Archive of Our Own ^beta

She is marvellous like this, even when dyed in his betrayal. Marvellous in a way that makes it impossible for him look away, even though a part of him urges restraint, begs him not to let his gaze linger on the flushed crimson blooming across her cheeks, before regret could crawl through him like mould through a bruised peach — fuzzy and soft at the surface, but creeping inward with a sickly inevitability.

He wonders, briefly, how she must be feeling right now – she spoke of their vow, but does she truly remember anything from before what they are now? How does she feel, being on the receiving end of a devotion transcending even memory and death itself? Lifetimes wasted, never to return. He knows she won’t remember this time.

In another life, he might have taken pity. In another life, he might have given in when the Princess’s first confused sobs reached his ears, when they bore their way into his heart. In this life: “It will soon fade away, like a dream.”

“No, I don’t want to forget…”

He is certain she won’t ever remember. Not anymore.

♢ ♢ ♢

Some may have called it possessiveness, but Rafayel has always called it belonging. What else could he have hoped it to be? He couldn’t possess his beloved, not in this life nor any other. He doesn’t think he would ever want to, because what has always prevailed either way is this: when she wakes, so does he. When she aches, he burns. When she can’t sleep, he stays by her side, tells her stories — never anything too much her-and-him, lest he risked her remembering (does he hope she would?), — recalls to her the myths of his people. When she loves him, he loves her. Naturally. His life belongs to her as much as his very heart does, and in return for his offering, he receives the most tender devotion there is.

♢ ♢ ♢

“Your Quintessence will sink to the bottomless depths of the Ocean and shall lay in eternal slumber, for even love cannot sustain life forever — least of all the love of a human. It is the ceremony that will ensure Lemuria will prosper forevermore.”

This is a distant memory that by now feels more like a vague dream to him that he can barely recall. Memories have interwoven and begun overlapping to bury it under the weight of everything after, so all that remains of it now is an uneasiness settled low in his stomach, like a heavy pit.

♢♢♢

In another memory, one much clearer to him, yet one the Princess seems to have long forgotten about, Rafayel is lured in by a bait called love. In this small pocket of his memories, they were happy — happy in a way children are when they are still unburdened by the vastness of life and its weight. However, even then, he was already restrained. The tightness in his chest has always been there, and seeing the Princess from the small lake by the castle did very little to ease it, has only managed to complicate and confuse further.

For as long as he could remember, the elders had always told Rafayel to better remain obedient since it meant guaranteeing safety and prosperity. That he ought to keep his distance, remain detached, objective, supreme — everything that a true Sea God was, and everything that he wasn’t. He had never believed a word of it, had refused to imprison himself in the beliefs and illusions of his dying people.

The first time Rafayel saw the girl, he thought she could have been no older than him. She was sitting by her window, longingly gazing out past the shimmering lake and across the city in whose channels and rivers he had been lost in all day after having decided he’d had enough of the elders’ nagging — he’d chosen to take matters into his own hands and to figure out what all this talk about bonds and fate really was about and, somehow, he had managed to end up here.

How, he couldn’t explain.

The girl appeared haloed by the warm orange flicker of light behind her which gave her face an almost eery and untouchable quality that at first made Rafayel feel rather uneasy, yet he couldn’t tear his gaze away. It was after watching her for some time that he began to understand her to have been crying, could see her eyes glisten softly even all the way from his hiding spot in the lake amidst the algae. This was when he could first feel a sudden tug to his heart that had nothing to do with the fuzzy yet foreboding memories of a life he never believed to have been his and everything to do with a sudden urge to ease a sadness that he inexplicably experienced as his own. He felt himself tear up too and, confused at his sudden grief, lowered his head to splash his face with the lake’s water. After, he cupped its coolness gently, thought again about the lengthy explanations he’d had to endure about duty and sacrifice, time and time again. How it had all already bound him even in a time before he could remember. How it had always been nonsense to him. Chains around his heart, around an existence he had never asked for nor would ever understand fully, even later on.

It was under the silver light of the moon, amidst softly saturated blues, that Rafayel decided he wanted to get close to the girl — had to get close to her. Surely, all the talk of the elders was to scare him off and to discipline him for not behaving. He could already imagine Elder Amund’s words upon returning home, which just made him want to find his way back even less.

‘Your Quintessence is being foolish! Doesn’t Your Quintessence know of the importance of remaining obedient by now? Our plans have already been set in motion, so all Your Quintessence has to do is sit tight and be a stupid little brainless jellyfish that can’t do more than flow with the tide while the great adults take care of everything. Your Quintessence, Your Quintessence, Your Quintessence’ — because Rafayel was nothing if not a pawn needed only for the revival of Lemuria. But he didn’t care. He was not even of age yet, not yet burdened with whatever it was adults burdened themselves with, so he would cross the bridge of irreversible decisions once he’d get to it.

For now, half-dipped in the coolness of the water, half-soaked by the boding full moon above, Rafayel thought of ways to get close to this girl that his heart craved to set free once again.

♢ ♢ ♢

The two-tone tiles were distractingly cool in the dry warmth of the palace and Rafayel only realised he had uttered a name that felt so intimately woven into his very existence when the old maid suddenly raised her voice at him.

“How dare you! You ought to refer to Her Highness as Her Highness, if anything,” she scolded, her high cheeks raised even higher as her brows squinted downward at the same time. She gave the impression of a deflated pufferfish like this and the mental image made Rafayel smile despite himself.

The maid did not seem to like his lack of adequate reaction very much, and her face contorted further before she turned her attention back to the girl, expression softening in the kind of pretentious manner he had observed in humans many times before.

“Her Highness is royalty, and thus not merely someone to do with or refer to as you please.” Her voice dripped with sweet contempt.

“I told you before that I do not care for formalities.”

“You ought to, Your Highness,” the maid urged and placed her hands on the girl’s shoulders. “A Lemurian like him…”

Rafayel was curious to hear the rest of the sentence, but the maid simply shook her head to herself, clearly deciding her opinion would be better left unspoken. He would have liked to know the girl’s reaction to the maid’s words. Would she have believed her?

“What matters is that Your Highness is happy about her present,” the maid conceded and offered a vague smile in Rafayel’s direction — fake, he could see, the way her eyes didn’t squint with any real joy. Why did humans bother with something as trivial as this? “And I’m sure Your Highness must be quite delighted. It is not often someone gets to own a Lemurian pet.”

“A pet?” the girl echoed and looked towards Rafayel as well.

An excited shudder ran through him when their eyes met, but Rafayel could, at the same time, feel himself growing self-conscious and thus directed his gaze to the floor underneath him, took it in with great attention. The tiles in this palace were of expensive stone and cool beneath his bare feet — contrasting the oppressive warmth of the dry air surrounding him. It was the kind of texture he was familiar with from the old ruin outside of Whalefall City he’d been eagerly exploring just a few weeks ago, even if he’d never quite seen an orange this dull for stone ornamentation — pale bronze, almost.

By now, he noted, the shackles around his ankles had broken his skin, which was quite uncomfortable. He wiggled his toes a bit, metal clinking, and counted the nubs slowly like one would their fingers, tapping each one at the count of a number in his head — left to right, right to left. One to ten, and back down.

Was the girl still looking?

“Yes, a pet,” the maid confirmed, nodding. “Lemurians make fantastic pets, Your Highness. Once they are bound to their owner, they listen to every wish, every command, even if it costs them their life.”

“Even then?” the girl echoed once more. Rafayel could not discern whether she kept repeating the maid’s words due to lack of understanding or belief.

“Even then. The Lemurian boy will surely become a great servant for Your Highness. He shall keep you good company once tamed.”

“What if I don’t want to tame him?”

“I do advise Your Highness to do so.”

Silence followed then, or perhaps it was Rafayel who stopped paying attention to what was being said. Either way, he needed to consider his options for now. He had finally made it to the girl’s side. Now what? Clearly, things would not be easy. The girl seemed to be surrounded by annoying elders herself.

“I want to be alone with Rafayel.”

Rafayel blinked as the words reached his ears, and when he lifted his head again, he was met with the maid squinting at him with what he could only read as disdain — she was clearly making the connection between the name the girl had uttered, which she had learned from one of the guards earlier, and the boy who was sitting on the cool floor by the windows.

“That won’t do, Your Highness,” the maid insisted sternly, yet certainly with more compassion than she had shown Rafayel through her gaze just now. “Lemurians can be vicious creatures — he could cut Your Highness’s skin with his scales! Your Highness would be in grave danger if I were to leave the room.”

“Then I want him to stay in my chambers instead of the hall, at the very least.”

“Your Highness cannot—”

“He has his shackles still, does he not? He was gifted to me, so it is my choice.”

“Your Highness!”

Rafayel felt amused by the exchange. He watched the girl — the Princess, he willed himself to memorise — closely. There had been fear inside of him these past days. So much of it. Fear stemming mostly from uncertainty — though not as much at what might happen to him had his plans been capsized and rather because he kept thinking, What if I’m wrong? The girl had felt like a bait, luring him out of murky yet safe depths, and he couldn’t tell whether he was about to fall to his demise or finally find something that explained the sting that had always lingered in his chest like an itch he couldn’t scratch. But now that he was here, with the girl, he felt almost at ease. He could still feel a soft ache somewhere deep inside of him, but he chose to ignore it in favour of the warmth that enveloped his heart at the sight of her arguing insistently, hands gesturing wildly and her filled with mirth, with the maid.

It felt like home, familiar in its unfamiliarity.

♢ ♢ ♢

Hand in hand, they ran, tripped, and fell — delicate skin bruising everywhere but on their hearts soaring in joint freedom.

♢ ♢ ♢

“No, no. You’re doing it all wrong!” the girl exclaimed in a pouted complaint and watched as Rafayel pressed down too hard on yet another peach, the vibrant flesh giving way and denting tenderly under his thumb while he was attempting to cut it.

“I don’t understand the fuss,” Rafayel insisted as a teary pout grew on his own lips, dismayed at the girl’s chiding. “They will taste the same no matter what.”

“No, they won’t.” Her insistence almost made it seem like Rafayel had committed a heinous crime. “They’ll grow all mushy. You have to be careful with peaches.”

Wordlessly, Rafayel cut up a slice of the peach he had just bruised and popped it into his mouth. Sweetness bloomed between his teeth and he revelled in it, rare as it was for him to taste something as expensive. It eased the sting of the ointment they had clumsily applied to their bruised knees and palms.

“I don’t mind it. I’m used to fruit being overripe and mushed,” he mumbled around the softness. It was juicier and softer then and carried a hint of the taste of fermentation that intrigued him. Spoilt but not yet rotten, like something at the very cusp of grandeur before inevitable decay. Peaches were almost liminal with how short of a time they were considered ripe by people like the girl.

Like the Princess, he noted — noble as she was even in his presence.

Rafayel had come to understand over the past days that the lives he and the Princess had lived so far, despite the two of them being more or less of the same age, was vastly different. It intrigued him more than anything — to learn about her. Not only about her upbringing, but also about her, as she was right this moment, in front of him. Especially then. She appeared different to him now, when it was just the two of them sharing peaches by the sunny window, than when maids or other people were present. He wondered if it was tiring to be two people at the same time. Then again, he knew the answer himself, didn’t he?

“You’re still crying,” the Princess taunted and pointed at Rafayel’s puffed cheeks that were flush and streaked by his earlier tears.

“So are you,” he retorted and sniffled, willing the redness of his face to subside while pointing out that of her own face. “The ointment you picked from that box in the drawer stings is all.”

“It does… But bruises can become infected if you don’t treat them.”

“You won’t die from scraping your knees.” He honestly wasn’t too sure himself. Could someone die from it? He figured that it could always be worse — the ointment he usually applied at home hurt much more than this human concoction.

The Princess’s frown only deepened amidst their quarrelling, but she didn’t speak further. Clearly, her special noble lessons had taught her to fall silent when leading pointless arguments. Rafayel didn’t like it, but he too agreed that their back-and-forth was pointless, and so instead, he focused his attention back on the fruit between them as their bare feet brushed against one another under the table.

After a final sniff of her nose, the Princess offered, “Peaches represent immortality, did you know?” She placed a few neatly cut slices on the small dish on the glass table between them. They were pristine and smooth, of course. Handled with care, their white flesh warmed in the golden light of the sun streaming into the room, breaking through the glass and refracting onto the tiles below their feet.

“They do?”

“Mh-hm. I’ve read it in books,” the girl hummed in agreement before picking up a peach slice with her fingers. Despite being a princess, she didn’t seem to mind the stickiness, which was a pleasant surprise. “Do they not in Lemuria?”

Rafayel thought about this as the girl slipped the slice into her mouth and chewed, watched as her cheeks puffed slightly. He shook his head. Not peaches, perhaps, but—

“Love,” he said as soon as the thought crossed his mind. He felt inclined to pay particular attention to her reaction to this word. “To Lemurians, I suppose love is what is closest to immortality.”

She seemed intrigued by his words and her eyes lit up with curiosity and a hint of an affinity for romance. She had previously explained to him that she liked reading all sorts of tales and fables, so this didn’t surprise him.

“Love,” she echoed with a few small nods while pressing her thumb to her lip to suck the sticky sweetness off of it. She swallowed the word, and Rafayel felt it like a bruise opening in him. “That is very romantic. I’ve read Lemurians are often like that.”

“Do you like it?”

“The idea that love is immortal? That it endures?”

“Mh-hm.”

“I do. Don’t you?”

Rafayel smiled and gave a few small nods himself, although he also shrugged slightly.

“I mean, everything kind of endures,” he offered with a thoughtful tilt of his head and glanced at the cut-up peach on the plate, its deep red pit resting on ceramic white. “Only breaks down into smaller bits and pieces as time progresses to create something new. But I don’t think anything ever truly disappears.”

The girl fell silent at that, thoughtful in her expression even as she gave a few small understanding shakes of her head. It pleased Rafayel to be able to offer her something in return for the joy he felt while being with her. He had been with her for four days now, and not once had the thought of returning home occurred to him. He had never felt this free before as when in her presence.

♢ ♢ ♢

Before the Princess managed to help him escape in secret, she had played pretend in front of the nobles — something Rafayel only had come to understand much later. Despite the anticipated emptiness of their interactions over the course of their week together — seeing how all of it had been but a façade, a part of the young Princess’s secret plans — Rafayel believed at least some of it to have been genuine. Perhaps even all of it, if he felt particularly optimistic on a day of idle reminiscence.

♢ ♢ ♢

The bleeding pit like a heart — only later did Rafayel begin noticing that the flesh of a peach appeared bloodstained when at its most ripe, veiny patterns exploding carmine on his tongue, like love.

♢ ♢ ♢

Fruit, people, civilisations — anything meant to perish was salvageable if one was eager enough. And anything was ruinable if one was desperate enough.

Even love.

Especially love.

Had his bride not betrayed him, Rafayel might have felt inclined to feel more affection for the Princess of Philos. It wasn’t that he hated her per se — whether this was a good thing he had not figured out yet. But indeed, he resented her. But he also found himself to enjoy himself in her presence, even now that he was older, which was really quite troublesome. How could he feel anything but resentment towards the mere vessel of the Sea God’s heart? That was all there was to her now after all these millennia — she was meant to keep the heart safe until she’d fallen for him, and then he could accept it back from her willing hands.

