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cutaepatootie · 6 years

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A Brief Story of Time

Pairing: Yoongi | Reader

Word Count: 34,4K

Genre: FantasyAU, PrinceYoongiAU, Angst, Fluff and Smut.

Summary: Moments like that were brief, for beautiful things are brief, and they all come to an end. And yours and Yoongi’s love was exactly that: a brief and beautiful story of time

Warnings: mentions of death, violence and other mature themes. If you have already read some of my stories... Then you already know what you’re signing up for hehe.

Tales of Greyria

There is a huge conflict in the heart of the young girl.

She wants to know what really happened to that kingdom named Greyria, how it all came to a tragic end. She wants to know what tore apart a kingdom so powerful and beautiful such as that. Was it love? Was it really that powerful that it destroyed everything and everyone on its way?

But, on the other hand, she doesn’t want it to end. She doesn’t want Greyria to end. She doesn’t want to stop feeling those butterflies as her grandmother tells her how two young people fell in love. She doesn’t want to stop imagining all those beautiful landscapes and magical creatures. She doesn’t want to stop relieving all those beautiful stories that now belong to the past, that now belong to the memories and words of the ones who tell them.

There is a huge conflict in the heart of the young girl because she doesn’t want to know what really happened to that kingdom named Greyria, she doesn’t know how it all came to a tragic end, and she wants to know everything at the same time. That’s why she can’t help but ask her grandmother to tell her how it all ended, to tell her the last Tale of Greyria, on a warm Summer morning.

Because the girl knows that life is ephemeral, that life always comes to an end – whether it’d be a happy or a sad end – and that, that’s exactly what makes life so precious and beautiful. That is what makes life interesting and exciting. That’s what makes you breathe, wake up every morning, make every decision, take every risk. The possibility of having everything in the palm of your hand, and the possibility of losing it all in one second

Life, with its perfections and imperfections. Life, with its counted time and fleeting moments.

You had always known life was ephemeral.

And that’s exactly the reason why you view life as something so precious. Flowers are so beautiful in Spring because, when the cold Autumn comes, there will be nothing left of them. Sunsets are so vivid and beautiful because they’re brief, the sun dying amongst orange hues in the sky and the moon taking its place surrounded by her dark blue veil. Meteor showers are so breathtakingly beautiful because you can only see their falling stars momentarily on the sky before they burn and turn into dust, into nothing.

Things as flowers, sunsets, and meteor showers are beautiful because they are ephemeral, because they come to an end.

Things as life and time are beautiful because they are ephemeral.

You had always known it, and you had always respected it. It was how Mother Nature worked, how life worked.

But was life really that beautiful when it was so brief? Was Mother Nature really that benevolent when she was threatening to take such a young soul? Were ephemeral things, brief moments, really the most precious ones?

“No, it can’t be,” you said in a stern tone, refusing to believe what the old healer was telling you.

“Your Highness, I did everything I could but…” the old healer said, taken aback by your reaction. “It was not enough.”

“It has to be enough!” you screamed, startling everyone in the room. “It has to be…”

You rested your forehead on the palm of one of your hands, the other, gripping the left arm of the throne tightly. You were the most powerful person in the room, and yet, you felt so powerless.

“Your Highness, we did everything we could,” your most loyal advisor, “We called every doctor, every witch, every healer… We tried conventional methods, magic, energy… And the results are the same.”

You closed your eyes, trying to shut the rest of the world until you could only hear your erratic breaths.

He had been the only thing you had been sure of ever since you were a kid – him, and your future together. He had been your playmate when you barely knew how to speak. He had been you adventure partner when you were just two teenagers longing to explore the world. He had been your best friend when you had no one. He had been your main support when your father died, and ten years later – and a year before now, he was your saviour when your mother died too, leaving you with a crown too big for your own head, a throne too cold and dangerous, and a Kingdom that was crumbling down to pieces.

The only thing you had been sure of ever since you were a kid, had been Kyungsoo. You had been sure you would marry him one day, form a family, and rule Greyria with the help of his kind heart and clever mind, to rebuild your kingdom from the ashes your ancestors left it in.

But now, Kyungsoo was dying at the young age of twenty-five, and he was going to leave you too, with a crown still too big for your own head, a throne too cold and dangerous, a Kingdom that was still crumbling down to pieces, and a million questions that would never be answered.

“There is one thing you didn’t try, your Highness,” a deep, male voice said, snapping you out of your thoughts.

You lifted your head from your hands and opened your eyes to see a mysterious figure that had appeared in the middle of the room. All you could see was a big, black cloak, and underneath it, all you could see were shadows.

Your guards where immediately around the figure, their swords pointing at it.

“Who are you?” you asked, straightening yourself up on the throne.

“You don’t know me, your Highness, and I don’t know you, but that can quickly be rearranged,” the deep voice said again, making a shiver run down your spine.

“Well, at least you have a name, don’t you?” you said, signalling your guards to stop as they were about to charge against the form under the dark cloak.

“I do, milady, but I haven’t heard it in a while, so I’m afraid I’ve forgotten it.”

“Arrest him, your Highness, he could be dangerous,” your advisor said from behind you.

“Me? Dangerous? I’m just a poor man with a cloak,” the mysterious man said.

His voice sounded deep, and yet, it sounded young. As if it was the voice of a young man with the words of an ancient man.

“Show me your face, then,” you demanded.

The man laughed softly. “I haven’t shown my face in a while, so I’m afraid I can’t show it anymore.”

You frowned. As your guards saw the frown in your face, they immediately walked closer to the mysterious man, but once again, you stopped them with a movement of your hand.

You were curious about what the man could offer you.

“Speak then, mysterious man, why did you come here?” you said, leaning against the back of your throne.

You could feel the disapproving stares of your advisors and choose to ignore them.

The man took some steps until he was just at the end of the marble stairs that lead to the throne.

“There is one last option, your Highness, though is a dangerous and dark option,” the voice said.

You frowned. A dangerous and dark option? You had already tried all sorts of magic, even dark magic, so why would this new option be dangerous and dark?

“Continue,” you encouraged him.

“I don’t know if you have heard about the Prince of the Green Fire,” the man said.

At the sound of that name, the room erupted into whispered voices and gasps.

“Your Highness, this is way out of your reach,” your advisor said. “This is way dangerous for you.”

“He’s not an option, your Highness, it’s too risky for you and the Kingdom,” another one of your advisors said.

“How dare him even consider that as an option.”

“Have you heard about him?” other voices said. “They say he can turn an entire town into ashes with just a snap of his fingers.”

“He is followed by the Death. Wherever he goes, she follows him.”

“No one knows who he really is, or where does he come from.”

“He once brought a man back to life in exchange of the souls of his entire family.”

“He feeds from the pain and suffering of people.”

“He is cursed, and everyone that relates to him, too.”

Your head began to ache from all the voices and murmurs that surrounded you, echoing through the main hall’s walls and asphyxiating you.

You had never heard about that Prince of the Green Fire, and you were surprised to see that most of your advisors, guards and maids, had.

“Silence!” you screamed, your voice louder than the murmurs.

Everyone silenced immediately under your harsh words and your even harsher stare.

The only one who remained unfaced by the murmurs and your harshness, was the man who was still standing at the feet of the stairs. You couldn’t see his face, but you could feel his eyes on you.

Under the disapproving stares of your advisors, you stood up from the throne and started climbing down the steps towards the mysterious man.

“Your Highness – ” one of your advisors called you.

“Not now,” you interrupted him. “We’ll discuss it later. Now, I’m going to talk with him in private.”

You were tired of people making decisions for you, choosing what was best or worst for you. You were tired of letting people take risks for you, of sitting on that throne while life happened just in front of your eyes.

“Come on,” you told the man once you were by his side. “Follow me so we can speak in private.”

You saw the man nod under the protection of his cloak and started walking towards the huge wooden doors of the room.

You motioned your guards to follow you. You wanted to talk with that man in private, but he was still a complete stranger to you and you didn’t trust him a bit.

Once you reached the conference room in which you always discussed important things about the Kingdom with your advisors, you closed the door, four guards entering the room with you.

“Who’s that Prince of the Green Fire?” you asked once the doors of the conference room were completely closed.

“I see you are going straight to the point,” the mysterious man said, and you could hear his faint smile in his voice.

“I have no time to waste, so answer me, who’s that Prince? I’ve never heard of him.”

“He’s not part of the royalty, your Highness, he’s never invited to any ball or tourney. Of course you have never heard of him, no one wants to speak about him, or hear about him for that matter,” the man said.

“Why?”

“Because he’s dangerous, your Highness. All those horrible things your advisors said were true. He is evil, he has nothing but thirst for power.”

“And why did you present him to me as an option then? Do you want to cause me any harm?” you said, your tone turning into a threatening one.

“Of course not, your Highness. I presented him as an option because he is. It is dangerous, but it is the only option you have to save Prince Kyungsoo.”

“How do you even know about the Prince’s condition?” your eyes were narrowed, wishing you could look at a face, at a pair of eyes, and not just at a shadow behind some black cloak.

“I have my sources,” he said.

You let the silence sip into the room and linger between you both. Of course he wasn’t going to tell you what – or who – those sources were.

Could you trust that man? And what if he did, indeed, want to cause you harm? Were you really going to leave your, and your betrothed’s, future in hands of a stranger?

“Why would I believe you? Why should I trust you?” you asked, raising a brow in his direction.

For once, you contemplated a bit of hesitation under all those shadows and black robes.

“Because, once, one of your ancestors was kind enough to trust me and give up everything for me. I owe her my life, now let me make it up to you,” the man said.

Suddenly, his energetic and young voice had turned into a tired one, into the voice of an old man who had lived enough to know a couple of things about life and how it worked, and to know that it was a brief cycle of receiving and giving back. Love, money, revenge… It didn’t matter what the coin was, life always claimed her price.

“It’s my way of making up to her for sacrificing her life for me. Its my way of finding the redemption I’ve been searching for years.”

You frowned at his words. For all you knew, you had a lot of ancestors – some of then you hadn’t even heard about – and he could still be lying to you. But something in those words, something in the way his voice sounded more serious and lower, made you believe him.

It was the nostalgia in his tone, the sadness in his words, the longing with which he pronounced the word ‘her’. “He must have really loved her” you thought.

“Okay,” you ended up saying, slowly nodding with your head. “Tell me everything about that Prince of the Green Fire.”

. . .

The day you left Greyria, grey clouds covered the sky and a cold wind filled the air, sipping into your bones and making you shiver under your winter clothes.

Parting and leaving Kyungsoo was really hard for you. You feared he would leave without you being able to tell him goodbye, you feared you would never see him again, that you would never get to look into his serious expression as he read some book, that you would never get to see his sweet smile, the crinkles by his eyes as he did so.

And a part of you, feared that you would never return to Greyria, that you would never see its green fields and cliffs, that you would never feel the breeze of the sea caressing your skin again.

But it was the last option you had, and despite your advisors’ warnings and your maids pleads to stay, you took the risk. You chose trusting that mysterious man and followed his advice.

“Everything’s ready, your Highness,” a guard said, snapping you out of your own thoughts and making you avert your eyes from the cloudy sky.

You nodded towards the guard and he climbed on top of your carriage as he grabbed the reins of the horses. You then looked at the man in front of you. He had been your father’s advisor for many years, and then, he had been your mother’s. And now, he was yours.

“I know you don’t approve this,” you muttered.

“I don’t, your Highness.”

“But it’s our last chance, Kyungsoo’s last chance.”

“Do you think he would like to see you taking such a risk for him?” your advisor asked.

“He would have done the same.”

“He would have never recurred to this sort of… Magic.”

You gulped. You knew he was right. Kyungsoo never liked those type of things, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t turn to any of them if he hadn’t another option.

“I can’t do without him,” you said, gasping for air, realising the huge truth behind your words. “I can’t rule Greyria if he’s not by my side.”

“Your Highness… I do not want to be indiscreet or rude but… Maybe you should think first about your Kingdom and the wellbeing of it. You could marry another Prince and join forces to bring Greyria back to the splendorous kingdom it once was.”

Your head snapped towards him.

“I beg you pardon?” you said, blinking rapidly. “Are you implying that I should let Kyungsoo die?”

“Your Highness, you know I love the boy just as much as you do, I saw the both of you growing together. But this is too dangerous, and we don’t know what that Prince will ask of you.”

“If you love Kyungsoo as much as I do, then you’ll know that he’s worth risking it all,” you said, your tone angry and your nostrils flaring with rage.

“I know, your Highness, I’ve never met such a diligent and kind man, and I know that he loves you so much. That’s exactly why I don’t think you should do this,” your advisor said. “If something bad happens to you, he would never forgive himself.”

“Nothing bad is going to happen to me,” you sighed. “But if Kyungsoo dies, I know what will happen to me, or to my kingdom.”

You observed the doubt in the advisors’ eyes. You took your chance and walked closer to him.

“Kwan,” you said his name, bringing his old eyes towards you. “You know me like my father did, you watched me grow into the woman I am today… And because of that, you know I’m not ready to rule a kingdom. It’s not what I want, what I ever wanted. But Kyungsoo did. He was made to rule wisely and be a powerful king. If he dies, Greyria dies with him.”

Your old advisor flinched at your words, feeling the truth behind them.

“And once Greyria dies, we’ll all follow. All my father’s efforts, my ancestors’ efforts… Will have all been in vain.”

“That doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice yourself, your Highness…”

“I was born to make sacrifices. If those sacrifices are made for the man, and the kingdom I love, then so be it.”

“I can’t just stay here while you go to that dangerous Prince.”

“Then go home, Kwan,” you said, reaching out to grab his hands in between yours. “You have been protecting me all my life, giving me the best of advices… You already did enough for me and my family. Go home, to your family, and rest. When I’ll be back in Greyria, and Kyungsoo is fine once again, we’ll celebrate together.”

“I can’t let you go there on your own,” he said.

“I’ll have my guards. Whatever that Prince asks me in exchange, I’ll do it, and once it’s done, I’ll return to Greyria,” you kept saying, swallowing hard to make you believe your own words.

“But what if that Prince isn’t as true to his word as that man told you? What if he tricks you? What if you put yourself in danger for nothing?”

“Then, at least I’ll know that I tried everything and that I did everything I could.”

A long silence surrounded you both, creating a dense atmosphere in between you.

“I won’t let him trick me, Kwan, you and Father taught me well and I know when someone is fooling me,” you smiled a bit to reassure him. “Go home and rest. When we see each other again, I will be marrying Kyungsoo and Greyria will be the kingdom it once was, I’ll be happy.”

You saw the tired smile in the old man’s face. It was everything he had ever wanted for you, everything your father had ever wanted: for you to be happy.

You squeezed his hands between yours one last time before opening the small door of the carriage and stepping inside. As you seated yourself on the leather couch of the carriage, your hands slipped away from your advisor’s.

“Promise me you won’t do anything stupid, that you will take care of yourself,” he said.

“I promise,” you smiled.

The old man looked at you in the eye, and you were able to see it all: the love of a father, the worry of a loyal advisor, the tiredness of an old man… The nostalgia of a man saying goodbye.

With a small reverence of your head, you smiled at him and closed the door to your carriage. You gave him a last look through the small window after knocking of the wood of the carriage, letting your guards know you were ready to leave.

You couldn’t help but wonder if all you had said was true, if you would make it back home… If you would keep your promise and see Kwan and Kyungsoo again.

. . .

It was a long journey, but you finally arrived to the kingdom and its palace.

The palace was magnificent.

If you had seen it in any other circumstances, you would have thought it belonged to a very powerful and rich Prince.

All floors were made of the most polished marble, your figure reflecting itself on it. The ceilings were so high you had to crane your neck until it hurt to look at them. The windows were wide and clean. And yet, there was something really odd to that place, a dark aura that surrounded it.

There were only a few paintings hanging from the walls, and they were all so old, you couldn’t even distinguish the landscapes or the portraits. The carpets that covered the marble floors looked old and damaged. The porcelain statues were broken or too grey to even think they had once been made out of porcelain. The tapestries that had once held the emblem of the Kingdom, were now just a few velvet rags hanging from the walls. Dust covered everything: the furniture, the lamps, the paintings and statues…

It was as if the place had been abandoned a long time ago, and yet, you couldn’t come up with a palace you had seen and that was more magnificent and beautiful than that.

You kept following the housekeeper that had welcomed you at the entrance. She was just as strange as the whole place, old and dressed in black garments. Behind you, you could hear the steps of your two guards.

You observed there weren’t many servants, just a few that didn’t even bother looking at you as you walked past them. The guards, didn’t look surprised by your visit either, and they all had that same odd aura the old housekeeper had. How many Princesses had come there to ask the Prince of the Green Fire for a favour? How many princesses had they seen?

Finally, you arrived at the main hall. It was nothing compared to Greyria’s, but still, you could see it had once been one of the most majestic main halls of all times, with classical music echoing through its walls and fancy balls being held in it. Now, it was just a shadow of that majestic hall it once had been.

“My Lord,” the housekeeper called.

Under the shadows that the dim lights of the main hall casted, you could see a figure on top of the throne that adorned the room. The distribution of the room reminded you of your main hall back in Greyria.

“Queen Y/N of Greyria,” the old woman raised her voice a bit, so she could introduce you properly, and then, she kept saying the rest of your noble titles.

Apart from the figure that was sitting on the throne, only two more people could be seen, both standing next to the throne and its occupant.

After hearing your name and following noble titles, you bowed politely towards the throne, your guards doing the same. Then, in that position you waited for a response. As you remained with your back bent, you tried controlling your erratic breaths and trembling limbs.

“A Queen,” a voice finally said. It was powerful and deep, and it echoed through the room, causing a shiver to run down your spine. “What an incredible honour.”

You straightened yourself up and the housekeeper disappeared from your sight, leaving you alone in the room with those three dark figures and your four guards.

“At what do I owe the honour of your visit, your Highness?” the male voice said.

The way he said “your Highness” with a mocking tone let you know he was laughing at you, teasing you, and you didn’t like it.

Clenching your teeth and taking a deep breath, you looked at the figure intensely.

“I’ve heard you can grant anything that is asked to you,” you said, trying to make your voice sound stronger and assertive.

“So, you’re here to request something to me?”

“Yes,” you simply said.

“Hmm…” you heard him whisper.

You observed how he slowly got up from the throne and began walking towards you. You tensed, signalling your guards to keep alert.

“It looks like you are an intelligent girl…”

As he walked closer to you, the light of the candles that hung from every column of the room, illuminated his features, letting you finally observe him – or what his mask allowed to observe from him.

You blinked a couple of times, taking everything in. He was smaller than you had imagined, only a few centimetres taller than you. His skin was pale, and it looked as polished as the marble floor itself. He was dressed in an elegant black suit, and all you could see from the white blouse he was wearing underneath was a turtleneck made of lace. His hair was darker than the darkest of nights, and his eyes were sharp and feline.

