Hael did not follow Zyrán when the door closed.
That, too, was a choice.
He remained where he was, standing in the dim of the corridor, listening to the house settle around him. The walls creaked softly, old wood adjusting to cold. Somewhere, a pipe sighed. Ordinary sounds. Human sounds.
They grounded him.
He waited until he was certain Zyrán had not turned back. Until the weight of his presence was no longer something Zyrán could feel pressing through the door.
Only then did Hael move.
He went to the smallest room in the house—the one without a bed, without windows wide enough to invite thought. He closed the door behind him and leaned his forehead against the cool wood, breathing slowly, deliberately, as though breath itself were something he had to earn back.
His hands were shaking.
Not with rage.
With restraint.
He opened his palms and stared at them as if they belonged to someone else. Once, those hands had lifted mountains of light. Once, they had shaped storms into obedience. Tonight, they had nearly torn a boy from the world.
From himself, Hael corrected.
The memory returned without mercy: the bridge, the flare, the way the air had screamed when he stopped holding back. The way Zyrán's pulse had jumped beneath his grip. The way fear—real fear—had crossed Zyrán's face when the light broke.
Hael closed his eyes.
"I scared you," he whispered to no one.
That was the part he could not forgive.
He had sworn oaths older than language—vows etched into his very being. Protect the human. Do not dominate. Do not command unless commanded. Do not become the thing they fear.
And yet—
His wings shuddered into being unbidden, half-formed, ghostly outlines of light and shadow. They pressed against the walls, trembling, feathers unraveling into motes before solidifying again.
He forced them back.
They dissolved with a sound like breath exhaled too sharply.
"I am not safe," Hael said quietly.
The words tasted wrong. He had never been unsafe. He had been absolute. Constant. Predictable.
But Zyrán was not predictable.
Zyrán felt things fully. Recklessly. He did not obey the slow, careful rhythms of eternity. He hurt, and the hurt went everywhere—into his voice, his eyes, the way he leaned into danger like it might answer him.
And Hael—
Hael answered.
Every time.
That was the danger.
He sank down onto the floor, back against the wall, and drew his knees up—not in despair, but containment. As if making himself smaller might keep the light from tearing through again.
"I don't know how to want you without unmaking myself," he admitted.
The confession echoed once, then vanished.
He thought of Zyrán barefoot on stone. Of the way his voice had sharpened when he said near. Of the way his eyes had searched Hael's face not for power, but reassurance.
Touch me.
The request burned hotter than the flare ever had.
Hael pressed his hand to his chest, over the place where something had been fracturing slowly, invisibly, for years.
"I stayed too close," he murmured. "And now I'm afraid to stay at all."
If he loosened his grip, he might lose Zyrán.
If he tightened it, he might destroy him.
There was no guidance for this. No scripture. No command written for angels who loved too fiercely and feared themselves because of it.
Outside the room, the house remained silent.
Zyrán did not call out.
That hurt, too.
Hael bowed his head, letting his hair fall forward, hiding his face from even imagined judgment.
"I will learn," he said. "I will be better than this."
But the promise felt thin.
Because somewhere deep within him, beneath restraint and guilt and ancient vows, something else had awakened—something that did not want distance, did not want rules, did not want to be careful.
Something that wanted Zyrán alive, breathing, close—no matter the cost.
Hael stayed there until the trembling stopped.
Until restraint felt less like a wound and more like armor.
And even then, he did not sleep.
Because guilt does not rest easily inside beings made of light.