Unfortunately, even if Rafayel could barely recall her face in any great detail, he was certain the Princess looked all too similar to his bride — even with half of her face covered as it was now by the makeshift blindfold he had wrapped around her eyes. The obscurity did little to stifle the small flickers of dread that had nestled in his gut some time ago. Not that it mattered right now though. Everything could be dealt with later, as for now his task was to ensure the Princess was trusting enough to offer her heart up to him.

“Your Highness’s hand still hasn’t moved,” Rafayel murmured lowly.

As with cubs, willingly letting oneself be caught during play would ensure the growth of a bond stronger than blood itself. And so he had let her win his posed challenge just like that, had let her catch him, had let the two of them topple down onto the soft floor of the tent. Rafayel’s neck was craned, the Princess’s hand right against, fingers grazing his fluttering pulse.

Despite the harsh winds rattling at the dimmed tent, the air inside felt still yet charged with a tension wholly separate from the dry sandstorm outside, as well as the from one raging inside of Rafayel’s chest.

“Your Highness needs to go lower.”

Her hand followed his words to settle atop of his heart for a few beats before it trailed lower — certainly lower than Rafayel had meant for it to go. His hand reached out to stop hers in its aimed wanderings, and he leaned close, lowering his voice next to her ear, “How terribly brave Your Highness is. But let’s stop right here.”

Pushing her back, Rafayel only belatedly noticed the lack of courtesy of keeping a noble’s wrists pinned to the ground in the way he did right now. Despite, he didn’t budge.

“I forgot to mention — a good assassin must be able to counterattack,” he offered in a low rumble.

The dark violet blindfold sat crookedly on the Princess’s face as she peered up at him with one unobscured eye, wide and startled after he had suddenly flipped them over and now had him hovering above her.

“Your Highness didn’t expect the bravery Your Highness showed to not be met with courage in response?”

Struggling weakly against the grip of Rafayel’s hands, the Princess finally gave in with a small huff of defeat. She shook her head slightly to dislodge the flimsy piece of fabric still covering her face.

“I became… distracted,” she offered and, not so subtlely, let her gaze flicker to his throat, and then lower, towards his body, before it rose to his face again when Rafayel cleared his throat.

“I am aware of that.”

“But you won, clearly. Not that it was a fair battle, of course.”

Amused, Rafayel smiled under his mask, and he ensured his eyes would crinkle enough for the Princess to see the playful mirth in them. “Is the Princess scared of the consequences of Her own actions? I can feel Your Highness trembling timidly in my grasp right now.”

“I’m not scared,” she insisted as a pout grew on her lips. She flushed, too, when Rafayel gave her pinned wrists an amused squeeze.

Rafayel’s eyes narrowed in on her further. The rosy hue on her cheeks, her own eyes filled with mirth, how they looked up at him with both challenge and curiosity.

How so very her.

“What does Your Highness think would be an appropriate punishment?”

For the betrayal of my own heart.

Her chest, in which the Sea God’s heart lay, heaved softly with something that certainly wasn’t exertion. But he paid it no mind amidst the relentless flapping of the tent walls surrounding them, caging them in.

It had been different as children when Rafayel had still been more clueless, but right now, he did resent her and her traitorous past. Had it not been for her, Lemuria would still prosper even now. Had it not been for her staged displays of love and devotion, he wouldn’t have had to lose anyone. Yet he had. Yet Lemuria was but ruins, while the Princess lived on with a heart that had never belonged to her except for in the weak moments of Rafayel’s own devotion — an emotion that was long subdued now.

She didn’t speak as Rafayel regarded her with a look he now noticed was likely intimidating her more than necessary. Because despite his hatred, scaring her was the last thing he wanted. Despite his hatred, he still wanted her to feel content, and to be safe and sound. Despite his hatred, he did not want her to die oh so very soon. Despite his hatred…

He could feel his gaze soften, even as he willed himself to stand his ground.

So long as he didn’t speak with his eyes, he could make her believe anything — and, thus, he could make himself believe anything, too.

“Your Highness has improved much, but it’s Your Highness’s reflexes that are still lacking,” he spoke almost mechanically. The words carried more care than a simple dry warning. “Carelessness leads to an assassins’s death. Remember this.”

Shaking his head, Rafayel dragged himself out of his head and finally released the Princess who continued lying still even now that her wrists were freed from his grasp.

“Why do Lemurians seek to assassinate the nobles?” she asked once she eventually lowered her hands back to her sides and pushed herself to sit up. “Is it for revenge?”

Rafayel scoffed softly. “Lemurians don’t desire something as rudimentary as revenge.”

Sitting back on his heels, he observed the fluttering walls of the tent — the linen that was once a paler ecru had long been stained by sand and dirt to offer a more smudged yet saturated grey. The tent itself held up well — not that he would have expected anything less. Really, he was only inspecting the worn fabric to put some much needed space between his body and hers. He didn’t trust himself with not acting on his feelings — resentment, or whatever else there lay by now.

In reality, by coming out to the desert today, Rafayel had hoped to be able to find not only ways to have the Princess trust him more, but also to convince himself of the distance between the two of them — to convince himself that he was still in control of what they had, and in control of his own feelings.

He’d always been good at it, and this would not change until everything was finally done and over with.

Even love, immortal as it was, was ultimately transient and had an inevitable starting point from which decline was no longer preventable. It could be ruined from liminality into near non-existence with ease. Rafayel had long pushed down any lingering traces of it to allow for his resentment to fester instead.

“I do believe revenge would be an understandable goal though, considering everything that Lemurians had to endure at the hands of humans.” The Princess’s voice was quiet — measured and caring in the way it so often was when she spoke to him. “They are inherently selfish in their actions like that. So whether you seek revenge under the guise of something else or not, I think that avenging those you love is just in the end.”

He allowed himself a smile at her words, under the safety of his mask, as she unearthed bit by bit the warmth of his embers that had always lingered. She kept doing so, and Rafayel had found it increasingly hard to protest against her unconscious advances. “Perhaps Your Highness is right.”

But betrayal was betrayal despite. His bride had coaxed him close to her only to flee with his heart in her grasp. Betrayal couldn’t coexist with love, unless he would want to consider himself a fool.

Well. Perhaps he was a fool.

Sighing, Rafayel ran a gloved hand through his hair, let the curls tangle between his fingers so he could tug on them, could relish in the sting to his scalp and trust it to ground him.

Get it together.

“Still,” he conceded with a shake of his head, “every Lemurian has their own goals and desires, and ultimately, we just want to return home.”

To a past that no longer was, love lost to the rivers of time.

“What are yours?”

“Does Your Highness want to guess?”

The Princess tilted her head in thought and regarded Rafayel closely, as if his form shrouded in the steady flicker of the lamp could reveal the very secrets of his actions. The rumours have certainly reached the castle by now after all — shadowed figures moving through the capital, noble after noble slain at the hands of Lemurians like him.

“At the very least, you don’t seem like some kind of sadist to me.”

Not having expected this response, Rafayel had to stifle laughter that threatened to bubble from his throat. He cleared it with a soft cough. “Well,” he mused, “I appreciate that Your Highness thinks of me so kindly.”

The Princess’s own lips quirked into an amused smile and she leaned back against her bag, relaxing visibly after the earlier intensity between them. Underneath her, the soft cushioning of worn fabric kept her comfortable on top of the warmed sand.

“What is it then that you want to achieve?” she asked. “Or, why do you want to achieve it, rather?”

Unsure of how to not give away too much of his selfish goals, Rafayel simply shrugged in response. “There are… certain artefacts I am looking for. And the nobles of Philos simply have far too much pride for their stolen Lemurian relics, openly presenting them to the world as if it was their own belongings.”

“So you hope that some of those stolen artefacts are the ones you are looking for?”

“Yes. I suppose it is my duty to find what pertains to Lemuria’s history.”

“You suppose?”

Another vague shrug. “I suppose.”

It was his duty, yes, but more than anything, finding the slates of the Tome of the Sea God was a burden — yet one he had been seeing through for so long by now already. It was what had always been expected of him, so despite the strain, he never quite minded it.

The Princess nodded slowly as she mulled this revelation over. “Well, as far as I am aware, we do not have any Lemurian artefacts at the castle. But I will keep my eyes peeled.”

“Thank you,” Rafayel offered, genuinely, with a smile.

Of course no slate would be at the castle. Elder Amund and the others were already busy locating the remaining ones, and all signs pointed to the Island of Songs far from the capital.

Finally finding the last slates would mean finishing everything he has ever been raised to do and think and feel. He wasn’t sure if that ultimately was a good thing or not. Endings were complicated like that, were they not? Even freeing oneself from the grasp of a traitor and harboured hatred would come with a weight on one’s shoulders, and regret, and doubt. No matter how close to the end Rafayel would come, a part would always cling to hope, he knew, because what else was there that ever endured as long? Even love had failed him, after all.

He wished it was easier. His bride had always been all he could think about. His traitorous beloved, having lodged herself like a thorn into his heart, and he had not once been able to convince himself of fully minding it. A small beating part of him had always held onto the hope of her love, even if he feared it more than anything.

How foolish of him, indeed.

Rafayel’s hand idly traced along his sheathed dagger, feeling its sure weight rest at his thigh, and he couldn’t stop the reflexive shift of his gaze to the Princess’s chest — to her heart. His hand anxiously gripped the scabbard as he felt himself compulsively wanting to ensure the sheathed blade remained right where it was.

No matter what it was he felt, soon, everything would be over — no more resentment, no more doubts, no more burdens. Outside of their bodies, life would continue, even if Rafayel so often wished for nothing more than to have more time.

♢ ♢ ♢

They would never fight, not really. Even in a previous life, it had been more of a consistent push and pull until either of them gave in, admitting to needing closure only if it meant they could continue less serious and more light-hearted quarrelling instead. Amidst their back-and-forth all those years ago over bruises of flesh and fruit too, he could not make himself hate her or even stay mad at her for long. She had been just as hurt, after all.

Rafayel had come to be able to recall memories of a shared past long forgotten somewhat more clearly once he’d come of age — not that it had made anything easier —, although they still always felt distant to him. Foreign, even. The only certainty he had was the girl. She who was currently entangled with him in the beaded curtain that dangled down from the high frame of her bed in the warm darkness of night.

Even though he tried his best to free the two of them, Rafayel’s fingers felt clumsy, not fully behaving how he’d like them to, which only added to his struggle. They trembled around the thin threads and he had to hold his breath to get them to comply to at least some extent. He couldn’t blame his body entirely. The Princess was so close to him it almost felt suffocating.

Oh, and of course, there was the peach wine he had brought from the market.

“You’re a lightweight,” mused the Princess, the sickening sweetness of fruit and liquor clinging to the breath that fanned across Rafayel’s left cheek and his lips like the most tender caress.

“I suppose I am,” Rafayel lied. “I barely had a few sips and already my fingers won’t listen. Poor me.”

Unfortunately, Rafayel was much too sober for his liking right now. His idea had originally been to attempt to ease himself into a softer, more blurry, less defined version of existence, even if for just a night with her by his side. Everything had been closing in around him these past weeks — his duty, Elder Amund’s demands, the haste he was forced to exist in. He’d been running out of time with no paths left to take — find the slates, take her heart, fulfil the prophecy, revive Lemuria. He had no other choice. All of it had driven him to feel increasingly angry at something that always was just out of his grasp. Perhaps a night like this would ease his mind enough for him to think more clearly again, to find a way out after all — that was what his plan had been.

Instead, Rafayel now eyed the empty wine bottle that had spilled over onto the tiled flooring beneath, creating a sticky mess of translucent peach after the Princess had, in her tipsy clumsiness, hit the table with her knee and knocked the glass bottle over to land with a loud thud. Both of them had jolted at the sudden noise, having tried to be quiet given the late hour and the usual secrecy of their affairs, and had got up so quickly from their respective spots to reach for the bottle that, in their frenzy, they had ended up in a mess of strings and glass beads. The Princess had tried to free herself before Rafayel could even react, with her sputtering apologies all the while, although that only managed to get them even more tightly entangled in the end.

And so, temporary yet longed-for relief spilled at his feet, he had nowhere to go but to her embrace — against his will. Not that he minded it.

He’d be a hypocrite if he did.

The thought made him smile in amusement.

“This is all because of the wine you brought,” the Princess complained in her lightly inebriated state. Her cheeks held the prettiest flush that stained her skin a colour reminiscent of the spilt wine, and her eyes carried a slightly glassy quality that made it hard for Rafayel to look away.

He should have known she couldn’t hold her liquor well. It was doubtful whether the nobles would allow her to drink any in the first place. They probably also fed her with only the most exquisite meals — anything to keep her heart healthy and the denizens prosperous.

“At least the bottle didn’t break into a hundred shards. Also, Your Highness enjoyed the wine’s sweetness either way, no?”

“That’s not the point.”

“I do believe it is,” Rafayel insisted with a huffed smile, not sure if he should enjoy the sudden irritation behind her dismissive words that saw him falter in his amusement of the situation — in a previous life, he likely would have taken it as part of some light and playful quarrelling. Now, he was too uncertain about how she felt about him to not overthink her grumbling. He returned his attention to the strings, brows furrowing in concentration. “Your Highness requested my presence stating in her letter that, and I quote, ‘the night is too beautiful for solitude.’ Everyone knows that companionship and a drink can enhance beauty and ease loneliness. It’s beating two birds with one stone.”

When Rafayel glanced at the Princess next, she was pouting. His smile widened. Heart triumphantly thumping in his chest, his fingers only trembled more however, much to his frustration.

Some slumbering part always seemed to rouse within him whenever they argued — dare it be called that considering the childish play that usually transpired. There was a need to be close to her, to feel her skin against his, to claim and be claimed in a way that would quiet any lingering echoes of uncertainty, and of pain past and present. A part of him had always been afraid that she had carved out a place in his heart only to leave it abandoned, and the only remedy for it it would be her touch, unreachable forevermore.

If the Princess truly wasn’t the same girl from all that time ago, then certainly that wouldn’t pose an issue however, right? She could ease him.

Yet what if it was still her?

And so right now, with his need for her warmth dyeing his heart deeper in hue, his clothes felt all too tight, leather rubbing against his skin in all the places where it should be her touch soothing him instead. The Princess was pressed against his chest, her left and his right arm, respectively, pulled against one another in a particularly tight embrace. Yet he couldn’t feel her. Not like this.

Not ever.

At least she must be able to feel some warmth, even with the worn dark violet leather smooth against her bare arms and hands.

Did she dislike the sensation?

She was more beautiful up close.

What did she think about him, seeing him like this?

Rafayel could barely pull his gaze away, constantly aware of the soft hue on her cheeks staining his periphery pink. It was distracting, yet he wouldn’t dare complain. If only he could place his lips to that gentle flush, have its petals unfurl against him like those of a rose offering itself in worship. Offering itself to worship — his, of her.

Yet instead of devotion, a tightness bloomed in his chest, and it brought with it hints of both confusion and irritation — like that ancient ache that couldn’t ever hope to be soothed; of love having lodged its thorns into his heart.

“You’re speaking from experience?”

“Pardon?” Rafayel already couldn’t recall what they had just been talking about, too lost in the maze of his own thoughts and feelings. The few sips of the wine he’d had had of course been nowhere near enough to make his own mind anywhere near as fuzzy as hers, no matter how ardently he wished it so now.

Seeing the Princess look directly at him — her face so close to his — made Rafayel’s own gaze waver for but a moment before he forced it to focus on a spot just below her left eye. Feeling suddenly exposed, he wished he could hide his emotions behind his mask that he’d taken off shortly after entering the chambers.

