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Lakeview has no patience for myth.
It does not hum with an endless, obedient wrongness the way the Tower did. It creaks when the boards shrink in the winter air. It sighs when wind presses into the eaves. It smells of sap and smoke and damp earth rising from the shore — honest things, careless things, things that exist without asking permission.
Miraak has been here long enough that the noises no longer sound like approaching teeth. Long enough that the open sky no longer feels like an accusation. Long enough that he can pretend he has learned the small rules of being a person again.
He has been useful today. That, at least, he understands.
He wakes before the sun claws up over the lake. He walks the property line while frost still laces the grass, listening for a wrong note, for the crunch of a boot that is not his. He trains until the ache in his shoulders becomes familiar, honest work rather than punishment. He spends an hour with a book open on his knee by the window — old habit, old hunger for knowledge, the one appetite he trusts. He sharpens a blade that does not need sharpening because his hands demand something to do.
He does all of this without thinking about food.
Because in Apocrypha, meals were an event. A performance. A ritual Lilliandra insisted upon with that maddening blend of practicality and defiance — tea brewed, bread broken, conversation made to happen in a place that did not grow wheat or raise goats or care whether mortals lived or died. He had sat with her because she moved through the Tower as if she belonged there, and because she looked smaller when she ate, more ordinary, and for a time he had needed that — proof that she was still a person and not just a blade of will honed sharp enough to cut gods.
He had eaten because it was what one did with another person. Not because his body demanded it.
His body is demanding it now.
It begins as a hollow pull, something he dismisses as fatigue. A little too much brightness in the windowlight. He tightens his grip until the paper stops shifting beneath his thumb. The words blur anyway. He blinks, scowling, and tells himself the ink is poor, the print too small, the author incompetent. As if any of that would explain why the letters seem to swim like minnows in the lake.
The sensation worsens with the speed of a spell taking hold.
Hollow becomes sharp.
Sharp becomes urgent.
His stomach clenches hard enough that he sits up straighter, sudden and irritated with his own flesh. The ache under his ribs is not pain exactly — more like a hooked hand pulling him forward by the spine.
The house is suddenly too loud. The tick of the clock on the mantel is an insult. The wind worry of the shutters is a mutter in a language he cannot stand. Even the lake outside — flat, dark, patient — seems to move with an unnecessary slowness, like it is deliberately wasting his time.
He stands. The book shuts with a snap that makes the candle flame flinch.
He paces once, twice, along the edge of the room, boots thudding harder than they should. His thoughts feel… narrow. Razor-thin. Everything wants to become a problem that can be cut.
He pauses near the table where Lilliandra has spread her notes in a disciplined mess — maps, sketches, marginalia in her precise hand. A jar of dried herbs she brought home from whatever errand she’d taken this morning, as if Lakeview needs offerings.
The door opens, and with it comes Lilliandra’s presence like a change in pressure.
Just her — cloak damp at the shoulders, hair still holding the cold as she shakes it loose. She shuts the door with her hip instead of her hand, as if her hands are occupied. Her fingers are wrapped in thin linen that smells faintly of crushed herbs and clean antiseptic, the kind healers favour when they don’t want the patient to pick at scabs.
Miraak’s gaze catches — briefly — on the faint discoloration at her throat where the skin is still tender. A shadow of bruising beneath the collar. The shape of strain that does not come from fists. From voice. From forcing something ancient through mortal lungs.
She looks up and her eyes catch on him immediately. She has always been too observant. “Miraak,” she says, and it is not a greeting so much as a measurement. Her voice is a fraction rougher than it should be — just a rasp at the edge. She clears her throat once, softly, like she does not want him to hear it. “You’re stomping.”
“I walk,” he answers, and the words come out sharper than intended. “The house makes noise. Blame the wood.”
Her brow lifts a fraction. She doesn’t look offended. She looks… curious. Alert, in the way of a scholar confronted with an unexpected reaction. “I brought—” she begins, shifting her satchel up her shoulder. The movement is small. Harmless. But she winces as the strap pulls, quick and involuntary, the kind of flinch people make when they’ve been told they’re healed and their body disagrees. She hides it immediately, posture settling back into composed lines.
