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The Tower does not creak.
It hums, sometimes — low and patient. It rearranges itself when its masters are displeased, and it holds still when they are not. Tonight, it is quiet.
Miraak walks the familiar corridor, boots silent against black-veined floor. A room has opened where there was only blank stone a day ago. Not an illusion. Not a hidden door he missed. The Tower does not hide much from them anymore; it obeys, sometimes grudgingly. It should not be able to surprise him like this.
Yet the archway yawns in the corridor like a mouth, and beyond it is a chamber that smells faintly of wet parchment and cold brine. Lamplight pools in wrong places. Shadows hang where there is nothing to cast them.
And the far wall—
The far wall is a board.
No, not a board, he corrects as he steps over the threshold, because it spans nearly from floor to ceiling: a massive slab of cork-black material bolted into the stone, webbed with thin, glossy string and realizes it is somehow ink, pulled into lines. Dozens of parchment scraps and pinned notes, clipped sketches, and pinned folios are arranged like a scholar’s conspiracy map.
At the top, in letters too large to be accidental, is written:
A STUDY IN BOND-FORMATION
Beneath it, in smaller script that has the arrogance of a footnote:
Colloquially: They are in love, you idiots.
Miraak freezes. For a long moment, he does nothing; a calm so practiced. He lets his eyes move, not because he’s curious, but because you do not turn your back on traps. There are no wards he can feel or see. No bite of sigil-work along the threshold.
The ink-string connects labels. Labels connect notes. Notes connect — he refuses to call them evidence. They are not evidence. They are taunts. He takes one step closer. Pinned at eye level:
PROXIMITY EVENTS (NONSEXUAL, UNFORTUNATELY)
— Argument on magic theory: 3 hours, 12 minutes. Neither leaves.
— Shared silence: 47 minutes. Outcome: mutual calm, continued proximity.
To the side, another card:
DENIAL QUOTES (INCOMPLETE, AS EXPECTED)
— “We are not—” (ripped off)
— “Do not imply—”
— “This is irrelevant—”
— “You are insufferable—” (note: frequently exchanged; likely ritualized bonding call)
Miraak’s jaw tightens.
Lower down:
MICRO-CARE (DISTURBINGLY CONSISTENT)
— Subject B relocates dagger from Subject A’s sleeping area. Not to steal. To place within reach.
— Subject A repairs seam in Subject B’s glove without comment.
— Subject B stops speaking when Subject A’s breath catches.
His hand closes, reflexive. The impulse is sharp and sour: to rip the board from the wall and throw it into the ink sea. He steps closer until he can see the pins — bone, some of them, others polished metal.
In the center of the board, ink-string converges on a single scrap marked with a thick, smug circle:
THE LOOK
(see sketch attached)
Someone has drawn them. Not flattering. Not cruel either — worse. It’s accurate.
Miraak’s eyes narrow. That sketch is not from a Cipher’s gossip. That is from a witness who has watched them without blinking.
A slow, deliberate stillness settles into his shoulders. The room doesn’t feel dangerous. It feels invasive.
He reaches up and hooks a finger beneath the corner of the headline — beneath A STUDY IN BOND-FORMATION — and tests it. The parchment clings as though it resents him. He takes the topmost piece and rips it down the middle. The sound is loud in the Tower’s quiet.
The ink-string shivers. The lamps flicker.
And the air behind him folds, like a page turning. “Well,” says a voice that is neither amused nor unamused, but something far older and far more interested than either. “You lasted longer than I expected.”
Miraak does not turn immediately. He watches the board’s web tremble as if responding to breath. He watches a note — one of the smaller ones, near the bottom—crawl half an inch to the left of its own accord, aligning itself in a neater line.
“Of course you’re behind this,” he says, and then turns.