Then again, any flushing of his skin could be attributed to the alcohol, he reassured himself.

What had they been talking about again?

“…Never mind,” the Princess deflected and looked the other way with a few flustered flutters of her lashes, away from Rafayel’s face. He could see her blush properly now — it was no longer from the alcohol, the colour having grown deeper in hue and more concentrated around her cheeks the exact moment his eyes had met hers.

Rafayel’s eyes twinkled with mirth. “I could see Your Highness staring.”

“You— I’m… merely fascinated about how I can see my own reflection in your eyes,” she insisted and decided the ennui-framed sight outside her window, just past his shoulder, was suddenly far more entertaining than the man pulled against her by the tightness of the beaded curtain.

“Well? Could Your Highness see it clearly? Maybe another closer look is necessary to see all the beauty my eyes behold right now.”

The confines at Rafayel’s arm made the leather of his gloves creak softly. The Princess had pulled her entangled arm in protest at his playful remark, though all it served was the restraints around both of them to tighten, pulling the two of them even closer together.

“Do not tease me,” Rafayel warned lowly, although his voice carried a bit too much playfulness to be understood as anything truly dangerous. “Surely even a princess does not want to get into trouble for misbehaving, right?”

She shivered against him — either from the breeze coming in through the balcony door, pleasantly cool in the late summer night and carrying with it the smell and sounds of the garden below, or because of his voice so close to her ear.

He hoped it was the latter.

A part of Rafayel suddenly felt glad that his clothes prevented any of her body heat from penetrating after all.

Another, deeper part, craved to be burned.

What would her skin feel like against his fingertips? How cool could he hope her fingers to be, how hot her neck? How soft would she be? All he knew was the dryness of leather and sand, pads of fingers roughened from years of dragging himself by the hilt of his blunted dagger through the pallor of a life he never wanted.

“What did it feel like?” The girl was still looking out the window, back to times past. “When you were captured, I mean. And chained.”

Rafayel recalled the chains to have been heavy and he remembered clearly the sting of the ointment she’d applied afterwards to his chafed skin. But he figured that wasn’t what the Princess was curious about.

“Being bound with Your Highness like this right now,” he deflected in a low murmur close to her ear, attention split between her face next to his and the stubborn strings pulling their bodies together, “is certainly far more comfortable than the metal chains the guards had put on me back then.”

“Right,” the Princess conceded quickly and fell silent.

Rafayel could sense her becoming tongue-tied and smiled to himself at her increasing fluster due to their proximity that became closer even as their restraints slowly gave more room for each of them to breathe independently. It was endearing to see how somehow the intimacy of the moment only registered for her now. Then again, her tipsy exasperation might have kept her mind occupied until his breath brushed a bit too hotly against her skin, contrasting the cool breeze from outside.

“Why?”

“Well, no, I mean,” she tried again, fumbling for words, “I just figured it must have been uncomfortable. And scary. I mean, as you said, right now, it’s… clearly not as painful. Not painful at all, in fact, of course. Obviously, since metal and string are nothing alike. But, anyway — back then, you escaped well, yes? You didn’t get lost on your way back?”

Rafayel had, in fact, ended up back at the palace a good three times before he finally managed to find the right rivers, the right channels, back out of the city so he could return home. He was greeted, rather angrily, by some of the elders who had been looking for him for days — not that he’d listened to much of their complaints as they returned given that all he’d done during the long journey was to turn his head, over and over again, to look back at the shimmering gold and marble of the castle’s roofs disappearing at the distant horizon. He’d gone from one cage to the other, and even at the time, he had already been certain which of the two he preferred.

“Your Highness has never considered that perhaps I did not want to leave the palace, right?”

He had almost finished untangling them now, and his gaze remained fixed on a particularly stubborn knot at their upper arms, brows furrowed slightly. He slipped his fingers underneath it, although his gloves made it difficult for him to truly get a feel of the flimsy thread. He didn’t want to break it. Not when it was digging into her bare skin like this.

“It is curious,” Rafayel teased almost melodiously when he finally figured out how to undo the last bit of their shared cage of glass beads, tugging and twisting. “Your Highness let me go so easily back then, yet now Your Highness is insisting I come over to spend the night at least every other day. What’s more is that Your Highness is even keeping me trapped in this beaded curtain! Truly, a princess’s greed is beyond me.”

“You were like a fish on land,” she insisted in a flustered murmur. When he glanced at her, she carried a complicated expression. “There is no way I would want for you to suffer just because someone thought it would be a good idea to capture you and hand you around like nothing but a mere object.”

He would have been willing to remain shackled by her side even if she had never expressed her secret wish for his freedom. After their childhood encounter, Rafayel had often wondered why he had gone to such lengths for someone he had, in this life, never even met. After all, she no longer was the girl he once was close to. That was what he had always been reminding himself of. What he had to remind himself of, still.

But her care had ached, and it still did now.

He tried to ignore it — his own heart.

He ached. For her touch, her love.

How could it not be her — she who had been bound to him for all eternity? How could the elders be so convinced it wasn’t when he felt so drawn to her? How could Elder Amund nag him with his reminders constantly, driving Rafayel near mad with frustrated confusion, when he could so clearly feel tenderness bloom within his very soul and soothe him into the closest to fulfilled peace he’d ever felt every time he so much as thought of the Princess? How could he ever make himself hate his tender and beloved traitor?

Furrowing his brows in irritation, he gave the string of beads one final tug, and the girl was freed from their intertwined fate.

“I also had my reasons,” he spoke quietly, subduing misplaced anger with a slight shake of his head. He couldn’t quite hide the bitterness in his voice despite. Not from her, he knew.

He yanked at the strings still wrapped around his arm, tried to free himself too.

“But I understand. After all, Your Highness doesn’t truly know me.”

Which was a fact.

“Oh, but you know yourself?”

The tight hold of the beads pressing into Rafayel’s clothes finally giving away almost went unnoticed by him.

Disoriented at the Princess’s increasing irritation matching his, he took a step back now that neither of them were any longer entangled and glanced towards the open balcony door from where the cries of cicadas in the garden seemed to reach a sudden crescendo. Their sounds would soon quickly die.

Rafayel let out a breath containing his final pieces of anger flashing crimson, and when his gaze returned to the Princess, her cheeks were slightly puffed in a way that made his own expression inevitably soften, concluding him into tenderness.

Of course he was being unfair to her, kept secrets from her that he wished he didn’t need to protect for the sake of something he wasn’t even certain would come to fruition.

But what could he do?

“I just don’t understand,” the Princess expressed and let herself drop back onto her bedding, the fluffed material puffing further under her weight, surrounding her lap in night-dimmed white and making her appear much more fragile than Rafayel would like to admit. “You come here without question, whenever I call you. You take me to all sorts of places, show me around the city, show me the desert. You are willing to show me the sea, simply because I have asked you to.”

“Your Highness and I are not strangers,” Rafayel reminded her and fixed the untangled beaded curtain back to the frame of the bed. He could finally see the Princess clearly now — exasperated, stubborn, yet warmed by the golden glow of the light of the lamp on the small table by the bed. The small pale flame flickered a few times as he moved to lean against the wall, catching his attention for but a moment before it returned to the Princess when she spoke.

“But surely you have better things to do than show a lonely princess like me around.”

“Believe me, Your Highness, there isn’t very much for me to do these days. It is not a burden, if that is what Your Highness fears. I do enjoy our outings myself. A lot, even.”

The Princess played with the ends of the curtain, wrapped it around her fingers, as she visibly sulked.

She was feeling insecure, he knew.

After all, had he not, too, once been in her position? A being revered for nothing more than their heart, forced to exist solely for their duty while scorned when displaying even a slither of craving for independence.

Not that things were much different for Rafayel in this life.

Neither of them had asked for any of it. Both of them wanted nothing more than freedom from what bound them, and to discover life and love as it was for those without burdens so existential they were better forgotten about altogether, lifetime after lifetime.

Amidst the gentle breeze coaxing forth more soft flickers from the fire of the lamp, the colourful beads surrounding the Princess’s hand glimmered lowly, like a reminder and a warning all the same.

Ribbons had been weaved around her fingers, excluding the fourth one. There had been a ring on her hand too, once. Perhaps more than once, the more Rafayel thought about it. He could almost envision it. His fingers twitched where they held onto his left biceps, suddenly eager to reach out. To take fate into his own hands at the familiar ache he could feel burgeoning in his chest — that burning ache he slowly began to understand now as he saw the truth of her for himself, without anyone else’s convictions colouring his beliefs.

“What I mean to say,” the girl said, pushing herself into Rafayel’s perception, pulling him back into the present, here, with her, “is that I don’t understand how you are benefitting from any of this. I cannot comprehend what you could possibly want.”

You.

“Living at the palace, I have come to learn throughout my life that people would want something from me — from my heart.” Her voice carried a familiar pain, and it hurt. “Yet I have never understood what it is you want…”

Always you.

“As Lemurians, we…,” he spoke, but suddenly felt at a loss for words at being on the receiving end of an insecurity he could for once not hope to assuage within the confines that were their current roles. He felt nothing if not guilty in this moment.

“Your Highness is aware of certain Lemurian stereotypes, yes?” A vague nod from her, and he placed his hand above the left side of his chest and visibly softened — right where the mark of their bond sat, even if the Princess was not aware of this. “We are seen as very passionate, are we not? And it is true in that we don’t usually bother ourselves with endeavours we don’t care much for — it would be a waste of our time and energy when we have things of more importance to us, like love, the arts...”

Smiling to himself, Rafayel felt satisfied with having given an explanation that would suffice for now. “So when I am with Your Highness, I truly do enjoy myself too. We both benefit from spending our time together in this way.”

The girl didn’t appear pleased with his response. Or, rather, not wholly satisfied, anyway. She seemed, however, flustered, although he could not ascertain this time if it was bashfulness that coloured her cheeks or not still the peach wine, even if its fuzzy smudge was long forgotten by now.

The ache in his chest — in his heart, to be more precise — had by now turned into an almost dull sting, a steady burning sensation that made it difficult to breathe. Rafayel didn’t understand what was happening, but he also didn’t care to think further about it now. Not when he had the girl so close to him right now, so vulnerable, so his for the first time in long that he felt lighter than ever.

He needed to be closer.

“Would you feel less insecure if you had me chained?” Rafayel pressed, despite himself, his voice dropping slightly alongside his gaze. “Like you once used to.”

Caught off-guard, the girl gave him a ludicrous look.

He liked when she took his bait.

To add further fuel to the fire, Rafayel made a display of pulling forth his dagger and reached for a string of the beaded curtain, pulled it taught, and cut it off with one unceremonious flick of his wrist. Re-sheathing the blade, he unravelled the string from around the bed post and kneeled down by her feet.

“Here,” he insisted, “help me tie a bow.”

Before any word of protest could be uttered, with his left hand, Rafayel reached for the girl’s right and intertwined their fingers. He waited a moment, and another, during which he refused to look at her. He couldn’t bear the idea of her not reciprocating his rising desperation to be close to her.

“Your glove,” the girl merely interrupted.

When Rafayel stilled and raised his gaze, he saw she had not planned on saying what she did. She seemed surprised herself, which in turn eased him.

“Is Your Highness not afraid that something bad might happen if I took off my glove?” he retorted, his voice equal parts playful and husky, sultry almost. Oh, how he’d love to rest his head in her lap like this right now. “Perhaps my scales shall cut Your Highness’s skin, poison Your Highness’s blood.”

“It will be uncomfortable with your glove.”

Her stubborn insistence made his expression soften into a fond smile. “What a fearless princess Your Highness is.”

Despite the eager pull that urged him to comply, Rafayel stalled.

Any touch he had shared previously with the Princess had been dulled by the leather tightly pressed against his skin after all. It had been suffocating, yes, but more so, it had felt like one final safety net. Admittedly, Rafayel had a rather strong fear that one single touch of hers could unravel him completely, just like that — make him act out in a way he was sure to regret later on, because his skin had grown resilient due to the harsh conditions of the desert, and gentleness was not something he trusted himself with.

Yet he still wanted to touch her.

He needed to.

Just when he felt the Princess’s hand twitch, as if she was about to change her mind and retreat it in response to Rafayel’s hesitation, he pulled his own hand back first. Placing the string of beads in her hand, he straightened his left arm and tugged the two long zippers of his glove down until he could pull his hand free from the worn leather. He flexed his hand a few times, suddenly feeling insecure that his palm might grow sweaty, and silently willed it to behave.

“Here,” he offered, holding his hand palm up towards the girl from where he knelt. His tone was much more quiet now, need for control warring with his voice’s emotional inclination to waver. The same wavering stutter overcame his heart even before the girl placed her hand into his — warm, soft, familiar — and he could only hope hers was tinged with a similar flutter too.

Had she ever held hands with anyone but him? Had she ever been caressed, kissed?

His bare hand squeezed hers in response to his sudden jealous musings, to the mere idea of the girl with another — it should only ever be him. How could anyone else dare touch her in even just this way, with their hand in hers?

Rafayel didn’t comment on his unwanted squeeze, simply played it off. “Your Highness is being pampered with the best creams and lotions, I can tell,” he said, squeezing her hand yet again, and his eyes sparkled with a hint of playfulness, although it was mostly a façade by now.

Why did he feel so nervous? They were merely holding hands.

“Your hand feels… rougher than I expected,” responded the Princess, hesitating at first but then carefully running the pads of her fingers across the palm of Rafayel’s open hand.

His fingers twitched reflexively and he could feel a slight blush growing on his cheeks, a faint heat rising to his ears, and so he lowered his gaze, pretended to inspect the glass beads in his right hand — not necessarily multi-coloured like he had initially believed them to be in the dim flicker of the lamp brushing against their entwined bodies earlier, but rather two-hued, although to varying degrees of intensity. Discordant, almost.

“I thought the leather is meant to protect your skin?”

“It is.”

“It doesn’t feel like it is.”

“Is Your Highness condemning me for not using expensive lotions while I’m travelling the desert? While I, a Lemurian, am being torn apart by the sharp and hot winds on my questing?”

A laugh, and then she shook her head. He smiled.

Rafayel let himself feel her touch further and eventually returned it carefully. Almost reverently, he traced a faint symbol into the skin of her palm with his pointer finger, swirl after swirl.

“…A fish?” the girl offered.

He repeated the motion two more times, ensuring the girl truly understood it even without his words, before weaving his fingers through the gaps of hers. Rafayel hummed lowly in satisfaction and a small smile remained on his lips as he wrapped the string of beads around their joined hands, lifting and settling, trailing around, and repeating the motion a few times.

He internally sighed in relief once their hands were securely fastened together — not with a bow per se, but tightly enough despite. More tangled, even. Messier. Prettier.

Now, he didn’t need to worry about his hand shaking anymore and embarrassing him. Also, the girl felt warmer like this, skin against skin. He liked it. At last, her hand was his and so, by extension, she was too, since he had forced fate upon her once more — a fate she’d accepted freely. Yet despite revelling in his current possession of her, because this was as far as they could go — or as much as he’d allow himself to take from her, anyway —, Rafayel still craved for even more.

Because what wouldn’t he give to kiss her knuckles with that reverence he felt? To devote himself to nothing but to kiss the back of her hand, up her arm, to her collarbone, her neck, and jaw? To stake his claim for all to see because she was his after all, was she not? He was desperate to show everyone that she was, indeed, still his bride. His bride, kissed by the very depths of the sea and by his own lips, cool yet soft. His bride, devoted to him the way he was devoted to her and to their love. His bride— His.