A black, simple mask, covered the right side of his face, perfectly moulding his features. But still, you could see his rosy, plump lips, and you could distinguish the soft curve of his nose.

He was breathtaking and he had your eyes glued to his every moment like a firefly who follows the light.

As you looked into his eyes, those dark eyes, you felt as if you were already drowning in the dangerous, deep ocean that was him. You felt like the sand of the seashore, moulding at the touch of the unrelenting waves, being dragged towards them until you had no other option but succumb to their force.

You gulped loudly as you averted your eyes from his, not being able to hold his stare anymore. And even after averting his eyes from his, you could still feel the burning sensation of his eyes travelling across your frame.

“Then, you must know I don’t grant wishes as if I were some genie,” he continued, finally stopping some inches away from you. “I make deals.”

You stayed silent. Of course you already knew that.

“Is that what you want? To make a deal with me?”

“Yes.”

You wanted to tell him to stop playing with you, to go straight to the point… But you knew that wasn’t a good idea.

“And why does a powerful Queen like you want to make a deal with some unknown man like me?”

“Because I don’t have any other option.”

The Prince scoffed, turning around and facing his back towards you.

“There’s always another option, your Highness.”

“Not for me,” you said, your voice louder than ever and your head held high. That caught the attention of the Prince, who turned around to look at you once again. “My betrothed is dying. I called every doctor, every witch, every healer in this continent, searching for a cure. But it was all to no avail.”

“So? Find another man you can marry with,” the Prince mocked.

“There’s no other man for me, there’s no other man I love as I love him.”

The Prince’s eyes found yours in the dim light of the room.

“Ah,” he said. “I see... This is all about love.”

You ignored his malicious words and his malicious smirk and kept your composure and straight posture.

“You love him and because of that, you can’t just let him die and go find another candidate,” the man kept saying, ignoring your angry glares. “And you’re willing to make a deal with me? To sacrifice yourself like that?”

“Yes, I am.”

The man scoffed and kept walking around you as if you were another one of his broken statues that he liked to contemplate during his free time.

“Then, maybe I took you for a more intelligent girl than you really are.”

“Excuse me?” you said, offended by his words. “I came here to make a deal with you, not to let you laugh at me and insult me.”

“Oh, you took that as an offense, your Highness?” he feigned innocence. “I beg you pardon, that was definitely not my intention.”

Taking a deep breath of air, you calmed yourself a bit.

“Of course,” you murmured under your breath sarcastically.

You watched him as he walked towards his throne and took a seat on it once again, placing both of his forearms on the arms of his throne.

“Okay, speak,” he then said.

You blinked a few times, perplexed by his words.

“I already told you why I came here,” your confusion could be heard in your voice.

The Prince laughed bitterly.

“Are you expecting me to do all the work?” he said. “I know your betrothed is dying because you told me so, but I don’t know what you expect me to do about it.”

He knew what you wanted him to do, but he was evil, and he took pleasure in seeing others suffering.

“I want you to cure my betrothed from his illness.”

“Do I look like a doctor or a healer?”

“No, and that’s exactly why I came here,” you said defiantly.

“And what do I get out of this?”

You hesitated for a few seconds.

“I can give you all the money you want.”

“It’s not money what I want, your Highness, at this point of life I’m at, money is worthless for me,” he said, leaning a bit forward on his throne.

“Well… I can give you lands, ships, stock…”

A deep laugh cut through the brief silence that filled the room after your words. It was a bitter laugh. An evil laugh. It wasn’t a laugh that came naturally from having fun. It was forced and ugly.

“Stock,” he mocked. “Stock and ships and lands!”

He kept laughing, and soon, his two advisors – you guessed – followed him, laughing forcefully.

“Isn’t she funny?” the man kept saying as if he was laughing so much it was starting to hurt.

“I thought I was being very clear before when I told you I didn’t come here for you to laugh at me,” you said, loud enough for your stern words to sound above his bitter laughs. “I came here in search of your help, willing to give you anything you wanted from me. But if you’re just going to mock me, then I’m afraid I’ll have to go. I have no time to waste.”

Their laughs died off until silence filled the hall once again. Your jaw was clenched, and your hands were balled into first at your sides, your nails digging into your skin with so much force you were sure you were going to leave marks.

You found the Prince’s eyes in the thick atmosphere of the room, and for once, those eyes were looking at you seriously, not as if you some little girl he could trick.

His face became blank as he observed you and debated with himself.

“I can cure him,” he finally said.

You let out a sigh of relief, but still, the tight pressure you felt in your chest didn’t vanish.

“How are you so sure of it?” you asked.

“You heard I can grant anything that is asked to me,” he said, but this time he wasn’t mocking you, nor was he trying to play you. He was being sincere. “Well, I can, and I will… With one condition.”

You nodded, already knowing he would want something in return.

“Anything,” you nodded.

“I wouldn’t say that so quickly, your Highness,” he warned you. “My conditions are usually much different and… Heavy. But today I’m feeling generous, and as I told you… Not every day a Queen comes around here to ask me for a favour.”

You nodded once again.

“Anything,” you repeated stubbornly.

The Prince just remained unfaced and nodded.

“Then, here’s my condition,” he said, before pausing dramatically. “I will cure your betrothed and I can grant you he will be a great king, the greatest king your Kingdom has ever seen, and that he will bring Greyria back to being the powerful and magnificent kingdom it once was.”

He paused once more, waiting for your approval. You nodded, urging him to continue.

“But you will have to pay the price of my services. And when I say you, I mean you,” he emphasized. “The thing I want in exchange of your betrothed’s life is you.”

You blinked a few times, not understanding what he was trying to tell you.

“W… What do you mean?” you stuttered a bit, letting your strong façade fall.

“What I mean is that you’ll stay here with me for a year. Four seasons, twelve months, 365 days. Neither one more, nor one less. If you stay here for a year, if you endure through it all, then I’ll give the cure to your man and he’ll be the King of Greyria.”

“But, my Lord, that’s not how this usually works,” one of his advisors said as you were still too shocked to process anything.

“That isn’t one of your conditions,” the other advisor said.

“Silence,” the Prince said, silencing the both of them. “My conditions, as you said, are my conditions. That’s what I want and that’s what will be done… If she accepts, of course.”

You felt three pairs of eyes on you and lifted your eyes from the floor to look at the three men.

“I can’t stay here for an entire year, m-my Kingdom and m-my people need me… And Kyungsoo won’t survive for another year, he is too weak,” you said.

“Don’t worry about him, he won’t die, nor will he get worse during your absence, you can have my word for that.”

“And what about my Kingdom? Who will rule it?” you asked, more to yourself than to him. “Greyria needs to be ruled by royal blood, it has always been like that and I have no siblings or close family there to rule while I’m here.”

“You will find a solution for that, right?” the Prince said, looking at you intensely. “If not, you can always turn down my offer and go back to ruling your Kingdom… On your own.”

You gulped loudly.

“Your Highness, you shouldn’t…” one of your guards said.

“Greyria needs you, your Highness,” another one said.

“Prince Kyungsoo needs you too, we’ll keep searching for a solution,” the third guard said.

“Are you her advisors? I thought you were just her guards,” the man on the throne said with a cold voice.

You lowered your head, not knowing what to do. The previous month you had promised Kwan you wouldn’t do anything dangerous or stupid, and there you were, thinking about staying at that palace, with a complete stranger who was evil and dark, for an entire year.

Again, you were choosing to trust a stranger before trusting your own allies, your friends.

But it was your last chance, the last option you had.

“I’ll do it,” you nodded.

“Your Highness—” one of your guards protested.

“I said I would do anything for Kyungsoo’s life and I’ll do it. I’ll stay here for a year.”

“It won’t be easy, your Highness,” the Prince warned you.

“I wasn’t expecting it to be.”

In the end, it was just a year of living in that palace with that man… What could go wrong?

“Your Highness—”

“There’s nothing else to say,” you interrupted your guard once again. “I’ll do it. I’ll stay here.”

You heard the sound of claps and turned your neck to see the Prince clapping loudly, bitterly.

“Magnificent,” he said. “Magnificent.”

It was done, there was no going back.

“But of course, I only invited you and not your guards, so they’ll have to go back to Greyria.”

“What? And stay here on my own?”

“Of course,” he smiled devilishly. “How else did you think it would be like? That I’d let you bring your closest friends here so we could all play cards together?”

You hated his sarcastic voice and his sarcastic words, and there was something in the back of your mind telling you that it wasn’t to late to back off, to make up your mind, to say no to that agreement… That there was something off about it.

But you chose to ignore it, instead turning to look at your guards.

“You heard him, go back to Greyria and explain them why I am staying here,” you said.

“Tell them that they can’t come looking for you either,” the voice form the Prince said from behind you. “That, if a see just a single man walking around my lands, I’ll kill him, then I’ll kill her, and last, I’ll kill Prince Kyungsoo.”

A shiver run down your spine at his words.

“You heard him. Don’t come looking for me.”

“No matter how many of you are, how big of an army you bring here in order to bring her back to Greyria, I’ll kill you all.”

You gulped loudly.

“Do as he say.”

“But, your Highness—”

“Don’t come for me, don’t form an army… I’m staying here because I want to, not because he made me,” you said, trying to sound assertive but failing at it.

“Your Highness—”

“It’s an order!” you raised your voice, startling the four men. “Now go back to Greyria and don’t come for me until a year from now.”

Your guards looked at you dumbfoundedly. They were in denial; they didn’t want to leave you there on your own with that odd man, they didn’t want to leave you in that cold palace alone, but they swore to serve you, to do as you told them, and they couldn’t fight against you.

“Go,” you repeated, seeing their conflicted expressions. “I’ll be fine.”

One of the guards stared at you as if he was giving you your last chance to back away from that and return to Greyria.

But you could only think about all the things Kyungsoo had done for you, had sacrificed for you… You owed him.

“Go,” you repeated, nodding with your head.

From the outside, you looked so strong-minded and sure of yourself, but if only they could have a glimpse of how you were on the inside, they would see a scared girl, trembling and unsure of her own future.

. . .

Your guards left that same day, leaving you behind with a couple of your belongings.

As you saw them parting, you could just wish that you wouldn’t see them in a year, because if that happened, you were sure the mysterious Prince would be true to his threats.

“This will be your chamber,” the old housekeeper said, opening the door to a room.

As you stepped inside, you watched in awe the room. It was just as rich and majestic as the rest of the palace, with marble floors and, pastel blue velvet curtains with their trims embroidered in gold. A king-sized bed was set against one of the walls decorated in a pretty pattern of flowers and plants. Apart from the bed, the rest of the furniture were a simple wardrobe made of dark wood, a desk and an armchair.

“The Lord wants you to have dinner with him tonight,” the housekeeper said once you had taken a look around the room.

It was a beautiful room, but it didn’t feel like home, too dark and subdued for your own liking.

“I’m not really hungry, but thanks,” you said, smiling politely and turning down her offer.

All you wanted to do was lock yourself up in that chamber and never get out of it until a whole year had passed.

“It wasn’t a request, your Highness, it was an order,” the old woman said.

And with that, he left you there with your own thoughts.

As soon as she was gone, and the door was closed behind her, you slumped down on the bed, bringing your hands up to your face. What had you done? Were you really so desperate to save Kyungsoo’s life that you had accepted the offer of a stranger to live at his palace for an entire year? Could you even trust his words?

He had told you he could cure Kyungsoo, but he hadn’t shown you, nor had he told you how. And what about his advisors’ words? That that was not how it usually worked? That that wasn’t one of his conditions?

How it usually worked? What were his conditions?

You sighed, staring at the ceiling and wondering about the future.

And you stayed like that the whole afternoon, blinking when you needed too, moving your eyes to contemplate the shapes of the flowers and plants that adorned the walls and the ceiling of the room, but not moving.

Since it was cloudy outside, and barely no light seeped into the room, you couldn’t distinguish the passing of time.

You were startled when you heard a loud knock on your door.

“Dinner is ready,” a male voice said from the other side of the door. “The Lord is waiting for you.”

Your lips remained sealed, forming a thin line as you heard some more knocks.

Maybe whoever it was would give up and think you were asleep.

You watched the dull light of the room turn into a paler but brighter one. You moved from the bed towards the armchair that was placed in front of one of the windows.

You wondered if that room had once belonged to someone. If they had stayed all night staring at the moon from the window like you did. You wondered if the Prince had obliged them to stay in there like he had done with you – unless he hadn’t properly obliged, you had accepted his conditions on your own, but he hadn’t given you any other option. You wondered if they had stayed there because they wanted to.

You didn’t have dinner that night with the Prince, and neither you did the following night, and the following, and the following… And just like that, a whole week passed.

You ate in your room as the housekeeper brought you some food. You walked around your room. You slept in your room. You cried in your room when you felt lonely, when you missed Kyungsoo.

You didn’t go out of your room and it was like a torture to you.

You already felt caged, as if you were suffocating, and it had only been a week, you didn’t even want to think how it would be for 358 more days.

Outside, the weather was always bad, clouds were always covering the sky, not allowing the Sun to shine brightly and illuminate the dark lands that surrounded the palace. You yearned for the sunlight you loved so much, for its warmth to caress your skin. But, at night, those clouds miraculously disappeared and left a naked dark sky full of starts and the Moon.

As you heard the usual knocks on your door – three times a day: in the morning, midday and afternoon – you looked outside the window and remained silent, knowing that you were angering the Prince as you kept refusing his offers to eat with him. But, if you made him angry with your rejections and silence, he never acted upon it. He never knocked on your door or obliged you to anything. You didn’t even hear of him.

It had already been two weeks since your arrival to that palace, when you began feeling the four walls of the room and its darkness enclosing around you, threatening to suffocate you, and you decided to get out of that room and take a walk around the palace.

When the Moon was high up in the night sky, and you couldn’t hear the steps of the maids and guards outside your room, you put on your cloak and cautiously stepped out of your room.

The place was even scariest at night, but once you felt the cool air outside your room, you sighed in relief.

Slowly, you made your way down the corridor, observing each painting, each statue.

You soon discovered you room was in the guest wing of the palace, away from the main rooms and wings, since it had nothing but common rooms like yours with beds and a few more pieces of furniture.

Curiosity got the best of you, and you towards the huge staircase that lead to the vestibule. The main staircase split in two at some point, the left staircase leading towards the wing where your room was, and the right, leading towards the main wing you supposed.

You climbed the stairs until you arrived at the newfound wing. As soon you started walking down the corridor, you saw the differences with the other wing. The tapestries, the paintings, the statues… They all seemed to be in even a worst condition that the rest of the paintings, statues and tapestries that adorned the rest of the palace.

It looked as if it was abandoned.

You continued walking, opening the different doors and peeking inside. Some were bedrooms, others were study rooms, conference rooms…

At the end of the corridor, before climbing another pair of stairs, you found a last door. It was made of white wood, just like the rest, with decorations in gold, but it was a double door, bigger than the others you had opened.

Grasping the golden doorknobs delicately, you opened the door slowly.

The sight in front of you left you breathless.

Rows and rows of books filled the shelves that covered the walls, high spider-lamps hung from the ceiling, fresh paintings of angels and heaven adorned the ceiling. There were busts of Greek and Roman philosophers, of Gods like Zeus and Poseidon, of Goddesses like Aphrodite and Persephone that belonged to the ancient Greek mythology.

Greyria’s library was majestic, but not as majestic as that one.

You entered the library, leaving the doors open behind you, your eyes travelling unceasingly across the entire room, drinking avidly the sight in front of you, searching, scanning, observing everything you could.

From the windows that were placed in between shelves, entered the white light of the moon, bathing the room in its milky light and giving everything a mystic aura that left you breathless.

You observed there were some spiral staircases that lead to the rows of shelves that created a second floor, separated from the floor downstairs by a simple marble railing. But, as your eyes scanned those rows of shelves, you observed they were all empty, not like the ones in the floor you were at.

But then, your eyes landed on a specific shelve. It was placed at the very bottom of the second floor, hidden from curious eyes, but not from yours. Unlike the rest of the shelves of the second floor, it wasn’t empty, nor it was full. It contained some books on its highest row, and you thanked the Moon that was shinning brightly that night and, which light seeped into the room, lighting directly those dark books.

You were about to walk towards the nearest spiral staircase and climb upstairs, when you heard someone clearing their throat.

You froze on the spot, heart beating rapidly.

“So, you don’t want to go downstairs and have dinner with me, but you sneak from your room and into my library?” the male voice said, a voice that was familiar to you.

You stood there, unmoving, trying to blend with the shadows of the room, pretending that, if you didn’t move he wouldn’t see you. But he had already seen you.

“Are you trying to blend in with the statues? Because you are failing at it,” his voice echoed across the room, following his sarcastic laugh.

Holding your breath, you finally gathered the courage to turn around and face him. You hadn’t see him since that first time at the throne hall, the first day you arrived at the palace and maybe that was why your breath got stuck in your throat as you got a glimpse of him once again, because you didn’t remember how imposing and powerful his aura was.

Under the moonlight, still dressed in his black suit and with his black mask covering half of his face, he stared at you.

“I’m not trying to blend in with the statues, pff…” you said, immediately feeling like a four-year-old having been caught red handed.

The Prince remained serious as he looked at you – or at least, that was what the dim light of the room allowed you to see.

“I thought so,” he simply said.

A sharp silence surrounded you both, the wind blowing fiercely outside as you both stared at each other.

“So?” the Prince finally said, breaking the silence. “Why are you here in my library?”

You swallowed slowly, opting for telling him the truth, you had nothing to hide after all.

“I was bored of being in my chamber and went to take a walk around the palace,” you said, your voice sounding so small compared to his.

“If you were so bored of being in your room, why didn’t you go downstairs and had dinner with me then?”

“I… I just…” you stuttered, not knowing what to say then.

“You know it’s rude to decline someone’s invitation without even showing up to tell them in the face, don’t you?” he asked, his eyes fierce as they stared at you, his steps slow as he walked towards you.

“I know, I just didn’t feel like having dinner with you,” you said, not being able to bite your tongue anymore.

You had never been one to bite your tongue, always saying what was on your mind. Then was not going to be an exception. You had already stayed silent the first day you met him, letting him laugh at you. You knew you had to be careful around him, but you weren’t going to let him mock you and play with you like a puppet just because he was powerful and dangerous.

“Oh, is that so?” he said with fake hurt.

“Yes,” you bravely said, taking a long breath and lifting your chin.

You were Y/N, Queen of Greyria, you weren’t going to let some small, mysterious Prince get to you.

The Prince narrowed his eyes at you. You observed his jaw tense as he contained himself, probably.

“And why didn’t you feel like having dinner with me?”

“Because I simply didn’t. I don’t have to give you any explanation about my motives,” you said.

The Prince let out a bitter, short laugh.

“You are my guest, and, as my guest, I think you should.”

“I’m not your guest since you didn’t invite me to be here, you obliged me.”

