Morning came not with fanfare, but with a hush.
No birdsong stirred the air, no distant wind danced among the curtains. Only the soft hush of early light—pale and gold as if painted by cautious fingers—spilled through the sheer drapery of the eastward window, bathing the chamber in an almost reverent silence.
August did not rise.
He did not stretch or sigh or greet the hour as he once might have when boyhood still clung to his bones. He simply… opened his eyes.
They were slow to reveal themselves—those smoke-grey orbs like quiet storms—beneath lashes too delicate for a world this cruel. For a long, unmeasured breath, he lay there, as if even the weight of his own gaze was something to be rationed.
The ceiling above him was carved with faded florals, pale ivory against duskwood, a ceiling he knew better than most of the portraits in the manor. He had memorized every crack, every creeping vine in the design, and yet each morning they returned like strangers—mocking, constant.
He did not move.
The sheets—clean, pressed, and smelling faintly of bergamot—lay smooth over his slender form, untouched by tossing or turning. The fever had waned, but the illness curled inside him like smoke inside a bottle, refusing to be let out or named.
Beyond the pane, the garden bloomed beneath a veil of mist. Dew clung to the petals, catching light like tears. He could see only part of it from his place in bed—the lavender rows, the trembling branches of a willow—but not the far corner. Not the graves.
He didn't try to look.
Instead, his eyes fluttered half-shut again, resisting the ache of consciousness, as if the act of being awake was an affront to the quiet around him.
For a moment, he thought of Elias—
Not the Elias of last night or the one who dared carry him like some fragile relic, but the boy from before. The one who used to braid August's hair with clumsy fingers and too much enthusiasm, tugging softly when the strands slipped between his grasp. The boy who always left for training too soon, whose absence made the world feel heavier than it should have.
"You're late," August whispered, but there was no one to hear it.
His voice sounded foreign to him—hoarse, light, uncertain.
The morning did not answer. It merely pressed on in golden silence, the sunlight now warm enough to kiss his cheekbones, turning the pale arc of his face into something nearly ethereal.
His fingers twitched under the sheet. A small thing. A defiant act.
But even that was too much.
He let out a long breath—slow and shallow—and turned his head just slightly on the pillow. In that fragile shift, the weight of his body revealed itself, as though the bed had turned to stone beneath him. His limbs were lead, his bones tired of their own burden.
Still, he did not call for anyone.
He did not wish for food, nor for medicine, nor for voices that would ask him how he felt when the answer had not changed in days.
Instead, he stared through the glass, eyes fixed on the edge of the garden he could not see.
And whispered, barely, "I'm still here."
A statement.
A truth.
And somehow—despite it all—an act of survival.
The morning deepened, gathering weight as hours passed like petals falling silently to earth. Within the great halls of Blackwood Manor, the hush lingered still—like the moment before a confession, or the breath before a name is spoken aloud for the first time.
Downstairs, the scent of polished wood and pressed lilies clung to the air. The drawing room had been prepared—subtly but purposefully. Chairs dusted, windows slightly parted to invite in sunlight and scent, and Giles stood near the hearth, his posture uncharacteristically alert.
The door opened without flourish.
And Lirael stepped in.
He was not announced by servants or preceded by title. He entered as quietly as a shadow stepping into light—yet no one could deny the shift in atmosphere that followed him. His robes were still pale as morning fog, embroidered now in gold and moonthread, clinging to the delicate slope of his frame like a veil sewn by the stars. His long, golden hair fell in endless threads down his back, bound in a half braid near the crown, the rest shimmering like candlelight with every movement.
Giles turned, and for a moment, the two regarded each other.
"Giles," Lirael said first, voice like still water breaking. His pink eyes—so gentle they almost hurt to look at—softened at the sight of the old steward.
"It's been… twenty years," Giles replied, offering a bow deeper than his station required. "And you have not changed a day."
"No," Lirael murmured. "Some of us are not allowed to."
He stepped forward, each motion slow and precise, as though time itself deferred to his pacing. Then, from the hallway, came another presence—brisk, tall, composed. Elias entered, newly dressed in an elegant dark tunic lined with subtle silver thread. His hair had been combed back, his shoulders straightened with deliberate calm.
He stopped at the threshold, meeting Lirael's gaze for the second time.
And Lirael tilted his head.
His rose-pink eyes narrowed—just a fraction—and something unreadable passed across his expression. Not shock. Not fear. But recognition of a kind far deeper. A soul seeing a shape it remembers, even if it cannot recall the name.
"You are… brighter this morning," Lirael said to Elias.
Elias blinked, unsure whether it was a compliment or something else entirely. "Thank you. I wanted to be presentable."
"For him," Lirael finished.
Elias nodded.
Lirael gave a gentle, unreadable smile. "Good. Let us not keep him waiting, then."
And so they walked—quietly, slowly, their steps echoing through Blackwood like part of some ancient procession.
As they approached the wing where August rested, Elias found his fingers unconsciously clenching. Every moment of August's illness flashed behind his eyes—the way his body folded inward from pain, the pallor, the stubbornness, the way he pushed Elias away with silence sharper than any blade.
