The days began to find their rhythm, as if the villa itself had taken him into its pulse.
Mornings belonged to Lucien.
The study always smelled of ink and parchment, a fire banked low against the chill that crept more deeply with each passing week. Some days it was runes and cadence, others dry genealogies or star charts spread across the desk.
Illidan scoffed at lineages until Lucien made him trace them like ley-threads, showing how families carried their own echoes.
Once, the lesson moved outside, scrolls unrolled in the orchard where Lucien pointed to constellations fading in the dawn. Illidan found himself yielding more often than bristling—because the words worked, and because Lucien corrected him with the unhurried patience of a man who believed he was worth teaching.
Afternoons belonged to the orchard.
At first, blossoms still clung to branches; later, apples weighed them down until baskets overflowed.
By month's end, the leaves had begun to curl and drop, crunching underfoot in russet and gold.
When Lytavis was home, she walked beside him with a basket at her hip, teasing him when Ginger nosed out the best fruit and Skye shrieked for her share. When she was gone to her own lessons, the silence was sharper.
Her midwifery studies were going well, and she spent her days sent learning how to ease pain, steady breathing, and coax new life into the world.
She returned with hands still faintly scented of herbs, with stories of mothers-to-be and the way even fear could be calmed by a steady voice. Illidan listened more than he meant to, struck by how she spoke of it not as duty, but as something sacred.
Evenings belonged to the table.
At first, the windows were open to catch the last warmth of autumn; later, shutters closed and firelight ruled the room.
Zoya's stews thickened with barley and venison, Lucien poured darker wines, bread stayed warm under folded cloth. Illidan learned to murmur thanks without prompting, to pass plates before serving himself.
Zoya told stories of herbs that cured and killed, Lytavis laughed over Whisper's latest escapade, and once Illidan—prodded by Lucien's dry look—confessed to singeing his eyebrows on a miscast spell. The laughter that followed loosened something in his chest he hadn't known was clenched. He listened, unmoored by how ordinary it felt.
One evening, with the fire snapping low, Lytavis spoke softly of her lessons—how she had rested her hand on a woman's belly and felt the quick flutter of a child's heartbeat beneath her palm. Her eyes shone as she described it, as though she had touched not just flesh but wonder itself. Illidan said nothing, but he found himself staring at her hands longer than he meant to, as if they might carry that same miracle still.
And between all of this—always—the stolen moments.
A brush of hands in the orchard that lingered longer each week.
A kiss in the villa library when the candle guttered low.
A hurried press of lips in the kitchen doorway, scattered by Zoya's footsteps.
On the balcony above the garden, lanterns glowing below, her fingers tangled in his until the cold drove them back inside.
In the orchard at dusk, when fireflies stitched their brief gold through the branches and his breath misted white, her mouth met his in something slower, sweeter, unashamed.
He pulled away only to rest his forehead against hers, laughing softly at the strange new joy of restraint.
The weeks slid by. Blossoms to fruit, fruit to frost. Lessons, dinners, gardens, kisses—woven into a rhythm that grew more dangerous in its ease with every passing day.
No one spoke of what it was becoming. Not yet. But Illidan lingered longer at the villa than anywhere else in Suramar.
And when the cold finally settled into the stone walls, he realized he had stopped counting altogether.