“I obliged you?” he repeated with a mocking tone. “I’m sorry, but I don’t remember obliging you to anything.”

“You did when you gave me no other option.”

The mask on his face made you uncomfortable because you couldn��t see his expressions through it, only the grimace he had drawn over his lips.

“I gave you no other option?” he repeated your words once again in the form of a mocking question. “I think I gave you two good options, your Highness. You could either accept my offer and stay here, or you could decline it and go back to that kingdom of yours and watch your betrothed die.”

You clenched your teeth.

“And those sound like two good and fair options to you?”

“Believe me, they were, I could have offered you something worst,” he said, smiling devilishly and stopping his small walk impossibly close to you. You waited, waited to feel the heat of a body, some warmth, but you didn’t, there was no heat radiating from his body and his skin looked incredibly pale under the milky light of the Moon. “But I’m sure you would still have accepted it.”

“You don’t know me, you can’t be sure of anything.”

When you thought he was going to reach out to you and touch your hair, he just took a step back.

“I’ve been doing this for a couple of years,” he said with a deep voice. “So, believe me when I say that I’m sure you would have accepted my offer anyway.”

With the muscles of your jaw still tensed and your eyes piercing into his, you tried to remain calm, to seem unfaced and strong.

“But… You can still decline my offer and go back to your Kingdom if you want,” he said. “And… You can watch your beloved man die.”

“And that seems fair to you? You’re conditioning me, you’re blackmailing me.”

“I’m just reminding you of the two options I gave you. You know where the door is, I never stopped you from leaving,” he said, his eyes piercing into yours. “You’re free to leave whenever you want.”

“I’m not free,” you said, your voice barely a whisper. “Not when Kyungsoo’s life is at stake.”

The Prince’s eyes narrowed again, the only thing that broke his blank face.

“Then, the blame is not on me,” he said after a few seconds of silence. “I’m just the one who offered you a salvation, not the one who put rope around your neck.”

“If your offer is keeping me hostage here for a year, then you aren’t any better than the one who put that rope around my neck.”

“I’m not, you’re right. But I’m not holding you hostage if you can leave whenever you want.”

You clenched your teeth angrily once more. Maybe he was right, maybe he wasn’t… But the fact that you had to pay the price didn’t change a thing.

“I’ve been wondering…” he suddenly said, making your eyes snap back to yours as he took a step closer to you. “Why trust a stranger like me if you think I’m keeping you hostage? Why trust a stranger if you don’t even want to have dinner with him? I could be tricking you. Maybe I don’t have a cure for your betrothed, maybe when the year ends, he will just die.”

You gulped lowly, getting lost in his black orbs.

“I don’t trust you,” you whispered. “But if a year passes and Kyungsoo still dies after staying here and keeping my word, I’ll seek revenge.”

“Ah, yes? And what will you do?” he asked, so close to you, you could feel his breath over your skin.

“I’ll kill you.”

The Prince let out a sarcastic laugh. “Who’s the one who is blackmailing the other now?”

“I’m not blackmailing you, I’m just warning you.”

“You can’t kill someone like me.”

“Break your part of the deal and you’ll see what I can, and what I can’t do.”

A small smirk started forming on the Prince’s lips before he could quickly hide it under his usual blank expression.

“Is that how you rule your kingdom? Threatening others?”

“That’s how I protect the ones I love, sacrificing myself for them and sacrificing others when they hurt them,” you said in a bitter tone.

For the look on the Prince’s eyes, he hadn’t liked your words.

He scoffed before taking some steps away from you, his hands hiding behind his back.

“It’s late and you shouldn’t be here, go back to your room and never come back to this part of the palace, I don’t want you wandering around my wing.”

His voice sent a shiver running down your spine. The sound of it was, somehow, even more threatening than his own words.

Wanting to get out of there and get rid of all the tension, you looked at him one last time before quickly walking out of the library, leaving him behind as he contemplated the night sky and its stars through one of the wide windows of the room.

. . .

Sleeping had been difficult for you that night, the Prince’s words echoing through your mind.

Where you doing the right thing by acting in front of him as if you didn’t fear him? Or where you making a huge mistake?

As you contemplated the, once again, cloudy sky through the window of your room, you thought about your next move. Should you keep acting freely around him? Not showing any special respect towards him?

Slowly, time passed by as you contemplated what you should do, and suddenly, you realized the light was dark outside, the clouds nowhere to be seen, as only the stars and the moon filled the night sky.

Gathering all the courage you could, you put on one of your dresses, brushed your hair a bit and got out of you room. As you walked down the stairs and towards the dining room, you couldn’t help but wonder if you were making another huge mistake, after all, you were showing nothing but your rebelliousness towards him.

The maids looked at you with widened eyes, but nevertheless, they opened the doors to the dining room for you.

He was there, facing his back towards you as he sat at the end of a too long a and too big table just for himself. His chair hid most of his body, but you could still get a glimpse of his dark clothes and black hair.

Silently, you walked towards the other end of the table, feeling the Prince’s eyes on your back as you did so.

If he was surprised by your sudden appearance, he wasn’t showing it, his eyes following your movements with a blank expression in them.

Taking a seat, you never averted your eyes from him.

“Are you going to have dinner with the Lord tonight, your Highness?” a young maid asked you politely.

“Yes,” you answered, equally as politely as her.

She bowed slightly and rushed out of the room to grab some plates and cutlery for you.

When you looked back at the Prince, he was still staring at you.

“Is something wrong?” you finally said, not being able to bear his piercing eyes on you one more second.

“No,” he answered calmly. “But I didn’t expect you to accept any of my invitations to have dinner with me.”

“You didn’t invite me tonight.”

“And that’s why you finally came?”

“Maybe.”

Your small conversation, tense conversation, was interrupted by the young maid, who came into the room and placed a porcelain plate in front of you, followed by some silver cutlery. It all seemed so fine and delicate, so luxurious.

“Thank you,” you said, smiling at her softly.

The girl seemed a bit taken aback by your response. You guessed she wasn’t very used to hearing those two words…

She bowed and disappeared, leaving you and the Prince on your own once again.

The lights of the candles placed in the middle of table were flickering, the wind that slipped through one of the open windows being at fault.

You both stayed there in silence, the Prince looking at you and you, looking at the decoration of the room. The light in the room was dim, only the candles placed on the table lighting the place.

A servant brought the food and placed it on top of the table, your stomach grumbling at the sight of the food. He served the soup on your plates and left.

“Do you like it?” you heard the deep voice of the Prince said while you attacked the food.

While you were grabbing a spoonful of soup and stuffing it in your mouth, you lifted your eyes and looked at him. He hadn’t touched his food, he was just staring at you.

With a soft blush on your cheeks, you placed the spoon on the plate and swallowed the soup, cleaning the corners of your lips with a napkin.

“Yes,” you whispered, starting to eat more politely.

The food was tastier when it was warm and recently made, not when it was cold and dull as it was when you received it in your room, so you were really enjoying it.

“Tell me, why did you come to have dinner with me tonight?” the Prince asked, interrupting you as you were savouring a piece of roasted chicken.

You stopped chewing and looked at him. You didn’t even know the answer yourself, you just wanted to prove to him that he didn’t scare you, that you weren’t going to let him affect you so much.

You shrugged, chewing the piece of chicken again and swallowing it.

“I was tired of eating on my own,” you simply said.

Your eyes were focused on the plate of food that was placed in front of you, so you didn’t get to see how the Prince narrowed his eyes as he looked at you. A few seconds later, he started to eat too, and the rest of the dinner was spent in silence. When the both of you had finished, you both got up from the table and went to your respective rooms.

The following night, you went downstairs and had dinner with the Prince again. And the following night, and the rest of the nights of that week, and the next, and the next. And suddenly, it had become a routine for the both of you, sitting at the table, on opposite sides, as you ate in silence.

But it wasn’t an uncomfortable silence. The Prince didn’t spend the dinners looking at you anymore, he just ate his food in silence, from time to time asking you if you liked the food or how your day had been.

“Boring,” you had answered one night, while cutting some vegetables on your plate.

He stood silence for a few moments before speaking again.

“Don’t you go out of your room?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know the place, I don’t know where to go.”

The next morning, a servant knocked on your door. He gave you a small tour of the palace, avoiding the Prince’s wing. He showed you a room full of musical instruments, a big fireplace at the end of the room. There was a wooden table of chess and two comfortable armchairs around it.

“How was your day?” the Prince asked you that same night.

“Fine,” you answered.

“Just fine? Did some servant give you a tour around the place?”

“Yes, I found a room full of instruments and I could distract myself a bit,” you said, not looking at him.

“But you still get bored…”

“Yes, I do.”

“And what would you like to do?”

At his question, you lifted your eyes and looked at him.

“Go back home and be able to be with the ones I love” was what you wanted to answer, but you stopped yourself.

“I would like to get out of the palace, see around the place a bit,” you said.

The Prince looked at you with cautious eyes. He looked as if he was hesitating, wondering if he should let you go out of the palace.

He finally shook his head and kept eating.

“I can’t let you do that,” he said.

“The one who said that wasn’t keeping me hostage…” you scoffed, averting your eyes from him.

You heard the sound of his fork a knife being placed on the table.

“If you go out of the doors of this palace, I won’t let you come back.”

“Why?” you asked a bit harshly.

“Because this isn’t some sort of vacation,” he said, his voice getting angry too. “This is part of a deal between you and me, and if I’m staying here, then you will too. The day you go out of those doors, is the day I’ll send you back to your Kingdom, and this deal between us will be ended.”

You let your fork and knife fall onto your plate, not as carefully as he had done it previously.

“Excuse me, but I’m not hungry anymore,” you said through clenched teeth, standing up from your chair with a loud shriek as the wood of the chair was dragged against the floor.

Before you could get out of the dining room, you heard a loud sound of something being thrown on the table, but you ignored it and ran upstairs, locking yourself in the silence of your room.

. . .

In the mornings, you took walks around the palace, observing the green fields and gardens that surrounded it, bathed in the grey light that the clouds that covered the sky casted over them. Then, food was brought to your room and you ate in silence. After taking a short nap, you walked around the palace some more and then, went to the play room and played the harp or some other instrument that reminded you of your home. Some days, you even persuaded some guard to play chess with you.

And despite your relationship – if you could call it relationship – with the Prince being more and more tense each passing day, you kept going downstairs every night and having dinner with him. And each time you opened the doors to the dining room, he was there, sitting in silence as his eyes remained lost somewhere through that window that was always open.

Three months had passed since your arrival to the palace. You were scribbling something on a piece of paper when you heard voices and sounds of horses coming from the outside.

You stopped drawing and ran out of the room and towards the hall, where the commotion was coming from. You had never visited the main hall again because you knew the Prince would be there, but the sounds and voices dragged you there.

When you entered the main hall, you saw the Prince standing in front of his throne, his posture tense and imposing as he looked at a group of men.

Immediately, you recognised their cloaks and the emblems on their chests.

“Kwan!” you shouted the name of the man who was standing just a few steps from the Prince.

A dark aura you had never seen before, surrounded the small man, making him look impossibly menacing in front of the taller and older man.

Your advisor turned around immediately at the sound of your voice.

“Y/N!” he said, forgetting about formalities and running to you.

He embraced you and his eyes scanned your face in search of some sort of damage.

“Are you alright?” he asked.

You took a step back, breaking the embrace.

“Yes,” you simply said, looking confusedly at the other men that belonged to the guard of your Kingdom. “What are you doing here?”

“We came here as soon as they told us what had happened,” Kwan said, pointing at the young guards who had accompanied you to that Kingdom.

“I told them they shouldn’t come here for me,” you said, shaking your head as you sternly looked at them.

“I know, and they told me so, but I refused to let you here in hands of that man,” your advisor kept saying.

For a brief moment you averted your eyes towards the Prince, who was observing the scene with stern eyes.

“You should have been with your family, away from the castle,” you said, looking back at Kwan.

“I know, your Highness, but I couldn’t do it.”

“It was not an option,” you said, taking some steps back from him and looking at him with flaring eyes. “It was an order. I told you I could take care of it on my own. Was it that you didn’t trust me enough?”

The older man’s face turned into one of shock at your words.

“What? No, of course not your Highness, I just wanted to make sure you returned back to Greyria safely.”

“I promised that, if any of your men came here, I would kill them myself,” the voice of the Prince broke the silence that had followed your advisor’s words.

At that, you looked at the Prince once again.

“And I always keep my word,” the Prince added.

You looked at the men in the room. They all belonged to your guard. They were young men, men who had a family, who had kids…

“Don’t, please,” you said. “They will go back to Greyria.”

“What did I say about them coming here?” the Prince repeated, raising his voice.

“I know, I know,” you said. “But they came here peacefully, they didn’t try to attack you or anything.”

“We have more men waiting outside, your Highness, we can get you out of here,” Kwan kept saying, his words not making the situation any better.

“Please, stop,” you whispered between clenched teeth. “It will only make it worst.”

You could see the Prince growing angrier and angrier out of the corner of your eye.

“I’m doing this because I want to, Kwan. Believe me when I say this please, he didn’t do any harm to me or anything, I’m just staying here for nine more months and then I’ll be back and Kyungsoo will be fine once again.”

“But you can’t just stay here with that man and hope that he won’t harm you in any way,” Kwan kept saying.

“It’s my choice and it’s done,” you repeated.

“You should listen to your Queen, advisor,” the voice of the Prince said, trying to provoke the old man.

“I told you to go with your family as your friend, as someone that cares for you and respects you,” you said. “Now, I tell you to back to Greyria, back to your family, as your Queen. It’s an order.”

The room stayed silent for a while, your men and Kwan looking at you with hesitation in their eyes.

“You heard your Queen,” the voice of the Prince broke the silence. “I won’t harm you, but just for once. If I see any of you around my lands once again, I will kill you without doubting. And, I can assure you I won’t be kind enough to let you into my palace and hear what you have to say once again.”

Some gulps could be heard in the room, yours, being one of them.

You stared at the Prince wide-eyed, and he slowly took a seat on his throne and relaxed.

“Now, get out of my palace,” he said.

“Your Highness…” Kwan said.

“Don’t. You heard him Kwan, get out of here and just make sure that Greyria is fine…” you assured him, nodding with your head as you let him know that you would be fine. “How’s Kyungsoo?”

You remembered the Prince’s words. “Don’t worry about him, he won’t die, nor will he get worse during your absence, you can have my word for that.”

“He’s surprisingly…” Kwan frowned as if he was looking for the right words. “Stable.”

Your eyes widened in surprise, looking briefly at the Prince, who was now speaking to one of his own advisors.

“The doctors say he isn’t doing any better, but it looks like he isn’t doing any worst either. It’s as if his illness is lethargic.”

Closing your mouth and regaining composure, you looked back at Kwan and nodded.

“If this works, we’ll al be fine in the end. Until then, you have to trust me and my decisions. And I choose being here and risking myself for Kyungsoo.”

Kwan frowned.

“If that’s what you desire…” he said, a bit of disappoint in his words. “Then, I’ll go. But I won’t stop worrying about you, your Highness.”

You shook your head and hugged the man. He smelled like trees and flowers, like the green fields of Greyria, like the sun and warmth of your Kingdom. He smelled like home and for a moment, you had a brief moment of weakness. You missed the trees and flowers, the green fields and the sun, and the warmth of your Kingdom. You missed being surrounded by people who loved you and cared for you, you missed the long walks around the gardens of your castle, and the books you read avidly. You missed being free.

And it was the last opportunity fate was giving you to change your mind, to be free and go back to Greyria.

But… Had you ever been free in the first place? Has anything you had ever done been because you had really wanted it? You were a Queen. Queens were never free. They owned an entire kingdom, but they never owned their own lives.

You broke the hug, trying to hide the sadness that pooled in your eyes.

“How will I know you’ll be fine?” he asked.

Your mind started functioning like the mechanism of a clock. Then, you leaned into Kwan as if you were going to hug him again, your lips close to his ear.

“Send me one of my carrier pigeons,” you whispered. “I’ll send you a letter every month.”

Then, you took some steps back, observing the old man nod, visibly more relaxed by your words.

You watched them leave that same morning.

. . .

For the first time, you hadn’t had a bite of your food during the entire dinner.

You blamed it on the fish that was on your plate. It looked really appetizing, but you had never liked fish. But, deep down, you knew the only one at fault of your lack of appetite was the lump in your throat, those words that you had been wanting to say since that morning, and the words that you hadn’t yet pronounced.

The only sounds that filled the silent atmosphere, were the cutlery of the Prince against the porcelain plate as he ate in silence.

You looked at him, taking advantage on his focus on his food.

Why had he done that? Why had he forgiven your men and let them return back to Greyria?

You didn’t think of him as a merciful man who forgave so easily. He had clearly forbidden your men from visiting his palace – or his lands for that matter – again and yet, they had done that, and he had forgiven them.

He was a pure mystery to you, from his mind, to the flesh that hid underneath that black mask. From his sudden outbursts of anger, to his outbursts of mercy. From his smirks, to his scowls. From his title, to his name. Who was him? Who was the man that hid underneath the name of the Prince of the Green Fire? Who was the man that hid behind that mask and that cold behaviour?

As you observed the shadows that the light from the candles casted over him, you couldn’t help but wonder if there had ever been something behind all those mysteries at all. Maybe he had always been like that: no name, no face…

Whatever it was, you couldn’t deny the pull you felt towards him, the keenness to know more about him.

So, you swallowed the lump in your throat and gathered the courage to speak.

“Thank you for what you did today,” you said, averting your eyes from the Prince and instead, looking at the untouched food on your plate.

The sounds of the cutlery against the plate stopped, and you unconsciously held your breath.

“What I did today?” he said.

You let out the air you had been holding and lifted your eyes to find a pair of black ones already on you.

“You know, letting my men return to Greyria.”

“Ah, that…” he said, going back to eating once again.

You bit your lower lip.

“You could have punished them for disobeying your word and you would have been right to do so, and still, you let them go,” you said. “And I’m really grateful for that, so thank you.”

“I won’t be so merciful the next time they disobey me,” he said, looking at you briefly. “You should know that.”

You nodded despite his eyes not being on you anymore.

A couple of minutes went by, and the Prince finished his meal. As he lifted his eyes from his empty plate, they fell on your full one.

“Aren’t you hungry?” he asked.

“No,” you lied, not wanting to tell him you didn’t like fish.

He frowned a bit in your direction but remained quiet.

“Can I ask you something?” you suddenly asked.

The Prince looked at you as if your sudden words had caught him by surprise.

“Well… It depends on what you’re going to ask me,” he answered.

“Do you remember how I told you I always get so bored?”

“If you’re going to ask me if you can get out of the palace, you already know the answer,” he said, sounding a bit angry.

“No, I wasn’t going to ask you that. You would know if you had let me finish,” you said in a stern tone.

He glared at you for speaking to him like that, but you ignored it.