Doubt lingered, but he was certain of it.

His thumb rubbed across her skin — as far as the string around their joined hands let him do so — and her hand twitched slightly before letting itself be coaxed into comfort in her lap under his gentle ministrations.

Intrusively, Rafayel hoped he could extend the string’s tightness to their bodies — tying each other together even more closely than earlier to the point that not even water could come between their bodies. Like a lovers’ embrace, even at the threat of them drowning. Especially then. They’d drown together, and Rafayel would be okay with it. He could keep her tied to him so that even Elder Amund couldn’t argue with how wholly intertwined their souls were, had always been.

Whether he would tie her up — all of her, to him — or merely her wrists against the softest of sheets where she’d be pinned underneath the warmth of his own body, he didn’t care for. Binding her to his whim wasn’t to keep her from escaping — she wouldn’t ever run from him, even when given the freedom to do so —, but to allow himself to indulge in all she had to offer with no reprimanding about his selfish greed from his own traitorous mind, precisely because she would willingly let him do all of it and more.

He could worship her not like a goddess but like a lover, like his bride, like his whole reason for existing and breathing and aching in this world in the first place. His lips would find hers, would travel along her jaw and neck to leave lovebites and the occasional mark of his teeth when her keens would spur him on too much, and she’d forgive him for it, would stroke his hair and urge him to keep going, to keep taking what had always been rightfully his to take from the beginning.

Because to her, she was someone taking from him, too — taking his love and his vulnerable need.

Rafayel grew increasingly aware of his own breathing, of the air sifting through his nose, of the rise and fall of his chest. Swallowing, he had to manually will his lungs to expand. To expel. To expand, to fill with her—

A squeeze of her hand in his, yet he still felt empty-handed. More than ever before.

“Fine,” she suddenly spoke up, which managed to startle Rafayel out of his increasingly turbulent and rather unorthodox thoughts. “I forgive you.”

“…Pardon?”

She was flustered herself (what must she have been thinking about?), but still looked at him — albeit somewhat vaguely and off to the side with a flutter when their eyes met. Rafayel could practically feel the thumping of her heart in the squeeze of her fingers mimicking his own.

“For confusing me so much — you exasperate me, then you become kind towards me, only to start teasing me again once I grow softer. Just don’t think I’m not still mad at you,” the Princess murmured through pouted lips.

He huffed out a smile. “Okay.”

The flutter of the sheer white curtains by the balcony door caught Rafayel’s attention alongside the gentle chirping and cricketing of the remaining nightly insects in the garden below, and he was grateful now for the cool night breeze cooling his heated skin.

Without her, he was left alone in a world filled with hatred towards him. With greed. He’d grown used to it. Lives lost and never to return because he had betrayed his very essence for love. Rafayel had never regretted it, not once, though by whom shall he be forgiven when the gravity of his sin was greater than any possible repentance he could ever do?

His loneliness always felt grand and hallowed in a way that often made him forget the mere act of being held within the girl’s gaze could change the very foundation of his beliefs, just like that. Her life — her very birth — was what had each time lured him out of the abyssal deep, made his own existence appear like something much greater and more significant than he himself believed it to be. After all, a god without their follower was nothing more than a fraud — clinging to a purpose, and to a relief, that was never truly theirs.

This was why he clung to her more than anything, no matter what shape or form she took. In exchange for his imperfections, he received not disdain, but forgiveness and devotion — the exact kind of worship meant for a god who wasn’t worthy of any of it.

And he could do well without it, without his heart. Love might have been a double-edged sword, but as long as giving up his heart was the condition for being found, Rafayel would gladly do it over and over again, so long as it was her he’d give his heart for. She’d been the only one who could find him, every time, without fail.

His beloved was the only one who would come for him if one day he sank back into the abyssal deep where no one would hear his lonely cries for solace but her.

“What are you doing?” the girl asked, her voice almost a whisper — not quite alarmed, but aware of the situation she suddenly found herself in.

“...What do you want me to do?”

Rafayel had kissed her hand that was entangled with his in the string, two beads the colours of blush pink and Egyptian blue adorning the top. Rafayel smiled at the sight of their desaturated hues. It almost felt like a cruel joke, now that he’d paid attention to their exact shades.

Elder Amund’s heedings be damned.

Everyone, his whole life, had tried to convince him that the Princess no longer was that girl from lifetimes ago — that it had merely been his existence responding to the call of the Sea God’s heart in her very chest. It almost made him scoff now that he could feel just how desperately his very soul was being set ablaze by his proximity to her alone.

There was no doubt.

That constant ache in his chest — he understood it now. It made sense like this, did it not?

Her love was what he craved more than anything, and with the Princess — his bride — so close to him now, it became harder than ever before to deny himself her attention. As confusing as it was to him, Rafayel didn’t even care anymore what shape this attention would take — affection or hatred or yet another betrayal: anything was better than distance. She should make him burn. Make him writhe in pain. Soothe his wounds and kiss his scars. Repeat it all over again until there was nothing left of himself.

“Rafayel, you—”

Another kiss, this one to the knuckle of her ring finger. “Did you know that in Lemuria, we offer a ring crowned with a single pearl to the prettiest brides?”

Of course, it wasn’t necessarily a Lemurian custom. The girl must have known, yet she didn’t say anything about it, which Rafayel was grateful for. It saved him the embarrassment of having to pretend to be unfamiliar with human affairs.

“Pearls, like love, are immortal in that they are transient,” he mused with his lips brushing against her skin. He kept his gaze on her bare fingers, tried to recall if he had ever seen the Princess wear rings or pearls. “They endure hardship and are eventually born out of suffering, and like anything, their light will one day dim, they will deteriorate and finally return to the sea — their very birth place.”

Why was he saying all this?

Rafayel fell silent for a few long moments, and even the girl did not dare interrupt his thoughts any longer now, fluster washed away by the mingling of solemn desire and what he hoped to have been affection.

“By gifting their beloved a pearl ring,” he finally resumed, “Lemurians immortalise their love in the physical realm too. Because in this way, when our bodies fade away and become one with the sea, our love too endures alongside and warms even the farthest corners of the Ocean.” Rafayel forced a small smile. “Well, once upon a time, anyway. There is no sea to carry a Lemurian’s love to their beloved anymore, I suppose. Which also means there is no longer a need for pearls, or rings.”

Or brides.

Rafayel swallowed.

The girl glanced toward his other hand, where his glove was still covering his skin almost completely safe for the necessary vent holes in the leather at his knuckles to aid circulation and prevent sweat from forming in the desert heat. On his finger there sat a ring — could it be called that, shabby as it was — that was more of a comfort to Rafayel than he’d be willing to admit, and he hoped the girl wouldn’t figure out the emotional value it carried for him. He wouldn’t know how to explain it to her. Not when she didn’t remember. It simply felt right, even after all this time. Like a reassurance that everything might just turn out fine and fate would not play its cruel hand once more.

“Though, of course, the erasure of our home doesn’t mean Lemurians will simply stop loving. We cannot help it — whether that is a curse or a blessing, I no longer know.” He paused. A self-deprecating smile replaced Rafayel’s forced one before he lifted his gaze, eyes softening upon seeing her watch him attentively, even if the expression she wore was solemn. “But to us, love is more important than life itself. We are made to perceive the person we love with all our senses — fully, utterly. It gives meaning to a Lemurian’s life to be bound to another.”

He didn’t need to explain their bond. Just saying this, she would understand, because bond or not, she must have felt the gravity of Rafayel’s devotion to her. At least he hoped she did. Whether he’d consider her his master was of little importance because no matter what, he would, without fail, return to her side. She didn’t need to ask or command anything.

Rafayel was aware of his rambling by now, repeating words he’d spoken so many times over, but couldn’t stop himself. He’d grown tired of believing in fate just because it’d been the only choice he’d ever had. Maybe like this, something could shift.

“I suppose, in this way, we are destined to outlast ourselves, our existence, alongside the foam and the pearls — beyond loss, through love and memory.”

“…Because everything lasts forever.”

Rafayel's eyes crinkled, genuinely. “Yes,” he agreed, “because everything lasts forever.”

Like pearls, like peaches.

Like his love for her.

The girl smiled, too, and nodded to herself.

He could, as he often did, feel a distant hurt that was separate from the more novel one in his heart. It was a hollow feeling far lower in his belly, like the lightest touch of memories from times past brushing against his skin. But it finally lifted slightly, the pain of his past no match for the pleasure of her presence with him, he came to understand now.

Nostalgia couldn’t touch him in his joy.

“What I’m saying is, our—,” he tried to conclude, although he wasn’t quite sure how to. Because what was it even that he had been trying to say this entire time?

Rephrasing it so he could remain vague might be best after all. Just in case.

“A Lemurian bond — the love it entails, rather — is absolute, no matter the currents of life intervening. It aligns with our passion, to crave for love so desperately that a kind of submission follows naturally too. We have killed for love, wrapping our actions into a desire so strong that, in the end, it might as well end us too. For many, it has, but it is a death worth meeting, as love is at its core.”

It would be easier to explain it in this way rather than delving into a past even he only remembered fragments of.

“That’s...,” the girl murmured, trailing off before she could finish her thought.

“It’s what?”

“Intense?” she offered vaguely. “For death to be so interwoven with your existence.”

“It is only natural.”

“Yes. It is, yes.”

It being natural of course did not mean it hurt any less. Especially when it was her. Especially then. Sea foam was sea foam, and even the promised embrace of the Ocean could be farthest away from where he was, forever out of reach, cold and impartial amidst grief.

The girl shook her head, smiled. “This is a very saddening talk,” she mused and looked down at their joined hands. She squeezed her fingers around his. “Yet there are many stories about Lemurians, about sirens, enchanting humans and killing them by drowning.”

“There are many such stories, yes.”

“Did they do it for love?” When Rafayel merely shrugged, she added, “You’re not here to drown me, are you?”

“Of course not,” Rafayel huffed out with a smile. He’d drown for her — drown others, drown himself. But certainly not her. “In what waters, do you reckon, could I drown you?”

The girl lifted her gaze to look out one of the windows, across the darkened garden toward the sea-less scape in the distance, before muttering a quiet apology and lowering her face with a hint of shame.

“You don’t need to apologise,” he insisted and mirrored her earlier action by gently squeezing her hand. He hoped he didn’t do it too strongly. He didn’t dare make her uncomfortable in any way even with that constant nagging voice in the back of his head urging him to go further, to do more, to consume and be consumed, wholly, until nothing of either of them was left but their love, like a final shimmering pearl.

“Your heart,” Rafayel found himself saying and faltered upon hearing his own voice. He felt unsure of what it was he had wanted to say.

Her heart. The Sea God’s heart.

He didn’t need it back. He couldn’t care less about drowning in the sands of Philos.

The girl’s eyes met his again and he could see both pained vulnerability and curiosity flickering in them. He held her gaze, unable to tear his own away. It’d always been like this with her — when their eyes met, truly met, he felt himself melt into something inexplicably softer. Indeed, just like a peach bruised into fermentation, ripe to the very threshold of rotting. His thoughts fell away and all that was left was a smouldering hard pit where his heart should be that both warmed and burned him from the inside out.

“...Then, my heart — is that what you want after all?”

Rafayel felt his own heart falter — stuttering once, twice — in his chest as a sudden emptiness spread to his stomach. The insects remaining cries forced themselves into his suspended perception from outside the open balcony door, and the sound almost felt deafening despite its quietness.

The girl was steadfast and had meant her words, holding his gaze, unable to see the sudden dread of familiarity that swallowed him. There was no pain in her eyes, no notion of feeling betrayal, of feeling hurt. There was merely an innocence to her question, simple as it was, that made him wonder just what it was she was feeling. What was she thinking?

How did she feel about him as he was in front of her right now? As the one person who might actually take her heart?

How much did she know?

How much did she remember?

Rafayel swallowed the panic that rose inside of him, Adam’s apple bobbing, before he licked his lips and took a slow and steadying breath.

He couldn’t deceive her.

“As Lemurians,” he spoke, voice measured, “we do not depend on Your Highness’s heart in the way the humans of Philos do.”

It wasn’t a lie. Not necessarily. Not all of it.

“So your heart is not something I want,” he conceded, truthful.

Outside, the garden had mostly stilled, and it was long time for the girl to sleep. Yet Rafayel did not wish for their night to end this way. He didn’t want any of their time together, precious and limited as it was (did it truly have to be?) to be spent mourning an inevitability they both were vaguely aware of even with all the secrets lingering in the cooled air between them.

In just two weeks, they would be out of time once more.

Wanting to lighten the mood again, he playfully added, “Your heart — it’s not something I would want. Not in the literal sense, anyway.”

The girl was slow to take in his words, having been in thought herself, but her slow making sense of his teasing coloured her cheeks a soft pink yet again, the sight of which satisfied him. He could never tire of it.

Rafayel rose from where he’d been crouching the past minutes and, feeling emboldened by the flustered display in front of him, invaded the girl’s personal space by placing his free hand on the soft sheets next to her lap that carried their tangled hands — their joined fate.

As he leaned close, Rafayel murmured lowly, “If I asked you to, would you be willing to offer me your heart?”

Growing more flustered, the Princess leaned back in response at the closing proximity, yet didn’t make any show of wanting to truly get away from him. They hovered within each other’s threshold, their mingled breaths like waves lapping at the shore. Rafayel’s eyes danced with mirth as he observed her think his question over, clearly taking it rather seriously — which he was grateful for, since he had meant it.

“...Metaphorically speaking?”

No.

Yes.

“Metaphorically speaking.”

Matching her voice to his, low and almost childishly conspiring, she asked, “Would that make us immortal?”

Rafayel blinked a few times before his smile widened, heart clenching in his chest so tightly he feared that even a single intake of breath would make a stabbing pain pleasantly spread through his entire body.

Still, or perhaps precisely because of it, he inhaled slowly before speaking.

“It would indeed, yes. I did explain it to you too when we were younger, did I not?”

“You did,” she agreed and returned the smile of his that her own eyes were drawn to suddenly.

The leather of Rafayel’s gloved hand creaked softly where his grip of the sheets tightened. He could not prevent himself from mirroring her action, and let himself glance at her lips, too.

The whole night, there had been a raging storm inside of him that had become increasingly hard to subdue. He felt anchorless, aimless in his advances that at times rose or fell, pulling him along at their whims — if Rafayel drifted too far on the tide, he would draw himself in; if he lay stranded in the ebb too long, he would force himself back to shore. Yet now, just because of that single glance to his lips, the predictable ebb and flow of his self became disrupted. Amidst surging tides, he felt like he was about to capsize and she was his one and only anchor keeping him as close to the shore as possible. Waves billowed and threatened to sweep him away, to tear his very lungs and heart apart, all because of a single look.

Rafayel wanted to touch her more — to feel more of her skin against his, to feel its warmth, its vitality, its familiarity.

He wanted to kiss her.

He needed to. Desperately and achingly so.

And so the most tender grace he could offer both her and himself was leaning in, coming close enough to feel the girl’s breath on his face once more — she didn’t even move away —, and to duck his head so he could rest his forehead against her shoulder in solemn resignation.

Because who was he kidding? Truly, who was he trying to impress, to win over, to conquer — or what, rather? Himself? His people? Fate? The tightness in Rafayel’s chest threatened to pull him under.

