The fire had burned low, ash crumbling into its own reflection, orange-glowing embers nestled like sleeping stars beneath the grate. A single oil lamp hummed softly atop the desk where Maerlowe sat, casting long shadows across scrolls, maps, and a half-drunk cup of tea turned tepid.
Alaric stood nearby, arms folded, leaning slightly against a carved lintel post etched with runes even he didn't fully recognise. Across the room, Grey had fallen asleep in an armchair—limbs coiled beneath her like a cat, hair shadowing her eyes, a faint thread of breath visible in the cold.
She didn't snore. Of course she didn't. Even unconscious, Grey Wyrde made silence feel like a deliberate choice.
Maerlowe closed his book with a sigh.
"Will she be safe?" he asked.
Alaric looked over. "With me, aye."
"That wasn't the question."
A pause.
Then: "No," Alaric admitted.
Maerlowe nodded as if he'd expected it. They sat for a while in the hush. The sanctuary, usually still, felt heavier tonight—like something vast and half-buried had exhaled beneath the foundations.
Finally, Alaric broke the silence. "You're not entirely mortal," he said, softly.
Maerlowe didn't look up. "No," he agreed.
"Not Fae-touched either. Not... in the way she is."
"I wasn't gifted," Maerlowe said. "Just… caught."
Alaric raised an eyebrow.
"In the Vale of Ardara," Maerlowe sighed, memory settling over him like a heavy cloak. "Many years ago. A gate opened during Samhain. I didn't pass through it. I just watched too long."
The fire snapped faintly.
"And some things," he added, "watch back."
Alaric nodded, slowly. "It stays with you."
Maerlowe didn't answer right away. When he did, it was quiet. "Colour is never quite as vivid, is it? Afterward."
Alaric's amber eyes flicked toward the dying fire. "No," he said. "It isn't."
A log settled with a soft collapse of flame.
"Is it true?" Maerlowe asked. "What they say about the Unseelie wells?"
Alaric didn't speak.
Maerlowe looked up. His gaze wasn't accusing—just tired.
Alaric finally said, "The soulwells have always been scarce. But now… they run dry. There is less to draw from. What remains is thin. Incomplete. Like memory faded in acid."
"How long?"
"A century. Maybe less. Unless something changes."
"Does your Queen know?"
"She pretends she doesn't."
They lapsed into silence again.
Grey shifted slightly in her sleep. A strand of dark hair fell across her cheek. Alaric watched her, gaze unreadable.
"She's…" he started, then stopped.
"She's beautiful," Maerlowe offered.
"Aye," Alaric agreed. "But it's not that."
Maerlowe tilted his head.
Alaric's expression didn't change. His voice was cool, clinical. "It's the stillness," he said. "She doesn't reach. Doesn't grasp for sensation, or validation, or even escape. She just… exists. Like a moment caught between heartbeats."
Maerlowe leaned back. "And that draws you?"
Alaric looked away. "I don't know what it does."
They sat with the ticking of the old grandfather clock in the corner.
When Maerlowe next spoke, his voice was gentler. "It wears on you, doesn't it? The years."
Alaric didn't answer right away.
He blew out a long breath, eyes focused on something in the distant past. "I forget sounds. Faces. Places. Sometimes names. I remember the feeling of watching Pompeii fall, but not the colour of the sky. I can quote every death wish whispered to me by a dying priest, but I've forgotten the name of the woman I held afterward."
Maerlowe's fingers tapped lightly against his teacup.
"It all becomes patterns," Alaric said. "Loops. Repeats. You think you're chasing meaning, but really you're just counting how many times you've seen the same play with different costumes."
"I know the feeling," Maerlowe said softly. "Even mortals taste it. The weariness of being awake too long."
Alaric looked at him. There was a moment of understanding—not camaraderie, not quite—but something older. Two scholars of entropy. Two relics watching the tide draw back.
"Immortality," Maerlowe murmured, "is the ultimate thief of joy."
Alaric's smile was faint. "And memory the accomplice."
Outside, the sky began to pale. Not pink, not gold—just that soft dull light that meant morning had come without asking permission. Grey stirred, but didn't wake.
Alaric stood. Straightened his coat. Rolled his shoulders like a man who remembered carrying things far heavier than weariness.
"We'll need to move quickly," he said.
"Yes," Maerlowe replied. "Before the Seelie move first."
Alaric nodded, glancing once more toward Grey, still curled in sleep. The lines of tension didn't leave his face, but they eased, just slightly.
"Watch her for me," he whispered quietly.
Maerlowe watched him for a moment, face inscrutable. Then gave a quiet hum. "Always."
With that, Alaric turned toward the door, boots soft on stone. The sanctuary didn't try to hold him—just breathed around him like a house that knew departures were part of the ritual. As he passed into the mist-wrapped dawn, the runes in the lintel flared briefly—an acknowledgment, not a warning.
Behind him, Grey slept on, untouched by the weight of the waking world.
For now.
After that, he just kept showing up every time she was on an assignment.
"Of course he's here." She thought "Why wouldn't he be? Nothing completes a haunting like the emotional equivalent of a thunderstorm watching you work."
They'd just finished dealing with a minor gate anomaly near the old rail line—spectral residue, mostly. Harmless, if you didn't mind sudden nosebleeds and time loops. Grey had sorted it. Alaric, to her mind, had mostly loomed and offered unsolicited commentary.
Now they walked side by side, boots crunching frostbitten heather. The fog was lifting. Unfortunately, so was Alaric's restraint.
"You know, for an organization dedicated to helping souls move on, Harrowers don't seem terribly fond of the living. Bit of a death cult aesthetic, really."
Grey shot him a sidelong look. "Says the man dressed like a haunted cathedral."
Alaric was unfazed: "Touché. But you must admit—grim hallways, the whole tragic-orphan recruitment vibe, very 'apocalyptic boarding school.'"
Grey tried her best to ignore the sting of the 'tragic-orphan' barb: Exactly how much did he know? "Yes, well, some of us don't get silk-lined blood pacts and glamour lessons. We make do with libraries and existential dread."
Alaric let out a soft chuckle. He had the audacity to look entertained. "I'm just saying—maybe people wouldn't flinch when you showed up if you didn't look like you were here to audit their funerals."
Grey stopped walking. Turned to face him, lantern swinging slightly. "Right. And maybe I wouldn't expect you to lie through your teeth if every Fae I'd met didn't treat honesty like it was a communicable disease."
That wiped the smile off his face—briefly. Then it returned, smaller, sharper.
"Ah. So I'm just a category now. 'Fae, therefore untrustworthy.' How refreshingly narrow-minded of you."
Grey replied in a clipped tone: "I've buried people who trusted worse than you, Fen. And not metaphorically."
"And I've watched mortals bargain away their children for the illusion of control. Neither of us is dealing in saints, pet."
The air stilled between them. The gate's residual hum faded into the moor. A sheep bleated somewhere, oblivious to the ideological deadlock. Grey sighed and looked away first, eyes scanning the distant ridgeline.
"Maybe we're both just tired of cleaning up messes made by people who thought they were the only ones who mattered." She sounded tired.
Alaric's voice softened, like velvet folded around steel. "Now that sounds like something a Harrower and a Fae might actually agree on."