The Hunt
Teaching Nana to catch gerbils was simultaneously easier and harder than Rafayel had anticipated.
Easier, because she was an attentive student, watching his every movement with focused intensity as he demonstrated how to set the simple traps. How to bait them with seeds and grains. How to wait with perfect stillness until curiosity overcame caution and the small creatures ventured close.
Harder, because she was so *earnest* about it. So delighted by each small success. So quick to laugh when she made mistakes, and so generous in her praise when she finally got it right.
"Like this?" she asked, crouched beside him as she carefully positioned a trap beneath a fallen log. Her tongue peeked out between her lips in concentration, and Rafayel had to physically force himself to look away from her face.
"Exactly like that," he confirmed. "Now we wait."
They settled back against a broad oak tree, side by side in companionable silence. The forest hummed with life around them—birds calling to one another, insects buzzing in the underbrush, the whisper of wind through leaves. It was peaceful in a way that Rafayel hadn't experienced in longer than he could remember.
Or maybe it was just peaceful because she was beside him, her shoulder brushing his, her breathing gradually syncing with his own.
"Can I ask you something?" Nana said after a while, her voice soft.
*No*, Rafayel thought. *Don't ask me anything. Don't make me lie to you more than I already have.*
"Of course," he said aloud.
"Where are you from? Really?" She turned to look at him, genuine curiosity in her eyes. "You said near the sea, but... there's something different about you. The way you move, the way you speak, even the way you—" She gestured vaguely at the beacon still clutched in her hand. "Make magic happen. You're not like anyone I've ever met."
Rafayel was quiet for a long moment, weighing his words carefully. He could lie completely—make up some distant kingdom, some fictional past. It would be safer. Smarter.
But the bond mark pulsed against his chest, and something in him rebelled at the thought of giving her nothing but falsehoods.
"I'm from a kingdom beneath the waves," he said finally. "A place where the water sings and the buildings are carved from pearl and coral. Where my people—" He stopped, the words catching in his throat.
*Where my people are dying because of me. Because I'm too weak to do what needs to be done.*
"It sounds beautiful," Nana said softly. "Why did you leave?"
*To find you. To kill you. To save everyone I've ever known by destroying the one person who saved me first.*
"I had something I needed to find," Rafayel said instead. "Something that was lost."
"Did you find it?"
He looked at her then—really looked at her. At the girl who'd pulled him from beneath that fallen tree a hundred years ago. The girl who'd promised to come back and then died before she could. The girl who'd been reborn without any memory of him, without any knowledge of what they'd been to each other.
The girl he was going to kill to save his kingdom.
"Yes," he said, and his voice was rough with emotion he couldn't quite suppress. "I found it."
Before Nana could ask any follow-up questions, there was a small rustling sound from the trap. They both turned to see a gerbil—round and fluffy with bright button eyes—nosing at the bait, completely unaware of the mechanism waiting to spring.
Nana's face lit up with childlike delight. "Look!" she whispered. "It's working!"
The gerbil triggered the trap with perfect timing, the door closing gently behind it. Not harmful, just containing. The small creature looked around its new confines with what could only be described as indignant confusion.
Nana laughed with pure joy, clapping her hands together. "We did it! Oh, it's so cute!"
She looked at Rafayel with such unfiltered happiness that something in his chest gave way. This was why she'd summoned him. Not for grand adventures or dangerous escapes. Just to catch a gerbil. Just to experience one small, simple joy that her gilded cage had denied her.
*She's so easy to please*, he thought. *So easy to make happy. Which makes what you're planning even more monstrous.*
But watching her carefully lift the trap, cooing at the confused gerbil inside, Rafayel couldn't bring himself to care about plans or strategy or the cold calculus of sacrifice.
Just for this moment, he let himself enjoy her joy. Let himself pretend that he was just a man teaching a girl he cared about to catch rodents in the forest. That there were no kingdoms depending on him, no altars waiting, no impossible choices looming on the horizon.
Just for this moment, he let himself be happy.
It was the most dangerous thing he'd done yet.
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🐚🐚🐚
The Moment of Truth.
The sun was setting by the time Nana's excitement finally burned itself out. They'd caught three more gerbils—which she'd insisted on releasing because "they have families too"—and she'd talked animatedly about everything and nothing, her words spilling out like she'd been saving them up for someone who would actually listen.
Now she sat with her back against the same oak tree, her eyes heavy with exhaustion, her head gradually tilting toward his shoulder.
"Sorry," she mumbled, fighting to keep her eyes open. "Didn't realize how tired I was..."
"Sleep," Rafayel said quietly. "I'll keep watch."
"You sure? We should probably get back before—" Her words dissolved into a yawn. "Before someone notices..."
"Soon," he promised. "Rest first."
It took less than a minute for her to fall asleep, her cheek pressed against his shoulder, her breathing evening out into the slow rhythm of dreams. One of her hands rested against his arm, fingers curled loosely in the fabric of his sleeve.
Trusting him completely.
Rafayel sat perfectly still, barely breathing, hyperaware of every point of contact between them. The weight of her head. The warmth of her hand. The way she unconsciously shifted closer to him in sleep, seeking comfort from the very person who planned her destruction.