All he wanted was to kiss her, to touch her, to be close to her. Was that so bad? Everyone else could love who they loved yet it was him alone who was forced to sacrifice everything over and over again for the sake of others. Why was it such a sin for him to experience repose for even just once in his life?

Then again, how could someone like him be deserving of it? How could he, when all his choices had ever done was kill everything and everyone, when this was what he still was doing, with time running out, over and over and over—

“...Rafayel?” the girl prompted quietly, dragging him to shore from the murky waters of his mind.

Before he could react to her call and dismiss her worry, he felt her hand on his back. No, not her hand itself — the weight of it. Certainly not its warmth, the leather of his clothing shielding him from even that. Still, he felt it, felt how the girl slowly patted him like one would a child, frightened and alone. The kind of comfort he desperately craved for but was never sure he deserved. The kind of comfort she so willingly offered him, selflessly, without him even having to ask for it.

He needed her, still, even if it was better to not admit this to himself.

Two more weeks.

“I will protect Your Highness,” Rafayel swore then and swallowed heavily. “At any cost.”

“What are you talking about?”

Rafayel didn’t respond. He wanted to ignore time running out — the prophecy’s foretold ending nearing — and to focus instead on their intertwined hands in the girl’s lap. Her warmth, he could feel there, at the very least. It was real. She was real. As were her feelings, he could tell with how they settled oh so softly around his very being — feelings he’d have to betray, because what else could he hope to achieve? Betrayal was all he knew. Almost everyone he’d ever loved was dead. Even her, once upon a time. Again, sooner or later. His protection mattered little in the grander scheme of things when he was the one she needed to be protected from the most.

Not even within his very embrace, she had been safe from him.

But selfishly, he didn’t mind the pain fate brought him so long as the girl was by his side. Contradictorily, he had never felt this free before, even as everything was closing in around him.

Though would it have been better to not let himself get close to her in the first place after all? A part of him felt spiteful towards his younger more naïve self and for letting himself have got caught up in something that, he could see now, had always been far too great for him to ever be able to conquer. Attempting to hate her had only managed to keep him afloat for so long too.

Yet despite these flickers of regret, he couldn’t drown the urge to be surrounded by everything the girl had to offer him, neither in this life nor any other. Her warmth, her love, her whimsy, her beauty — and the pain it all brought him —, he relished in. He craved it even, he came to realise now as he rested heavily against her in lonely anguish.

It was desperate longing at its most potent. Because longing signified something — someone — worth to strife towards even during his darkest hours. It was painful in its futility, but that was what made it feel realest.

Because love — true love, the kind of devotion a god would give their follower despite the inevitability of the fate of any and all prophecies — could not exist without pain. This love was the kind that consumed, that burned and twisted every place where her soul met his. Like the sea carved the shore, relentlessly and without care, as tides ebbed and flowed. He’d never been able to deny it. It was precisely this pain that gave meaning to love, to his life. Could he even hope to exist without it? Without the chance to cast his scorched heart toward hers, without hers reaching back? The thought terrified him more than anything. He didn’t want to escape it. He feared losing this pain more than losing himself.

A burn mark where his heart was — a reminder of love all the same.

No, he would protect her. If Rafayel fulfilled the prophecy, he would live at the cost of love dying. And that, to him, was worse than eternal death itself. He had to think of something.

Anything.

“Never mind,” he dismissed the Princess’s confusion, and his own emotions. “Your Highness should try to sleep. It is late.”

He’d been choking on these feelings of longing mingling with grief for so long. Some more days, weeks, years wouldn’t hurt. Inevitably, he would die again — this time pointlessly, he figured. For once, without love to sustain him in his final moments. Yet he couldn’t hope to reach the future of a story that tormentingly repeated between life and death because of his own selfish mistakes.

He couldn’t keep dragging her into it with him.

“I don’t want to,” the Princess retorted and squeezed their entwined hands to highlight her insistence.

“Why? Surely, Your Highness must be tired by now,” he spoke lowly. “Lie down.”

Steadfast, the Princess refused to budge even when Rafayel coaxed her with a hand on her shoulder, pushing gently. He thought he could see fear in her eyes, and it hurt Rafayel more than anything to be held in such a vulnerable gaze. Her fear felt accusatory, because he knew he was the one to blame for it.

“I won’t leave,” he reassured and once more pushed against her shoulder, this time while moving to settle on the plush sheets next to her.

“You have to promise.” The Princess finally gave in and lied down, albeit reluctantly.

Rafayel huffed out a soft smile and helped her get settled, squeezed her hand as he sat down by her side, back against the bed’s headboard.

“Promise me,” she insisted.

“Your Highness will always remain in my thoughts. And in my heart.”

This seemed to assure her somewhat, even if not fully — but it was enough to lay her into comfort, to help her sleep soundly for now.

He was avoiding making empty promises, and she knew it.

He had to leave. If not her, then, still, the city, to return home.

Home.

Whalefall City was naught but ruins, and hadn’t home never felt like it should ever again since he had last lost her? With how heavy with relief and joy his chest had felt these days, he had almost forgotten. But he could allow himself some reprieve, if only briefly, could he not?

Rafayel couldn’t tell how much time had passed, but when he regained awareness of his surroundings, the soft remnants of wild cricketing entering his consciousness, he found himself staring at the girl’s sleeping form soaked in midnight blue at his side.

His eyes burned from dryness, and so he forced himself to blink strongly a few times.

Their blurred hands lay intertwined even now, and he could feel her warmth still. It was spreading through his body, like a wildfire of the most soothing kind. Licking away at his heart, he let it consume.

He still ached to kiss her.

Perhaps even more so than before, now that all was said and done, and he’d dulled into peace.

If he faltered now, would he be betraying her or himself?

Amidst the whispered joy of being together and whole, Rafayel was certain he felt content. How could he not when the girl slept so peacefully by his side, when she let him see her like this — so vulnerable and trusting despite knowing what he was capable of? He did feel content, felt perhaps even hints of sparkling relief in the easy silence between their bodies, and in its familiarity. But then why did he feel like crying?

Acknowledging it would only coax forth his tears, but her warmth against him urged him to let himself feel despite. He felt safe enough to. Somehow, he always did, with her.

Oh, how beautiful she was.

Perhaps allowing himself softness at her hand wouldn’t have to be betrayal. Perhaps it didn’t have to be something else. Perhaps it could just be softness.

Rafayel blinked a few insistent times again, this time with moisture gathering in his eyes. He cleared his throat, ensured the sound was light enough to not rouse the girl from whatever wonderful dream she surely must have been having right now.

Unlike himself, Rafayel figured she was sleeping soundly during her nights, figured still that he should enquire about tonight’s rest the next time they’d meet.

The next time.

Rafayel would be gone before the sun rose, disappear yet again without a trace if only to bask in the joy of her reaching for him once more. The distance felt excruciating, always, yet was this not precisely love? What, if not this?

Next to him, the sheets rustled and the girl pressed her face deeper into the pillow. Her eyelids fluttered, vivid images being crafted behind them.

Rafayel’s entwined hand twitched with the urge to touch her. Properly touch her. He regretted now not having removed his second glove earlier too. The girl’s hair would have felt soft against the roughened skin of the pads of his fingers. Her cheek was soft too, as was her jaw, her neck — he imagined. Everything about the Princess was soft after all. She’d grown up so protected — isolated — that nothing could have ever possibly touched her. Not even him, until now.

Greedily, he craved this softness of hers, and he didn’t want anyone else to have it. It should all be for him, and him alone. Not so that he could ruin it, not so he could roughen her, but because he wished nothing more than for it to extend towards him and soften him too — to fall onto his knees and beg for a mercy he knew he couldn’t ever possibly hope to receive.

Then again, perhaps if it was her...

Not that it mattered anymore. He only had two more weeks. What grand things could he hope to experience with her in this short period of time but stolen touches and yearning running so deep it burned him beautifully?

When outside the chamber’s windows the first symphonious sounds of nature eventually stirred to life — a dawn chorus of thrushes, wrens, and other passerines —, Rafayel hesitated only briefly. After all, he’d had the whole night to consider their future and to begin to shape his final plans.

Slowly, he ducked his head. The girl’s quiet and even breathing tickled his face as Rafayel allowed himself to whisper the briefest of kisses to her cheek.

His entwined hand squeezed hers painfully tenderly before he carefully rubbed his thumb back and forth along her skin. Even limp, her hand had been warm and alive the past hours. It grew warmer still when Rafayel burned the strings wrapped around their hands, glass beads stained with black soot falling into the sheets with soft thuds.

♢ ♢ ♢

Rafayel’s possessiveness was near obsessive, but it simply was the way he loved. Yes, loved. Of course he loved the Princess, despite everything. And, still, Rafayel preferred calling his love belonging, called this belonging home more than he did the very depths of a sea long dried up. Not that there was a difference between the two, indistinguishable by now — deserted love.

His heart burned either way.

Left wanting, left craving.

♢ ♢ ♢

The truth was that Rafayel had always seen the clouds and the dunes and the sunsets and would crave for beauty to surround him so wholly that he could die in it — to suffocate and drown in it all, serenely, finally. Yet beauty was out of reach the way a bird outside one’s window was inherently within a world separate from the viewer. He couldn’t own the sky or the sand. He couldn’t own a sunset, no matter how beautiful it was. He couldn’t own her, as much as he wanted to in his most disgustingly desperate moments. He saw what could be and all he felt was grief and a bitterness at what would never be his.

He hated himself for his greed.

When comparing his emotional landscape, whatever it might have been precisely, to love — which was more mellow, softer, less intense, and certainly less angry — how could he ever hope to be able to offer his beloved something as pure and just? All he felt had been grief all along. An existential mourning of what was, what is, and what will be, purely because he was not inside of any of it — just on the other side of the pane of beauty.

Perhaps it was for the best to be more like a caged bird than to betray those who believed in him the most any further.

♢ ♢ ♢

Of course, it had been no mere coincidence that Rafayel was with the Princess once more since that night they met again at Moonbath Lake a few weeks ago. He had observed her long enough, had almost compulsively watched her from the nearby waters — partially in an attempt to convince himself he could fulfil his duty and move on eventually, although his conviction dwindled with each glimpse he caught of her through the windows of her chambers.

Sometimes, she was dancing and singing, joyous and bright in her movements and blurred expression. Other times, she would be silently weeping, would not even bother to dry her tears with her robes in the sanctuary of her loneliness. Mostly, she simply gazed across the city, the land, out into the desert and towards the faraway horizon belying secrets she could never hope to discover let alone solve.

Either way, there had always been longing in her eyes.

It had also — perhaps because of it, or perhaps because of his own selfish desires — been his own choice as a child to let himself be captured of course, although the Princess didn’t need to know that. It was enough to admit it to himself, to feel confusion at his own past curiosity. Not that he could blame himself. Her longing for freedom had always warmed him with empathy.

“Is Your Highness not meant to attend the ball to be sought out by possible suitors?”

“Being with you is far more exciting than any ball could ever be.” A glimmer of excitement crossed her face — she was genuine about her words, of course — as she tugged her hood over her head, reading herself for departure.

Her words reassured him, even though he tried to remain unaffected by her affections. Especially now, after he’d had a taste of her proximity, her touches, for the first time in their current lives.

“What about Your Highness’s royal duties?”

He hoped she would at least meet him halfway, even if he didn’t truly wish for her to.

The truth was that he wanted to be wanted by this version of her — the Princess of Philos — too. What fool would he be to deny this? He’d always wanted all of her, for himself — nothing less and nothing more. Egoistic as that made him.

“I will make my maid pretend to be me,” she dismissed with a nonchalance that made the corners of Rafayel’s lip twitch upwards under his mask. “Pretty please?”

“Isn’t Your Highness just using me to run away yet again?”

“Perhaps I am.”

“How cruel,” he sighed with exasperation, playfully. “Though I suppose I cannot deny a princess her wishes, can I?”

♢ ♢ ♢

When they arrived on the high dunes far outside the city, the sand was cooling into a pale yellow, yet the sun that set ahead saturated their two bodies into molten gold and morphed their shadows into one.

“I will never tire of this sight,” the Princess sighed as she sat down just ahead of Rafayel on a small rocky ledge.

He turned towards her and watched as she moved, watched her eyes — bright and enamoured — look out towards the horizon, watched the appreciative and somewhat dreamy smile on her lips.

Beautiful.

More than by the sun itself, Rafayel felt saturated by her presence.

“Beautiful indeed, isn’t it?” Rafayel mused.

“The sight,” the Princess added, and her cheeks flushed a little. She could see him stare from her periphery.

“The sight,” Rafayel agreed with a satisfied smile.

“...Of the sun.”

“Of the sun.” Rafayel’s smile widened still as he continued to shamelessly stare at her and her alone.

The girl groaned and lowered her face against her knees, clearly embarrassed, and Rafayel laughed softly, the sound light and warm, in endearment. Like whispered prophecies couldn’t harm them.

Rafayel’s expression softened as he sat down next to the Princess and opened a small pouch to pull out a cake wrapped in linen that he had bought for them to eat. Well, not that he felt any appetite. He rarely did anymore, these days.

“Thank you,” the Princess offered and reached for the piece, broke some of the dried delicacy off, and brought it to her mouth to eat it slowly with intrigue.

“How is it?”

“Soft and sweet.” A few small nods and puffed cheeks around her mumble. “It’s very nice.”

“I’m glad.”

She seemed content eating at his side like this, yet he could sense her increasing questions and doubts — everything unspoken despite the time they’d been spending together. He couldn’t blame her. He rarely, if ever, gave her the opportunity to ask questions openly. And even when he did, he didn’t reply thoroughly. Rafayel couldn’t help it. Everything had only been accumulating, weighing down on his shoulder blades, and sealing his heart shut.

“Does Lemuria have sunsets like this?” the Princess asked, mumbling around another bite of the cake.

“No,” Rafayel said, though he then halted and reconsidered her question. It wasn’t quite true after all, was it? In the depths of his memory, he could recall the weight of her head against his shoulder, bodies warmed by a soothing flame.

“Yes,” he corrected. “It is different in the Deep Sea. But no less beautiful to watch, especially with the right company.”

The girl smiled and nodded by his side before she seemed to fall into her own thoughts, observing something he couldn’t.

“I’ve seen the sea before,” she admitted after some time, catching Rafayel off-guard.

“Surely, Your Highness jests.”

“Well, in my dreams, I mean,” she said and faced Rafayel to offer an apologetic smile before growing more solemn. “I have this dream often. I am on an island, in a hut, in the middle of a vast grey desert — the Sea... There, I am alone, and I am waiting for someone to come to my rescue.”

Rafayel momentarily couldn’t respond, too taken aback by the image the girl painted in his head. An image of the Island of Songs.

“The Sea is great and blue,” Rafayel said. He didn’t know why he did. He thought to have believed it would ease the silent dread the girl so clearly felt right now at remembering that dream of hers, believed he could replace it with something grander, something shimmering with the illusion of hope. Such was the power of words, as simple as they might have been.

Perhaps she did remember more than he gave her credit for. What if she, too, held herself back, kept secrets from him for the sake of his own peace of mind? The thought stirred up uncomfortable feelings in Rafayel’s chest that he couldn’t quite name. Disbelief, in part. Determination to disagree, mostly.

Hadn’t this happened before already?

