I woke before the city did. Blue light lay across the floor like water. The windows wore dawn thin and pale. The blue roses on the balcony faced east, a little smug about it. The penthouse smelled faintly of chocolate, clean glass, and him. Arthur slept beside me, one arm flung toward my side of the bed as if his body didn’t trust me to stay. Hair a disaster. Breathing slow. The kind of peaceful face that makes you forgive a man for regularly inviting apocalypse to dinner as a guest of honor. Last night hit me all at once and I had to bury my face in the pillow because my cheeks were absolutely, definitively on fire. We hadn’t just kissed. We’d talked until words weren’t enough, laughed until the room remembered what it was for, and then crossed the last inch the world had been saving for us. Gentle, careful, real. No fireworks—unless you count the ones behind my eyes. No broken wards, no dramatic power surges. Just two people who had walked a very long road and finally decided to stop pretending there was another destination. Yes, qilin can blush. Apparently a lot. I watched him in the hush and tried to name the shape of him in my life. Bond? Yes. I’ve worn that word twice with meaning. The first time was Julius Slatemark—my first partner, my first contractor, the human who taught me to walk beside someone without leading or following. I cared for him with everything I had to give then. Not romance. Companionship that held up a piece of the sky. He was brilliant and difficult and so very tired. I learned patience from Julius, and how to be sharp without cutting the wrong things. Tiamat came later—closer in recent years, our bond deepening after Arthur gave me back pieces of myself I didn’t know had gone missing. With Tiamat, I learned the virtue of pressure, the grace of edges, the way kindness can look like a hard lesson and still be kindness. And then there is Arthur. He is the second person I learned to care for with my whole self. He is the only person I learned to love. I touched his jaw with one knuckle, a feather of contact. He didn’t wake. He did the small nose-scrunch I will never, ever tell anyone about. High Radiant now—demigod level—and still capable of being endearingly human at seven in the morning. I love this universe sometimes. He feels different since the breakthrough. The pressure around him is deeper, steadier. Rooms relax when he enters and clocks keep better time. Lucent Harmony sits under his skin like a lake under summer wind. Grey answers him without drama. Soul Resonance hums like a tuning fork that found its perfect note. He doesn’t shine louder—he settles farther. I’ve grown too. Purelight flows cleaner. The seams of reality are easier to smooth. Tiamat hammered steel into places where I only had glow. But Arthur is further now, and it doesn’t sting. It just makes sense. He is the one who keeps raising his hand when the sky looks for a volunteer. The sky noticed. I slipped from bed. He made a small unhappy sound and rolled into the heat I left like a cat. I tucked the blanket around his shoulders, stood there for three seconds looking ridiculous and full, then escaped before I embarrassed myself further. The living room still held last night’s shape. The banner had slouched into the dignified slump of a party well done. The glass dome on the table glowed faintly around Rose’s blossom; the word we braided into the glass—"Master"—breathed slow and soft. One of Stella’s notebooks lay face-down on the rug with a pencil through the spiral like a flag. The shoebox-universe ring sat obediently in a sunstripe, pretending innocence. I set water to boil. I am not an expert in mortal coffee, but I am very good at kettles and the illusion of patience. While it hummed, I touched my own throat and felt the echo of last night’s warmth. I thought of the first time he took my hand as if it were the most natural thing in the world, then of the way he touched me later like he’d been learning a language for years and finally dared to speak. Yes, blushing again. Dragons would mock me. I accept it. I turned. Stella padded in from the hallway, a constellation hoodie swallowing her shoulders, hair attempting a coup against gravity, eyes soft with sleep and bright with everything else. The word landed and my heart did that bell thing again. I’ve been called many names by empires and kings and a few gods who should have known better. ’Mom’ is the only one that almost takes my knees. "Good morning, star," I said, opening my arms. She walked straight into the hug like it was the front door of the day. Children radiate heat the way small suns do. I inhaled the shampoo she pretends she didn’t borrow from me and decided the world could be forgiven for a lot. "You’re up early," I said into her hair. "I wanted to see my pendant in morning light," she said, pulling back to show me. The Quiet Heart caught dawn and gave it back gentler. "Also I had a dream that my stylus was writing on air and the letters were math cats." "Math cats," I repeated, properly horrified. "Did they purr in prime numbers?" The kettle clicked. I