Hermaeus Mora is not in the room in any single shape. He never is. He is a pressure in the corners, an idea that leans in. Tonight, he chooses a partial manifestation: ink pooling into the suggestion of a form near the threshold, a silhouette stitched from tentacles and book-spines, eyes opening like lanterns in the dark.
In the Tower. In their Tower.
Mora regards the torn headline with a languid interest. “Archival material,” he says mildly, as though Miraak has spilled wine on a rug. “You are destroying research.”
“It is not research,” Miraak replies. He keeps his voice controlled because rage would be a gift to the Prince. “It is—”
“Accurate,” Mora supplies, a little too smoothly.
Miraak’s hand flexes once at his side. “It is a dossier.”
Mora’s eyes blink, slow. “What else is a dossier... if not scholarship with intent?”
“You are taunting us.”
“I am observing you.”
“You are bored.”
“And you are predictable.” He gestures with a tendril; the ink-string on the board tightens a fraction, as though pleased to be acknowledged. “When presented with a text you dislike, you tear the page. When presented with a truth you dislike, you threaten the source.”
Miraak steps closer, making the air go colder on purpose. “If you wanted a disaster,” he says softly, “this is a crude way to summon one.”
“Hm? And do you think she will be upset?”
Miraak’s mouth flattens. The room feels smaller. The Tower watches him through its stones. “She will be—” he starts.
Ink blooms on the board in the place where he ripped the headline. Letters write themselves, graceful and smug:
OBSERVATION: SUBJECT B SPEAKS OF SUBJECT A WITH PROTECTIVE INSTINCT.
Miraak goes utterly still.
Mora makes a small sound that might be laughter if laughter had ever crawled from the sea. “There,” he says. “We are already collecting fresh data.”
Miraak’s stare cuts back to him, sharp enough to flay. “Stop writing.”
“No.”
The ink on the board continues: SUBJECT B DISPLAYS AGITATION AT THE IDEA OF THIRD-PARTY ACCESS TO SUBJECT A.
Miraak’s voice drops. “If you are attempting to provoke me into—”
“Into what?” Mora asks, and there is a genuine curiosity there, the kind that makes mortals bleed. “A confession? An argument? A severing of your ‘friendship era,’ as she would phrase it?”
Miraak’s nostrils flare once, barely. He hates that Mora knows their language. He hates that Mora wears it like a stolen cloak.
“You do not get to make sport of what is mine,” he says before he can stop himself.
The room is silent enough that the ink seems to hear it. The board writes, delighted: VERBATIM: “WHAT IS MINE.”
He wants to bite his own tongue for the words.
“There it is,” he murmurs. “The disaster.”
Miraak’s gaze does not move. “It will not be the one you want.”
“Ah... but it can be one.”
The Tower hums, low and attentive. And then — before Miraak can decide whether to rip down the entire center web out of sheer spite — he feels it. A familiar pressure at the edge of his senses, faint as heat behind a wall. A ripple of magicka that is not the Tower’s and not Mora’s. Something bright, sharp, and disciplined, like a blade wrapped in velvet.
Lilliandra is close.
He feels her before he sees her; her presence presses into the corridor, cautious and certain, and the Tower responds with a subtle shift: a stone seam smoothing, a lantern flaring a shade brighter.
Mora’s eyes flick to the archway, amused. He says, almost fond, “Excellent timing.”
Miraak does not look away from him. “Leave,” he says, each syllable scraped down to bone.
“This is my realm.”
“This is our Tower.”
Mora’s gaze lingers on him, listening to the way Miraak says our without thinking. “Yes,” he says softly. “That is the point.”
Footsteps sound — quiet, measured. A shadow crosses the threshold, and then Lilliandra steps into the room.
She is not dressed for spectacle. She never is when she is being most herself. Simple clothes, sleeves rolled to the forearm, hair pinned back in the careless way that tells Miraak she has been working and didn't care for elegance. Her eyes scan the chamber quickly, the way a scholar scans a new ruin: half hunger, half suspicion.
