Chapter Text
Phainon sat in the dim hush of his room, cross-legged atop a stained velvet stool, one bony finger trailing ink across parchment as if capturing the fleeting essence of a fading dream. His spine curved like a question mark.
A single candle burned low beside him, its wax bleeding slow tears into a porcelain dish shaped like a swan. The soft light pooled over his sharp cheekbones and cast flickering shadows across the pale blue of his eyes. His charcoal pupils were vastly dilated, as if they’d seen a vision once and never quite recovered.
Although half of that was true. The vision had been but a dream, yet that golden gaze lingered in his waking thoughts. His muse, it must be. He had chased countless women merely resembling those eyes, but he knew deep down they weren't that particular shade of gorgeous golden. Still, he searched, as artists often do, for the elusive spark that ignites creation.
Phainon’s hair, that silvery frost-kissed tangle, fell in uneven waves to his collarbone. He’d tied a lilac ribbon in it earlier, then forgotten about it. It drooped now like a wilted flower against his temple. Strands clung to his brow where sweat had kissed him.
On the page before him, a bird. Thin. Fragile. Resting on a wire. He stared at it like it might speak to him if he listened long enough. “Still no voice,” he muttered, tapping the paper once. “Little birdy, speak to me. Chirp.”
His voice was quiet and airy. Not miserable, just lonely. He drew a second bird beside the first. Smaller, curved as if in flight, but caught mid-motion, wings not quite spread. He sat back, gazing at the sketch with a growing unease.
“No. Not that,” he whispered. “You don’t need company. You need an aspiration.” He struck a faint line between the birds, a sliver of distance—almost nothing. But to Phainon, it felt like an abyss.
The room smelled of drying paint, singed papers, and violets – the cologne he had spilled earlier when reaching too quickly for his sketchbook. Windows fogged. Scattered pages surrounded him, filled with faces that meant nothing. Bodies that never lasted. The residue of failed obsessions.
“I can't seem to find her,” he said softly to no one. “The one with eyes like golden syrup and soft butter.” His hand drifted again. This time, below the wire, he drew a blade.
Thin. Suspended. Like a guillotine caught in the breath before it falls. He paused.
Then added a single drop of ink, dark and round, beneath the blade’s tip.
Blood? Or a teardrop? He wasn’t sure.
Phainon pressed his thumb to the ink and smudged it. A silence wrapped around him like silk soaked in something bitter. He stared at the half-finished page. The birds. The knife. The space between them.
“I’m sick and tired of beautiful things that don’t bleed,” he murmured, eyes fixed on the wire.
“I want my piece of art to have feelings and a warm body.”
Phainon couldn’t help but yearn aloud. If he bottled it up into a puzzle of thoughts, he would faint from exhaustion. The fire crackled. Outside, the wind hummed a lullaby only madmen would understand. He closed the sketchbook with care, as if folding away a prayer.
The Masquerade Ball was tomorrow night. The silver-haired gentleman had sworn he wouldn’t go. Had scoffed at the invitation. But something behind his ribs ached.
Not for beauty or thrill. But for the slight chance of collision. Perhaps that was what he was waiting for. Yearning for another who would see the hollow in his chest and fill it with fire or carve it wider. Someone who could perceive Phainon wholeheartedly, the person beneath the oil-stained hands and silk waistcoats. Someone with a captivating, angelic kind of beauty that he could capture in a single stroke of paint.
The second bird was erased before the sun rose.
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Mydei didn’t hear the door open.
He was tightening the corset laces with a practiced rhythm, each pull scraping breath from his lungs, and tracing lines between the crimson tattoos that wrapped like a rose’s thorns over his ribs.
One veiny hand braced on the vanity, the other threading the silk like he was binding a wound. He hadn’t cried. There wasn’t enough time, no privacy, or permission.
“You’ll bruise yourself,” came a voice from the doorway. It was soft, but serrated.
Mydei froze. In the mirror, his elder brother leaned against the frame like a shadow draped in black.
As if I don't know. As if I haven't felt the sting of every pull.