No, even if she’d seen an ocean in her dreams, it’s because she’d read about it in books. He was there when she did when they were still younger, had described to her the cool vast blue dyeing his memories and how the words in the book couldn’t even begin to compare to them. She’d marvelled at his descriptions, even as he himself believed them to have been merely enhanced through that hazy lens that often accompanied reminiscence, nostalgia, and memories forgotten even when sensations remained.

In the end, Rafayel decided it would be best this way — if she didn’t remember. If she didn’t know how to command him to do something he couldn’t — wouldn’t — ever forgive himself for.

“You’ll take me to the blue sea, yes?” the Princess asked and suddenly stood up in her eager ambition, as if she wanted him to take her right this moment.

Rafayel blinked, startled. Well, he had promised her, hadn’t he? One way or another, he would take her there.

Whether he wanted to or not.

It was the only way.

“Of what remains of it, anyway,” Rafayel agreed with an expression that he knew couldn’t fully hide the hurt he felt at the mere thought of their shared fate.

Reaching the sea — whether it’d be golden or blue in this instance of his imagination — would be their end, wouldn’t it? Yet he knew there must have been a way to avoid the inevitable. There had to be. Because if he couldn’t think of a plan, there would never be any way out of this mess his own desperation had created all those millennia ago. Not a way that would ensure both of them could be happy and safe. And to Rafayel, the girl’s life meant more than anything else ever could.

Sometimes he felt that the only certainty they’d ever had was that they were never meant to love each other.

Rafayel felt his eyelids flutter as he faltered further before he managed to reign himself back in and could offer a smile once the girl sat down next to him again. She appeared apologetic, although she didn’t express it verbally.

Silence enveloped them, replacing the warmth of the sun that had now finally dipped below the horizon. The city in the distance behind them dimmed into pale blue dusk alongside their figures, and only the large tower of the palace remained as a sole shining pearl, still touched by the gentleness of the endurance of hope.

“Perhaps you could tell me a Lemurian myth,” the girl requested in a gently questioning tone.

She was drawing little fish — the same ones he had traced onto her palm some nights ago — into the cooling sand with her finger and offered Rafayel a small side-glance, as if testing the waters of escaping their awkward silence.

No matter how many times Rafayel, whether purposefully or not, put distance between her and himself, she would keep choosing to close it.

A small huffed smile escaped his lips, and his expression softened into one of grief — grief felt not for himself or Lemuria, but for his beloved, and her ending. No matter what it would be this time.

“Myths are but stories people tell to make their lives — their existence — bearable,” Rafayel dismissed.

He thought this surely would thwart the girl’s curiosity. But then: “I want to hear how you make your life bearable.”

She tugged her knees to her chest and eyed him with both curiosity and empathy. Of course she saw that sadness that Rafayel never managed to hide completely from her. He’d struggled himself with not falling too silent these past days, with being unresponsive for just a moment too long, which had proven increasingly difficult the more time passed, the closer they got to...

Rafayel shook his head.

“Why not?”

“I can barely recall any tales, Your Highness.”

Again, the Princess remained patient, despite. His heart throbbed. Did she really want to know more about him? To satisfy her curiosity and obtain some sense of control over what they had? Or simply because it would be about him — nothing more?

Another huffed smile left him despite himself. A myth. There were countless ones, of course — many of which he could recite without thinking. Yet in this moment, only one came to mind, eclipsing all others.

With a slow acquiescing nod, Rafayel inhaled.

O winding path where dirges lie,
Plundered treasures bring tears, anguished and wry.
When islands in the sea turn to deserts of sand,
Divine fishtails turn to stumbling legs by chance.
Gales replace the waves and erase the Traveller’s traces,
The Follower’s gaze weighs heavier than iron braces.
Yet the Traveller’s heart’s weight is lighter than sand,
Where to find? Where to divine?
O Great Blue Sea.
The price that is paid, only the Traveller can say.

What did you call a person who fled their fading home in pursuit of something much larger, much greater than themself? A traitor? A martyr?

Wasn’t dying for love worth more than living for the faithful?

Wasn’t love its own religion, either way?

Rafayel was convinced that devotion and love were one and the same. Because with her, they were. Had he not gladly drowned her in his devotion — not in return for her worship but simply because revering her was the only thing that had ever felt right to him? Had he not spent countless days and nights singing praise, worshipping the very sheets she lay upon, warming her body with his own in a dance as ancient as time itself, merely because nothing else had ever offered him the same sense of purpose in life, not even his own duties?

Now that the edges started blurring and fate began to become ambiguous, the only thing he could do was hold onto his conviction to protect his love with white-knuckled desperation if only it meant he could prevent everything from falling apart even further.

There was no one, and there was nowhere else. He had nowhere to return to but her side, even if the Sea were to bloom again and unfurl its brilliant blues, drawing back the desert one lapping wave at a time. From the very moment he had met her amidst stormy waters, he’d known that nothing — no sand, no sea, no eternity — could ever again feel like home but her embrace.

Rafayel swallowed the lump that threatened to form in his throat and forced a smile on his lips to conclude.

As golden sands recede by Tempest’s might,
Songs of the Sea blanket the Land’s desperate plight.
Azure waves caress each fin,
Children of the Sea rejoice, spirits akin.
The Traveller...

The Traveller...

Where to did the traveller return when all home, even upon revival, was lost to him? When everything he’d ever wanted was everything he could never reach? When his loneliness had become so great that he didn’t even crave for freedom anymore, not unless it came with the mingling pain and love that he had grown so familiar with at her hand?

“One’s journey ends at the shore,” Rafayel finished solemnly before shaking his head slowly and forcing another smile. “As I said, I can barely recall it.”

The girl let the silence linger, rare as it was. He disliked it. What he disliked more still was that he couldn’t tell what she was thinking. The only certainty he had was that she felt hurt, as did he. Though while his hurt extended to something inexplicable and out of grasp — past, present, and future — hers appeared to extend to him. Only him, judging by the look on her face. By the ember in his chest.

She didn’t dare to close their distance now, and Rafayel, too, hesitated for a moment before he finally reached out a hand to tuck a strand of the girl’s hair behind her ear.

“We should return before it gets cold,” he offered and moved to stand, holding his hand out to her.

She looked at it, staying still, before eventually taking it and pulling herself up.

“The traveller,” she began but trailed off shortly after, brows furrowing in contemplation. “What about their heart?”

“Did—...”

Did the traveller find his heart?

He suddenly felt that he needed to embody the story — his story. Needed to place himself inside of it and wade through it, as is the power of poetry and song, and purposefully, mindfully, take sluggish step after sluggish step and convey to her anything the vast space had to offer.

The lonely traveller’s story was far from over. It had not yet ended. He needed to allow for more, he needed... more. More of her, more of them, as impossible as it was. He’d been entangled too much to just let everything go, here and now, through a simple phrase, a mishap in semantics. There was hope in wanting more, was there not? He could allow himself some hope for the time being, he tried to convince himself. Just for the rest of the night.

And so, with a soft breath, he corrected himself.

“Has the traveller found his heart?”

The girl nodded. Her gaze was on him, closely watching, trying to decipher meanings she knew she couldn’t even hope to begin to untangle. Yet she tried. Yet she insisted.

Whether he’d given her his heart — the Sea God’s heart — willingly or not before was of little importance to him now that he felt like he would do it all over again if given the choice. Surely, he must have given his heart out of love — and if that love had been garnered through deceit, then would it not still have counted as something? Would he not still have been foolishly devoting himself to her, vow or not?

Even though Rafayel still often waded through murky depths at night — whispers of past, of betrayal, of hatred —, he could no longer bring himself to believe any of it to have been part of some sort of grand coup of a single human, fragile and lovely, against the last Sea God.

Despite, the hateful ache lingered, because it was but fear in disguise. It consumed even when he tried his most to not let it tint his actions, especially those towards her, with red. Pink was the softest shade he could offer her instead.

“...That heart is right in front of him,” was what left his lips as he decided to let his words become lost in translation, let them tumble freely from his own heart. Speaking them in a way she’d understand would have meant speaking them into truth, speaking her into what she was to him, or rather, and worse still, to his people. And exposing her like that was the one thing he could not allow himself to do.

Despite everything, he loved her. Despite everything, his smile widened when the girl’s brows furrowed deeper, all while there was wonder in her eyes too at his foreign tongue.

It was all he could have hoped for when she cheered up the moment Rafayel took her hand and tightly held it in his. In the dimming desert, all was quiet except for the sand giving way to their shoes, the sound a rhythmic lull to both of their souls.

The girl’s hand was a comfortable weight in his — it felt right. By now, Rafayel had grown used to the sensations she could spark within him to carry aching familiarity. A heavy kind, although it was no less longed for by him. Even if he could feel this rightness every day for the rest of his life, it would never feel like it was enough. Their bond transcended lifetimes, as did the solace he found in her presence.

“Does Your Highness think the maid enjoyed her time at the ball?”

“That’s doubtful,” she responded with amusement tinting her voice. “I probably won’t hear the end of it later.”

Rafayel hummed in acknowledgment as a smile grew on his lips at the image this painted in his mind.

“Perhaps my plan wasn’t so foolproof though. I gave her one of my dresses that I never wear.”

“Why doesn’t Your Highness wear it? Is it too uncomfortable?”

“I dislike the shade,” she offered, shrugging slightly. “It’s orange. The colour generally makes me look sickly, but it looks wonderful on her.”

“So likely people would notice if the Princess isn’t wearing Her usual colours then, yes?”

“Who knows,” she countered playfully. She squeezed Rafayel’s hand in hers and glanced up at him as they walked through the stillness surrounding them. “Would you?”

“Your Highness doubts an assassin’s true abilities, I see.”

“Just an assassin’s?”

Chuckling softly, he added, “And my ability — to know Your Highness inside and out.”

He’d been with her for long enough.

Rafayel wished sometimes that he’d known what he knew now. But in a way, he was grateful for his past cowardice — he’d lived alongside her, had shared joys and sorrows, had lived wholly. Had loved deeply. He still did. Stories already lived couldn’t change, and even though Rafayel half-believed that endings of any sort were often predestined and unavoidable, he urged himself to believe in a change of heart at the hand of fate.

Just this once.

He had lost grip of her hand before. This time, he would let go of her again, but willingly, in a way he could control — which ultimately made it hurt less or more?

In the end, Rafayel had a cracked and dried-up heart that yearned for tenderness either way and there was nothing he could do about it. He’d been lonely before. So why not make things final?

At least for her sake.

Squeezing the girl’s hand tighter, he pulled her that bit closer to his side.

He was determined to spare her the burden.

Once more, he would be the one suffering.

Yet this time, he would protect his heart even if it cost him his very life.

♢ ♢ ♢

Unlike his joys, his grief never becomes smaller just because it continues being repeated.

In this life, Rafayel has experienced too many days and nights in the echo of life. Perhaps it was the same before. Grief is a constant weight at his feet that has accompanied him for as long as he can think, and only once he grew up did he understand at least some of it — the grief of his past mistakes, the grief of a life unlived, of a life that was never meant to be his to begin with. A life of peace, and a life of love. The kind of life he remembers having begged for as a child the more he learned about their inevitable ending.

Instead, he lives his life within a perpetual golden hour where the sand just begins to cool and everything falls quiet around him, the sound of joy and chatter softening out to be replaced by the tranquil emptiness of the breeze caressing the dunes at dusk. It is peaceful, yes, but lonely — harsh in its silence where Rafayel once wished laughter and love to be.

Once, before he gave up on his dreams.

Each reminder of his duty is a burden and brings with it another pound of weight to the shackles at his bruised ankles, and even his beloved’s presence does not alleviate much of the pain, no matter how much he hopes it would. He has learned this the past weeks. She has allowed for him to rest, yes, but with Rafayel’s plans, none of the keys she could offer him would ever fit the corroded lock at his feet. Years of exposure to the sand have sanded it down to become rounded and smooth, too much so for even a locksmith to hope to be able to pry open anymore.

And so with the ending near, his grief simply grows and stubbornly lodges itself into his bones like grains of sand in the crevices under his nails.

♢ ♢ ♢

Does she truly remember anything from before what they are now?

No.

Her memories — the mere fragments she holds, rather — are fake. Inebriated musings, whispers of dreams at dusk. They are barely there to begin with, and the ones that do occur to her are tricks played by her mind, meant to confuse her. Which means they are ultimately meant to betray him, and his goals.

Nothing more than that.

It’s nothing new.

Yet why does her devotion appear so real — so awfully familiar whenever she looks at him with the same exact eyes from lifetimes ago?

♢ ♢ ♢

At times, Rafayel can hear a voice from somewhere deep inside his subconscious admonishing him for all the choices that have led him to this very moment. Protecting her — his follower, his beloved — has always been a conviction to him, yet one he will have to see through for one final time now.

He tries not to think about whether this single-minded stubbornness makes him selfish, or rather selfless. The answer would be much too vague to offer any real value of comfort anyway.

Just earlier, when they rode the camel towards the horizon blazing in the brightest hues of orange and yellow, Rafayel was reluctant to let the girl touch him. To even let her get near him beyond what was utterly necessary. Her body pressed so tightly against his to the point he struggled to breathe let alone think was certainly not ideal in helping him contain himself. Her hand on his chest — on his heart that was beating much faster than necessary — wasn’t helpful either in aiding him in coming up with the final steps of his plan, its epiphany sluggish for days now. He couldn’t even tell if it was the proximity that made his endeavour more difficult or the knowledge of what was to come.

Even now, Rafayel is still waiting for an epiphany of their ending to occur to him with his breath winded yet bated. He would find the slate, would hope it is the correct one, and then what? He doesn’t know how to proceed, but he would finish everything one way or another.

He has to.

Outside of their tent, the girl sits beside him with her body shivering in the oppressive stillness of the cold air of night, and Rafayel can’t keep the aching need to soothe her from taking over. He knows the pale black fire he lit barely offers any meaningful warmth anymore. His fire has been dimming. Carefully, he shuffles closer towards her and wraps a blanket around both of their bodies, to keep her shielded from the nightly chill while sharing his own warmth.

Hypocrite, he chastises himself when he feels her look at him with a surprise that borders on relief.

He feels bitter. At himself. At fate. If only he could blame something grander still, but he knows the only one to blame is his past self — the paths he himself has chosen being cause now for a discomfort, or rather an ache almost, that is pressing down on him like some sort of divine self-punishment.

Rafayel can’t help his having been a walking contradiction ever since they set foot on this very last journey together. He simply cannot bring himself to settle on either side of this abyssal trench in the fault line of his being and instead finds himself suspended in a silence whose oppressiveness even the girl does not dare breach.

Would it not perhaps be best after all to keep the girl close to him as much as possible until their final moments — to cherish her, to offer her more of the joy he saw on her face so much of these past weeks — so he could remember her with a smile, in the very least?

But this is selfish of him, is it not? To give her an illusion of peace and an empty promise of companionship even though he knows so many things that she could never even begin to comprehend — mostly, that there are but two ways their lives could ever turn out.

Death of one over the death of the other, yet who is to decide on the justice of something as intangible as love beyond life itself?

So perhaps it is best to attempt to keep her at a distance from himself as much as possible — the same way he has done since seeing her uncharacteristically reluctant smile when he picked her up earlier and they silently walked through the city to reach the outskirts. He knows this is the option that will keep him safest for now, which only means it is as inherently selfish as the first, especially when confronted with the girl’s obvious discomfort and anxiety pressing against his side.

Either way, he is to blame for it all. All of it has always been his fault.