Her gaze lands on the board. She stops.
For a beat, there is no expression at all. Then something almost like amusement threatens at the corner of her mouth, quickly smothered beneath composure.
Miraak watches her more than he watches the wall. That is the part he hates most: the instinctive pivot of his attention, as though she is the only thing in the room that matters.
“What is this?” she asks, her tone betraying her curiosity.
“An invasion,” Miraak answers flatly.
A brow raises. “A what?”
“An archive,” Mora corrects. “A study.”
Miraak hears the faintest change in her breath — an almost-laugh that dies before it can live. She steps closer, slow, as she takes it in. She reads the torn headline, eyes flicking over the remnants. Then she reads the ink Mora has added.
Then she looks at Miraak. Not at his face. Not at his eyes. At the space just beside his mouth, where she can imagine the words came from. Her brows lift, the smallest possible movement. “Did you say that?” she asks softly.
Miraak’s jaw works. He could lie. He should lie. It is safer to lie in front of a daedra that collects truth the way she collects eyes. He says, instead, “It’s a provocation.”
Wearing a smile, Lillindra’s gaze slides back to the board. She reads another card.
JEALOUSY TELL-TALES (SUBJECTS DISPLAY TERRITORIALITY)
— Subject B’s voice drops 1–2 tones when Subject A is praised by others.
— Subject A’s politeness becomes sharper when Subject B is admired.
— Both subjects deny this with impressive discipline (note: denial does not negate trend)
Lilli’s lips press together, thoughtful. “That’s… uncomfortably specific.”
“It’s wrong,” Miraak snaps, too quickly.
The ink writes immediately beneath the card: INCORRECT.
Her eyes flick to the new word, and then, traitorously, her mouth twitches. “Oh,” she says, very quietly, “it’s lie-sensitive.”
Miraak’s fingers curl. Mora emits a pleased, wet sound.
“How long has this been here?” Lilli asks, still reading. She’s moving now, drawn in despite herself, eyes traveling from note to note like a moth to flame.
“It wasn’t,” Miraak answers, voice tight. “This room didn’t exist.”
Lilli pauses. The Tower changing in their space, the invasion made literal. Her gaze cuts briefly to the archway, to the corridor beyond, as if checking the rest of the home for new teeth. Then she returns to the wall with renewed sharpness.
Mora watches her with avid interest. “I thought you would appreciate the documentation,” he says.
“I do not appreciate being catalogued,” Lilli replies, crisp as paper. “I am not a specimen.”
Eyes that watch her blink. “And yet you are reading.”
“I am confirming your methodology so I can dismantle it,” she says, and the lie is almost convincing.
The board writes: OBSERVATION: SUBJECT A DISPLAYS COMPULSIVE INTEREST IN SELF-KNOWLEDGE.
She huffs. Miraak’s chest loosens by a fraction at her irritation; it feels better to be angry together than singled out.
“You made this,” Miraak says to Mora, low. “In our home.”
“You call it home?”
Miraak’s gaze knives. “It is where we sleep.”
“It is where you orbit,” Mora corrects. “Where you pretend you do not share a gravity.”
Lilli lets out a short, sharp exhale and points at a scrap near the center, pinned with a bone tack.
UNSOLICITED DEFENSES (SUBJECT B)
— “She is not careless.”
(footnote: said while describing her as reckless, arrogant, and unfit for supervision)
Miraak’s face goes hot under his mask of calm.
Lilli’s eyes slide to him, and there is something there — an interest that is too gentle to be mockery. “You said that?”
“It was relevant,” he says harshly.
“It’s sweet,” she says with the same tone she uses for dangerous artifacts.
“It is not sweet,” he bites back.
The board writes, almost coy.
DISPUTE: SUBJECTS ARGUE TO AVOID DIRECT ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF CARE.
Lilli laughs once, under her breath, despite herself. The sound is brief and sharp and gone. It hits Miraak like a thrown stone.