“I think I found something I want to do to not get bored.”

You waited for him to say something, but he just kept staring at you without even blinking, a bored expression on his face.

You nervously readjusted yourself on your seat. You didn’t know if what you would ask him next would make him angry.

“I want to read.”

“And you have to ask me so I can let you… Read?”

“No… I just… I was just…” you sighed, letting out a long puff of air. “I was just wondering if you’d let me go to your library and read some books.”

“No,” he immediately said, not even thinking about the different options.

“No? Why?”

“I already told you when you sneaked into my library, I don’t want anyone wandering around my wing. No even my servants can get into my wing, so why would you?”

“I don’t want to wander around your wing, I just want to read some books from your library.”

“No,” he repeated.

“If not even your servants ca get into your wing… Who cleans it then?”

He looked at you as if you had just said the stupidest thing he had ever heard.

“You should go to your room, it’s late.”

“You always say that when you don’t want to keep the conversation, but sending me to my room won’t fix anything,” you stubbornly said.

You heard him sigh, but he remained quiet.

“C’mon, I’m going crazy here. I wake up, have breakfast, look through the window and only see clouds and forests, I walk around the guest wing, I have lunch, sleep, I walk some more, I play chess or play some music, I have dinner here with you and then, I stay up until midnight because I’m not tired and I can’t sleep,” you said, so quickly that you had to pause to take a deep breath. “I need to do something, or else, I’ll go crazy.”

“That’s the thing about our deal. You will not endure twelve months here with me, that’s why I proposed you that in the first place.”

You were the one who narrowed their eyes at him then.

And you had thought he wasn’t as evil as he seemed… How naïve of you, thinking that he would do something good for you. Of course he had all thought from the first time he saw you.

Shaking your head and scoffing, you stood up from your chair and went to your bedroom, leaving the Prince there in silence watching you leave as always.

. . .

You knew there were always visitors arriving to the palace.

They were looking for the Prince of the Green Fire, just like you had done. Then, they asked something from him, he offered them a deal, and they left, not even knowing what they had just agreed to.

But that morning, you hadn’t heard anyone arriving to the palace, nor had you seen any horses on the outside waiting for their owners.

You were lying on your bed after having lunch, trying to sleep for a bit when you heard some knocks on your door.

Frowning, you stood up from your bed and opened the door.

“W-what are you doing here?” you said, almost breathless, when you came up face to face with a pale face half covered by a black mask.

“This is my palace, remember? I can be whenever I want,” the Prince answered you, hiding his smirk with a scoff.

“Yeah, but you never come around here.”

“Or you don’t see me around here,” he corrected you.

Rolling your eyes, you crossed your arms over your chest.

“I’ll ask once again, what are you doing here?” you said, the initial shock vanishing.

“Well, if you’re going to be rude I’ll better go…” he said, starting to turn around.

“No, tell me,” you said, almost pleading.

When he faced you once again, you could see the eyebrow that wasn’t covered by his mask being raised.

“Please,” you ended up saying when you guessed he was waiting for you to plead him.

“Maybe… I changed my mind,” he simply said, resting his left shoulder on the door frame.

“About what?” you asked, intrigued by his mysterious behaviour.

He usually spent his evenings at the main hall or at his office, but you had never seen him around the guest wing before.

“About the library thing.”

“Are you serious?” you exclaimed, your eyes widening as you brought one hand to cover your mouth.

“Well, for now, yes…” he said. “But I’ll have to put some conditions.”

“As always…” you thought, but opted for shutting your mouth and just nodding.

“Sure.”

“Alright, then follow me.”

You followed the Prince through the corridors of the palace. As you walked a bit behind him, you couldn’t help but think that everything seemed more ancient, more damaged by the passing of time than you had previously noticed.

“Well, tell me about those conditions,” you urged him, still not believing the fact that he was going to let you into his library.

“Okay, the first one: I’m just granting your access to my library. Everything that’s not my library in this wing is forbidden to you,” he said as you began walking down the main corridor of his wing. “These doors don’t hide anything special behind them, but still, don’t open them. And specially, don’t use those stairs.”

He pointed towards the stairs that you had seen the first time you had gone there, the ones at the end of the corridor.

“Why?” you asked curiously.

“Because I say so.”

“Whoa, okay…” you murmured.

“Second condition,” he said, his hands grabbing the doorknobs of the huge doors. “You will always come here accompanied by someone.”

“Didn’t you say not even your servants could get in here?”

“Who would clean the place then?” he answered with another question, raising an eyebrow at you and definitely imitating your words from the previous night.

“Touché,” you nodded.

“A guard or a servant will always come here with you,” he said, and then pushed the doors open. “Third condition: treat my books with the respect they deserve.”

You were so caught up in the scenario before you, that you didn’t even hear his words, your eyes already travelling across the paintings on the ceiling, the statues in between shelves, the precious curtains and carpets. In the daylight, the room was even more breathtaking.

“Did you hear me?” the Prince repeated.

You closed your mouth, that had been shaped in the form of an “o” and looked at him.

“Yes, sure,” you said, not even knowing what he had said.

He shook his head a bit and you thought you had seen a faint smile drawing itself on his lips, but you had just thought…

“Alright, apart from that, I have no other condition.”

“Are you seriously letting me come here whenever I want?”

“Well… Whenever you want… If there’s a maid that wants to accompany you here at three in the morning, then yes.”

You bit back a smile.

“And what happened to your evil plan of making me suffer and go crazy so I won’t endure twelve months in here?”

“Who said that this will be the solution for that?” the Prince said, arching a brow once again.

You shrugged and turned around, your eyes landing back on the scenery before you. You wanted to scream and jump from delight, but you stopped yourself.

“Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me, just treat my room and books right.”

“I’ll do it.”

You started walking towards a shelve that caught your attention. His steps could be heard behind yours.

“How is it that you have so many books?” you asked as you brought your hand up to caress the covers of the different books.

“I’ve been collecting them over the years.”

“Well, then you must have spent a lot of years in collecting all of these books.”

“You have no idea…” you heard him murmur, his voice barely a whisper that, had it not been for the silent atmosphere of the library, you were sure you wouldn’t have been able to hear properly.

“And, have you read all of them?”

“The majority of them, yes.”

“Whoa…” you kept murmuring.

Some of the covers were rough under your fingertips as you caressed them, others were soft, others worn away. The Prince didn’t say a thing, his eyes following your every move.

“What’s your favourite book?” you suddenly asked, really curious about his answer.

“Hmm…” he said, his eyes getting lost in the paintings of the ceiling as he thought about his answer. “Why do you ask?”

“Because there are so many books in here I can’t decide which to read first. Your favourite one will be a good start.”

“I don’t think our tastes are similar.”

“Well, tell me and you’ll see what my tastes are.”

He hummed once again, and you observed how his eyes wandered all over the different shelves in search of his favourite book. When he turned around, your eyes unconsciously travelled to the shelve on the second floor where you had seen those mysterious notebooks the first time you had entered the library, and you weren’t surprised to see they weren’t there anymore. You narrowed your eyes suspiciously, but let it go.

When the Prince apparently found what he was looking for, he walked towards one shelve in the far end of the room and grabbed a book.

As he approached you with the book in his hands, your eyes widened.

“I said book, not encyclopaedia,” you joked.

“This… Well, this isn’t just some novel,” he said, caressing the cover of the book as if it was one of his most precious treasures. “In it, you can find any storie about Ancient Mythology, from the birth of the Great Bear, to the destruction of an entire kingdom like Troy was.”

A book about Mythology? That’s the last thing you would have expected from him.

Carefully, you grabbed the book and almost dropped it as you realised he was even heavier than it looked.

“Hey, treat it with care, it’s the only copy that exists,” he said, his voice serious as his eyes observed you.

You caressed the cover with your hand. You could feel the grooves on the leather cover, the patterns of the golden drawings and letters over the beige material.

“I will read it.”

And you did. You read that book, and then another, and another…

And just like that, two more months went by.

With the arrival of Winter and the first snowfall, you found a bit of peace within yourself.

You sent a letter to Kwan every month, the dark pigeon waiting for you patiently on your windowsill each first day of each month. You told him you were doing fine, and he told you that Greyria was surviving, that Kyungsoo was still breathing.

And, with each passing day, you started feeling relieved.

Maybe it was selfish of you feeling relieved for not having the pressure of ruling a kingdom or feeling free for not having anyone telling you what you should or shouldn’t do. Whatever it was, you hadn’t felt like that ever since before your parents’ death.

And, even though your body wasn’t completely free because you couldn’t get out of that palace, your mind was as free as the mind of a Queen could be.

You had finished the first book the Prince had recommended you in just two weeks, and after it, many more books had followed. You couldn’t help the emotions they all created within you, like sunrays helping the small roots of the plants grow. And when you arrived to the last page of a new book, you allowed your eyes to drink the last few words before closing the book and everything that it contained, letting out sigh as you closed your eyes and let yourself relive every emotion it had made you feel.

Within the four walls of the palace, away from the Winter winds and cold, you found your love for books.

Of course you had always read a lot, you were a Queen, but never had you enjoyed it that much.

As the Prince held the same love for books as you did, it soon became a routine for the both of you to sit at the dining table every night and just talk for hours about the last book you had read, discuss about the characters, about the ending or the feelings that it had created in you, until it was midnight and the maids almost urged you to your respective rooms.

“How can you not think he was selfish?” you asked.

“We all are selfish, but that’s not the main thing about that character,” the Prince said, grabbing some mashed potatoes and placing them on his plate.

“Well, I think it is, since it led the rest of the characters to a tragic end.”

“And what about his passion for music?”

“Selfish.”

“It was the only thing that made him feel alive, didn’t he have the right to feel alive?”

“Yeah, but it stopped being a right when it put the life of other people in danger.”

You observed the Prince shaking his head as he ate the mashed potatoes.

“I think-“

“Selfish,” you said, a small smirk on your lips and a small smirk being hidden under the mask of the Prince.

You hated to admit it, but part of the reason why you felt so eager to start a new day and go through it was exactly that, having long conversations with the Prince at dinner. They made you feel wise and useful and intelligent and… Full. He always listened to you with all his attention and, even though most of the time you both had opposite points of view, he never invalidated any of your opinions, always respecting them.

Days went by, and your curiousness about the Prince only grew. With each stare, with each word, with each frown… He dragged you more and more towards him.

You found yourself alone in your room wondering about him. You could read a thousand books, about Mythology, about Mathematics, about Astronomy, about Philosophy… And yet, you couldn’t read him. You had always been good at reading people, so why was it so difficult for you to read him? To understand what was behind those dark eyes, behind that blank expression and constant frown.

You were reading at the library, sitting on one of the armchairs comfortably as you hummed placidly, the grey light from the outside illuminating you, when you heard the door of the library being opened.

“Go, I’ll stay here with her,” the voice of the Prince said, making you lift your eyes from the page you were reading.

The guard bowed politely and disappeared from the room.

You went back to your book, trying to read again and immerse yourself back on the story, but you could only hear his footsteps approaching you in the silence of the room.

He took a seat on some armchair and kept quiet.

You felt a pair of eyes staring at you and, when you stared at him, you found those black eyes fixed on you.

“What?” you asked.

“Nothing.”

Arching a brow, as if to challenge him, you went back to your book.

You were only able to read a couple of pages before you felt those pair of eyes on you again.

“Stop staring at me,” you said without looking up. “Don’t you have something better to do?”

“Yes.”

“So why are you here then?”

You heard him scoff as he leaned back on the armchair.

“This is my library, I don’t have to give you any explanation about why I am here.”

“I guess you’re right,” you shrugged, trying to focus on your book.

A couple of minutes passed before you closed the book, giving up. You were unable to read when he was there just doing nothing.

“Not fancy reading anymore?” he asked.

“No.”

You leaned back on your armchair too, facing him, your book resting on your lap.

As you stared at him, you realised you hadn’t seen in in daylight that much. His black hair looked even darker, like the feathers of a crow. His skin was really pale, almost as white as the porcelain of which the statues were made.

He looked as if he had been taken out of one of the books you had read.

“Stop staring at me,” he said, repeating your previous words. “Don’t you have something better to do?”

“I did, but you came here and distracted me.”

“Don’t know how, I was just sitting here,” he said, with feigned innocence.

You scoffed as you rolled your eyes, then, you looked out of the window at the cloudy sky.

“Anyway… Why is it always cloudy in here?” you asked curiously.

“I don’t know, it just is,” he shrugged.

You frowned.

“But the clouds disappear at some point and the night sky is always clear and you can see the moon and the stars in it.”

“It’s always been like that.”

“Ah…”

Your eyes kept travelling across the cloudy sky.

“But I don’t get it,” you said, breaking the silence once again and making the Prince click his tongue. “Why are the forests and the fields so green then? I thought they needed sunlight.”

“And they do.”

“So?”

The Prince looked at you beneath his mask, his left brow, the one you could see, was arched.

“Why are you asking so many questions all of the sudden?” he asked a bit harshly. “What does it matter to you if the sky is covered in clouds or if the sun is shining?”

“I was here reading peacefully and then, you came and distracted me,” you defended yourself. “I’m bored and things like this happens when I get bored.”

“Things like what? Sticking your nose into other people’s business?”

You rolled your eyes. The Prince was as unpredictable as a storm in the sea, but you were starting to get to know him a bit. He was always closed and didn’t give any clue about himself, but as soon as you spoke about anything that involved him or his privacy, he closed off even more and it was impossible to approach him.

You had to be intelligent and witty if you wanted to know what was going on in that place.

“For example…” you opted to say, biting your tongue as you wanted to spat some harsh words at him as he had done to you.

You heard him sigh and, when you looked at him, you found his eyes lost in the horizon, somehow looking through the window but seeming as if he wasn’t seeing anything that was behind the thick glass.

What was he thinking? What was going on in that mind of his? You hated it, but you couldn’t help but feel utter curiosity towards him and that dark aura that was always surrounding him.

“It makes me miss my Kingdom even more…” you sighed.

The Prince looked at you with that blank expression of his. “What?”

“The clouds, you know? They make me miss my Kingdom, my home, even more. You should see it… Greyria. It is so beautiful…” you said, looking through the window at the clouds that covered the sky. “It’s already Winter in there too, and Winter is so beautiful in there… Days are cold, and nights are even colder, but the skies are always blue and radiant, without clouds, the sun shining brightly. Some flowers die, but Winter flowers bloom and adorn the gardens of my castle. And there is the Winter Festival, where all the village celebrates the arrival of the cold and the first snow. People make hot chocolate, and sweets…”

There was a silence between you both for a while.

“Why are you telling me this?” the Prince asked coldly.

You shrugged, your eyes still lost outside that room.

“These thoughts have been on my mind for some days now and I needed to get them out of my chest.”

Another silence.

You wondered if that place had always been that silent. If no music had ever echoed through its walls, if no children had run through its corridors, laughing and messing around.

“This was once a beautiful kingdom too,” the sudden deep voice of the Prince startled you. When you looked at him, his eyes were still lost in the landscape outside the window. “Clouds have not always covered the sky. A long time ago, this kingdom had a name, it had villagers and it had the life that Greyria has. If I close my eyes I sometimes can still hear the sounds of birds from the outside, the noise of the village and the sounds of the people that visited the palace.”

You observed him as his dark eyes wandered across the cloudy sky. And you wondered if he had ever been like that, serious and cold. You wondered if he had, someday, looked up at the sunny sky and smiled.

“I bet it was a beautiful kingdom,” you breathed.

“It was.”

“Why isn’t it anymore?”

The Prince remained quiet for some time, but then, he looked away from the sky and his eyes landed on you. His features weren’t as composed, a smirk adorning his lips.

“Are you implying my Kingdom isn’t beautiful?” he said.

“Oh… E-err… No, of course not,” you lied, not being able to hide your smile.

The Prince looked at you behind narrowed eyes.

“Stand up,” he said all of the sudden, confusing you.

“Wh…What?”

“C’mon, stand up,” he ordered once again, he himself standing up from his own armchair.

You looked at him, confused, hesitating.

“I’m gonna show you something,” he said, biting back a smile as he observed your conflicted expression.

You stood up slowly. “Now? So suddenly?”

“Yeah, just follow me,” he said, walking towards the tall doors of the library. Once he reached them, he spun in a fast movement and stared at you. “Unless you want me to change my mind and you want to stay here for the rest of the evening doing nothing…”

“No, no,” you shook your head, the idea of staying there and doing nothing under the boring grey light from the outside not sounding really interesting to you. “Please, lead the way.”

You watched him smirk briefly before turning around and opening the doors of the library, signalling you to follow him. You passed the mysterious staircase that led to the mysterious floor upstairs and kept walking down the main corridor.

“Most people don’t know about this,” the Prince whispered, stopping in front of two ordinary curtains.

He parted them, revealing a stone staircase that spiralled upwards.

“Ladies first,” he said in a playful tone, letting you step into the stairs first.

Hesitantly, you began climbing them, not really knowing where they would lead you. From time to time, you looked behind you to see if the Prince was following you and hadn’t left you alone. You didn’t know how someone could walk so silently.

“How many steps are there?” you asked breathlessly when you had been already climbing stairs for five minutes.

“I don’t know, I’ve never counted them.”

You scoffed but kept climbing them without complaining once.

Finally, the stairs became smaller and soon you reached a wooden door.

“Open it, it’s unlocked,” you heard the Prince say from behind you.

Grabbing the doorknob carefully, you opened the door.

It led to a small circular room. It had four windows around it, none of them covered by glass, allowing the cold winter air to seep in the room and make you shiver as it toyed with your clothes. One of the windows was larger than the others, leading to a small balcony.

“What’s this?” you asked, your voice sounding muffled by the howls of the wind.

The Prince closed the door behind his back and walked towards the balcony. You followed him.

“This is the Tower of the Howls,” the Prince said. “It was made for the guards to keep guard in here, since it is the highest point of the palace. I suppose you already know why it’s called the Tower of the Howls.”

“Yeah, the wind blows with strength up here,” you said.

“Mhm…” the Prince nodded.

You let your eyes wander over the horizon. You could only see grey clouds covering the sky and disappearing behind the high mountains that surrounded the kingdom. The sea breeze, and the cliffs and the sounds of the waves colliding against them were missing, only miles and miles of thick and dark forests in sight.

“Can you see that?” the Prince asked, making you avert your eyes from the landscape before. “Over there.”

Your eyes followed the path from the Prince’s finger to the place he was pointing at you. You distinguished some ruins in between the thick vegetation.

“Yeah,” you breathed softly.

You observed the Prince place his hands on the stone railing, his eyes lost in the landscape.

“It was the village… my village.”

You looked at the ruins again. You couldn’t see them clearly, because of the distance and because of the vegetation, but you could make out some destroyed houses in between the stones and fallen trees.