poured, and the kitchen rewarded us with a smell that should require a license. I passed Stella hot chocolate and took a cautious sip of coffee. It behaved itself. "Thank you for the gifts," she said, feet swinging against the cabinet. "The stone is already listening. I asked it if I should have cereal or pancakes and it said, ’Not cereal.’" "That stone has taste," I said. She tilted her head at me. "Are you staying today?" "I am," I said. "If you’ll have me." "Obviously," she said, and the room got lighter. We stood in comfortable quiet and watched the floor change color as dawn moved in. The pendant pulsed—four in, six out—and without meaning to I matched it. She noticed, because of course she did. "You needed one too," she said softly. "I did," I admitted. "Last night was... a lot." Her eyes turned very wise and very mischievous at the same time. "Did you and Daddy...?" She left the sentence hanging like a cliff with a sign that says ’confess here.’ "We slept," I said, absolutely composed, which is a lie everyone in the room could hear, including the plants. Stella squealed so quietly it registered only to bats. "Finally!" "Oh no," I said. "Has there been a betting pool?" She tried not to smile and failed. "Maybe." I will find the bookie and them to a worthy cause. "Please refrain from telling your five moms for at least ten minutes," I said. "No promises," she sang, then softened. "You look happy." "I am," I said. "He makes it easy." We migrated to the couch with our mugs. She set her stylus on Tiamat’s slate and wrote her name once, small and clean, like a secret she was telling herself first. The line came out steady. Kind, not lying—the tool was doing its job, and so was she. "Tell me something about Daddy from before I knew him," she said, curling into my side like a cat. "He was smaller," I said. "He’s still tall," she said, offended on his behalf. "Inside," I said. "He was carrying too much and pretending it was fine. He tried to fix everything alone because asking felt wrong. He learned to ask. He’s better at it now." She nodded like she’d been waiting for that sentence to exist out loud. "He asks me for help too," she offered proudly. "Like with the sim tablet. And I remind him to eat. And I tell him to stop being dramatic about paperwork." "You are indispensable," I said. She sipped and swung her feet. "Do you think he’ll be okay when Alyssara comes back?" We don’t pretend in this house. "He’ll be ready," I said. "And he won’t be alone. That’s the part she never understands." Stella considered that. "I don’t like her," she said. "But I feel... sad for her sometimes." ᴛʜɪs ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ ɪs ᴜᴘᴅᴀᴛᴇ ʙʏ 𝓷𝓸𝓿𝓮𝓵✶𝕗𝕚𝕣𝕖✶𝓷𝓮𝓽 "That’s because your heart works," I said. "Keep it that way." Footsteps behind us. The soft weight of someone who can move like a ghost when he wants to. We turned. Arthur stopped at the edge of the couch, sleep-ruffled and devastating, the way that should be illegal before breakfast. He took us in—mugs, pendant, slate, me, Stella—and the last of the night left his face. "Morning," he said, voice low with sleep. He leaned down and wrapped his arms around me from behind with that claiming gentleness he thinks he hides. My shoulder fit under his jaw like it had been designed by someone with taste. He smelled like warm skin and the good kind of tired. He reached out and ruffled Stella’s hair into new geography. She squeaked and leaned into his hand anyway. "Morning, Daddy," she said. "Mom Luna says my stone has taste." "It does," he said gravely. "Stones generally do. People are iffier." He kissed the top of my head without making a fuss about it, which made it worse in the best way. My face, traitor, did the blush thing again. He felt it and smiled into my hair in a way that should require a permit. He slid onto the couch, one arm still around me, his other hand finding Stella’s and giving it a quick squeeze. The city finished waking; hovercars hummed, light climbed the roses, the glass dome caught it and made it gentle. I looked at them and felt something old and tired inside me sit down and rest. People use the word ’salvation’ like it’s a crown. It isn’t. It’s a room where you are exactly what you are and someone is glad about it. Julius gave me a road. Tiamat gave me steel. Arthur gave me a door with my name on it. "Obviously," Stella and I said together. He laughed, stood, and went to negotiate with a pan. I stayed where I was, leaning into the place he had left warm, listening to the small household noises I have learned to love: batter meeting griddle, a child humming, a man who tilts the universe back toward right one breakfast at a time. "Best morning," Stella said, pendant warm against my arm. Arthur returned with the first plate and set it down, then bent to hug me from behind again, because apparently that is a habit now, and patted Stella’s head for good measure. The world outside our windows could wait. For these few minutes, this was the whole map: his arms, her grin, my ridiculous heart, and a stack of pancakes trying their best.