*Now*, the practical voice in his mind whispered. *She's vulnerable. Unguarded. You could take her to the altar right now. End this before you're in any deeper.*
His hand moved without conscious command, reaching for the blade he kept hidden in his robes. The Lemurian steel whispered as he drew it—a sound so soft it wouldn't wake her but loud enough that he heard it like a scream.
The blade caught the dying sunlight, beautiful and terrible. He'd used this weapon countless times. Had taken lives without hesitation when the contract demanded it. It should be easy. *She* should be easy—just one more target, one more necessary death in a life full of them.
So why couldn't he make himself move?
Rafayel stared at her sleeping face, memorizing every detail with the desperate intensity of someone trying to carve an image into his soul. The way her lashes fanned across her cheeks. The slight furrow between her brows, like even in sleep she was thinking. The soft part of her lips as she breathed.
She looked so young like this. So innocent. So utterly unaware that death sat beside her, blade in hand, weighing her life against ten thousand others.
His free hand moved of its own accord, taking her small hand in his larger palm. So small. So delicate. So warm with life that he was about to extinguish.
These were the hands that had saved him. That had dug through sand and debris until they bled, until she'd freed him from certain death. These hands had never harmed anyone. Had only tried to help, to heal, to make the world a little less cruel.
And he was going to make them still forever.
*It's so wrong*, he thought, and the realization hit him like a physical blow. *This is so wrong.*
The blade trembled in his grip.
He closed his eyes, trying to summon the image of his dying kingdom. The receding waters. The suffocating mer. The children who would never grow up. The civilization that would crumble into nothing but golden sand and forgotten history.
*One life or ten thousand*, the High Priest had said. *Make your choice.*
But it wasn't that simple, was it? Because that "one life" was *this* life. This girl who laughed at gerbils and thanked him for teaching her to set traps.
This girl who'd called him amazing and looked at him like he was worth something.
This girl who trusted him so completely that she fell asleep against his shoulder, never once suspecting that he was the monster from her father's warnings.
This girl who'd saved him once, when she had no reason to. Who'd given him hope before she'd taken it away. Who'd been the first and only person to see him—really see him—not as a prince or a god or a weapon, but as someone worth rescuing.
I can't do this.
The thought formed with crystal clarity, undeniable and absolute.
I can't kill her.
Not like this. Not while she slept trustingly against him. Not when she'd just spent the afternoon laughing and catching gerbils and looking at him like he'd given her the world instead of planning to take everything from her.
Maybe later. Maybe when the water got lower, when his people's situation became even more desperate, when he'd had time to harden his heart again.
But not today.
Not now.
You're weak, his conscience accused. This is exactly the weakness that will doom everyone you're supposed to protect.
Maybe. Probably. But Rafayel found that he couldn't make himself care.
He carefully placed her hand back on her thigh, his touch reverent despite—or perhaps because of—what he'd almost done.
Then he returned the blade to its sheath, the metal sliding home with a whisper that sounded like relief.Or maybe that was just his own heart, starting to beat again after holding itself suspended in that impossible moment.
It's wrong, he thought again, but this time he meant something different. The choice itself is wrong. Asking me to kill her to save them is wrong. There has to be another way. There has to be.
But what if there wasn't? What if this was exactly what the universe demanded—one impossible sacrifice to save many? What if his inability to strike now would doom everyone?
What if loving her more than his duty made him the villain after all?.
Rafayel didn't have answers. He had only this moment, this girl asleep against his shoulder, this choice he'd made not to be her executioner.
At least not today.
He let his head fall back against the tree, exhaustion washing over him. Not physical tiredness—Lemurian bodies didn't fatigue the way human ones did. But soul-deep weariness, the kind that came from fighting yourself at every turn, from being at war with your own heart.
If I keep feeling like this, he thought, I won't be able to sacrifice her at all. And then Lemuria will fall. My people will turn to sea foam. Everything will end because I'm too weak to do what needs to be done.
The bond mark pulsed against his chest—not painfully now, but with something almost like contentment. As if the curse itself approved of his weakness. As if it was pleased he'd spared her.
Curse indeed, Rafayel thought bitterly.
Cursed to love her. Cursed to need her.
Cursed to be unable to hurt her even when hurting her is the only way to save everyone else.
The sun continued its descent, painting the forest in shades of amber and gold. Somewhere in the distance, birds called their evening songs. The gerbils they'd released probably returned to their burrows, oblivious to how close they'd come to being part of something significant.
And Rafayel sat beneath an oak tree with death in his robes and doubt in his heart, holding a sleeping girl who trusted him completely, trying to figure out how to be both the monster his people needed and the person she deserved.
Failing at both.
But unable to stop trying.
Tomorrow, he promised himself. Tomorrow I'll figure this out. Tomorrow I'll find a way to harden my heart. Tomorrow I'll remember why I'm here and what I have to do.
Tomorrow I'll be strong enough.
But tomorrow was always tomorrow, and today was now, and right now all he could do was sit in the dying light and try not to think about how much easier everything would be if he could just stop loving her.
If he could just stop being the boy who'd waited a hundred years for a promise.
If he could just stop hoping that somehow, impossibly, there might be another ending to this story.
An ending where nobody had to die.
Where love didn't have to be paid for in blood.
Where the villain could become the hero after all.
But fairy tales rarely ended that way.
And this was no fairy tale.
This was a tragedy.
They just hadn't reached the final act yet.
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🐚🐚🐚
To be continued __