BLEEDING VELVET

"Loving him was war. Being loved back was a massacre."

Almond never believed in peace.

Not after what it cost her to survive.

She sat at the edge of her makeshift bed, knees pulled up to her chest, hands twitching from magic withdrawal. Her body was healing from the last summoning—but her heart? That thing was still shredded.

There were three things she knew for sure:

Aren had changed.

She still loved him.

One of them would not survive this.

He came again that night.

No blood. No thunder. Just the soft thud of boots against wood and the slow creak of her door opening like it missed him too.

"I shouldn't be here," he said, voice rough like gravel soaked in guilt.

Almond didn't move.She didn't blink.

"But you are," she replied.

His eyes glowed dimly—like there were stars hiding in him, afraid to shine. He looked... like the boy she used to whisper secrets to at 3 a.m. under stolen blankets.

But she wasn't twelve anymore.And he wasn't that boy.

"You still trust me?" he asked.

"No."She stood up. Walked up to him. Chest to chest. "But I still want you."

His breath caught.

And in that moment, she saw the old Aren flash through him like lightning in a dark room—quick, deadly, unforgettable.

"I hurt you," he whispered.

She nodded.

"And you'll do it again."

He didn't argue. Just closed the space between them like forgiveness was a language only their bodies could speak.

They didn't kiss like lovers.

They kissed like witnesses.To their own undoing.

His mouth tasted like regret and her name.Her nails dug into his back like memory.Their clothes hit the floor like confessions no priest could cleanse.

It wasn't about pleasure.It was about claiming. About surviving the love that never got the chance to live.

"Say my name," she moaned into his throat.

And he did. Again. Again. Until it was carved between his teeth.

"Almond. Almond. Almond—"

Like a prayer. Like a promise.Like the beginning of the end.

After, they laid on the floor, naked and covered in sweat and secrets.

She stared at the ceiling.He stared at her.

"You were always mine," he said.

"And you were never really mine," she replied, eyes stinging with heat. "You left long before your body did."

He turned on his side, brushed hair from her face. "I was scared."

"Of me?"

"Of how much I wanted to stay."

Almond swallowed the lump rising in her throat.

"You don't get to choose when to love me," she said. "This isn't a story where the hero returns and all is forgiven."

"I'm not the hero."

"Good," she whispered. "Because I'm not the girl you left behind either."

Later that night, he watched her sleep.

And in the quiet hum of candlelight, he whispered a truth she wouldn't hear until it was too late:

"If I stay, I'll kill everything soft in you."

But he didn't leave.

Because Aren was the kind of storm that believed wreckage was affection.

And Almond? She was already drowning.