Not once has she done anything wrong, yet she has had to carry the consequences alongside him throughout.

Self-hatred festers inside of Rafayel like something rotting from the inside out — like a body of all his mistakes and short-comings surfacing now, when, really, he needs it the least. He barely has any strength left to deal with any of it. Not when he is directly facing a fate so irreversible, he half-believes his own death to be the kindest outcome once all is done and over with.

Not that a simple death would change anything — neither his nor hers. When has it ever?

“Can’t you finally tell me where we are headed?” the girl asks in a quiet tone. “Is it really the Sea?”

She has shuffled closer to him and, to Rafayel’s relief, her shivering has subsided now. Her voice is steadier too, although there is a characteristic waver to it which manages to make Rafayel’s chest tighten uncomfortably and urges him to reach out to her — really reach out to her. To meet her not halfway but unconditionally, wholly. To hold her so close, body against body, that he would no longer be able to think or smell or feel anything but her. To soothe himself in his anxieties and fears for even but a moment.

All he needs is for her to hold him. Nothing more.

How selfish.

“Your Highness will find out once we arrive. It’s not far anymore. We will depart once we have rested.”

“Okay.”

She doesn’t hold him.

Between the light brush of their shoulders, silence hangs heavy over them, and although at any other time Rafayel might have relished in sitting with his beloved like this, huddled under a shared blanket underneath the vast expense of a sky so eternal he wished their lives could be the same — ever-observing, ever-bright —, right now, all he can feel is the steady throbbing of his own heart. By now, it feels like something alive and wholly separate from his own miserable dying existence. Like there is a caged animal amidst the rot that is trying, in its final moments of valour with whatever strength it has left, to break free and run towards a future it could be certain of would be better than the cage it has lived in all its life.

Like reaching for the warmth of a light Rafayel himself has not felt in years.

Perhaps like reaching for her. Which would still be possible if he tried now, no?

But he doesn’t reach for her. How could he, so selfish in his fears?

In his desperation, Rafayel’s breath quivers ever so slightly and he turns his face away from the girl to pretend to clear his throat that is beginning to form a stubborn lump deep within.

He cannot falter now. He knows that his hypocrisy, in the end, will save both him and her as much pain as is possible. It will be easier like this.

It will hurt less.

Surely.

What Rafayel also knows is that he is betraying her, the way she has once betrayed him. He’d take her memories and run away with them, to leave her with nothing but emptiness.

He can never hope to experience love ever again once this night ends.

Glancing at her looking at the cool fire — seeing the beauty of the remaining warmth on her skin, frail and withering in its hue even as her vibrancy remained like a mismatch inside his heart — does not help.

Of course it doesn’t.

That would be too easy.

“Can you sing for me?”

Rafayel lightly shakes his head. “No.”

“Then tell me another myth... Or tell me about yourself, perhaps. After all, I barely know anything about you aside from your Lemurian heritage.”

“There is nothing worth of note, Your Highness.”

The ache in his chest at his refusal to comply with her requests is exquisite by now. Feral teeth bared against bony barrier, biting and thrashing as if that would resolve anything. As if that kind of red-eyed defiance guaranteed freedom.

Once defiant, his flame flickered and almost burned out had it not been for their love. Defiance brings risk with it, the kind of risk Rafayel cannot allow himself to have anymore now that his flame is weaker. Although being called a traitor couldn’t extinguish him, the risk of losing his love could. And it did. It still does, even now that he has long been tamed and has remained steadfast in his duty-bound compliance to attempt to revive Lemuria. He would give his last embers for it.

Weakly flickering in front of them now, the dim bonfire is mirroring Rafayel’s own increasing weariness despite his turbulent thoughts — there were screams in his mind of not his people, but of his own, for once. Or perhaps it was that animal, whimpering and pleading in the darkness of its cage the more it grew exhausted of trying to break free. It is a futile attempt, after all.

Rafayel has made his decision.

His plan will succeed.

It must.

By now, the cage that has been expanding around his heart is locked securely, and the key has been tossed into the dark sand, has already been buried by the winds sweeping across the dunes.

♢ ♢ ♢

Only a fool would attempt to defy fate. Likely a fool in love, because if the pain that comes with his attempt was this exquisite, and the result would mean Rafayel could remember their love in this way — intense, all-consuming, deadly —, then it ought to be worth the risk.

After all, it is a torturous kind of pain — seething yet soothing, and addictive almost, was it not for the knowledge of what it now symbolises.

And maybe it isn’t necessarily fate but love that frightens him the most. Because if it didn’t mingle with the kind of pain he is experiencing only in her presence and didn’t mix until nothing is left in the end but a vast open space of a single certainty dyed all visible shades in-between — fuchsia, lavender, budding rose, vivid violet —, then what is there left for him to take? He doesn’t dare accept something as pure and just as love for himself. He needs for both of them to co-exist, doesn’t want to settle on either side of pain or pleasure. Only when combined, it can all be his, as beautifully tragic as it may be.

Then, no one could ever take this from him. Never again.

Like bruises blooming.

Yet he has either way an almost perverse obsession with this fear, especially when it involves the possibility of adjunctive pain. The thrill of it makes him feel alive in a way that is more addicting to him than any drug could ever be — to always crave more, always strive endlessly for something that might or might not ever become reality. It suits him, he feels, to be left wanting. Like a sea overflowing into emptiness, giving and giving and giving until there is nothing left of himself inside of his very existence but sand and dust, drying out. All for the sake of love.

Passion. Patior. To suffer.

It was romantics like him who once coined painful obsession and turned it into something beautiful, was it not?

Though of course, once a love is lost, once an obsession loses its target, there is little one could do that would allow for beauty to remain.

♢ ♢ ♢

Rafayel doesn’t remember at what point during the night the idea of making their love go up in flames first came to him. Even now, it is still but a half-formed thing, not yet fully bloomed. But some plants are poisonous right from their very seeding, their roots and leaves expanding far before the first blossom could sprout, luring in anyone who dares to give in to vibrant temptation.

Even if the prophecy truly is inevitable, he would rather make himself be the one to blame for any grievances. He has made a mistake once, thought he could outsmart something much larger than himself, only to lose everything as a result.

However, he acted on love.

And he will do so again, as many times as needed — that is what he decides now.

After all, Rafayel can always make another mistake.

Fate could not scorn him more than it already has.

Perhaps like this, he can finally find a semblance of peace before perishing, knowing that at last she will finally be free and safe. From him.

♢ ♢ ♢

Yet more than anything, he is scared.

In the end, he still risks giving in only because he cannot deny the girl anything — because of her love, pure as it was.

In the end, it is for the best to remain a trapped bird, and to betray all those who believe in him the most.

♢ ♢ ♢

Like a fish, she flits away from his side and is running amidst the sandy ripples that reflect the moonlight from above like glistening waves billowing towards the remnants of the Island of Songs. Their final destination together.

Rafayel’s legs feel heavy, numb, and he struggles with even just placing one foot in front of the other in the grey sand, the action of walking feeling overly mechanical. His mind is urging him to stand still and observe from a distance, yet the pull he has always felt towards her, the pull he is feeling right now, drags him forward. One heavy step at a time. Despite.

“I have dreamed of this place before,” she speaks from where she glances around the ruined structures that were half-buried in the sands. “I know it.”

Visions, perhaps. Intangible fragments, more likely.

The girl’s eyes focus on one particular spot at the bottom of a set of crumbling stairs. She crouches down and begins to dig, fingers lodging in the cooled sand.

“It should be here... I know it should be.”

Has Rafayel, in the end, clung to his hope that she wouldn’t remember? Of course he has.

Her being blissfully unaware of their shared fate might be the kinder ending for them both after all. But her memories, thoughts, and feelings are all variables that he cannot influence, no matter how obsessively he pursues his own carefully designed goal. All he can hope for is that this wouldn’t make him falter in his own resolution. She still barely remembers anything — everything is probably hazy to her, and Rafayel himself is likely not much part of whatever fuzzy images she is currently seeing or whatever feelings of a past long gone she is experiencing.

He will be fine.

It’s but fragments that he could easily attribute to figments of her imagination. Nothing more.

“A slab... This is Lemurian,” she murmurs to herself. Although her voice is quiet, thoughtful, lost in a maze of a dream-addled mess of recollections she can barely grasp fully, to Rafayel, her voice cuts clearly through the silence of the desolate ruinscape.

“It’s a part of the Tome of the Sea God — legends pertaining to Him,” he explains calmly.

It is exactly what he was looking for. He has felt the slab the moment they have come close to the Island of Songs, although he has to admit he is surprised she could find it with such ease herself.

But no problem. This won’t change a thing.

“The Tome? What does it say? Can you read it?” The words practically tumble from her lips in excitement at being at the precipice of a longed for epiphany. “I know it must be something important — I can feel it.”

He doesn’t respond. He doesn’t need to. Nor is he able to think of how to anyway.

Feeling something akin to annoyance bubble within him, nauseatingly cold and ugly, he wonders what she sees in his face — in his eyes, anyway, with nothing else of it visible.

Whatever it might have been (he hopes she sees his love, warmer and softer, despite), it doesn’t matter now.

Rafayel pulls off one of his gloves and tosses it into the cool sand before slicing the inside of his palm. He does not flinch at the sting.

He is much acting without thinking right now, he realises when he sees the surprise on her face as he approaches her and the slab, dagger in hand.

Just follow the plan. Nothing else matters.

Taking hold of her hand, he silently cuts it too — she flinches (why doesn’t she protest?) —, makes their blood mingle and mix so it would drop onto the faded stone by her feet and stain it red.

With this, the words on the slate begin to glow golden and manifest into something far more cohesive and tangible. Yes, this is precisely the part of the prophecy he has been looking for. The one he could use to finally bring an end to everything.

“I recognise some of these symbols... That is my name, isn’t it? What does it say?”

Too much.

Everything.

Rafayel skims through the glimmering text, takes what he can offer her from it safely, and reads, “When the God of the Sea is revived, the seas will awaken.” He himself supplements, vaguely, “Which occurs through the help of His beloved.”

“...Is that me?” she asks quietly, and the question feels like a punch to Rafayel’s stomach because he can tell she knows the answer. He cannot hide this from her. He cannot deny her the truth, even if he’d never wanted to let her in on any of it.

“Yes.”

As she gazes at their mixed blood, her free fingers come up to gently touch her face — like feeling for a veil that once was — and a slight smile spreads on her lips at the memories spreading within her, visibly warming her from the inside out in the chilly night air.

The sight is so achingly familiar that it paints a vivid image in Rafayel’s own mind. He suddenly feels like he is dropping from a great height at the unravelling of her memories, and before he knows it, his hopeful heart is soaring, enveloped in the most gentle of breezes.

He can almost feel her weight against him. The depths of the Ocean tinted in the softest hues of periwinkle and marigold as the flame that just passed the temple warms their bodies sitting on the tower — her head that leans on his shoulder as they hold each other’s hand, and they would sleep, undisturbed.

She truly remembers?

“Our bond— The vow,” she recalls, piece by piece, and looks at Rafayel with such devotion that it breaks him.

She does?

“The vow,” he agrees, quietly, recalls that final night at the temple. His lungs sting with how much his breath refuses to leave his body, to draw back in, to leave again.

She remembers their love? Her God’s devotion to her and her alone?

“We made a vow… My heart.” She places a hand above her chest. “Your heart,” she corrects. “I need to give you back your heart.”

A throb where his own heart is now, spreading into his limbs like the mixed weariness of regret and familiar betrayal.

“After all, you carry my sincerest devotion — I want you to take my heart. It is part of the prophecy, of Lemuria’s past and future, is it not?”

...So she remembers.

How can she still believe this is what would save them? How can she be so stubborn?

“Prophecies are but delusions,” Rafayel expresses with a hurt in his voice that he cannot quite mask. And with fear, which he does manage to mask.

His words are meant for her as much as they are meant for himself — as a grounding reassurance, mostly. As a promise, perhaps. Either way, neither the words of the elders nor the foretold prophecies can be trusted in their entirety. This is what Rafayel decided that deep blue night surrounded by air permeated by the scent of sickeningly sweet peaches and the warmth of her skin against his.

Rafayel banishes the memory of her scent with a slow breath. He cannot let her see him falter now. He knows that if she did, if he saw her watching him hesitate, he might just give up on his plans. He fears that he would with certainty if only she asked him to.

“Lemurians—”

The girl suddenly takes hold of his hand holding onto the dagger and twists it slightly so the cool steel presses right against her chest, right where her heart rests.

Rafayel tenses, breathing suspended.

“I know that there is no other way,” she insists. Does she really have to be so stubborn right now? “I have devoted myself to you wholly. I know the consequences of giving you back your heart.”

“It is a god’s duty to protect his followers,” Rafayel retorts within a single sharp exhale, yet he feels momentarily unable to pull the dagger away. Not with the way she looks at him, with a gaze filled with such sincere determination it makes his stomach churn and his heart reach towards hers.

Her intensity makes Rafayel look at her — really look at her — for the first time since they set foot on this journey. He is intent to convey the conviction he himself holds — to show her that he is just as determined about his own plan, if not more so.

He tries his best to dismiss the flickering images intruding his mind of the two of them floating in the vast blue Sea, dagger glinting silver in the pale moonlight where it kissed flesh before.

Not once has she minded her selfishness. She doesn’t mind giving her life for him, the person whom she loves most.

She knows her proposal will mean her death.

But she doesn’t think of how her death will affect him, does she? And if she does, then she believes her sacrifice to outweigh any pain Rafayel could possibly feel.

How foolish. As if it could ever measure up.

Still, the girl insists, “It may be a god’s duty to protect his follower, but it is also a follower’s duty to serve her god. I was born into this world for this very reason — to give you back your heart.”

Her insistence hurts more now that he knows she remembers everything. Now that he understands she truly means it. Rafayel knows he is caging her in with his refusal to comply. But it is for her sake. Everything always has been.

Rafayel did know that once she remembered — if she remembered —, she would be greedy like this.

Despite how much it pains him, he loves her for it.

He cannot blame her, can he? Not when he knows he would do the same in a heartbeat was he in her stead. To gaze at her with the utmost devotion while ripping his heart out with his very own hands if only it meant he could offer it to her, palms facing the sky, the moon, the eternal vastness above.

Because this is what their love looks like — sacrificing what each of them have for the perseverance of the other’s life and, thus, their love. It is what it always has looked like, even when he last had to let her go.

And this is what Rafayel is doing right now, too, at the Island of Songs in the cold pallor of night. After all, this current predicament isn’t all that novel, is it? Have either of them ever known anything but sacrifice?

Either way, what his understanding of overlapping past and present gives him now is mostly a false sense of hope by delaying the inevitable.

She remembers. So what?

So what?

Her memories won’t lead to anything but grief.

Rafayel swallows. Looks down.

He forces bitter lament to push down any lingering warmth bit by bit.

“Your Highness cannot truly mean it. You—”

“I do mean it. I did before, and I still do.”

He tries to feel annoyed. Had he not seen that familiar spark of recognition in her eyes, had she not looked at him with the same devotion she’d harboured for lifetimes — the kind he knows he gazes at her with too —, it would be easier.

She is making this more difficult than necessary by remembering, by insisting to go against his plans that she knows nothing of because he refuses to tell her.

Yes.

Finally pulling away his hand that is holding his dagger — the limb trembling in a way he is certain she could notice was it not for her intent focus on his masked face — he breathes once. Twice.

