The next day dawned rough on Illidan Stormrage.
The apprentice's quarters still smelled of ink and smoke when he left them, eyes shadowed from too little sleep. Magister Darkgrove had flung a dozen scrolls across the hall, each more temperamental than the last. One had snarled until Illidan crouched to stroke its binding like a hound, murmuring low until it quieted. He carried the sting of the old man's laughter with him long after the lesson was done.
By the time he reached the Ariakan villa, the late afternoon sun was already softening the orchard. He carried himself tall, but Zoya saw through it instantly.
"You look dreadful," she said without preamble, brushing flour from her hands as she stood in the doorway. "Come in. Sit. I'll fetch tea."
"I don't need tea," Illidan muttered, though he sat and drank it anyway.
Lucien emerged from his study, brows lifting at the sight of him. "Another battle lost to Darkgrove?"
Illidan huffed. "He threw scrolls at me. One tried to bite."
Zoya snorted, unimpressed. "If a parchment frightens you, you'll never last in this house. Here." She pressed a basket into his hands. "Pull weeds in the north bed. Work until your head clears."
Illidan blinked. "Weeds?"
"Unless you'd rather I hand you back to the scrolls."
For once, he didn't argue. He took the basket and went.
The garden was hushed with the song of bees, rows of herbs sighing in the late afternoon breeze. Illidan worked in silence, long fingers tearing weeds free with the same precision he gave spellwork. The air smelled of rosemary and turned earth. By the time Lytavis returned, the basket beside him was overflowing, and dirt smudged his jaw and robes.
She looked tired—robe rumpled, braid frayed from hours of labor, and a streak of blood on her cheek. But her eyes softened when she saw him there, crouched among her mother's basil and thyme.
"Long day?" she asked, voice low.
He rose, brushing soil from his hands. "You could say that." His gaze flicked over her, taking in the fatigue, the streak on her cheek. "Yours too."
Lytavis smiled faintly. "The mother and child are well. That's what matters."
Illidan nodded, jaw tight. Then, as if something inside him refused to wait another heartbeat, he spoke.
"About yesterday…" His voice caught, roughened. "Your father asked, and I—Elune, I sounded like a fool. I wasn't ready. I didn't know how to say it." His hands flexed once before falling still. "But I do know this. You're the first thing I think of when I wake. The last when I close my eyes. Everything feels… less, when you're not in it."
The garden went quiet but for the bees.
Then Lytavis stepped forward, her tired hands lifting to cup his face. Her thumb smeared the soil across his cheekbone, but he didn't seem to care.
"You didn't need to say it perfectly," she whispered. "You just needed to mean it."
The tension in him gave way like a bowstring loosed. His arms closed around her waist, rough and certain, and she yielded without hesitation. The kiss came hard and unpracticed, softened only by relief. Breathless. Aching. Real.
When they parted, her smile brushed his lips—wry, weary, luminous. "You're filthy," she teased, flicking soil from his jaw.
His grin broke through, unguarded. "Then I'll keep working in gardens, if it means ending the day like this."
She laughed—low and sweet—and leaned her forehead against his. The orchard lanterns began to glow, fireflies stitching lazy light between the leaves.
For the briefest moment, the world felt simple.
Notes in the Margin - Lucien Ariakan
Zoya told me later that she sent him into the garden.
Of course she did. My wife believes no soul can stay stubborn when faced with soil and silence. She's right more often than not.
When I looked out from the study window, I saw him there—the boy who once stalked through my lessons like a storm cloud, now crouched among thyme and basil, dirt smudged across his cheek.
I had half a mind to go down, to say the words he could not find the day before. But I held my peace. The lesson was already in motion, and this time, I was not the one teaching it.
When Lytavis came home, she did what I could not. She looked at him, saw the apology written on his hands instead of his tongue, and chose to meet it with grace rather than pride. In that moment, she was her mother's daughter—steady as the earth that grows things back after storms.
I think he loves her.
Not the way boys usually do, with fire and conquest, but with the careful awe of someone who has never truly been welcomed and cannot believe he finally is.
If he can hold onto that awe—if he can learn that love is not possession but presence—then perhaps he will become more than a prodigy.
Perhaps he will become a man worthy of her light.
And if he does not… well.
Zoya knows where to find the shears.