“You see that big building in the middle?” he asked. You simply hummed. “It was a cathedral, one of the biggest in the continent. It was huge, and it had a big staircase that led to its entrance. The bell tower was so high it almost touched the clouds. People came from everywhere to see it. Now it’s only a pile of stones.”

“It must have been really beautiful,” you nodded, creating the image in your own head, the nostalgic tone of his voice being the paint brush that traced every line inside your mind.

“Yeah,” he breathed. “And do you see that old house? The one that is more isolated? I used to go there every Sunday morning. The owner was an ancient lady who had a pear farm. I gave her wool to knit her sweaters and she gave me pears in return.”

His words held so many feelings in them that you opted for staying quiet, not wanting to break the magic of the moment.

If it had not been for the thick clouds, you both would have contemplated one of the most beautiful sunsets that ever traced the sky.

“Why are you telling me this?” you asked the same question he had asked you back in the library. “I don’t mean it to offend you, it’s just… That I’m curious.”

He smiled softly, looking briefly at you.

“I used to come here every evening, trying to get a glimpse of the streets I once knew as well as the back of my hand. But I eventually stopped coming. Seeing everything disappear under the passing of time hurt me in a way I couldn’t understand. I had seen the village so many times I never stopped to contemplate its beauty, and watching it disappear slowly made me realise how brief time is… I guess I just wanted you to see in the same way I didn’t a long time ago.”

Your heart melted at his words, their warmth spreading through your body as a new feeling settled in the back of your chest.

Unconsciously, you brought your hand upwards and placed it on top of one of the Prince’s hands.

“We don’t realise how beautiful things are until they aren’t there anymore, that’s how this world works. Things are beautiful because they are ephemeral,” you whispered, waiting for the Prince rejection.

But it never came.

Instead, he turned around the hand that was under yours and welcomed your touch. He was cold, and his skin was rough, but his touch was soft. His fingers played with yours, caressing your skin softly as butterflies flew around in your stomach. You would have never thought that his touch could be so tender, and yet, there you were, closing your eyes as you enjoyed his caresses.

As his thumb traced the lines in the palm of your hand, the sky started getting darker. It was like a dance, the touch of your fingers and his, moving to the rhythm of the non-existent music, touching through the hard blows of the wind.

The Prince interlaced your fingers and pulled you closer to him, making you open your eyes.

“You shouldn’t be touching me like that,” he whispered, his body now closer as ever to yours but his hand never letting go of your own.

“I want to.”

“You shouldn’t want to touch me like that,” he whispered once again, with his free hand, moving some strands of hair away from your face.

“You are touching me like that too,” you answered, following the movements of his eyes as he looked at your lips, your heart beating erratically in your chest. “If we shouldn’t be touching like this, then stop.”

“I can’t.”

He leaned slowly until his face was mere inches from yours. “I shouldn’t want to kiss you either, and here I am, dying to feel your lips.”

You wetted your lips unconsciously, your eyes now focused on his rosy lips, their right side encircled by his black mask.

“Then stop,” you breathed.

“I can’t.”

“Then don’t.”

And with that, he closed the final space between you and placed his lips on top of yours. In contrast to his hands, his lips were soft and warm, and they embraced yours in soft caresses.

His free hand cupped your cheek and he pressed his body further into yours. You hummed as his body blocked the cold wind. When he saw you were following his movements and not rejecting him, he started moulding his lips against yours.

He deepened the kiss and you felt a thousand fireworks explode in your belly, their sparks tracing your skin and ever muscle, making you feel wobbly under his touch. You blocked every sense that wasn’t your lips feeling his, kissing his, licking his, his tongue tracing patterns with yours, his thumb caressing the cold skin of your cheek.

And, as the clouds disappeared leading to a starry sky and the moon illuminated you with her milky light, the Prince of the Green Fire kissed you like you had never been kissed before, and you wondered if everything had to be ephemeral, if there were some things that could survive the passing of time, like the feeling of his lips against yours, his fingers tracing the palm of your hand, his breaths against your skin or the sparkles you were feeling inside.

. . .

Five months turned into seven, the cold weather gave way to a slightly warmer one and soon, you were in love with the Prince.

It wasn’t too difficult to fall in love with his dark eyes and mysterious persona, with his cold façade and his tender actions. And despite that voice in the back of your head that kept telling you to stop, that it was wrong falling in love with someone like him, someone you barely even knew, you couldn’t help yourself. Not when he was always trying to act cold with you but ended up bringing you to the Tower of the Howls to contemplate the stars with him and grabbing your hand and tracing your palm with his fingers. Not when he tried to push you away but ended up dragging you even more towards him. Not when he tried to keep his distance from you but ended up kissing you in a random corner of the palace.

Was it all part of a deal anymore? Were you two people who only had business between them anymore? What was the point of keeping you locked in that palace when you wanted nothing but to be there with him?

As the love grew with each tender action of the Prince towards you, with each caress, each kiss… Another feeling grew within you. It was guilt. For Kyungsoo and for Kwan and for your people and your Kingdom. It was guilt for feeling so happy and lively when everyone was suffering back in Greyria. You should have been spending those months thinking about your future husband and king, about your kingdom, not about a Prince you barely knew.

But how could you think about all that when all you could feel were his lips on you, his hands tracing your body, his voice whispering sweet nothings in your ears?

The Prince grabbed your waist with one hand while he used the other to push the door to your room open, his lips never leaving yours. He pushed you, dragging you towards the bed as his hands traced your dress with hunger.

That night, the Prince was eager, the most eager you had ever seen him, and you didn’t know how to feel about that.

You had both kissed and touched each other in the most innocent way, but he had never touched you or kissed you like that, so impatient and passionate. A part of you was still saving that moment for Kyungsoo, when you would be both married and ready to start a family, but you weren’t sure if that was what you wanted anymore.

As the Prince swirled his tongue hungrily against yours and started leaving open mouthed kisses all over your neck after biting harshly on your lower lip, you placed both of your hands on his taut chest. With all the strength you found within yourself, you pushed him softly once, then twice, and even a third time when he didn’t respond you.

“Stop,” you whispered, trying to catch your breath.

Finally, the Prince parted his lips from your neck and sighed softly, trying to calm himself.

“I just can’t get enough of you,” the Prince whispered, his forehead pressed against yours as he still held your face with both of his hands.

“I can’t either, but I want this to be slow…”

His features softened, and you relaxed.

You lifted one of your hands and placed it on his bare cheek.

“Something’s bothering you, I can tell…”

That night, he had barely spoken to you during dinner, deep in thought as he barely touched his food. You hadn’t asked him about it, wanting to give him a bit of space, but as soon as you had both been away from curious eyes, he had thrown himself at you, devouring you like a hungry beast.

“It’s nothing,” he said, sighing as he placed both of his hands on your waist.

“It’s something if it’s making you avoid my glance.”

The Prince took a step back and sat on the bed, his back facing towards you. You stayed there in silence, knowing he wouldn’t speak if you pushed him further.

You saw his shoulders fall and heard him letting out another sigh.

“Why are you still here?” he asked, his voice sounding distant and small despite him being in the same room you were.

“What do you mean?” you asked, frowning.

“Why are you still here with me? What’s making you stay at this palace? You should have run away a long time ago, you have always been free to go.”

You couldn’t help but feel a pang of pain in your chest at his words. Did he not want you there anymore? Was that the thoughts that had been keeping him quiet all night?

“You, you are the reason why I’m still here,” you wanted to say, but opted for staying silent and letting him speak first.

“You must love him a lot if you’re still willing to be here… With me… If you’re still willing to sacrifice yourself like this for him.”

“I don’t get why you’re asking me all this all of the sudden.”

“You don’t?” he asked, his words turning harsher. “I’m asking you because I don’t get why someone like you could be happy in a place like this, with a man like me… I’m asking because moments ago you were willing to give yourself to me so freely… Without even knowing who I am.”

“I know who you are.”

“Ah, yes? Tell me, what’s my name then?” he said, turning around so he could stare at you, his dark eyes piercing into yours.

You bit the inside of your cheek, the truth behind his words hitting you like a ton of bricks.

“You don’t even know my name…” he mocked, making your cheeks turn red. “This, kissing me and following me around as if you were some lost puppy, letting me touch you whenever I want, making me believe that you care for more than your betrothed’s and your own wellbeing… Was never a part of this deal.”

His words sent another pang of pain across your body, but you closed your eyes and walked closer to him. “I know, and that’s the reason why I don’t do any of those things.”

The Prince looked at you with distrust in his eyes.

“You know I’ll fulfil my part of the deal even if you hate me,” he said. “I don’t get why you have to do all this.”

“And I don’t get why you have to do all this either,” you answered back, your voice also a bit harsher.

“All what?”

“Push me away every time I try to get closer to you. Is it that you don’t trust me enough?”

“I trust no one.”

“Then I don’t know what you are doing either. I’m not forcing you to do anything, you’re doing all this because you want.”

You watched him purse his lips and you knew you had hit home. Even if he didn’t want to admit it, he wanted you. The reason why was the missing piece of the puzzle.

“How can I know you when all you do is push me away? I want to, I truly do, just because of me not because of some deal we made seven months ago. But I need you to let me in,” you lowered your voice with each word until the last one was merely a whisper.

He averted his eyes from you and looked at his hands. Slowly, you walked towards him until you were standing in between his legs, and you crouched before him until you could see his lowered face.

“Let me in…” you whispered one more time.

You searched for his eyes, pleading him to let you in, to let you know him. You were willing to see what was inside him, because you knew it would be beautiful.

You wished he had lifted his eyes and met yours, that he had let you convince him, convince him to trust you. That his eyes would have softened and one of his hands caressed one of your cheeks like he had done before, reassuring you, giving you peace and warmth. You wished he would have kissed you and sealed with his lips the promise of opening himself up to you. That he would have told you with his lips all the things he couldn’t say with words.

But he didn’t.

He didn’t lift his eyes to yours, nor did he caress one of your cheeks in that reassuring way of his. He didn’t kiss you and he didn’t let you in.

Instead, he stood up going around you as to not touch you. When he was in front of the door, he grabbed the doorknob with one of his hands – his knuckles turning white – and you heard him whisper a last: “I can´t” before opening the door and disappearing without even sparing you a last glance.

. . .

You stood there, sitting on the cold floor of your room just waiting.

For what?

You didn’t know.

First, you waited for the sleep to numb your mind enough so you wouldn’t be able to think any more. Then, when sleep didn’t come, you waited for dawn. You observed with tired eyes how the sky turned lighter, and when the sunlight was starting to appear on the horizon, those grey clouds appeared once again. Eventually you fell asleep, your heart still yearning for the Prince who couldn’t open up to you.

The next day, you went to the main dining room, hoping he would be there, waiting for you as always. But he wasn’t, and you had dinner on your own, feeling as lonely as you hadn’t felt in a long time ago. The room was too dark for you, the table so big you couldn’t even see the end of it, and the food, suddenly didn’t feel appetizing.

You repeated that same process for the next days. Just waiting.

For what?

You didn’t now.

When a week had gone by and you hadn’t heard any news from the Prince, you started turning impatient. You needed answers for all those answers that had bloomed in your mind, just like the flowers were starting to bloom outside with the upcoming arrival of the Spring.

One night, after having dinner alone at the main dining room, instead of going to your chambers, you decided you had had enough. Enough of that loneliness. Enough of that silence. Enough of missing him.

If he couldn’t open up to you and let you know him, you were going to need an explanation why.

You stopped at the bottom of the stairs that had been a mystery to you ever since you arrived at the palace. For a moment, you hesitated. He had told you not to go upstairs but a part of you was begging you to climb those stairs and find out what the Prince was hiding.

Slowly but determined, you climbed up the stairs.

The floor up had the same tapestries, the same old statues and paintings that the other floor had, but it looked as if the passing of time had been harsher with it, leaving it more damaged than the rest. You could barely see, the light from the moon that seeped through one of the fallen curtains, being the only source of illumination.

As you grabbed doorknobs and came across closed doors, you made your way into the depths of the corridor. The atmosphere grew thicker and colder, and you shivered under your clothes. There had to be something up there…

Finally, your hand landed on a silver doorknob. It was bigger and cleaner than the rest, your hand not finding any track of dust on it. The doors were also bigger and more luxurious than the rest, letting you know that you had arrived to the main bedroom of the palace.

You let your fingers enclose around the silver doorknob and grabbed it with strength, the big doors opening before you.

A silver light blinded your eyes, having been accustomed to the darkness of the corridor.

There was a wide large window from which the moon could be fully seen. It poured its pure light all over the room, making it look as if it had been taken from a tale. That same window had a door on its side that lead to the huge balcony at the other side of it.

But it was empty, no trace of the Prince in it.

Maybe you should walk back to your room before he found you and got mad at you – even madder. But curiosity got the best of you and, leaving the doors open behind you carelessly, you walked into the room.

It was decorated in dark blue and gold, with dark tapestries and carpets. It had a big fireplace on one end and a four-poster bed on the other. The sheets were messy, the cushions thrown on the floor and the bed unmade.

There was a dark blue, velvet sofa placed in front of the window, contemplating the night sky, and a big, white piano next to it.

It looked like a complete normal room, and still, you couldn’t help but feel as if something was missing.

Your eyes scanned the room in search of that something.

If it was the Prince’s room, it definitely didn’t look like it. It didn’t match his dark and cold aura, everything so perfectly decorated, even the smallest detail had been neatly thought.

You approached the piano, a small stool was placed in front of it, and you took a seat on it. Your back faced the huge window, and your shadow reflected itself on top of the white and black keys. There was a partiture open in half, a prelude written in different musical notes.

Your hands caressed the keys of the white piano slowly, your eyes reading the notes. You loved instruments, but piano had always been your favourite. Unfortunately, you had never been good at it.

As you turned the page, the partiture slipped from the polished material of the piano and fell onto the floor. You were about to grab it, when you found a small book had been lying beneath it.

You grabbed it curiously, the rough material of its cover such a contrast with the softness of the white and black keys.

The small book seemed familiar to you, and you were sure you had seen it before somewhere.

You turned the book around and opened it from its first page. You could see a big number one drawn on the front page, on top of a smaller four.

Frowning, you kept turning the pages until you found words.

“To my memory, the only one that still stays faithful to me up until now,” you read to yourself in a low voice.

The handwriting was neat and clean, easy to read. As you kept reading, you found out it was a not a book, it was a diary, the diary of a young girl. It was one of the diaries you had seen at the library that first time you had been there.

Frowning, you let the girl’s words trap you, submerge you in her world.

“4th of April, year 1066”

“It was dated from four hundred years ago…” you whispered under your breath.

You lifted your eyes from the diary to make sure no one had entered the room.

“Today I turn 15, and I think now I am old enough to write a diary… Ever since I found this notebook somewhere in the forest, I’ll start it in here.”

Your eyes avidly drank the words. The girl’s name was Astraia and she lived in the forest. She lived on her own, her only companions, the different creatures that inhabited the forest. She took care of them and, in exchange, they took care of her. She didn’t write where she had come from, who her parents were of if she even had some. What she did write, was that she had powers. She had the power of the forest, of the sky, of the Mother Nature. She could make plants, flowers and trees grow. She could bring animals back to life. She could make water flow from in between stones. Day by day, the small girl observed her powers grow, and she wrote what they did.

“Today, I watched an old stag die. I was sad, it was a very beautiful stag and I had known it ever since it had been a fawn. As I observed its unmoving body and cried, I felt some kind of rush into my body, some sort of call. It grew from the tip of my toes to the tip of my nose, and suddenly, light was emerging from my body and pouring into the stag’s. With wide eyes, I watched its black eyes open again and its elegant body stand up.”

As the girl kept telling her feelings and the things her powers could do, you kept reading and reading, soon, your fingers finding the last page. It ended with a:

“Since I’m arriving to the last page of this notebook, I think I’ll go to the village and steal a new one. I’m nervous, I’ve never been to the village and the forest keeps telling me not to go, but I’m curious. I’m tired of seeing all those people walking through the stone path and never speaking to them. I feel so lonely…”

“So, this has a second part?” you asked yourself, closing the diary and looking around the room.

There, on top of the sofa, you found a pile of books. Two of them caught your attention.

“This is the second part of my untold memories,” the first page said, a number two drawn above a number four, just like in the first diary.

The girl had grown older, you could see it in her handwriting, in her words. She had met someone at the village, a boy, and despite the forest kept telling her not to see him again, not to go to the village again, she couldn’t help but wake up every morning and run towards the village, where the boy was waiting for her. She described him as a reserved and shy boy, with round cheeks, gummy smile and dark hair. He was her age, but he was way smaller than she was, and she always teased him about that.

“15th of September, year 1068. It’s difficult getting a smile from him, but yesterday, I told him how I had fallen onto the river the previous day and he smiled. He smiled! And it was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen! I felt butterflies in my belly. I want to see that smile again and feel that funny feeling in the pitch of my stomach.”

“22th of October, year 1068. I think I know what those butterflies in my stomach are. I am going to tell Yoongi about my powers today. I’m afraid that he will run away and get scared. I’m afraid that he won’t want to keep seeing me and being my friend.”

“23th of October, year 1068. He liked it! At first, he looked really taken aback, but then he smiled and told me to repeat what I had done! I made water pour from his hands, a flower grow in between stones. He said it was amazing.”

“02th of January, year 1069. The first snow of the year has arrived. Yoongi and I were playing with the snow. I kissed him, and he kissed me back. I told him I loved him.”

Your heart softened as you read the girl’s words about the boy named Yoongi. Everything was so tender and full of love. From the adjectives she used to describe him, to the words with which she described how they had gone to the forest together and how she had introduced him to the animals and creatures in it.

The third diary didn’t start different from the two others, but you could see some of its final pages were damaged, some had even been torn.

“01th of March, year 1071. Soon, it will be Yoongi’s birthday. I’m thinking about preparing a surprise for him. But he seems sad… I think he’s sad for his parent’s death. He told me they died when he was young, and ever since then, he has been a servant at the Palace. It was a long time ago, but he always gets sad around this time of the year. I hope my surprise will cheer him up. I love him so much… He makes me want to keep waking up every morning, I don’t even know what’s loneliness anymore. I would do anything for him…”

“09th of March, year 1071. Yoongi always says that the thing he likes the most about me is the light that’s in my eyes, how lively they are. I don’t know if that’s true, I can only look at my reflection in the waters of the river and it’s blurry. Tonight, when he comes to the forest and I seem him, I’ll make the dark night sky shine brightly. It’s so dull, with only the white Moon in it. I’ll create a thousand lights that resemble the one he sees in me and I’ll hung them in the sky for him. For his birthday.”

“10th of March, year 1071. I wish I could draw his face the moment I showed him my surprise for his birthday. I’ve never seen him looking so beautiful and so happy. He called them Stars, since my name is Astraia and they remind him of me.”

