. “You’ve been avoiding me.”
Lucas snorts. “You’ve got that reversed.”
A pause.
Then, softer: “Why do you always do this?”
Lucas turns. He’s soaked to the bone, black robes clinging like second skin, hair a halo of wet ink around his eyes.
“Do what?”
“Leave,” Ijekiel says, and it's not a question. “Just when I think you’ll stay.”
There’s something fragile about him in the downpour — like glass caught in a storm, still standing only because it hasn’t been shattered yet.
Lucas hates it.
He hates that it makes him want to wrap Ijekiel in silence and warmth and the kind of magic that doesn’t wound. The kind that stays.
He doesn’t say any of that.
Instead, he steps forward, closes the distance, presses one hand against the side of Ijekiel’s soaked jaw and leans in close enough to taste the unsaid.
“I’m not good at staying,” he murmurs.
“You never even try.”
Then Ijekiel kisses him like a man drowning. No permission. No questions. Just lips and teeth and hands that tremble a little too much at the edge of Lucas’s collar.
It’s not polished. It’s not perfect.
It’s real.
Lucas lets himself be kissed. Lets himself want. Just this once.
They don’t talk about it.
Not the next day. Not the one after.
But Lucas starts appearing in the same places as Ijekiel with alarming frequency.
The rose garden at dusk. The corridor outside the royal study. A quiet corner of the royal archives where no one should be, and yet—
“You’re following me,” Ijekiel accuses once, eyes narrowed but lips twitching like he wants to smile.
Lucas leans against a shelf. “You say that like I haven’t been doing it for months.”
The third time it happens, it’s behind locked doors. A diplomatic ball winding down. Moonlight slicing across their skin. Ijekiel breathless beneath him, shirt half-untucked, silver hair mussed like some fevered dream.
Lucas is slow this time. Reverent.
Like he’s cataloguing the pieces of Ijekiel no one else has ever seen—each freckle kissed, each breath caught between teeth, each sound drawn from the back of his throat like it belongs to him.
“You're dangerous,” Ijekiel whispers, voice rough.
Lucas presses a kiss to the hollow of his throat. “You make me worse.”
But want has weight. And this thing between them is no longer light.
They meet in shadow, in silence, in stolen moments that do not belong to them. Behind enchanted doors and woven illusions, always inches from discovery. Always pretending this isn’t real.
But it is.
Gods help them— it is.
Because Lucas, who never stays, now lingers.
And Ijekiel, who never takes what he cannot keep, starts to reach.
It snaps one night—too much longing, too little air.
“I can't do this in the dark anymore,” Ijekiel says, voice breaking like the edge of a sword. “I can't keep pretending you don’t matter.”
Lucas stands still. So still it hurts.
“Then don’t.”
A beat.
“I need more than this,” Ijekiel says. “More than shadows. More than secrets. If you’re going to disappear again—”
“I won’t.”
Silence.
“You always do.”
And Lucas—old, tired, terrified—steps forward and says, very quietly:
“Then ask me to stay.”
Ijekiel’s breath catches.
He doesn’t say yes. Not out loud.
But when he pulls Lucas into his arms and kisses him like he’s choosing him, choosing them, Lucas understands.
He’s staying.
This time, he’s staying.
It’s different, after that night.
Not louder. Not clearer.
Just… closer.
Lucas doesn’t vanish anymore.
He still flits in and out of shadows like the magician he is, but now he always comes back. He leaves books on Ijekiel’s desk without explanation, magicked flowers tucked between pages. A teacup that never cools. A spell that warms his hands when the winter wind starts to bite.
And Ijekiel, steady and golden and maddeningly good, begins to smile when he sees him coming.
That’s what undoes Lucas most.
Not the kisses.
Not the heat.
Not even the way Ijekiel lets him unbutton his shirt with shaking fingers under the moonlight like he’s offering up a piece of his soul.
It’s the smile.
Soft. Sure. Like Lucas is worth smiling at.
Like he belongs.
The next time it happens, it’s not rushed.
It’s not shadowed by secrecy or fueled by frustration.
It’s slow.
Gods— it’s aching.
They're in Ijekiel’s quarters, hidden behind heavy curtains and layered wards. The fire crackles low. The room smells like parchment and lavender, like sleep and things Lucas isn’t used to wanting.
Ijekiel sits on the edge of the bed, silver hair mussed from Lucas’s hands, cheeks flushed from kissing too long and too sweet.
“Are you sure?” Lucas asks, voice a threadbare thing.
Ijekiel reaches up, touches his face.
His thumb brushes just beneath Lucas’s eye, so gently it feels like a spell.
“I’ve never been surer of anything in my life.”
Lucas exhales—shaky, disbelieving.
And then he leans down. Kisses him like he’s grateful. Like Ijekiel is a miracle stitched together from all the softness the world forgot to give him.
Their clothes come off slowly. Reverently. Not like they're racing against time, but like they’ve finally found it.
Ijekiel’s skin is warm beneath his hands, all breath and heartbeat and the kind of beauty that begs to be memorized, not worshipped.
Lucas traces every inch with aching care. Leaves kisses along collarbones, down the line of his chest, over the flutter of his pulse like he’s writing a love letter with his mouth. Ijekiel sighs into the sheets, fingers tangled in Lucas’s hair, breathing ragged as he arches into his touch.
“Lucas,” he whispers—just his name, nothing more.
But Lucas hears everything in it.
Want me. Stay with me. I trust you.
And gods help him, he will.
Later, when they lie tangled together in warm sheets and even warmer silence, Lucas rests his head against Ijekiel’s shoulder and lets himself be held.
There’s nothing sharp in this moment. No snark. No magic.
