Illidan's Private Journal - The Weight of a Kiss
(Journal fragment, penned in Illidan's hand.)
I did not mean to do it.
I have rehearsed restraint all my life - measured words, hidden hungers, waiting for permission that never comes. But tonight, when she walked in with her hair unbound, her robes stained with blood not her own, her eyes weary yet still bright... I forgot myself.
I kissed her.
Not hidden. Not stolen.
In front of her parents.
For a heartbeat after, I braced for the world to collapse. I expected Zoya's sharp rebuke, Lucien's cold dismissal, her own laughter at my presumption.
Instead - silence.
Then acceptance.
Her mother smiled as though she had been waiting for it. Her father said nothing, but neither did he turn away. And she… she only looked at me. Steady. Unafraid.
I am not used to being welcomed.
I am not used to being chosen.
And yet tonight, at that table, in that villa, with bread rising in the oven and flour on her mother's hands, I felt it: not condemnation, not rivalry, but belonging.
I do not know what I have done to deserve it.
Perhaps nothing.
Perhaps everything.
But I know this…
I will not let go.