“17th of March, year 1071. The stars appear every night in the sky, accompanying the Moon. They look so tiny and fragile by its side, but they are beautiful. Everyone at the village speak about them, they don’t know where they came from. If only they knew…”

“20th of March, year 1071. They can’t know. If they know I created the stars they will want my power, that’s what Mother Nature has told me. Human are greedy and thirsty for power, and they can’t have mine, they will use it in the wrong way. Yoongi promised me he won’t tell anyone. I believe him. I trust him.”

“04th of April, year 1071. Today, two men killed a unicorn. Unicorns never show themselves to humans, but I asked them if they could show themselves to Yoongi since it was my birthday. They did, and some men appeared. They killed the unicorn and saw me. No men had always dared to come inside this forest despite Yoongi, I don’t know what those men were doing in here. Now, the forest is scared. It’s scared of Yoongi too.”

“22th of February, year 1072. I’m sorry I haven’t written in a while. Things have been getting worse. Word has spread about the forest’s creatures and men want to hunt them. Me and the forest are working to kick all those humans out and protect the forest and its creatures. I haven’t seen Yoongi since past September. I miss him.”

“03th of September, year 1072. Today, it’s been a year since I last saw Yoongi. I’m worried about him, I hope nothing bad has happened to him. I’ve been thinking about going to the village and see him, see if he’s okay, but I can’t, not when the forest is in so much danger. I don’t know what to do. I feel so lonely once again. The creatures aren’t here with me anymore because they are hiding, and they only thing I have with me are the starts.”

“28th of January, year 1074. The forest is half gone, its creatures too. It’s nothing compared to the magic and safe world I used to know, now it’s dark and void of life. I can’t keep doing this. I’ve tried to be kind. I’ve tried not to use my powers for bad aims… I have no other option.”

As you kept reading and turning the pages, the handwriting became messier and darker.

“10th of February, year 1074. They saw me using my powers. They were trying to kill the stag I saved years ago. I had to stop them. And now they now, they know I was the one who created the stars. They will come for me.”

“15th of February, year 1074. I killed them. I killed them all. They were coming for me, for my forest. The King sent an army. And I killed them all. I feel the blood in my hands. I close my eyes and I hear the cries of all those men. What have I done? What have I become? The worst part of it all is that I would do it all over again, to protect my home and to protect myself.”

“27th of February, year 1074. I killed two other men. I don’t even know if the King had sent them or if they were innocent travellers. At this point, I don’t care. I’ll kill whoever that puts its foot in this forest. I don’t feel bad for it anymore, on the contrary… I feel anger, fury, resentment… I want to kill them all.”

“01th of March, year 1074. I’ve heard the King has put a price to my head. Well, I dare him to come here and try to get me himself.”

“09th of March, year 1074. Today, I saw Yoongi. It was his birthday and he came to see the stars. He looked fine, but he has changed. He doesn’t have chubby cheeks anymore. He doesn’t have that gummy smile. He looks bitter, he looks like them. He has changed, he’s not the boy I loved. I don’t trust him anymore.”

And just like that, when you turned the page, you found the back cover of the small notebook. You searched in the pile of books that were discarded on the sofa and its surroundings for the fourth – and last – diary. But it was nowhere to be found.

“Are you searching for the last one?” you heard a deep voice coming from the entrance of the room.

You lifted your eyes from the books in your hands to find a dark shadow hovering on the doorframe.

Your breath got stuck in your throat at the sight of the Prince entering the room slowly, the moonlight illuminating him and making him look like a ghost.

“Well, I’m sorry to tell you this, but I don’t have the fourth diary,” he said, his eyes never leaving you, though you couldn’t quite decipher the look he had in them.

You blinked a couple of times, making yourself stand up and face him.

“I’m… I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be here… I should get going,” you said.

“So soon? Without asking me why I have those diaries? Without asking me if I’m the boy those diaries speak about?” he said, approaching you slowly, his steps so soft you couldn’t ever hear them.

You slowly backed away until your back was pressed against the glass of the window.

“It’s impossible… Those diaries are from…”

“Four hundred years ago, I know,” he said, smirking in a devilish way that sent a shiver down your spine.

“B-but you just have… T-that’s impossible you can’t be…” you kept whispering to yourself.

“Four hundred years old?” the Prince mocked. “Well, technically, I’m four hundred and twenty-three years old… Or maybe four hundred and twenty-five… I don’t remember anymore, I stopped counting a long time ago.”

“That’s not true, it can’t be…”

“But it is,” he said. “I’m Yoongi, Y/N. I’m the boy those diaries speak about.”

Your eyes widened, and your mouth parted. He had to be lying to you. He was mad at you for entering his room without his permission and sneaking through his things and now he was making you pay for it.

You narrowed your eyes. If he was mad at you, you were even madder at him.

“So… You’re telling me that you’re some boy that appears in the diaries of some random girl who had magical powers… Four hundred years ago?”

“Didn’t you want to get to know me?” he snickered. “Well, now you do. You know who I am.”

“You’re just telling me this to scare me and make me run away, to break our deal and get what you want.”

He took some steps towards you, who were still pressed against the window, huddled like a lost fawn.

“The deal… So, I was right and this is all about the deal…”

Your jaw tensing. It really offended you the fact that he thought all you had done was because of that deal that didn’t even have any value to you anymore. The fact that he thought your words had been lies, the fact that he thought your love for him had been an act.

“Of course this is all about the deal,” you challenged him. “To you, it has always been.”

He clasped his mouth shut, waiting for you to say something else, or maybe thinking about something witty to say himself.

“From day one, you have done nothing but try to push me to my edge, so I would surrender, and you would get what you wanted and put our agreement down,” you kept saying.

“And how do you explain all those times I was kind to you? Like when I caught you sneaking into my library without my consent. Had it been someone else, I would have kill them on the spot without even blinking. Or all those things I did to make you more comfortable here. Was it all because of the deal too?”

“Maybe… Maybe it is some sort of plan, I don’t know.”

“Ah, yeah? And did I accomplish it?”

“No.”

You bit your lower lip. Your mind was full of questions you wanted to ask him, of equations you wanted to solve. Of unresolved feelings twisting and turning in your chest and turning your breathing into a difficult task.

Seeing your conflicted expression, Yoongi changed up the topic and started walking closer to you.

“Why were you here in my room? I told you not to – ”

“Come up here,” you sighed. “I know, it’s just that…”

You couldn’t find the words. You couldn’t explain to him why you were in his room, going around his things, trying to find more about him that he could tell you… Without saying that you were doing it all because you were in love with him, and you couldn’t bare the idea of being in love with a complete stranger.

“I don’t even know why I’m still trying when you made it very clear that you don’t want me to get closer to you,” you ended up saying, because in a way, it was the truth.

He took some more steps towards you, his eyes never leaving yours. He was still angry at you for coming up there and for rummaging through his things, but there was something else in those dark eyes of his. What, you couldn’t decipher.

When he was so close to you that you could feel the warmth of his body radiating onto yours, you held your breath and instinctively pressed yourself further against the glass of the window, still afraid that he would somehow punish you for sneaking into his room.

As he lifted one of his arms, you flinched involuntarily, but instead of making him stop, your movement made him press his hand to your cheek more quickly.

“Are you afraid of me?” he whispered.

His hands were cold, the feeling of his skin against your warm one making you shiver.

“No,” you said without even doubting. It surprised you, such a simple word meaning so much and holding such a clear truth in it, slipping from the depths of your heart.

The surprise faded away from the Prince’s expression, leaving it blank as usual.

“You should,” he whispered.

“Why?”

“Because I’m going to end up hurting you, one way or another,” he said, and his voice sounded tired, as if it had said those same words a long time ago.

“We’re all exposed to getting hurt,” you said.

You softly pressed your hand on top of his and leaned towards him, kissing him like you had never kissed him before. Your lips traced his like travellers trace a map they want to remember for the rest of their lives, its different paths forever carved in their minds. And you were sure you would never be able to forget the feeling of his lips against yours, for it was such a mind-blowing feeling.

Yoongi wasn’t good with words, he wasn’t affectionate, nor was he good at showing his feelings. But he didn’t need any of those things when he had lips that kissed like that, that traced like that, that caressed like that.

He was, finally, letting his lips tell you all the things he couldn’t say with words.

And oh, did it feel so right.

His hands slowly traced paths from the skin of your cheek, to the fabric of the dress that covered your body. His tongue danced with yours in a ball with no music and no guests, just the two of you, the stars and the moon as witnesses.

Yoongi slowly pulled away from you, his eyes piercing into yours for a brief moment before bringing his lips down to yours once again. Slowly, he traced a path of wet kisses from your swollen lip to your neck.

He was lost in you. And you were lost in him.

“Yoongi…” you whispered his name, the sound of it so beautiful coming from your lips.

You heard him grunt and you grabbed his face with both of your hands.

“I want to see you,” you whispered once his eyes were on yours, a wild shine in them. “All of you.”

The Prince tensed under your touch and his body froze. You could almost see the mechanism of his mind working, hesitating, fearing…

“Let me see you… For what you truly are.”

You watched him swallow and slowly, you brought your hands to the back of his head, caressing his black hair as you do so. Silently, Yoongi closed his eyes.

You untied the small knot that kept his mask in place and you felt it loosening under your touch. As slowly as you had brought your hands to the back of his head, you brought them back to the front of his mask, caressing his skin over the soft material.

You looked at him like that, with his eyes closed, half of his face bare to you and the silver light of the moon, the other half, hidden behind the shadows and mystery of the mask.

You let the mask slip from his face and fall onto the floor, revealing the other side of his face.

You almost gasped at the sight, but kept your lips sealed as you admired him.

Huge scars ran from his jawline to the end corner of his eye as it traced patterns all over his skin. They reminded you of the furrows that creates a river when it erodes the ground underneath it, so savage and indefinite. The skin was rosy, not as pale as the skin on the other side of his face. It was a scar from a long time ago and even though it wasn’t deep, you guessed the cause of it ran deeper inside him.

Seeing so much pain in his features as he waited for your response, your heart ached.

Softly, you brought one of your hands to that damaged side of his face and delicately caressed his scarred skin with your pointed finger. At the feeling of your hand on his skin, Yoongi flinched.

It wasn’t a beautiful scar. It was big and tortuous. But it was his, it was a part of him, and that made him even more beautiful and real.

Tracing his scar with your finger, you let yourself speak. “You’re so beautiful.”

The Prince’s eyes opened, and for the first time in forever, you could see all the emotions swirling in them. Fear. Pain. Anger. Doubt. Regret. Shock. Want.

Without letting you anticipate his movements, he pressed further into you and attacked your lips with his in a whirlwind of passion and want.

Yoongi let his lips wander freely around your skin. Your lips. Your cheeks. Your forehead. Your jawline. The lobe of your ear. The nape of your neck. Your collarbones. Everywhere. And, in the meantime, you pressed your back against the cool glass and closed your eyes, letting you drown in the deep sea that was Prince Yoongi.

When his lips reached the curve of your breasts, you pulled from the ends of his hair, causing him to lift his eyes and find yours.

At an animalistic pace, the Prince unbuttoned your dress and let it slide against your naked skin until it reached the floor. Then, he parted to admire the beauty of your body completely naked before him, bathed in the light of the dying night.

“I want you, I want all of you,” he growled, falling on his knees in front of you.

You didn’t even have time to bite your lip as he grabbed the back of your knee and hoisted your left leg on top of one of his shoulders. But you did eventually bite it when you felt his lips leaving a trace of kisses from the inside of your thigh to your sweet spot.

As he traced your sensitive area with his lips, his eyes looking at you from time to time and his hands caressing your trembling thighs, the stars disappeared from the clearer sky, the moon long gone.

In between moans and whispers, he traced one of his fingers upwards and you observed with parted lips and erratic breaths how he pulled back from your sensitive core and inserted two fingers in his mouth, licking them lewdly as he smirked.

“I want your eyes on me the entire time,” he mumbled before caressing your lower lips with his now wet fingers.

You nodded, biting on your lower lip to prevent you form screaming.

Looking at you, he inserted one finger in your core, and then other. When he began pumping both of his fingers, he pressed his tongue against your sensitive skin once again.

You moaned loudly, letting your head fall once again against the glass behind you. You were in a complete state of bliss in between heaven and reality. His fingers pumping in and out of you at an increasing pace, his tongue devouring you, the cold glass pressed against your sweaty skin, and all those butterflies flying around your stomach.

You felt hot begin to run towards your belly, towards your chest, towards your cheeks. Everywhere. And you moaned once again.

“Can you take more?” Yoongi’s voice said, snapping you out of your own bliss.

You nodded, breaths erratic as you observed the Prince inserting a third finger in you. You clenched your teeth, feeling his fingers stretch you.

“That’s it, Y/N, take them, take them like the good girl you are,” Yoongi whispered.

As you looked him in the eye, you watched it all explode. A strong feeling rushed through your entire body, making your legs buckle with so much force Yoongi had to held you so you wouldn’t fall. It made you close your eyes with force, seeing white sparks as you did so.

Yoongi milked your orgasm until he couldn’t take it anymore, his hunger for you getting the best of him.

He stood up in a haze, stumbling a bit as he let your leg on the floor again. In less than a second, his glossy lips covered in your juices were on yours once more, and his hands searched for your waits, grabbing it and walking backwards until his legs hit the back of his bed and you both fell onto his bed.

You kissed him, grinding on his growing erection, your hands fumbling with the buttons of his shirt. Once they were all undone, your ripped his shirt open and started tracing kisses down his chest, right on top of his heart, and following the line of his belly button.

When your lips found the fabric of his pants, you looked up at him to find him propped up on his elbows, watching you with a marvelled look in his eyes.

You climbed on top of him to kiss him once more before undoing his pants and leaving him completely bare, just like you.

You stood like that, observing him, Yoongi, the man you had hated and feared and despised and resented and loved. It was him completely naked in front of you, from his bare face without his black mask, to the pale skin that had been hidden under his dark clothes, to the shine in his eyes and the lust in his face.

You grabbed his erection and caressed it from the base to the tip, making the Prince emit a growl that sounded like your name.

Battling your eyelashes softly at him, you lowered your head until your lips were hovering over the tip of his cock. Without breaking eye contact, you sunk onto him, taking him slowly in your mouth.

Yoongi’s eyes rolled into the back of his head, one of his hands coming up behind your head and grabbing a fistful of your hair.

You held your breath, swiping your tongue all over the base of his erection as you tried to keep up with Yoongi’s pace.

“That’s it, just like that…” he kept saying as he pressed your head lower and lower, forcing you to take more of him.

You could taste him, and you could feel yourself growing eager once again.

You let the Prince take complete control of your movements, placing both of your hands on his thighs.

“Oh, God,” he mumbled, pushing your head until your nose was nearly touching his pubic hair.

Tears began falling from your air and you couldn’t breathe, soon your throat constricting around the tip of his cock and gagging.

“God…” Yoongi growled, pulling from your hair and pulling you away from his erection.

With his hand still gripped around your hair, he pulled you upwards until his lips found yours. He dragged both of your bodies on the bed until his was pressed against the pillows.

You sat on his stomach, letting his lips take you to another world, another universe in which time wasn’t a brief thing, in which beautiful things didn’t have to end, in which no one was exposed to getting hurt. To a dimension where you could both be together for the rest of your times, loving and making love and making time together.

As the Prince made love to you, the clouds doubted in the sky.

And for a moment, for a brief moment, the orange hues of the first light illuminated the sky, drowning the Prince’s room in oranges and soft blues and purples, just like the colours of the marks that you had both left on each other’s skins, like maps that one would never want to forget but that would eventually end up forgetting.

But it was just a brief moment, for beautiful things are brief, and they all come to an end. And yours and Yoongi’s love was exactly that: a brief and beautiful story of time.

. . .

You both spent the rest of the day in his room, in between the sheets, falling in and out of sleep, making love, talking, joking, teasing each other and drowning in laughs and pleasure tears.

“Tell me about it,” you said one of those times after making love, when you were both breathless and still coming down form your highs.

You were tracing the scars on the right side of his face with your fingers as you laid your head on his chest.

“Tell me about you.”

His hand grabbed yours, the one that was caressing his cheeks, and pressed it softly to his damaged skin, making you feel all of it.

“What do you want to know?” he asked, surprising you a bit.

You smiled as you propped yourself up on one of your elbows, your free hand pressing on his chest as your fingers played with his skin.

“Are you really the boy those diaries speak about?”

“Yes,” he nodded.

You opened your eyes in surprise.

“And how’s that possible? I mean… What happened?”

“Life… I guess life is what happened.”

“You betrayed that girl, didn’t you? You sold her to the King…” you said, observing how he averted his eyes from you, letting them lose themselves outside the windows of that room.

“I remember meeting her, such a beautiful and innocent girl… You sometimes remind me of her when I first met her, but she was younger and more naïve, she wasn’t damaged by the reality of this cruel world like we all are,” he spoke, his eyes not being the only ones lost in the horizon, for then, his entire being was lost in another time, four hundred years before.

“She was so special and pure, so ethereal. She dragged everyone and everything around her. I guess that was her main gift. And then, there was me, an orphan who dreamed about being someone in life, who wandered around the streets without nothing to do or nothing to eat… Until I met her,” he paused briefly, then continued. He was taking his time, almost as if it was the first time that he was letting himself remember the full story in four hundred years. “It was easy falling in love with her, with her bright persona and her cheerful innocence. We were complete opposites. She was the sun, I was the moon. She was light, and I was darkness.”

“One day I sneaked into the palace, I had always been curious about how it looked like on the inside. When my dirty and worn out shoes touched those clean and polished marble floors I felt something churning in my stomach, in my chest… And I swore to myself I would never feel something like that never again. I would never feel shame of being who I was, I would never resign myself to being a poor orphan that robbed in search of food and warm clothes. I don’t even know how, but I ended up meeting the King and he somehow, grew a liking for me and my astuteness.”

“So, money and power started being more important to me than friendship and… Love. Because yes, despite everything, I loved her like I’ve never loved anyone. On the day of my twentieth birthday, she gifted me a part of her, a part of her powers. Lights that reminded me of the light in her eyes, sparkles that lit up the darkness. The stars. She gifted me the stars. And I didn’t appreciate it enough. I didn’t want stars, I didn’t want something that I would look into and remind me of her wherever I was. I only wanted money, and power, and that’s all I sought, leaving her forgotten in a secluded area of my heart.

“Years passed… And I stopped seeing her. Humans found out about her and wanted her powers, they destroyed her precious forest and animals, and everything she loved. And I stood there, watching as everyone destroyed the girl I loved, doing nothing.”

“The King was mad. He was mad that some girl had more power than he had. That her and her stupid forest could destroy an entire army of his. So, he put a price to her head. He had no sons, no heirs to his throne, so, in return for taking the life of that witch of the forest, he would offer his crown. Me, being the stupid boy I was, blinded by the succulent offer of the King, I saw the doors of the throne room opening in front of me, I almost felt the weight of the golden crown on top of my head. My shoes would never be dirty and worn out, I would never be hungry once again. Me, a simple orphan who had grown in the streets, turned into a powerful king who slept in between silk sheets and ate warm food every day.”