Mora’s voice deepens, pleased. “There,” he says. “You are not a disaster yet. But you are… entertaining.”
“What do you want?” Miraak demands.
Eyes drift over the board, then back to them. “To see what happens,” he says simply. “You are both stubborn. You both believe yourselves in control. And you both” —his gaze lingers on the ink-string connecting the micro-care notes— “have already done the most dangerous thing a pair can do.”
Lilli’s voice is cool. “Which is?”
“You have made habits,” Mora says. “Habits around the other.”
Miraak’s hand goes to the board again, not to read but to remove. He yanks a strand of ink-string loose, and the web shudders. Pins rattle.
Lilliandra tilts her head, watching him. “Careful. If it’s self-updating, it may—”
“—write,” Miraak says, and tears down the nearest note out of spite.
Ink floods across the board in response, quick as blood:
OBSERVATION: SUBJECT B RESPONDS TO THREAT WITH DESTRUCTION.
Miraak’s teeth grind.
Lilli steps closer, shoulders squaring. “Fine,” she says, and the word has the weight of a decision. “Then we do it properly.” He looks at her. “Properly,” she repeats, and her gaze flicks to the pins, to the string, to the order. “Not like a man having a tantrum.”
He bristles — then catches himself, because she is right and she knows it and that knowledge is part of why he cannot stop circling her like a star pulled too close.
Eyes blink and pop, delighted. “Cooperation.”
“Do not,” Miraak warns him.
Mora ignores him. “This is better than the disaster,” he murmurs, almost to himself. “This is—”
“Shut up,” Lilli says, sweetly venomous, without looking away from the board.
Mora’s ink-form ripples, pleased by how they mirror each other.
Lilli reaches up and plucks a pin free with careful fingers. The note comes away without tearing. Miraak watches her hand, the way it moves — precise, unshaking. He finds himself matching it. Together, they begin to dismantle the wall.
It should be simple. It is not.
Each pin removed makes a soft, awful sound, like a tooth pulled from wet gum. Each strand of ink-string, when cut, writhes faintly before falling limp. The Tower hums, fascinated by the act of undoing.
They work in silence at first — Lilliandra extracting pins and stacking notes neatly, Miraak cutting strings and tearing down the largest headings. The rhythm settles between them like a third presence.
Miraak’s shoulder brushes hers once. Twice. Neither steps away. Their hands cross when they reach for the same corner, and for a brief, stupid moment his fingers touch her skin at the edge of her sleeve.
It is nothing and yet he retracts as though burned. Lilli does not look at him. She keeps her gaze on the board. But she hums a if to say I felt that.
Hermaeus Mora watches with the patience of a predator watching prey walk into a snare. “You were supposed to yell,” he says conversationally.
Miraak does not look at him. “You always want theater.”
Lilli plucks another pin and says dryly, “He’s disappointed in us.”
“Only fascinated,” he corrects.
Lilli’s mouth curves, quick and razor-thin, but says nothing else. They keep working. Halfway through, Miraak sees her do it: when she thinks he isn’t looking, she slips one scrap from the pile and folds it into her sleeve. The movement is smooth, practiced, the way she steals dangerous knowledge from under other people’s noses.
He catches the edge of the paper before it disappears. He sees the words on it in a single glance: “He shouldn’t get to keep pieces of you.”
His own line. Written down like a specimen tag. He should snatch it back. He should demand it. He should burn it before she can turn it into a weapon or a comfort. He does none of those things. His chest aches, a dull, old pain that feels like pride and discomfort braided together. He turns away and rips down another string hard enough that the board shudders.
The ink writes again, smug. OBSERVATION: SUBJECT B NOTICES THEFT AND ALLOWS IT.
Lilli pauses for the first time. Her head turns a fraction, eyes flicking to the new note. Then, without expression, she plucks that pin too and adds it to her stack.
