Night fell like velvet over Nyx's house, thick and suffocating in its softness, as though the sky itself had decided to press close and listen. The old wooden beams groaned quietly with the weight of settling darkness, every creak a reminder that the house was awake even when its inhabitants pretended not to be. Shadows stretched long across the walls, stitched together by moonlight slipping through thin curtains.
The room held two presences.
Nyx lay stiff beside Nia, aware of every inch of space between them and every inch that threatened to disappear. They shared a single bed, not out of carelessness but inevitability, the way fate forced collisions and waited to see who broke first. Silver moonlight spilled across the sheets, pale and unguarded, turning the air dreamlike, unreal—like a memory being formed even as it happened.
Nia had stopped laughing.
The sharp edges of her voice had softened into something slower, heavier, carrying warmth that pressed against Nyx's ribs. She shifted slightly, the mattress dipping beneath her weight, and turned toward him with deliberate slowness.
Her voice slipped into the dark like a secret.
"You're still afraid of me, aren't you?" Nia asked.
Nyx did not answer.
Silence stretched.
He stared past her, toward the window, toward the moon he had once trusted more than people. It hung there cold and distant, a constant that never demanded explanations. He had sworn oaths beneath that light, bled beneath it, made promises to himself that power would never touch his heart.
But the moon did not protect him now.
Nia moved closer.
Her fingers brushed his hand—barely a touch, barely a question—and the tension between them finally broke, snapping like a wire pulled too tight. Nyx inhaled sharply, his body betraying him before his will could intervene.
She reached for his wrist.
Her fingers traced the faint scars there, slow and reverent, as if she were reading a history written in flesh. She followed each mark like a constellation, mapping the violence and survival etched into him.
Nyx froze.
His instincts screamed retreat, but his body remained still, caught between resistance and the magnetic pull of her presence. Her arms slid around his waist, confident, unhurried. Her breath brushed his neck, warm and intimate, and the closeness felt dangerous—not human closeness, not comfort, but something older. A spell masquerading as touch.
"You can't keep running from me," Nia whispered.
The room seemed to respond.
Two heartbeats pulsed in the silence, uneven at first, then slowly aligning. Magic stirred—not summoned, not controlled—but born from emotion too raw to be named. Nyx felt it coil beneath his skin, answering her without permission.
When their lips met, the world collapsed inward.
It was not gentle.
It was not hurried.
It was inevitable.
For a single suspended heartbeat, they were nothing else—no vampire, no human, no heir to a throne soaked in blood. Just a spark caught between two worlds grinding against each other.
The air shimmered.
Nyx felt it before he saw it—the pressure change, the way reality seemed to inhale. Nia's magic bloomed outward, unrestrained, flooding the room with light. Her eyes glowed softly, pink and gold folding into each other, and the walls seemed to bend beneath the warmth of it.
The light touched Nyx.
His clothes unraveled into threads of silver mist, dissolving without pain, without resistance. The mist reformed around him, shaping itself into robes that carried weight and authority—intricate patterns woven with sigils older than names, radiant with power that recognized him.
He gasped, not in fear, but recognition.
"You were always meant to wear power," Nia murmured.
Her hand rose to his face, her thumb brushing his cheek as though claiming him.
The walls vanished.
The ceiling followed.
In the next breath, they were rising.
The sleeping town unfurled beneath them, quiet and ignorant, rooftops bathed in moonlight. The moon itself loomed wide above, watching, unblinking, as if measuring him against the oaths he had broken and the ones he had yet to make.
They hovered there, held aloft by Nia's spell.
When they kissed again, the sky changed.
Silver light softened, blushing into rose. Clouds caught the color and carried it outward, painting the night as though even the heavens recoiled at witnessing something too intimate, too forbidden.
The magic ebbed slowly, reluctantly.
They descended back into the room, the bed receiving them like a held breath finally released. The air still hummed with echoes, the remnants of power clinging to skin and bone.
They lay together in silence.
Nia rested her head against Nyx's chest, listening. His arm moved before he consciously decided to let it, curling around her with instinct rather than permission. Her warmth seeped into him, unsettling and grounding all at once.
"Maybe the world isn't all fire," Nia whispered.
"Sometimes it's just warmth."
Nyx said nothing.
But he tightened his hold.
Outside, the moon slowly drained of color, retreating into pale white, as if ashamed of what it had witnessed. Sleep claimed them tangled together, breath syncing, heartbeats finding rhythm for the first time since fate had turned them into enemies wearing love like armor.
Morning arrived gently, almost apologetically.
Sunlight spilled through the window in soft gold sheets, touching Nyx's eyes first. He woke slowly, the night replaying in fragments that felt too vivid to dismiss as dream. His body ached—not with pain, but consequence.
He rose quietly, careful not to wake her, and moved to the washroom.
The door clicked shut.
He sat in silence.
The weight returned.
Plans. Blood. Seven days. Seven hours. A world leaning closer.
His reflection stared back sharper than before, eyes carrying something harder now—something that could not unlearn what it had tasted.
When he stepped out again, steam curled from the bathtub.
Nia lay there, unbothered, watching him like she had known he would come.
Their eyes met.
No words passed.
Her hand lifted, resting against his chest.
Memory surged.
A knock shattered it.
"Nyx?" his father's voice called.
"Are you alright in there?"
Nyx straightened instantly.
"Yes! I'm fine," he said quickly. "It's just a bat!"
"A bat?" his father asked.
"Should I come in?"
"No!" Nyx snapped, then forced steadiness.
"No, I mean—no. I'm completely bare. I can handle it."
Silence.
Then laughter fading down the hall.
Nia covered her mouth, shaking silently.
Nyx exhaled.
The day unraveled.
School was cold. Friends were colder. Silence slammed doors where words should have been.
By nightfall, fear turned into rage.
And rage turned into violence.
Nyx's hand closed around Nia's throat before thought intervened.
"You've shown your true colors," he hissed.
Shouts. Hands pulling him back.
When he released her, tears streaked her face.
"Leave," he said.
She vanished.
"She cared for us," his father said quietly.
Gald said nothing.
Nyx ran into the dark, screaming her name into a sky that did not answer.
Nia Mare was gone.