Something in him snaps anyway.
“Must you always bring something?” he bites out. “Must you always fill every silence with… with things?” The sentence is ugly even as it leaves him. Too personal. Too pointed. It strikes at her habits — her clutter, her tendency to collect, her refusal to exist without leaving marks of it everywhere.
It strikes at a woman still wearing bandages under her sleeves because she used her own breath to drag him back into flesh.
He sees the flicker in her eyes. Not hurt, she doesn’t bruise easily, but surprise, and then a narrowing, a recalculation.
The room goes still.
He expects her to argue. To retaliate. To tease in that infuriating way that turns blades aside without ever acknowledging the cut.
She doesn’t. Instead she sets her satchel down slowly, like she is careful not to startle a skittish animal. Her fingers linger against the strap a moment longer than they need to, as if the simple act of lowering weight has cost her something.
Then she looks at him — really looks. “You’re pale,” she says.
“I am fine.”
“When did you last eat?” she asks.
There is a moment where his mind tries to dodge it, tries to turn it into an insult, an intrusion, anything but what it is. Then he realizes he does not know.
The last time he remembers clearly is… morning, perhaps, when she set bread on a plate and he ate because it was there, because she watched him over her cup, because it made the day feel structured and therefore survivable.
After that, there had been training, and reading, and walking, and then time slipping away.
“I do not need—” he starts, reflexive, pride-driven.
Lilliandra’s expression doesn’t change. “Yes, you do.”
He glares at her. “Do not speak to me as if I am one of your apprentices.”
She steps closer, stopping just out of reach. Close enough that he can smell the cold on her cloak, the lake damp, the faint medicinal tang rising from her bandages. Close enough that her voice doesn’t need to rise.
“I’m not,” she says. “I’m speaking to you like you’re in a body.”
He hates her for being right. He hates the way the truth sits under his tongue like a swallowed shard. Hates that his hands are trembling now that she has named it, as if the act of being seen has stripped away the last of his control.
Lilliandra reaches to the kettle already sitting by the hearth. There is water in it; she must have been planning tea anyway — something soothing for her own throat, perhaps. She moves with practiced ease — tinder, spark, flame coaxed up with a flick of magic so casual it barely registers.
But Miraak sees the micro-hesitation: the way her breath catches before she casts, the slight tension in her jaw as if her body is bracing against an aftershock. Magic is easy for her — until it isn’t. Until the cost reminds itself.
She measures honey with a spoon, and the honey moves thick and slow, a shining thread that catches the firelight like molten gold. The smell of it makes his stomach cramp again. His mouth waters.
His hatred sharpens into something uglier: shame.
She pours. Steam rises, fragrant and sweet. She sets the cup on the table in front of him, as if she is placing a tool within reach. “Drink,” she says. Her voice is still rough at the edges. Not enough for anyone else to notice. Enough for him.
He stares at it. He can feel the stubborn refusal in his chest like armour. He can feel the animal urgency beneath it like claws. He does not move.
Lilliandra leans in slightly, gaze level. “Do you want to keep snapping at me for the crime of existing in the same room,” she says, “or do you want to fix the problem?”
“It is not a problem,” he growls.
“It is a problem,” she corrects, unruffled. “Because it’s making you stupid.”
His eyes narrow. That should have provoked him. Instead, it hits with a cold clarity: he does feel stupid. Fogged. Mean for no reason he can justify. Like a man trapped in a bad illusion with no spell to break it.
His fingers close around the cup. The heat bites at his palms. The scent is overwhelming — honey, herbs, faint citrus.
He drinks. Sweetness floods his mouth. Warmth slides down his throat into the hollow ache in his belly, and, for a terrifying moment, he feels the relief like a drug — immediate, undeniable, physical.
His shoulders loosen a fraction without permission. He drinks again, more quickly. The edge of panic in him eases — not gone, but softened, the way a storm relents when the pressure changes.
Lilliandra places fruit on the table: sliced apple, dark berries, and dried fruits. Practical, prepared. She had already been thinking of feeding herself; she is simply redirecting the plan toward him. “Eat,” she says again, quieter. Then, after a beat, she clears her throat, and the sound is small — controlled — but it tightens something in his chest anyway.