“I didn’t even think twice about it before going to the forest in search of Astraia. When she saw me, she ran towards me with tears in her eyes and kisses on her lips. She looked at me like I was the only hope that was left in her crumbled world when in fact, I was her downfall. That night, after spending the entire day with her, I tried to kill her. But I had never felt so loved as I felt with her, I had never felt so at home as I had done in that forest… And I couldn’t do it, and I took her to the king.”

“He tortured her, trying to get her powers out of her. I could hear her cries, her screams… But I was the heir to the throne then, and it was all I had ever wanted, so I drowned her screams with music as I played the old piano the king hadn’t even touched once. Music became my mantra, and it still is. But I will never forget her screams, the hate in her eyes when I looked at them, the broken pieces of his heart I had carved myself and that pierced my skin with each one of her threats towards me.”

“In the depths of the palace dungeons, her powers turned darker, more powerful, and one day, she freed herself. She killed the King first, and then, she killed the rest of the people that was at the palace and the village, only a few remaining alive. Me amongst them.”

“When I saw her walking towards me, she wasn’t that girl I had seen eight years ago. She wasn’t the girl I loved. But it was my fault. As I begged her not to kill me, she laughed bitterly and said ‘Yoongi, there are things far worse than death’. I didn’t know what that meant until she took everything for me.”

“She left me here, in a kingdom with no villagers, a kingdom ruled by a king that was doomed. She painted clouds over the sky, forbidding me to look at the sunlight ever again, but she left the night sky untouched, so I could look at it, see the stars, and remember her, remember what I had done and who I was. After that, I never saw her again.”

As Yoongi finished his story, he turned his face and looked at you, who had stopped tracing patterns all over his skin and was deep in thought.

“I didn’t want to tell you because I was afraid you would realise what kind of person I am – if you hadn’t found it out already for yourself – and hate me even more than you already did.”

“The day I first came here… You told me I should be grateful for the deal you had made with me, because your deals weren’t usually like this…” you said, your eyes tracing his skin as your mind was lost in the million thoughts that ran through it. “What are your deals like? What’s your price?”

You watched him gulp.

“Before leaving, Astraia took one last thing from me. She told me men like me shouldn’t have something as pure and precious as a soul, so she took it away from me and divided it in four parts, each one of them belonging to a diary of hers. Then, she took those diaries with her and hid them all over the continent, so I couldn’t find them… A man with no soul can’t not live, nor can he die, that’s why I’m doomed to take the souls of others.”

“What?” you asked confused.

“I can grant anything to anyone… In exchange of their souls.”

You hid your face beneath your hands and pressed them to Yoongi’s chest. He remined still.

“I kill people, Y/N, that’s my price. They ask me for favours, I give them whatever they want, and after some time, I send my messengers after them and they bring them here so I can take my part.”

You didn’t know what to think, how to feel, after hearing his words. Were you really in love with a man who had no soul and which prince was the lives of others?

“The souls of all those people are what keep me, and the rest of the people who serve me, alive. They are the ones that keep us all grounded here, not being able to walk away from this kingdom too.”

“I… Why me? Why was my price different from the rest?”

Yoongi sighed, his eyes meeting the outside world once again.

“Astraia died in Greyria. They say she was killed by one of her stars. She died in your kingdom, in your castle, the same place where those three diaries had been hidden by a Princess, one of your ancestors. I guess seeing you… the Queen of Greyria… It brought all the memories back. I felt connected to you, as if our stories had been made to intertwine themselves in time.”

You let your mind process all the information slowly, Yoongi remained silent as you did so.

“I’ll understand if you think I’m a monster and if you don’t want to see me ever again. If that’s so, I won’t bother you for the next four months, and our deal will be over,” he said, propping himself up as your body fell onto the mattress.

He sat on the bed, facing the window as the pale light of the moon illuminated his naked skin. You looked at him as he faced his back to you.

“You will have fulfilled your part of the deal by then, and I promise you, you will have a peaceful and long reign.”

“And what if I don’t think you’re a monster? And what if the idea of not seeing you ever again terrifies me?” you spoke.

He hadn’t been waiting for your words, and you observed him tense.

“How can you not think I’m a monster after all I’ve told you?”

You sat yourself up on the bed and dragged yourself closer to him, your chest pressed against his back, your chin resting on his shoulder as you embraced him with both of your arms, one hand pressed firmly on his chest, on top of his beating heart.

“How can I think of you as a monster when all you’ve done is treat me so kindly?” you whispered, inhaling his scent and letting it captivate your senses. “Maybe you made some mistakes in the past, some big mistakes, but you’re not the same man that you were four hundred years ago, I can tell. You’re the first person that has been real to me in my entire life. I wasn’t a princess or a queen and suddenly, I was a normal girl by your side. That’s all that matters to me, Yoongi.”

You brought one hand up and caressed his right cheek.

“I love you, it’s simple as that.”

You observed him parting his lips as he caught a deep breath of air, his hands coming up to yours as his face turned so his eyes could look into yours.

“What will happen in four months? When you have to go back to Greyria and – “

You interrupted him by sealing your lips against his. He followed your movement pleasingly.

“We don’t have to think about that right now,” you murmured with your lips touching his as you spoke. “We have four months to ourselves.”

After that, you dragged him across the bed and once again, attached your lips to his. You wished you could forever live in that exact same moment, that you could somehow freeze time and turn something brief into something infinite. Just the two of you, loving each other, being beautiful together under the light of the stars that shone brightly in the sky above.

. . .

Time went by in haze, and you only realised you had less than a month left at the palace when Kwan’s letter arrived.

You were reading in your room, since Yoongi had business to attend, when you heard a noise in your window.

Lifting your eyes from the book you were reading, you saw a pigeon waiting on the windowsill.

Looking at the door of your room and making sure it was closed, you walked towards the window and grabbed the letter from the neck of the pigeon.

You let the animal drink and eat from the food you saved for it as you opened the letter with trembling hands.

July.

It read at the beginning of the letter, making you blink a couple of times to make sure you were reading alright. July? Already?

In the letter, Kwan told you he was eager for your return, that Kyungsoo was making progresses and that he hadn’t fevers anymore. Somehow, the good news didn’t bring you comfort.

You wrote a simple letter, just a couple of paragraphs telling Kwan that you were doing okay and that you would see him in a month. After tying the letter to the pigeon, you sent it flying and watched it disappear behind the cloudy horizon.

You stood there for a couple of minutes, just letting the warm air of Summer hit you as you closed your eyes and imagined the sight of the sun in the sky and the warmth of its rays on your skin.

A sudden knot appeared in your chest and you felt as if you were suffocating. A feeling that had been haunting you for the past two months.

You needed some air.

Running through the corridors and climbing the steps to the Tower of the Howls as fast as you could, you hoped for the feeling to dissipate, but it didn’t, and when you arrived at the top of the tower and pressed your back against one of the pillars in the room, you were gasping for air.

Hastily, with trembling fingers, you unbuttoned the back of your dress and your corset, trying to ease the pressure you were feeling in your chest.

It was a feeling that had clawed itself in your bones and your whole body, a feeling that didn’t let you sleep at night, awakening you in a puddle of sweat as Yoongi looked at you with a frown on his face.

Thousands of thoughts ran through your mind, making it spin and making you want to vomit.

Greyria. Kyungsoo. Yoongi.

Kyungsoo. Yoongi. Greyria.

Yoongi. Greyria. Kyungsoo.

Time.

But time… Time was the thing that was eating you up, with its cruel passing and hunger for damage.

And those same thoughts had been devouring you for months, making you feel like a bird locked in a cage.

You had always been a free spirit, ever since you were a little kid, enjoying running around the castle’s gardens, or riding a horse through your kingdom’s fields. You had never been able to stay in between four walls for too long, but now, you had been locked between the four walls of the palace for nearly a year, and your skin missed the caresses of the daylight, your lungs yearned for fresh air, your ears cried for the missing sound of the sea you loved oh so much.

Time was eating you up, slowly, but avidly, leaving nothing but a shell of the vivid girl you once were.

You had tried to hide that from Yoongi, but every time he looked at you in the eye, you could see him reading you like an open book.

You weren’t happy by his side anymore.

It was not because of him, for you loved him so much it hurt. But love, love wasn’t supposed to hurt. It was supposed to make you feel alive, and free, and happy… And loving Yoongi hurt too much.

Maybe it was because of the uncertainty it all brought to you; his love, his existence, all those mysteries that surrounded him and that he still kept to himself. Maybe it was because you were a young girl who yearned to see the world, who yearned to live some more, and living the rest of your life in between the four walls of that palace wasn’t what you called living. Maybe it was because you were selfish and put your happiness first.

Maybe it was because loving Yoongi had been too beautiful, even for yourself, and all beautiful things must come to an end.

You grabbed the railing of the tower with both hands as you closed your eyes and let your tears fall freely down your cheeks, letting the summer air dry them on your skin.

It had been brief, but it had been intense, and it had added some precious time to the briefness of your existence. And it was all that mattered to you.

With a more calmed heart, and more relaxed appearance, you slowly returned to your room, finding the door open once you reached it.

Yoongi was there, sitting on the edge of your bed and his eyes lost in the same stars you had been observing just minutes before. On his hands rested all the letters Kwan had sent you during your stay at the palace.

“Where were you?” he asked softly, not even needing to turn around to realise you had entered the room, his body feeling the change of the atmosphere in a room as soon as you entered it.

“Taking some fresh air, at the Tower of the Howls.”

“Hmm…” he murmured. “The stars are beautiful tonight.”

You breathed softly as you took as seat by his side on the edge of your bed.

“They are,” you agreed.

A comfortable silence engulfed you both as your eyes traced the sky slowly, appreciating the beauty of it. Maybe stars were the only eternal beauty that existed.

“Did you ever thought about staying here with me even after the deal is over?” Yoongi asked, breaking the silence as he deposited the letters on your lap.

“I did.”

“But now you don’t,” he said, more to himself than to you. “Are you still happy in here with me?”

You shook your head, feeling your eyes burning with new tears. You felt all the love you had for Yoongi inside you, shining, twisting and turning, making you feel as if you were glowing. But at the same time, you could feel it tightening its grip over your chest, tearing you apart.

“I understand,” Yoongi whispered. “I cannot force you into a fate that isn’t yours, you don’t deserve it. It’s the price I have to pay for my mistakes.”

You felt fingers grabbing your chin softly, making you lift your head and look into the Prince’s eyes. He wasn’t wearing his mask. He barely wore it around anymore.

“Don’t cry,” he said, wiping away the falling tears. “You’ve made me the happiest man on Earth without asking anything in return, and I’m not used to getting something freely.”

You smiled, hating him for making you smile when you were breaking both of your hearts.

And then, he kissed you, making all that love in the shape of sparks that you had inside explode, painting your insides in gold, and silver, and black, and all the colours of the sunset. You knew you would never feel something like that in your life, and wanting to get the most out of it, you kissed him back with all the colours you had inside, with all the love that would forever remain with you.

“I’ve been dying to ask you something,” you said as your lips parted. “Why do they call you the Prince of the Green Fire?”

Yoongi smiled at your question.

“Hold your hands up for me,” he said, making you hold your hands in the shape of a small bowl.

He then placed his hands on top of yours and you slowly observed a green light appear in between his fingers. Green fire tinted his pale skin, and with a flicker of his fingers, it created a ball of green fire in your hands.

“It is one of the gifts Astraia gave me,” he said, his eyes lost in the exotic fire as his fingers played with it on top of your hands. It didn’t burn your skin, instead, it felt cold and tickled you. “Even after all the pain I caused her, all the heartbreak, she still gifted me with her powers, her magic.”

Averting your eyes from the green fire, you looked at his face, so beautiful under the green shadows that the fire casted over it. You watched the scars on the right side of his face blend with the fire that probably caused them.

“Come with me to Greyria,” you blurted out.

You knew that he needed to stay at the palace, where his lost soul remained divided in three of the four diaries of the girl she once loved and betrayed. He needed the souls of those who had required his powers to keep himself alive, the souls that wandered freely over the palace and the ones that fed him.

You remembered the conversation you both had had on a windy spring night.

How he told you how badly he wanted to die, to end his eternal days. How badly he had tried to take his life, to end it, to extinguish it. And how badly he had failed.

He had no soul. He couldn’t die like any other human being. He could only be killed by destroying the four diaries with fire, by killing his soul. And there was a diary that he hadn’t found yet.

So, until he found it, he was doomed to spend the rest of his days taking souls and watching time pass, for his had been frozen a long time ago.

“I can’t get out of here without destroying the four diaries and breaking the curse. I can’t get out of here without killing myself.”

The green fire extinguished in your hands as you threw them in the air and hugged him, hiding your face in his chest as you cried. You felt his hot tears landing on top of your head as his hands caressed your back.

The truth of your fate was hidden behind his words, and your brief story of time had come to its end.

. . .

You remembered your last days at the castle as bittersweet.

You spent entire nights with Yoongi making love to you passionately, the both of you trying to grasp the last remainders of your brief time together.

You spent entire days chatting, and reading cuddled on the sofas of the library, exploring the castle… Trying to be as happy as you could when nothing but grey clouds covered the sky, and a sad fate casted its shadow over your heads.

And the day it all came to its end, you walked down the hall of the palace feeling the marble floor echoing under your steps like the first day you had arrived, an exact year before.

Yoongi wasn’t at the door waiting for you like some of his servants and guards were, and you smiled, contemplating his vacant spot.

The night before, he had said his sweet goodbye to you, making sure his kisses would forever remain carved on your skin, and he had already warned you: he hated goodbyes, and seeing you part, would kill him. So, he had stayed inside, somewhere where you couldn’t see him.

With the image of his beautiful face illuminated by the green fire on your mind, you walked away from the palace of the mysterious Prince of the Green Fire and returned home.

. . .

“Your Highness?”

“Your Highness…”

“Your Highness!”

You could hear the muffled voices of your maids running all around the room, sounding so distant despite being in the same room as you. It was almost as if you were under water, drowning, screaming, but no one was able to hear you, to occupied with their own things to mind your statue-like position and lost gaze.

“Your Highness,” one of the maids said, closer than the others. “The dress is ready.”

The dress was perfect, the most beautiful you had ever seen. The hairstyle your maids had made for you was perfect. The decoration, the guests, even the day – sun shining brightly in the sky – was perfect. It was everything you had ever wanted. Everything you ever dreamt of when you were a kid, and it was supposed to make you happy.

But you weren’t happy.

You had grown accustomed to it, to the empty feeling and empty show you had to put on every day. But somehow, that day, it all felt too real.

You missed him. You missed him with all your heart and soul and everything you had. You hadn’t been happy with him either, and you knew you had made the right choice by returning to your kingdom and doing things right. But oh, how you missed him.

And oh, how you wished he had been the one waiting for you at the end of the corridor made of guests, looking at you as if you held his entire world in your hands.

But the one waiting for you at the altar was Prince Kyungsoo – not Yoongi – you were going to be his queen and him, your king – and not Yoongi – and he was going to be the man whom you would spend the rest of your live with – and not Yoongi.

You took a deep breath of air as you walked towards your soon-to-be husband.

The buzz in your ears didn’t stop even when the priest started talking. You could see his lips moving, but you could hear no sound.

A bit dizzy, you looked around the room. Hundredths of eyes focused on you and Kyungsoo as you both held hands. The ladies were dressed in their finest dresses, and men all wore their best armours and shiny swords.

Suddenly, a loud noise was heard in the main hall of Greyria’s castle.

All heads turned around, trying to look at the cause of such a noise. Even you, who had been lost in thought, turned around with your eyebrows furrowed.

The sight of a dark figure hunched over the doors of the main hall made your heart skip a beat.

“Yoongi?” you whispered, your voice so low and broken you couldn’t even hear it.

Yoongi stumbled into the room, zigzagging as if he was drunk or hurt. With every step he took, the crowd took steps away from him, encircling him as if he had the pester.

“It’s him…” you began to hear the whispers say.

“It can’t be… Oh my God.”

“Wasn’t he dead?”

“Wasn’t he some sort of myth?”

You couldn’t move, frozen on the spot. How could you not when you had convinced yourself that you would never see again the man you loved?

It all happened too quickly.

Kyungsoo pushed you behind him as he shouted for Kwan and his guards. People started running out of the room at the mere sight of the small man, who somehow looked even smaller hunched like that, not even knowing who he truly was, afraid of a myth they heard when they were younger, and their grandparents told them stories to keep the entertained and scared.

Something snapped inside of you at the sight of him surrounded by your guards.

“No!” you screamed. “Stop!”

Your voice echoed through the room, stopping your guards as they looked at you.

“What? Arrest him!” Kyungsoo shouted, looking at you as if you were crazy.

“Don’t! I’m your queen and I order you to stop!”

You walked past Kyungsoo and towards Yoongi, who was looking at you under the safe cover of his black face mask and the hood of his dark cloak.

“What are you doing?” Kyungsoo asked, grabbing your wrist and stopping you from running towards Yoongi. He was confused and angry at the same time, but not half as much as you were.

“What are you doing? Let go of me.”

“He’s dangerous. He came here to kill you.”

“Look at him, Kyungsoo,” you said through gritted teeth, nodding your head towards the man who was bent on the floor, his arms barely holding him anymore. “Does he look like he’s going to kill someone? Let go of me.”

You were desperate, desperate to see him again, to hear his voice, to see his eyes from up-close, to touch his skin. You were desperate to know why he looked like he was crumbling into pieces.

“He could be putting on a show to trick us.”

“He was the man who saved you,” you spat. “How can you speak about him like that?”

“Yeah, he is a warlock, you can’t trust him. He held you hostage at his palace, maybe he has come to get you back.”

“He never held me hostage.”

“Oh, so you stayed there because you wanted?” he asked with sarcasm laced in his voice.

“Yes.”

Both of your chest raised and fell heavily as you argued in front of everyone in the room, who were waiting for one of you to tell them what they had to do.

It wasn’t an unusual sight since your arrival some moths before. You and the Prince had somehow started arguing ever day to the point you couldn’t even walk with him into a room without you both saying something hurtful to the other.

“Ah, you did?” he asked once again, as if he didn’t believe you.

“Yes.”

“You’re telling me you stayed at the palace of a man you didn’t know because you wanted? That he kept you away from your loved ones and your duties because you wanted?”

“That’s exactly what I’m telling you,” you said, defiantly.

“Yeah? And why did you stay?” he asked, looking at the guards and laughing.

Your cheeks reddened.

“Because I fell in love with him.”

The laughs stopped and the few people that had stayed in the room, gasped. You felt the hand around your wrist loosening its grip and you ran towards Yoongi before throwing a last glance towards Kyungsoo, who looked at you with narrowed eyes.

“Yoongi,” you mumbled once you reached the man who was struggling to keep himself propped up on the floor.