He has no time to lose. If he doesn’t act now, it will be too late. He can’t risk having her try to stop him. Not now, when he finally is this close — not to freedom, certainly, nor peace. But close to something final, either way.

Whether it is self-hatred spreading within him or anger at her for having remembered, Rafayel knows he needs to make use of it. Seeing her wanting to perish so wantonly for his sake was all the last nudge he needed.

His need to protect his beloved surged alongside his quelled hope, and he knows he cannot trick her anymore now. He knows she would understand what he is about to do if he doesn’t act fast.

If he doesn’t act now.

And so Rafayel burns.

Mixed blood on stone catches on fire and begins to lick away at the slate in every spot her name glimmered in that last hopeful glow, like a golden hour offering the last warm rays of light before the darkest of nights — one that is certain to be endless. Red tinting black as light perishes.

“Wait,” she breathes. Her wide eyes flicker between the flames and his face. “Wait, what are you...?”

He doesn’t care about the unexpected butterfly effect his actions may cause. All that matters now is that Rafayel could ensure her memories of him — their vow, their bond, their love — will be erased and her life is severed from his in a way that would keep her safe.

Nothing else matters.

It never did.

“Wait! No, I don’t want to forget!”

She is panicking now that understanding settles in as her first memories of him — of them — are ripped away, and it hurts. He remembers her fear back when she almost drowned. How she, nothing but a simple sacrifice, flailed in her need to survive. How she was desperate to reach for him more than anything, in the same way she is right now — to be saved from drowning in sand amidst the ebbing of her memories, alone.

“It is better this way,” Rafayel says dryly and manages to take a small step back from her while re-sheathing his dagger, securing it to his thigh, out of her reach.

She would be safest this way.

It was his people, himself included, trusting the prophecy so naturally which inevitably led to their downfall. They need to stop believing themselves worthy to prosper on the sole ground of human intervention — of human sacrifices — while further harbouring resentment and envy towards humans at the same time.

Even if Rafayel is the only one who thinks this way, if he is alone in his beliefs, it will be better to take the initiative like this, at long last.

Make his beloved forget him.

Make his people resent him.

Neither is anything new.

Bonds can change.

He needs to change the prophecy so irrevocably that not even their eternal vow could survive. He has to make sure to outlive it all.

Not even ashes can remain.

That is the lonely decision he has come to.

“Please...” The girl’s voice all but breaks. Into him, through him, all at once.

The moment she brings a hand to her chest is the moment Rafayel too staggers slightly and clutches his own with his hand as his remaining relief from her remembering plummets into vast emptiness, alongside her memories, and pain spreads, leaving him winded.

The premature grief for the death of love feels excruciating, like something in the very depths of his chest is being ripped apart before being sucked into a deep gaping black hole, bit by painful bit. He struggles to breathe, struggles to even remember how to breathe, and feels both faint as much as he feels rooted to the very ground under his soles — unable to move; unable to act.

He is unable to do anything but witness the loss of a love, of a bond, felt so deeply it has since times ancient inextricably become part of himself to the point he has never been able to tell where his own soul ends and hers begins. For as long as he could think, it was her his heart has been calling out for, has been trying to desperately reach with all its might.

He has never imagined what it would be like — not feeling this constant and insistent pull of her soul. He now understands why, because no amount of imagination could have possibly prepared him for the tight emptiness beginning to surround his very lungs while he is forced to witness something where instead he would have wanted to offer grace.

Yet witnessing meant remembering. Witnessing meant loving.

And even without their bond, he knows he would love her.

He will.

How could he not?

He feels like he could die like this.

Surely, people have before. So why can’t he?

No, he has to finish what he has started, has to ensure everything turns out well. Turns out as planned.

Giving up now would only make things worse. He would risk sacrificing both them and their love for naught.

Swallow it down.

He shall become a container for unexpressed grief, for unacknowledged and selfish betrayal. And then, once all is done, he may rest.

Though despite the acceptance of his pain, amidst this cold determination of his, the moment the first sob of his name reaches his ears — broken, confused, desperate — is the moment his body aches further and warms with deep regret.

He knows there is no other way for them. He knows there is no taking his deceit back either. Yet the cushioning confusion of limbo does little to soothe his rupturing heart.

“Rafayel...”

His brows furrow at the broken sound of her voice, like something at the very cusp of collapse, and his eyes sting. It hurts that, even with her memories being dragged away one by one, the sole vestige she still manages to hold onto is his name.

Rafayel attempts, yet fails, to pull his gaze away from her in order to egoistically try to escape even a margin of the pain he is causing both her and himself. Colours of betrayal, deep and bitter, flush her cheeks in her fear and he can do nothing but watch. He ignores the tint of concern for him underneath it all. She understands what the erasure of her from the prophecy means for him, even as any tangible threads still binding them slip away from her grasp. After all, betrayal can only stem from connection — a connection not formed by their bond, but by the love fundamental beneath it all.

She knows he will die like this, alone.

And he knows she won’t remember, won’t even think of his perishing once it comes to pass.

His devotion alone will be what transcends memory and death.

“Don’t worry,” he reassures her, and himself. The calmness of his own voice surprises him. “It will soon fade away, like a dream.”

Yes, like a gentle ending. His beloved deserves the soft sluggishness that comes with opening her eyes on a warm sunny morning, where the rays of vibrant gold would kiss her skin in all the places he failed to ever reach with even just the tips of his fingers.

The mere idea of her peace makes him feel tiny sparks of relief, yet his conflicting emotions continue warring within him.

I am betraying her, he reprimands himself once more. He doesn’t want to allow himself reprieve, or mercy. Not right now, in the midst of all this.

Likely never, once this night is over.

Rafayel has betrayed his beloved once. He gave her his heart — the Sea God’s heart — so willingly back then without considering the near infinite tragedy it would entail.

He promised that he wouldn’t take advantage of the Princess’s heart — he would not offer her selfish admiration in hopes of her heart’s endurance to extend to him. But white lie or not, he has purposefully never agreed to not expect something in return for the short-lived peace and freedom he had been giving her.

And so right now, he is betraying her a second time — he is wanting lifetimes worth of memories in return for the love he has shown her the past weeks.

He is expecting to receive her heart, albeit metaphorically speaking. Just as she had agreed on a mere two weeks ago.

He is needing to take away her love for him.

How is he any better than the people who have, for all her life, exploited her?

How could he not be to blame for her current anguish?

At least they are even now — the stealing of a heart for a sacrifice, and a sacrifice for the stealing of a heart.

Eye to eye.

Dust to dust — one day, to the Sea they shall return.

“No, I don’t want to forget,” the girl all but whimpers as she reaches out towards him with the remaining strength of her memories.

Rafayel swallows and finally — finally — looks away from her, eyes dulling into a muted teal blue despite the sheen shimmer catching within them in the light of the setting moon. He can no longer bear the anguish on her face, how it tints her beauty with tragedy, and finally takes a few proper steps back to put some much needed distance between them.

“I’m sorry,” he speaks quietly, likely too much so for her to hear, especially through his mask and her sobs, but he no longer trusts his voice not to break.

Rafayel himself will die, and so be it — everyone dies eventually. Let him lay in eternal rest at long last, and let him hope that she, too, can find peace.

But he would not — would never — let her die like this. Never again. Not for his sake, nor for his people’s.

“Lemurians must rewrite their own story.”

He doesn’t need the prophecy. He doesn’t need his heart.

Forgetting about him shall be the kindest act of love he could bestow upon her.

Let him ensure they will never meet again, that he will never hurt her ever again.

Let her be happy and let her be safe.

Let her be happy.

Let her be safe.

Please.

He will deal with the consequences of everything alone, but at least keep her away from him, and from their fate.

Please.

Surely there must be some grander being still to hear the desperate prayers of a god.

Their bond is being torn from his very soul and Rafayel feels like dying.

But he has suffered in solitude for so long that he can bear the pain for some time longer. Right?

He can live without his beloved for a few more months or years.

His beloved.

Despite the forced resentment, he has long not been able to refer to her as merely a vessel or a passerby in his life anymore. He cannot call her Princess anymore. As fun as the novelty of the title felt at first, it doesn’t matter now. It hasn’t mattered for some time already. And perhaps Rafayel believes himself to have grown comfortable with the idea of distancing himself from her through refusing to call her anything that could relate to his own miserable existence. She belongs to him and he belongs to her, but maybe, like this, it will hurt less. Maybe, if his last memory of her is as someone who is but a distant idea, a vague and incomprehensible stranger, it will be easier — these were his thoughts.

However, now, at the final end of love, he realises the most fitting title has always been just the one that inadvertently and selfishly leaves him wanting more, forever...

“Goodbye, my beloved bride.”

♢ ♢ ♢

Perhaps some small insignificant part of him believes that their bond could outlive annihilation. That love could find its way to reunite them... Though what good will it do to think of inconsequential matters now?

♢ ♢ ♢

It is too late to only now remember that a little spark is all a dry heart needs to go up in flames until nothing is left of it but grey ashes, likened to sand.

♢ ♢ ♢

That following night, Rafayel doesn’t sleep. The embers of his heart feel like they are ripped out and are being crushed to shreds, like someone has taken the remains into their hands to grind into them with a determination to ruin him utterly set ablaze. A smouldering hole in the shape of his love, of his beloved — which is what she still is to him now, despite. There is no other way to refer to her inside the ruins of his heart.

This pain is one he did not know was possible to be experienced by a person without it meaning their death.

Perhaps if he lay here long enough, demands not to be bothered, to be left grieving, he can die. After all, he is already spoilt. He might as well rot away and stain the pale sand carmine.

It is Elder Amund’s voice that gratingly drags him out of whatever last fitfulness of sleep he hoped to be able to cling to.

“Your Quintessence needs to rise so we can make the journey back to Whalefall City.”

Rafayel doesn’t even need to pretend to lie still and not hear him. He heard him fine, of course, but he cannot move despite. Or he doesn’t want to. He can’t tell. All he knows is that he feels confused, devastated, yet oddly serene in the dim pallor of his tent — although this in turn makes him feel nothing if not guilty.

But gone, too, was that caged feral being inside of him. Whatever last ridges of love it had insisted on clinging to, there was no more flesh to sink its fangs or claws into, nor was the cage of bones that had been trapping it still intact. The cage was swallowed alongside their bond and has since been replaced with that gaping black hole in his chest that thrums with pure gravitational energy. Heavily. Insistently. Demanding to devour more and more.

Yet somehow, it is easier this way. There is a kind of silence surrounding him that he could almost mistake for peace. Perhaps he could just be swallowed into that deep tranquillity, too. He longs for it, even.

Grief, in the end, is a kind of surrender to love as one’s final eternity. And with his love so great, especially now that it no longer has anywhere to go, what else could it do but turn inward to consume?

“There is no point in grieving one’s own choices,” Elder Amund advises and enters the tent, uninvitedly. He probably wants his words to offer some kind of encouragement, yet as so often, they are misplaced. He has never had a talent for being tactful. Not that Rafayel minds it. Usually, he can appreciate the more pragmatic views of the man, even if they often juxtapose his own.

“I know,” Rafayel says, voice hoarse and throat parched.

Has he been crying? He doesn’t remember.

“We ought to leave while Your Quintessence can still move with ease,” Elder Amund says even as he is certain to hear the broken quality of Rafayel’s voice. It is rather unmistakable. “This predicament — the life force draining — happened at Your Quintessence’s own hands.”

Dedicated and loyal, determined and goal-oriented — Elder Amund does not shy away from his responsibilities even when faced with the logical understanding of grief.

What the man clearly does not understand, however, is that it isn’t Rafayel’s life force draining rapidly. It is his will to sustain his life, rather, that struggles to stand its ground, even with Rafayel’s purpose not yet being fulfilled.

The quietly violent events of last night were only the beginning, after all. Somehow, he still has to endure, for his people. How he would achieve this anymore now, he doesn’t know.

He did not expect it to be this hard in the end.

But if this is the price of her freedom, then so be it.

He has to continue and find a way himself to finish what he has started. Then, he could rest. Only then.

Perhaps in his final slumber, he might dream of her peacefully and without remorse at long last.

And so despite the eclipsing pain, he rises and sets foot outside of his tent, into the blinding light of mocking gold. Sluggishly. If Elder Amund is surprised by Rafayel letting the night’s resistance finally ebb, he doesn’t show it. Not that it matters. Pity would do little. Especially not for someone who certainly isn’t deserving of any.

It is the moment Rafayel almost stumbles over his own feet that Elder Amund does look up from where he is gathering their belongings. Rafayel half expects a chiding, yet it doesn’t come.

His mind is playing tricks on him by now. He faltered the moment the gaping hole in his chest thrummed anxiously, as if there was a soft kindling of the crushed embers of his heart.

How silly of him.

His heart has been doing this all night. He should be used to it by now.

Rafayel takes a slow measured breath to steady himself again. To try and straighten up.

His duty, yes. That is what he needs to focus on now. Nothing else.

Yet he suddenly feels urged to stall. Perhaps he should think of justifications to offer to Elder Amund so they could stay near the city for just another ten minutes. Perhaps five would be enough too. Even just one, if that is what it takes to rationalise the intensifying throb in his chest that slowly is no longer pure grief, nor the numbness he hoped for to envelop him wholly, but something more urgent.

He thinks of possible excuses. Or tries to, anyway, what with how much of a mess his thoughts and feelings have been all morning and are even more so now. There is nothing coherent there, not really — only a sudden and inexplicable urge to both stay and run away at the same time.

But what if he is wrong? What if his heart, extinguished and dried as it now is, is merely playing tricks on him, if only for him to settle down and die as close to her as possible like a lovesick animal?

Yet what if her soul calling out to him in this very moment is the only truth that matters?

“Your Quintessence ought—”

“I wish to rest for just a moment longer before we leave.”

Rafayel sits down, heavily. He slumps over, rests his elbows on his knees.

His heart is racing in a way he physically simply cannot keep up with, so at least he isn’t wholly lying to Elder Amund by inventing his weakness for the sake of chasing what he has lost forever.

Yet even as he continues to prevent Elder Amund from making him rise so they could finally depart, he cannot shake the feeling that something has gone wrong. Or perhaps it has gone right, but in a way that Rafayel does not want to face right now. Or does he?

Before doubt could eat away at him entirely, he finally stands, even if achingly.

“Let’s go,” he decides curtly. He cannot afford to look back. Not this time. He is no longer a child.

Rafayel grabs his belongings, banishes his thoughts — racing yet blank and utterly useless —, and tugs away any lingering stabs of love into the crevices right where the crushed hole in his chest meets his lungs. Where he could breathe alongside the gravitational pull without losing himself entirely.

He takes one step, then another. Like this, he manages to get into a steady-enough rhythm to walk over to his camel.

He mounts it mechanically. Fastens the belts and straps the way he always does. Adds the little belongings he has left to the bags, his tent already rolled up and stored by Elder Amund.

In the end, Rafayel does lose the battle only he knows of and allows himself to glance towards the city one last time.

Childish hope.

His dull gaze caught the bright glimmers of light reflecting off the roofs of the houses and the palace. It all feels misplaced, now that he looks at it. Like art forgery to show grandeur where nothing but lies rested instead.

But somehow, amidst it all, a silvery light shone warmer than all the gold surrounding it and reflected brilliantly in Rafayel’s widening eyes.

Running towards him, his beloved appears like a fish returning to its eternal home in the warm depths of the most vivid and bluest of seas, and she is shouting his name with all her might.