He hates how his hand reaches before his pride can object. The apple is crisp. The first bite — juice, sugar, the clean snap of it between his teeth. The third makes the world stop feeling like it is tilted against him.
He eats like a starving man, and the word starving tries to lodge itself in his mind as an accusation. He chews slower, forcing control back into his movements. By the time he finishes the apple and a handful of berries, the rage has drained out of him so thoroughly it feels like waking up from a fever.
He sets the cup down carefully, as if he fears breaking it.
The quiet that follows is different from before. Not brittle. Not poised to cut.
Lilliandra watches him with that same clinical attention, but there is something softer in it now, something that might be satisfaction in having solved a puzzle. “Well?” she asks.
Miraak’s mouth feels thick. His tongue does not want to form the next words. He has not apologized often in his existence. When he has, it has been strategic, calculated, or extracted like a tooth.
“That was… unacceptable,” he says at last.
Lilliandra’s brows lift. “Your tone?”
“My words,” he corrects, and his voice is lower now, scraped raw by the admission. “The impulse. I—” He stops, because admitting I lost control feels like offering his throat.
Because admitting it to her, of all people, feels like handing her another thread to pull.
Lilliandra does not press. She simply rests a bandaged hand on the table, fingers splayed among her papers like she is anchoring herself in the room.
“Your body runs on fuel,” she says, like she is explaining a spell formula. “You can be as proud as you like, but if you don’t eat, you get… feral.”
The corner of his mouth twitches, not quite a smile, not quite anything. “Feral.”
“Mm.” She tilts her head. “It’s not cute in this context.”
He huffs once, a sound that might have been a laugh in another life. It fades quickly. The shame returns in a slow wave — hotter now, because he cannot stop seeing her throat when she swallowed around that rasp. He shakes the thought.
“I ate in the Tower,” he says, as if the confession is a defense. “With you.”
“I know.”
“It was habit.” He searches for the right words and finds none that do not irritate him. “A… performance.”
Lilliandra’s gaze sharpens, not offended this time, but thoughtful. “And here it’s not.”
“No,” he admits. “Here it is… need.” The word tastes bitter. Need is a chain. Need is leverage. Need is the oldest form of control. He looks down at his hands. They are steady now. Mortal hands. Flesh that shakes if it is denied sugar. Flesh that obeys a kettle and a spoonful of honey.
He hates it.
He hates it less than he did ten minutes ago.
Lilliandra nudges the bowl of fruit toward him again. “So, we make it habit again,” she says. “But a smarter one.”
He gives her a flat look. “You intend to schedule my meals?”
“I intend to prevent you from biting my head off because you forgot you’re not a myth,” she replies, sweetly merciless. Then she adds, quieter, almost dry: “And because I don’t have the breath left to argue with you for sport right now.”
That last line lands, soft but direct.
His gaze flicks up. Catches on her throat again. The bandages. The careful way she holds herself, as if her ribs are still negotiating with the world. The way she stands like she refuses to be fragile, but her body is insisting on it anyway.
His chest tightens, uncomfortable.
He reaches for another slice of apple — not with desperation this time, but with deliberation. Lilliandra watches the movement, and the line of tension at her mouth eases.
“Where do you keep the honey?” he asks, stiffly.
Her eyes widen a fraction, then soften. “Upper cupboard. Left.”
He nods once, as if she has given him the location of a weapon.
Later, when she turns back to her notes — one hand rubbing absently at her throat as if soothing the lingering ache — and he returns to the window, cup warm between his palms, he finds himself listening to the sounds of the house again.
The clock ticks. The shutters mutter. The fire crackles.
None of it is an insult now.
Outside, the lake lies dark and patient, reflecting the first stars.
Miraak takes a slow sip of honeyed tea and forces himself to think of this not as surrender, but as strategy — maintenance, as she said. A ward against the thin, mean edges of his own mind.
And when the sweetness settles in him, quiet and steady, he realizes with a reluctant, unfamiliar clarity:
Being a person is not one grand transformation.
It is a thousand small obediences.
And, silently — without offering the words, without making it her burden — he chooses one: to remember, next time, before his body turns cruel, that she is still healing from the price of his breath.