You kneeled beside him, oblivious to the looks Kyungsoo was giving to your guards behind your back.

“Y/N” you heard Yoongi’s voice, and you almost cried at the sound of it, so muted and void of that power it once held.

“Hi,” you smiled, parting his sweaty bangs from his forehead as you took off his hood.

“Hey,” he smiled back.

You hugged him, letting him rest his weight on you as you held him tight.

“What are you doing here?” you asked, tears in your eyes when you broke the hug.

He reached out and touched your face, wiping away the tears with both of his thumbs. It was a as if a wall had been built around the both of you in that moment, separating you from the guards, Kyungsoo, Kwan, and the rest of the people in the room.

“I couldn’t stand it… I couldn’t stand to think about living in a world where, someday, you wouldn’t be anymore,” he whispered, his lips almost touching yours.

“This is ridiculous!” you heard Kyungsoo scream. “Guards, arrest him!”

“No!” you screamed back, hugging Yoongi protectively.

He was trembling underneath you and he had a febrile look you didn’t like, sweaty and pale and his eyes almost empty.

“Are you, my wife, telling me that you love this man?” Kyungsoo said, his voice sounding angry and deep. “Please, stop yourself before you dishonour me, and your family more than you have already done.”

“What’s wrong with you?” you asked Kyungsoo, still rocking Yoongi in your arms. “I’m not your wife yet, I’m your Queen and you shall not speak to me like that.”

You were shocked at Kyungsoo’s behaviour. You knew he was strict and he liked things done a certain way, but he had never been like that with you.

“Do you want me to send the guards after you too?” Kyungsoo said, some gasps being heard in the room at his words. “You’re my Queen, yes, but you have our enemy in your arms and you’re telling me that you love him.”

“Our enemy? You didn’t think of him as an enemy when he saved your life.”

“Yes, our enemy. He became a threat to the throne of Greyria the moment he kept you hostage at his palace. I’ve heard the stories they tell about him, how he sent his men to a monastery in search of a diary and how they burnt the whole place with innocent people still inside. How the people that make deals with him, never come back home. He saved my life, but he is an enemy to Greyria, and whoever is a threat to Greyria, is a threat to me. So, I give you two options, either way you let the guards take him and come back here, or you are arrested with him.”

You stayed in silence, still processing Kyungsoo’s words. Were you hearing right? Was the man you once thought you loved speaking to you like that in front of everyone? Was the man whom you had grown with threatening you? The man you considered your best friend, your most loyal counsellor…

“Y/N… I just came here to tell you – “ Yoongi began to say, searching for your gaze.

But your eyes were still focused on Kyungsoo, and you had already made your decision.

“I’m not leaving him. He needs a doctor and I’ll stay by his side,” you said with a stern voice.

“Y/N…” Yoongi pleaded, bringing his hands to your face to try and make you look at him.

“Arrest them. Both of them.”

“If you arrest your Queen you’ll be judged for committing treason, Do Kyungsoo,” you announced.

“My Queen would have never done this, she would have never trusted a stranger and she would have never chosen him over her own Kingdom. You’ve changed, he has changed you, you’re not my Y/N, and you’re definitely not the queen Greyria needs anymore,” Kyungsoo said, his eyes dark and unknown to you. “Guards.”

“My Lord…” Kwan said, looking at you with wide eyes.

“Maybe I should arrest you too,” Kyungsoo said, facing Kwan. “For you were supposed to take care of her and you just let her stay there.”

“I ordered him to do so! You can’t just arrest everyone you want! I’m the Queen here! This is my guard!”

“Arrest them! Now! For the wellbeing of your kingdom, for the wellbeing of your families.”

You saw the faces of the guards changing from fear to determination.

“I’m your Queen!”

“Take her! And then kill him!”

The guards charged against you as you protected Yoongi with your body.

But, as one of the guards grabbed you by the wrist, the whole room erupted into green flames.

You looked at Yoongi, who was now facing his back to you, green fire erupting from the palms of his hands and filling the room. His cloak was flying in the air around him, and his hair was sticking to his forehead. You could see him trembling, barely being able to stand on his two own feet.

“You won’t take her!” Yoongi shouted to Kyungsoo, who was staring at the flames, livid.

The guards that had taken your wrists let go of them and started backing away from you and Yoongi.

You were mesmerized by the green flames, their beauty hypnotizing everyone as they ate up everything in the room.

“Bring your weapons!” Kyungsoo shouted. “Kill him!”

“Don’t you dare kill him!” you said, standing up to protect Yoongi once again, who was too distracted creating new green flames.

“Go!”

A herd of guards appeared with bows at the entrance of the hall, people running everywhere madly: maids, servants, guests, rich nobles… Everyone screaming and terrified of the fire who was eating even the stone of the walls.

One of the guards, amongst the crowd, shot an arrow. It flew across the room and landed on one of Yoongi’s legs. The boy cried, his leg failing and him, falling onto the floor, the green fire disappearing from his hands.

“Yoongi!” you screamed, running towards him.

You kneeled down beside him, and despite the screams and the sounds of the fire, you could hear his erratic breaths.

“Y/N, listen to me,” he pleaded, trying to stick the arrow out of his leg. “I came here to tell you something – “

“No,” you cut him off again. “You’ll tell me when we’re both out of here. We shall go… I have some cousins in the north, we can go there.”

“Y/N stop – “

“But we have to find a doctor for you before, what happens to you? You look ill.”

“Y/N I’m not going to get out of this.”

“Don’t be stupid Yoongi,” you scoffed, trying to clean the sweat from his forehead with one of the sleeves of your wedding dress.

“No, listen to me, please – “

He was interrupted once again, but this time, by another arrow piercing through one of his arms and making him cry in pain. Why was he bleeding? Why was he hurt? Didn’t he tell you that he couldn’t die for he had not a soul?

All those questions floated in your mind as you observed Yoongi turning around with fury in his eyes and he brought his hands up, the familiar green fire that was engulfing the room, appearing on his hands once again. It was as if the green lights poured from his pale skin, from his veins, and onto the guard that had shot him.

In that moment, a figure appeared beneath you.

“Your Highness, I have to get you out of here,” Kwan said looking at you with a worried expression.

“I’m not leaving without Yoongi,” you said, looking at the man who was fighting against your own guards, turning the arrows that they shot him into ashes as they clashed against his green fire.

“Prince Kyungsoo is speaking with the other advisors, he wants to arrest you and set a trial for you, charged of treason against your own Kingdom.”

“He can’t do that.”

“He can. He has their trust, he has always been loyal to the crown and responsible. Your own father told them he would be his greatest successor. They just want the best for Greyria, and right now, Prince Kyungsoo is telling them that you’re not the best for Greyria. Please, your Highness, go away before Prince Kyungsoo gets a hold of you, he is not the boy we used to know anymore, being so close to the death has changed him and has toughen him.”

“I can’t leave Yoongi here, Kwan. I have to bring him with me.”

“He won’t let the two of you go.”

“Then, we won’t go.”

You saw the pain in Kwan’s eyes. The pain of a father.

“Y/N,” he said, calling you by your real name and not by ‘your Highness’ for once. “I love you like a father loves his daughter. Please, run away and be safe. I promised your father I would take care of you the day he died, but I had sworn that to myself a long time before that and I – “

The old man never got to finish his words, a sword piercing his chest and the light disappearing from his eyes. His body felt limply onto the floor, a puddle of dark blood appearing beneath his body.

“No! Kwan!” you cried, throwing yourself at the dead body of the man that had been like a father to you.

“Stop this,” a cold voice said from your left. “Stop this before anyone else dies.”

You clenched your teeth and, with teary eyes, looked at Kyungsoo, who was standing by your side with the sword that had just killed your most loyal advisor and friend.

“You…” you spat. “How could you?”

“I told you, stop before anyone else dies. I wouldn’t want to end up hurting you.”

You were speechless, looking at a face you once had known like the palm of your hand and that, you couldn’t even recognise it then, distorted in an expression full of hate and evilness.

“You would hurt me? Would you kill me?” you asked, defying him.

“I would if that was be the best thing for Greyria,” Kyungsoo said without even doubting once.

“Then do it,” you said through clenched teeth. “Because I won’t let someone like you rule my Kingdom while I’m alive.”

A smirk drew itself on Kyungsoo’s lips, his grip tightened around the hilt of his sword.

“Who are you? The Kyungsoo I once knew would have never killed Kwan. He would have never thought about killing me…”

“The Y/N I once knew would have never fallen in love with another man, with a warlock that kills people and sell souls.”

With that, Kyungsoo raised his sword, its sharp point touching your dress, tearing the white fabric a bit. Tears formed in the corner of your eyes, your lips trembled as everything became too much for you.

Kwan’s body lying unmoving and cold in the floor, people running and screaming trying to scape from the green flames, the sounds of the guards and their arrows and swords blending with the cracks of the fire. The sounds of the castle crumbling beneath the green flames.

“Kill me,” you whispered. “Go on. Kill me.”

Kyungsoo took another step towards you and you felt the point of the sword tearing the dress and grazing the skin of your stomach.

But before he could stick the sword into your skin, a green flame sent him flying onto the floor, screaming in pain as his clothes burnt under the anger of the fire. Your wobbly legs finally gave out and you fell onto the floor on your knees, gasping for air.

Yoongi’s black cloak grazed you as he passed by your side, striding towards Kyungsoo, who was still screaming on the floor, trying to extinguish the flames from his body.

“You have betrayed the woman you once loved for a crown,” Yoongi said, his voice deep and dark, his eyes glimmering with a dangerous glint in them as he looked at the man beneath him. “You have just done the same thing I once did.”

Yoongi crouched above Kyungsoo, who tried to fight him, but one of Yoongi’s hands grabbed his neck and he slowly watched how Kyungsoo struggled underneath him.

“You’re not any better than me. You’re just the same,” Yoongi spat, tightening his grip over Kyungsoo’s neck, then man turning red and purple and gasping desperately for air. “And now you’re going to die, looking in the eye at the man that once saved your life.”

Kyungsoo raised his hands, grabbing Yoongi’s wrist, but barely making the man move. You didn’t even try to stop him, still on the floor, looking at your surroundings. The guards had disappeared, only a few death bodies lying on the floor. But you were alone with Yoongi and a dying Kyungsoo.

“Y… Y/N” Kyungsoo tried to say. “Y/N.”

You looked at him, finding his bloodshot eyes already on you, pleading, desperately trying to make you save him. But you couldn’t, not when you could still feel the last bit of warmth disappearing from Kwan’s body and when his betrayal was so present all over your skin. All he ever wanted was your throne, and all he ever got was a stupid promise of it.

After a few minutes, Kyungsoo stopped fighting Yoongi, his last breath escaping from his parted lips at the same time the sun was starting to disappear behind the horizon.

When Yoongi let go of the man, you could see him gasping for air, pale as ever.

“Yoongi are you okay?” you asked, running towards him when you saw him falling onto the floor. “Yoongi!”

You kneeled behind him, grabbing him from the shoulders and taking him off Kyungsoo’s now dead body.

“Yoongi, what’s wrong?” you asked, lying his head on your lap as you cleaned the sweat form his face.

The green lights from the fire and the orange hues of the sunset engulfed the room, the once so magnificent main hall of the castle of Greyria that had been witness of stolen glances between two star-crossed lovers, witness of the first glance in between a young wildling and a naïve princess who would later find out she had a strong, brave woman inside her; of the fall of a great witch and an insignificant farmer girl who held in her hands the heart of a bewitched prince; witness of the fatal fate of the love story in between the son of a baker and an adventurous princess. The same main hall that was being the witness of your tears and Yoongi’s last breaths.

“Y/N, I’m dying,” Yoongi finally said what he had wanted to tell you.

“No…” you whispered. “You told me…”

“That I had no soul and that a man who has no soul cannot die,” he finished the sentence for you. “But… A few weeks after your departure… A man came to me and told me that the fourth diary had been destroyed in a fire.”

“The last diary…”

Yoongi nodded, closing his eyes as if even nodding was a huge effort for him.

“It was hidden in the same monastery my men had burnt years and years ago…” Yoongi laughed bitterly. “I could have ended my life a long time ago if they had found it… But still, they didn’t, and I’m grateful for it, for I wouldn’t have meet you if that had been the case.”

“Yoongi,” you whispered his name in a low cry, tears falling from your cheeks and landing on his black mask.

“I destroyed the other three diaries…” he said. Every minute that went by, you could see life escaping from his lips with each word of his. It was turning more difficult for him to breathe, to speak, to look at you and not break appart.

“And I came here because I couldn’t die without letting you know that I’m in love with you, and that you made me feel alive even when I was dead inside,” he said, one of his hands coming up to caress your cheek. “Now I’m free. I’ve payed all my debts and I’m free to go.”

“Yes, you’re free my love…” you mumbled, bringing on of your hands to the back of his head and untying the black mask, taking it off slowly and observing his beautiful face.

“I wish things were different, that I could stay here with you and make you happy… I wish that our story had a different ending”

“It doesn’t need to have an ending, Yoongi, it can be eternal for as long as time is brief” you said, bringing your lips to his in a soft kiss.

He followed your movements, his cold lips caressing yours and making you remember everything he had once made you fell.

You kept kissing him, under the strong light of the dying sun.

You wished, too. You wished that you had met him under different circumstances, that you weren’t a queen and that he wasn’t a doomed prince. You wished that you had stayed with him forever, in the Tower of the Howls, contemplating the non-existent sunset as he hugged you from behind, his chin resting on your shoulders, his hands forever caressing yours. You wished that time wasn’t as brief, and that beautiful things didn’t have an ending.

But it was, time was brief and beautiful things always came to an end.

Yoongi had been one of those beautiful things, and maybe he hadn’t been as brief as others, but he had been as beautiful as the stars in the sky that once were created for him. You had had the honour of witnessing his unique beauty shine brightly and you had the honour of watching that same unique beauty die with him.

You parted your lips from his, crying softly as you closed his now distant eyes and caressed his cold skin.

You had seen Yoongi live, and you had seen Yoongi die, and somehow, you felt grateful for it, just like someone who contemplates the sun from dawn until dusk.

As the last green flames the Prince of the Green Fire had created ate the last pieces of the once beautiful and magnificent castle of Greyria, you caressed the face of the man you loved, tracing the scars on his face and closing your eyes, letting your fingertips remember the feeling of his skin against yours one last time, the main hall of the castle of Greyria as the only witness of the ending of your brief story of time.

Greyria was once a beautiful place to visit.

Its name was never up to the beauty of the small kingdom, green meadows surrounding the small wooden houses, white daisies painting the green fields like small dots in an empty canvas. The air was fresh and clean, impregnated with a salty scent. If you were silent enough, you could hear the whisper of the green wisps of grass and wheat, being caressed by the sea breeze. You could even hear the dance of the sea waves, colliding with the base of the cliffs that flanked both sides of the town.

Every single traveller that followed the stone path that crossed Greyria, got mesmerized by the raw beauty of the place, by the wooden houses in which the villagers lived, by the pureness of its nature, by the magic of the small town. By the stone church that stood proud in the middle of the valley, drawing all the attention in between the small cottages. Its bell tower could be seen from miles away - as if it was a lighthouse to the travellers - and during sunset the sun reflected its rays on the golden bell creating beautiful shadows all over the small kingdom. They got mesmerized by the deep forest located behind the town, that guarded it from the rest of the world, from the other kingdoms. By the stone path that crossed the small town and the deep forest leading to the vast expanse that was the outside world. By the beautiful sounds of the small town waking up, first thing in the morning, when everyone was opening the windows to let the sun into their houses, when the kids were playing in the streets, their laughs and voices blending with the beautiful song of the birds. By the smell of freshly baked bread that slipped through the door of the bakery, that was just next to the church.

Greyria was never a name that was up to the beauty of the small kingdom, but what was up to the beauty of it, was the magnificent castle made of stone that stood at the end of the stone path, on top of one of the three cliffs that surrounded the place and separated it from the sea. It wasn't the tallest of castles, but you could say it was the biggest and the most magical of all castles. Its gardens were always adorned with roses, begonias, primroses, petunias and all sort of flowers.

Travellers not only visited Greyria because of its cliffs, or because of its beautiful church, nor for the beautiful small houses or the delicious freshly baked bread. They wanted to see if it was true, if the tales that were told outside of that little bubble that was Greyria - beyond the enormous forest - were true. They visited the kingdom of Greyria because of its magic.

Greyria is now a shadow of the kingdom it once was.

Its cliffs are still magnificent, the sea colliding with them with so much force, you can hear the sound from far away. The meadows are still green, and full of white daisies. The church still stands in the middle of the village, but it does not stand proud anymore. Its bell tower paid the expensive price of the passing of time, just like the wooden houses, now destroyed and deserted, abandoned on the fateful night the green fire ate everything. You can't smell the freshly baked bread anymore, since the bakery was abandoned a long time ago too.

The only thing that was up to the beauty of the kingdom a long time ago, is now a bunch of ruins and stones scattered all over the place. The fire ate everything, leaving nothing but the skeleton of the once magnificent castle and the stories that hid behind its walls. Its gardens aren't nothing but green fields, filled with brambles and hawthorns. The once beautiful red and blue roses, lilies, daisies, primroses and begonias are gone too, leaving nothing but a landscape of greens and browns.

Greyria is now a ghost town.

There are a few stories about what happened that fateful night, long time ago. Stories about how the green fire started and how a lady dressed in a white, beautiful, wedding dress was seen in between the ruins of the castle. There are a few stories about the different occurrences that lead to the abandoned kingdom that Greyria is today, stories about a wonderful tourney and a forbidden love between a betrothed Princess and an invincible Prince, stories about a red and a blue rose. Stories about the north and its beautiful Aurora Borealis, about a boy who fell in love with them and a Princess who found herself in the rudeness of the north and the arms of a wildling. Stories about a living star in the shape of a humble girl, a girl who was loved by a Prince with silver hair. Stories about a long, dangerous journey that led a young baker and a Princess to fall in love with each other. Stories about a brief love that lasted an eternity.

Stories that were brief, beautiful, and sad.

Stories that lost themselves in the ephemeral passing of time, but that will forever live in the hearts of those who read them.

Because… The best stories are those that speak about past lovers, about untold stories and broken hearts, about beautiful promises of future and happiness that got lost in the wind; those that make you feel happiness, loss, hurt, love, hate, fear and sadness, all at once.

A/N: and those were the last words of Tales of Greyria... I want to thank every single one of you who read the stories, who read my words and felt what I wanted to transmit through them. It has been a long journey, nearly 1 year long, and at the same time, it has been brief and beautiful. I dedicate all these five stories to those who - like me - love to dream, to feel, to imagine, to read. Those who love to immerse themselves in the beautiful words of a story. Keep dreaming, keep feeling, keep imagining and keep reading. It’s brief, and it’s beautiful. Thank you, I love you.

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