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“Of course not, your highness. You are the most magnificent creature I’ve ever laid eyes on.” Cylvan smirked. “Tell me more about how ugly everyone else is.”
“I would never let anyone gut you,” Cylvan promised, but Saffron waited for the punchline. “Not with wine this expensive in your stomach.”
“Oh—I would never,” Saffron promised. “I have better instincts than that… especially after recently making a deal with an actual unseelie lord, who is intent on teaching me my place.” The unseelie lord smirked. “You mean between his legs?” Saffron
Something cupped the back of his head, holding him. He tried to find his eyes again, but there were only stars. Only stars, and warm breath, and gardenia and pine, and needles, and water, and wind. So much wind. “I think I know how she felt…” he whispered at last. “I dreamed about you for a long time, too…”
“Like… a potato,” Saffron responded without thinking, blaming it on his fever. The heat of the bath. How Cylvan’s legs looked in his pants. “… Oh, you mean in a pot?” Cylvan caught on to the nonsense, taking a place on the cluttered chaise and balancing his dish on the edge of the tub. “But why would you be a potato, when you’re already a spice?” Saffron raised his eyebrows in question, and Cylvan raised his right back. “Erm… because saffron.”
“What…” Cylvan started, making Saffron flinch when his fingers gently brushed along his sore cheek. Saffron just kept his eyes down, biting his lip as Cylvan’s voice turned venomous. “Who did this to you?”
“Tell me who did this,” he repeated tightly, “so that I may tear them apart with my own hands.”
“Who are you?” Cylvan asked without emotion. “Well… it’s… like a pixie caring for a raven, isn’t it?” Saffron smiled softly. “Someone insignificant like me, thinking I can do anything at all for someone as big and grand and free as you are. But, I guess… perhaps, while the pixie cannot help with raven-sized problems… it can at least share the little treasures it steals, because it knows the raven likes shiny things, too…” “... A raven?” Cylvan finally chuckled the more he thought about it.
“I care for you as well, Saffron—enough that I finally understand why people worship a Day Court,” Cylvan confessed between their mouths. “I want to fill your life with light, and joy, and peace, and safety…”
“You are more than just a pixie,” he went on. “If I am indeed a raven—then you are the treasure I wish to spend all my days appreciating.” Saffron wrapped his arms back around him, pulling Cylvan in more. There were a thousand things he wished to respond, but one stuck out the loudest: I wish to always be a safe place for you to close your eyes and rest.
“Saffron,” Cylvan said, pressing his fingers to the ring for a moment. “In all ways of safety, protection, and companionship, for as long as you wish it… I swear to patronize you until we both shall die.”
“Stay with me, Saffron,” he beseeched once more. “As my treasure. As my one, simple peace, so that I may always know there is at least one person who cares for me.”
“I will never, ever forgive you.” “A prince who remembers all debts he owes—I hope the weight of your debt to me crushes you into dust.” “You idiot… you goddamn idiot…” And the one thing he couldn’t bring himself to say outloud: I… hope you’re doing alright by yourself. Even though I hate you.
An agonized scream tore through the floorboards, vicious gusts of wind ripping through the suite below and whistling through the cracks beneath where Saffron lay. He clamped hands over his mouth, stifling his own miserable sobs as Cylvan wept and begged until there was nothing left but shuddering grief to fill the walls of Danann House. Two weeks. Just two weeks.