He hoped this would not be another cruelty August would endure. He hoped, perhaps foolishly, that Lirael's presence would bring light instead of another shadow.
They reached the door.
Elias paused with his hand on the handle. "He won't be kind."
"I am not here for kindness," Lirael said softly. "I am here to see the truth."
The door opened.
And sunlight spilled into the room, warm and slow, touching the pale outline of the boy still draped across the bed.
August did not move. Not at first.
But then, sensing the shift—he opened his eyes.
Elias stepped aside.
And Lirael… stepped in.
Like a ghost sent from a kinder afterlife. Like a memory carved into something living.
The moment their eyes met, it was not noise but silence that filled the room. August did not speak. But his breath hitched—just slightly—as if some string inside him had been tugged loose.
And Lirael bowed. Low. Deeper than anyone had bowed to August in years.
"My name," he said, rising, "is Lirael."
The silence between them did not break like glass—it bent, stretched, held taut like a thread suspended between two fates.
August lay there, half-sat in a nest of embroidered pillows, his white-gold hair tumbling around his face like a crown no one asked to wear. His eyes—smoke-grey and tired—narrowed as they roamed over Lirael.
The pale stranger, poised and delicate, stood near the foot of his bed with the patience of a statue carved by gods. Sunlight from the window fell across his skin like reverence.
"You're… not a physician," August said at last, his voice hoarse but cool. "You don't smell like one."
Lirael's lips curved faintly. "I am not."
"Then what are you?" August asked, not lifting his head from the carved headboard. "a wandering loyal man? A priest? Or simply another ghost everyone expects me to entertain?"
Elias shifted in the corner, jaw tense—but Lirael raised one slender hand to still him. His gaze remained on August, soft but unblinking.
"I am none of those things," he said quietly. "But if I had to choose… I'd say I am a reminder."
August's eyes narrowed. "Of what?"
"That there are people who see you not as a curse, not as a symbol, not as a burden—" Lirael took one step closer, "—but simply… as you."
The words did not pierce August so much as pass through him like smoke. He looked away, biting his lip in that familiar, restrained fashion—frustration building behind fragile dignity.
"I don't need riddles," August muttered. "I need time. And quiet. I've had enough strangers at my bedside pretending they care."
"I do not pretend," Lirael said, and for the first time, his voice lost its softness.
It was a single sentence, but it cracked like thunder in the space between them. August flinched—barely, but enough for Elias to notice.
"I gave you my blessing when you were born," Lirael continued, taking another step, his bare feet silent against the wooden floor. "I have known of your existence longer than you have known pain."
August's throat tightened.
"I didn't ask for blessings," he whispered.
"No child ever does," Lirael replied. "But sometimes, they are given not as gifts—but as shields."
August sat up straighter then, though his limbs trembled faintly beneath the blankets. "If you know so much, then you know I am no child anymore."
To that, Lirael offered no argument. He simply studied August with those strange rose-pink eyes—eyes that did not pity, did not leer, did not flinch.
"You are not a child," Lirael said. "You are a flame, August. Not wild… but wounded. Still burning. And everyone who's tried to hold you either got too close—or never close enough."
August's breath caught.
No one had said it like that before.
Not even Elias.
"Why now?" August asked, softer. "Why come now?"
Lirael tilted his head, and the sunlight shimmered through his hair like golden water.
"Because now you are on the edge. Not of death—but of something worse. Silence. Resignation. The moment a flame dims not from wind… but from giving up."
August closed his eyes. For a moment, the room held nothing but the sound of the wind brushing the windows.
"And you think you can stop that?" he murmured.
"I think," Lirael replied, stepping beside the bed now, "you deserve someone who does not fear your silence. Someone who will sit beside you when your strength fails. Someone who has felt what you feel."
August turned his head then. His eyes met Lirael's—and for the first time, truly looked.
"I don't believe you," he said. "No one feels what I feel."
And Lirael—Lirael only smiled. But it was a sad smile, the kind that said I wish you were wrong.
Then, in the quiet, he whispered:
"They all said they loved me too, once. But none of them said it before asking for a piece of me."
August's chest rose slowly.
"…What did they want?"
"My face," Lirael said. "My body. My name. My loyalty. Everything—except the truth inside me."
He reached for the edge of the blanket. Not to pull it down or away, but simply to rest his hand beside August's.
"They talked of beauty as if it was currency. But no one asked who I was when the lights went out. No one stayed for the voice inside me—not even the ones who claimed they'd die for me."
August did not speak. He didn't move. But his hand—his slender, trembling hand—curled faintly inward, toward Lirael's warmth.
Elias said nothing from the doorway. But his chest ached.
Lirael rose gently, stepping back. "I won't ask you to trust me today. But I will come again. And I'll keep coming, if you'll let me."
August looked down. His voice came quiet, cracked.
"…Fine. Just don't wear that robe next time. You look like a funeral."
Lirael let out the smallest laugh, light and fleeting. "Noted."
As he turned, Elias followed him out—but not before glancing back once more.
August sat there in the bed, chin tilted toward the window. Not speaking. Not moving.
But his hand still rested on the blanket where Lirael's had been.
And that, for now, was enough.