“Don’t pretend to care,” Mydei spoke without turning, his voice flat. Theron exhaled – like a hiss from a serpent too tired to strike. He crossed the room, ivory hair spilling down his bare chest, faintly, velvet rugs swallowed his footsteps.
“I do care,” he said. “That’s the problem.”
Mydei didn’t respond. His golden gaze traced the outline of the circular vanity.
His fingers had already reached for the pearl necklace — Eurypon’s favorite. Cool against his palm, the pearls had been passed down like a cursed heirloom. They were a tradition in his father’s house — a final adornment before the first confirmed kill.
Am I ready?
Theron outstretched his forearm before the clasp could touch skin.
His hand closed around Mydei’s wrist — not with force, but with something worse.
Care
His grip was firm but feather-light, like he was afraid Mydei might disintegrate if grasped too tightly. Theron’s sun-warmed skin against Mydei’s soft pastiness, the pale canvas of Mydei’s arm intertwined with delicate swirls of ink, tattooed in crimson like ceremonial scarring.
His veins showed faintly beneath the surface, like a map waiting to be read by someone who never would.
“Don’t wear that,” Theron said. Mydei turned slowly, the silk of his sleeves whispering like regret. The fabric caught the light like blood just beginning to dry. His figure, lean and narrow, had been sculpted by expectation. Tilting his head at a flattering angle, yet somehow daunting in his presentation. His beige hair, tipped red like feathers dipped in blood, fell around his face in deliberate chaos.
The faintest blush of makeup highlighted his sharp cheekbones, but it was the eyes, golden and fever-bright, that refused to be softened. They burned like a defiant fire.
He met his brother’s gaze — steel-grey, like a storm held in a blade’s reflection. They were colorless, yes. But not empty. They never had been. “You wore it,” Mydei recited, voice thin and without accusation.
Theron didn’t flinch. He held himself still, every line in his face drawn with control — the only thing slipping through was the sloth-like weariness in his eyes. He smiled gently, a blissful scoff escaping his soft lips.
“And I never took it off,” he murmured, almost to himself. “That’s how it starts.”
Theron looked at him like a man watching a flame go out in a lantern he wasn’t allowed to interfere with. His gaze moved from the cherry-red gown to the faint blush of makeup dusting Mydei’s cheekbones. To the dagger hilt peeking beneath the seemingly innocent scarlet sleeve.
“You look just like her,” he murmured. Mydei’s jaw locked. “Don’t.”
Theron didn’t press; he had no desire to reignite that burning flame. Their mother—beautiful, gentle, yet hurting inside—had suffocated on a job. One of Eurypon’s earlier failures. She had taught Mydei to smile through pain. How to bake a sweet treat, to sew, and to survive moments of weakness. But never how to survive him.
Eurypon. The father who’d weaponized every loving act known to man.
Neither son had been given the skills of surviving that man’s tiring expectations. Theron had learned through bitter, bloody mistakes.
“I’m not asking you not to go,” Theron finally spoke. “You know I don’t have that power.”
“No one does,” Mydei said bitterly. “He made me for this.” Theron looked away. The silence stretched between them like a mourning veil neither of them dared to lift. Then, softly, almost as if offering a biscuit, Theron parted his lips to ask a mere favor.
“Come back with blood on your hands if you must. But come back as you. The same old Dei.”
The same old Dei. The one who used to burn cookies and hide them behind his back. The one who used to have laughing attacks at the powdered sugar in his hair. He would shove some in Theron’s as well, just to get unimpressed with the result that sugar blends in perfectly with his already snowy hair. The one who could exist in a kitchen and forget, just for a while, the weight of his legacy.
Mydei didn’t respond. I can't. The words are lodged in my throat, a lump of guilt and fear.
He turned back to the mirror. The maiden in the glass smiled with marmalade-glossed lips. But her eyes— Her eyes were a boy’s.
The reddish gown seemed entirely too classy, too extravagant for his tainted heart. His posture, perfect. A painting. A masterpiece of grief. His pretty physique helped him play the part of a damsel in distress.
Exactly as his father expected of him. That’s exactly what he had to achieve.
Theron left without another word. When the door closed, Mydei exhaled, parting his lips to whisper, “Too late, Theron. I've already disappointed you.”