INICIAR SESIÓN*Belinda*A flush of crimson surged up her throat like blood through water, blooming hot beneath her high-buttoned collar before the door had even finished groaning open. The heat crawled along her spine with fingers of flame, settling sharp as glass shards behind her cheekbones, painting her pale skin with the particular shade of fury that comes from fear turned inward.And, for once, she didn’t bother to smooth it down.Didn't reach for that practiced mask of serenity. Had the fury and something else, that terrible, tender thing she'd tried to kill—flicker wild across her face like shadows from a dying fire. The heavy moan of the shattered the hearth's constant crackle, that ceaseless whisper of wood surrendering to flame that had masked her approach. It was enough, barely, to drag his attention from whatever foolishness had possessed him this time.Alexander froze.Thin, parchment-colored fingers stiffened mid-motion. His knuckles jutted out like branches stripped bare. The feathe
*Julia*The drawer hung open behind her like an accusation, its contents forgotten, abandoned mid-search. Her frustrated vexation over misplaced things had evaporated like steam, rendered meaningless beneath the weight of a single, unbearable gaze.A pair of pale brown eyes, steady and unreadable,anchored her in place and swallowed the room whole.Julia didn't move. Couldn't.She only stood caught between breath and stillness, spine locked in the posture of a woman who had risen too quickly—the motion fossilizing inside her bones as if her very skeleton had turned traitor. Her arm remained frozen in space, fingers curled just above the open drawer like a hand reaching for salvation that would never come.Halfway to something. Halfway to ruin. Halfway to nowhere at all. The scent of the tea hung between them —bark and crushed hips, root and silence. Steam rose from the pot's spout in a thin, translucent ribbon, spiraling upward with languid grace before the room's heat caught it, ben
*Julia* Julia stopped so suddenly her skirt swayed like a bell behind her, the stiff fabric sighing against her stockings with a dry rustle. She stood just shy of the spicery—no, the jar store, as it was formally called on the records—but everyone who mattered knew its true nature. A vault of flavors. A treasury of scent. One of the most guarded and indulgent rooms in the entire castle, where kingdoms could be toppled with a pinch of the wrong powder. It’s door looked identical to its siblings in this corridor—dark oak bearing the same ornate carvings, the same patterns of roses and thorns that decorated every surface in this wing. Save for one crucial difference.This door was always locked. Always.It required a key—not just any key, but an intricate, custom-forged piece of metalwork so unique that duplicating it would require the original locksmith's hands, and he'd been dead for thirty years. A key given only to those who had proven themselves beyond loyalty, beyond question. Th
*Nicoli*Nicoli exhaled, the breath leaving him in tatters, sharp and unraveling at the edges like fabric overworn and too thin."Well," he muttered at last to the empty room, forcing his mouth into a crooked crescent of lips and brittle humor, "at least the tea had a lovely time."The joke fell flat, of course, as most did when the only audience was dying embers and a half-devoured plate of biscuits. Still, he let the words linger in the quiet, clinging to the hollow echo of them like they might soften the edge of everything else.He turned back to the table, its surface still pristine in all the ways that mattered—and ruined in all the ways that didn’t.The fine tea remained untouched in cups so delicate they seemed to hold light rather than liquid. Gold traced their rims like captured sunlight, and the aroma still haunted the air—cardamom and star anise, citrus peel kissed with clove, a blend his mother hoarded like dragon's gold. She rarely shared it, even with distinguished guest
*Nicoli*Marry… The word didn't land. It fractured. Splitting through him like ice spreading across glass, each crack branching into a thousand smaller breaks until his entire inner landscape was a spider web of damage.The space beneath his ribs didn't just hollow—it collapsed inward like a sinkhole opening in soft earth after rain. Everything that had been solid, everything he'd built himself on, simply gave way. Something fundamental shifted in his chest— irrevocably—reshaping into architecture he didn't recognize. His hands twitched involuntarily, fingers spreading as if he could physically hold himself together, press his palms against the place where everything was coming undone.But there was nothing to grasp. Nothing to hold. Just the sensation of falling through himself.His stomach lurched with violence, bile rising sharp and acidic, burning tracks up his throat. The lingering sweetness of tea curdled on his tongue, transforming—copper first, the taste of blood that wasn't
*Nicoli*The sound of her laughter reached him before anything else. It cascaded down the corridor like an avalanche of warmth—loud, alive, utterly unstoppable.The kind of laugh that filled every corner it touched, that made stone walls seem less cold just by existing. Nicoli's boots scraped to an abrupt halt against the polished floorboards, the sound sharp as breaking ice in the sudden stillness of his body.Hidi.Even without seeing her, he could paint the scene perfectly. Her head thrown back with abandon, golden bangs scattered across her forehead like wheat in wind, melting snow still clinging to the fur of her cloak like diamonds she hadn't bothered to shake off. Hidi in full form, absolutely in her element— unbothered, transforming any space she occupied into her personal stage, claimed so effortlessly, regardless of when and where. Her voice rang clear as cathedral bells, rich with the kind of genuine amusement most people forgot how to feel past childhood.She was debating