“Don’t give it more material,” Miraak says, voice rough.
Lilli hums. “I’m not. I’m removing it.”
He almost laughs but instead huffs at her tone.
At last, the board is bare. The final string falls like a severed vein. The last pin is removed. Only faint ink stains remain on the cork-black surface, like ghosts of words. The room feels suddenly wrong — too empty, as if it was built to hold a presence and now doesn’t know what to do with the absence. Lilli gathers the notes into a neat pile, as if cleanliness can cleanse violation. Miraak tears the torn headline into smaller pieces until it is pulp and lets it fall into his palm like ash.
Mora’s ink-form lingers by the threshold, eyes watching, unblinking. “You believe this is an ending,” he says, voice smooth as oil.
Lilli doesn’t look at him. She finishes stacking the last of the pinned scraps with meticulous care, aligning the edges as if they were legitimate research notes instead of an invasion dressed up as scholarship. Only then does she straighten, rolling one shoulder as though loosening tension she refuses to name.
“No,” she says lightly. “I believe it’s housekeeping.”
Mora’s gaze shifts to her, sharpening. “You mistake removal for erasure.”
“Do I?” Lilli asks. She finally turns, expression composed, eyes bright with something dangerous and amused. “You mistake interest for ownership.”
She steps closer to the board — not to admire it, not to read what the ink is already trying to rewrite, but to stand squarely between it and the rest of the room. Between it and the Tower. Between it and Miraak.
“This is our home,” she says, and the word lands with deliberate care. Not louder than necessary. Not softer either. “You don’t get to annotate it.”
Our.
Miraak had said it before, to Mora, sharp and instinctive. Hearing it from her — casual, unguarded, used as if it has always belonged to her — does something traitorous. His attention locks on her profile, on the easy certainty with which she claims the space they stand in.
Mora watches her, still. “Everything in this realm is text,” he says. “Text invites commentary.”
Lilli hums, unconcerned. “Then let me offer an edit.” She smiles and lifts her hand.
Magic curls around her fingers — clean, efficient flame. Not the roaring destruction of anger, but the controlled burn of someone who knows exactly how much force is required. She doesn’t hesitate. The stack of notes ignites at once. Parchment blackens and curls. The scraps burn fast. The smell sharp and brief. Ash flakes downward like black snow.
Miraak watches, transfixed by the calm finality of it. The way she doesn’t look back at him for permission. The way she doesn’t flinch when the Tower hums in mild protest.
She is not destroying evidence.
She is ending the conversation.
A multitude of eyes narrow. “You discard knowledge remarkably easily.”
Lilli flicks the last of the ash from her palm. “Only bad research.” She turns then, already done with him, and reaches out — not touching Miraak, not quite, but close enough that the heat of her magic still lingers between them.
“Come on,” she says, tone mild, as if inviting him to dinner rather than walking away from a god’s attempted manipulation. “I was looking for a book before this all became a distraction. And I refuse to let him think this worked.”
For half a heartbeat, Miraak doesn’t move. Then he does. He falls into step beside her without comment as they leave the room together. The Tower shifts subtly to accommodate them, stone smoothing, lanterns brightening in their wake.
Hermaeus Mora watches them go. The room dims.
The Tower does not immediately rebuild the wall. It waits for the sounds of their steps to quiet. And in the room that was never there before, ink begins to seep back through stone. Slow, patient, certain. The cork surface darkens, drinking the stains and becoming new again. Pins slide from cracks in the wall as if the Tower grows them. Ink-strings thread itself into lines with the careful precision of a spider at work.
A new title writes itself, neater than before:
A STUDY IN BOND-FORMATION: REVISION II
Beneath it, a fresh scrap pins itself into the center—clean, sharp, and unkind in its honesty:
LIES: “— let him think this worked.”
The ink pauses, as if considering. Then, in smaller script, with the smugness of a god who collects inevitabilities: Data accumulates.