In that life, he was Aurelian (Cael).
He wore the name like armor—polished, untouchable, a mask for the heart that ached beneath it. No one would have guessed that behind the crown and careful posture, a soul burned quietly, endlessly, for one person.
Lioren (Illyen).
Aurelian watched him. Always.
He learned to look without being seen. To smile without revealing the longing that twisted his chest. When Lioren spoke, Aurelian's eyes followed every gesture, every movement, memorizing the way light caught his hair, the tilt of his head, the soft inflection in his voice that made the world feel gentler than it ever had a right to be.
When Lioren looked at him directly, Aurelian smirked. A small, careless curl of lips that said I am aware, but I will not say more. It was playful, charming, even disarming—but beneath that smirk was a storm of longing that Lioren never saw.
Lioren never understood. Never once paused to wonder why Aurelian's gaze lingered, why the corners of his lips betrayed amusement in moments that were not amusing.
And so Aurelian suffered quietly.
He endured the ache of seeing Lioren smile at anyone else, laugh at a careless joke, lean toward another presence, while his own heart clenched in silence.
He tried everything.
Every word, every gesture, every act of kindness was calculated to please, to protect, to show love without saying it.
If Lioren shivered in the morning cold, Aurelian ensured a cloak would be draped over his shoulders, unseen.
If Lioren admired a flower in the garden, Aurelian arranged for the same bloom to be placed in his path later, with no explanation.
If Lioren praised a book or a poem, Aurelian procured the entire collection, silently delivering it, knowing Lioren would never guess it came from him.
He did all this while keeping his gaze casual, his smirk polite, his presence unobtrusive. Every act of love was buried beneath charm and indifference.
The cruelty of it was unbearable.
Every glance at Lioren's radiant, unguarded self made Aurelian's chest ache, but he never let it show. He endured it—because to expose even a fraction of his feelings would be to destroy them both.
Sometimes, in the quiet moments when no one watched, he allowed himself to imagine.
He imagined Lioren looking at him, truly seeing him for the first time.
He imagined Lioren understanding the years of unspoken devotion, the nights of sleepless longing, the way Aurelian's heart had learned patience in the face of impossibility.
But when he returned to the terrace or the hall, his mask slid back into place. Smirk. Charm. Polished perfection. And Lioren remained blissfully unaware.
Aurelian's heart ached harder than it had ever ached in all his years of service and vigilance. Every day without acknowledgment was a wound, every shared space a battlefield of restraint. And yet, he endured. Always.
Even when Lioren was taken, when absence hollowed the halls, when hope grew thin as air, Aurelian did not waver. He stood, immaculate, unbroken, while the world whispered that love had failed him.
But it had not.
It endured. It burned quietly beneath the surface. It waited.
Even in the years that followed, when the gods offered mercy in the form of forgetting, Aurelian refused. He would remember Lioren for both of them. He would carry the ache, the yearning, the longing that could not be spoken.
Because someone had to.
Someone had to love, even if it was invisible.
Someone had to watch, even if it was from the shadows.
Someone had to wait, even if it was forever.
And in the quietest hours of every night, when the palace slept and the crown rested heavy on his head, Aurelian allowed himself one thought:
One day…
You will look at me, Lioren (Illyen).
And you will understand.
But until that day came, he would smirk. He would charm. He would serve.
He would endure the ache of loving silently, fiercely, and without hope.
And that ache—sharp, endless, beautiful—was the only thing keeping him alive.