Just skin against skin, breath against breath, a hand in his hair and a heartbeat he can hear beneath his cheek.
“You always feel like a dream,” Lucas murmurs.
Ijekiel laughs softly, stroking his back. “You’re the dream. I’m just the fool who keeps waking up beside you.”
Lucas doesn’t say anything.
But he presses a kiss to Ijekiel’s chest and holds on tighter.
He’s not good at staying.
But maybe—just maybe—he’s learning.
Lucas doesn’t mean to get jealous.
It’s beneath him, really—petty and human and so unnecessary. But there’s something about watching Ijekiel smile at a visiting noble’s daughter for one second too long that makes something ugly twist in his chest.
He knows it means nothing. Of course he does.
But still.
He lingers at the edge of the ballroom like a storm on pause, expression unreadable, fingers twitching with restrained magic. He doesn’t say a word. Just watches.
Watches the way Ijekiel bows politely. The way he steps back just enough to be proper. The way his eyes flick, unbidden, across the room—to him.
Lucas looks away first.
He doesn’t want to see the apology in Ijekiel’s eyes. Not when he has no right to want it.
That night, he doesn’t come to Ijekiel’s quarters.
Lucas lies awake in the tower instead, fingers curled into the worn hem of his robe, eyes fixed on the sliver of moonlight cutting across the ceiling. He listens to the wind claw at the windows. Feels his magic churn, restless and bitter.
He hates this. Hates how it softens him. How it turns his sharp edges dull with longing. He has always been the blade, never the wound.
But tonight, he bleeds.
The next morning, Ijekiel finds him anyway.
Always does.
“You're sulking,” he says, stepping into Lucas’s sanctum like he’s been there a thousand times.
Lucas doesn’t look up. “I’m brooding. It’s different.”
Ijekiel walks closer. Not hesitant. Not angry. Just present. Like he always is.
“You don’t have to be jealous.”
Lucas scoffs. “I’m not.”
A pause.
“I didn’t say it was a bad thing.”
That makes him pause. Look up.
Ijekiel is standing right in front of him now, arms crossed, expression gentle— but firm.
“You think I’d look at anyone else?” he says, voice quieter now. “After everything?”
Lucas doesn’t answer. Can’t.
So Ijekiel reaches out. Cups his face like it’s easy. Like it’s natural.
“You’re the only one,” he says. “You’ve always been the only one.”
And Lucas—sharp, ancient, terrible Lucas—closes his eyes.
Lets himself believe it.
The next few weeks are quieter.
Not softer. Never that. But steadier.
They fall into something that resembles rhythm—midnight visits and morning notes, shared glances over tea and books, fingers brushing beneath the table during council meetings.
There are still shadows, still secrets. But the fear feels smaller now. Less like a wall, more like a veil.
They don’t name it.
But it’s there.
Lucas catches a cold.
It’s ridiculous. He’s a magician of unfathomable power, breaker of curses, destroyer of ancient beasts—and he’s shivering under a mountain of blankets with a fever and a very pink nose.
Ijekiel finds him like that, of course.
Brings tea. And soup. And an expression that is equal parts fond and exasperated.
“You’re impossible,” he says, adjusting the blanket around Lucas’s shoulders. “You could have summoned a healing spell. Or told someone. Or literally anything.”
Lucas sneezes. “Wanted to see if I could survive the mortal way.”
“You look like death.”
“Thank you, dearest. Your concern is overwhelming.”
But Ijekiel just sighs and brushes damp hair from his forehead.
“You’re warm,” he murmurs.
Lucas blinks. “You noticed.”
Ijekiel leans in. Presses a kiss to his burning temple.
“You’re staying in bed. No magic. No snark. No escaping through windows.”
Lucas grumbles but doesn’t argue.
Mostly because Ijekiel’s hand hasn’t left his.
That night, he dreams of stars.
Not the ones in the sky—but the ones in Ijekiel’s eyes, shining just for him.
The first “I love you” slips out by accident.
They're lying in bed, limbs tangled, a book abandoned between them and the warmth of sleep wrapping around their shoulders like a second skin. Lucas is half-asleep, hand on Ijekiel’s chest, thumb tracing lazy circles over his heart.
And then, softly:
“I love you.”
The silence that follows is immediate—and devastating.
Lucas blinks, suddenly awake. Stiffens.
Ijekiel doesn’t move.
Then he turns, very slowly, and smiles.
Gods. That smile.
“I was wondering who would say it first,” he says.
Lucas exhales, incredulous. “You knew?”
“I hoped.”
He leans in. Kisses the corner of Lucas’s mouth.
“I love you too.”
Lucas hides his face in Ijekiel’s shoulder after that, muttering something that sounds suspiciously like idiot.
But he’s smiling.
They start to delve themselves into the domesticity of it all.
Lucas leaves enchanted notes on Ijekiel’s teacups that flirt or insult him depending on the day. Teleports books directly into his arms. Accidentally sets the curtains on fire trying to “improve the ambiance.”
Ijekiel pretends to be annoyed.
But he always makes space for Lucas in the morning. Makes his tea just the way he likes it—black, scalding, and a little too sweet.
They fight over closet space. Lucas steals all the left sleeves of his uniforms “for science.” Ijekiel leaves love letters folded between grimoires.
And at night—when the palace is quiet and the world forgets them—they curl into each other like they were always meant to fit.
Sometimes, Lucas wakes in the dark, heart pounding, magic flaring from some ancient nightmare he doesn’t remember. And Ijekiel, groggy and warm, always pulls him close. Always whispers:
“You’re safe. I’m here.”
And Lucas, for once, believes it.
They are not perfect.
But they are theirs.
Something precious, unsaid, blooming in the quiet corners of a life that was never meant to be soft.
But is.
With him, it is.