He was pale, which in Aeterna was hardly remarkable. Many outsiders arrived that way. He had been brought into the world wearing the body of a Fetch.

  Fetches no longer walk Aeterna’s roads now, but that absence is deliberate, almost merciful. Fetches were humanoid wanderers born with a singular, dangerous gift. They could open portals into the demi-plane of dreams. Not visions. Not illusions. The place itself. A mutable, predatory realm shaped by thought, fear, desire, and unfinished ideas. Because of that, Fetches were endlessly requested. Hired. Pressured. Owned, in all but name. The ruling houses and major guilds always wanted the same thing. Fetch this relic. Retrieve that idea made solid. Bring back what cannot be made here.

  They were named for the task that hollowed them out.

  Matthew wore that legacy without knowing it. Or perhaps he knew, and simply refused to bow under its weight.

  He was tall, broad-shouldered without being heavy, his movements loose in the way of someone accustomed to danger but not ruled by it. Brown hair, perpetually unruly, as if combs had long ago conceded defeat. His eyes were silver. Not the reflective silver of enchanted bloodlines or divine blessings, but a softer hue, like moonlight filtered through cloud. They watched everything. Me. The field. The aftermath. The caravan. Always calculating, always present.

  He looked nothing like the human I did not yet know he was.

  His voice was a rich baritone, confident without effort, the sort of voice that assumed it would be heard and usually was. It carried authority without invoking rank. Comfort without apology. It sounded rehearsed, but not in the false way of someone pretending. It was the polish of a man who had already explained himself to hostile rooms and survived the experience.

  He approached across the ruined meadow with boots already stained red. He did not avert his eyes from the flowers, from the goblins entangled and half-consumed by thorns, from the lingering scent of iron and ozone. He took it all in, then stopped several paces away from me, hands spread in a gesture that was not peace, but emphasis.

  “Okay,” he said, voice sharp enough to cut through the lingering magic. “What the hell was that?”

  I turned toward him, still breathing hard, the chants echoing faintly in my ears.

  “First,” he continued, pointing back toward the wagons, “we get a rate that’s so absurdly high I assumed we were hiring a professional who valued their own survival. Then, on the first sign of a target, you sprint off like you’re auditioning for martyrdom.”

  His gaze flicked to the distant caravan, still encased in faintly glowing blue glass.

  “The only reason we’re standing here right now is because you remembered to put up that barrier,” he said. “And even then, that was a gamble. If that dome had cracked, we would’ve been dead. Not to the goblins, mind you.”

  He gestured broadly at the meadow, at the blood-soaked flowers that still twitched and grew.

  “That garden spell,” he finished. “That would’ve done it.”

  There was no fear in his voice. No trembling anger. Just sharp, unfiltered assessment, delivered with the confidence of someone used to being right and not particularly worried about offending the dead.

  I should have been offended.

  Instead, I felt something unexpected unfurl in my chest. Interest. Amusement. A dangerous flicker of admiration.

  He was brash. He did not soften his words for politeness or hierarchy. He spoke as if my title, my magic, my authority mattered less than the outcome. He was arrogant enough to assume he could critique a Saint in the aftermath of a massacre and survive the experience.

  He was rude. He did not thank me. He did not praise the precision of the lightning or the containment of the barrier. He did not flinch at the aftermath of the talismans, did not pretend the violence was regrettable.

  He simply evaluated it.

  And gods help me, he was amazing.

  Because beneath the sharp tongue and forward posture was something rare. Responsibility. He had not been watching the fight to be impressed. He had been watching the caravan. The people inside it. The margin for failure. He was not angry that I had killed efficiently. He was angry that I had taken a risk he did not consent to.

  Fetch or not, he was a protector by instinct.

  When our eyes met, there was no reverence in his expression. Only curiosity, edged with challenge, as if asking whether I would justify myself or prove him right.

  In that moment, standing amid a field of blood-fed lilies and dying magic, I realized something with startling clarity.

  This man was not meant to belong to Aeterna. I only found out after our third date, he didn’t.

  I did not answer him immediately.

  That, more than anything else, seemed to irritate him.

  The silence stretched, filled by the soft crackle of dying magic and the wet, vegetal sounds of the meadow finishing its feast. The lilies drank deeply. Thorns withdrew where there was nothing left to punish. The barrier around the caravan dimmed to a faint blue sheen, holding, obedient and patient.

  Matthew watched all of it with a professional’s eye. When he finally looked back at me, one brow was already arched, his expression settling into something dangerously close to a smirk.

  “Well?” he prompted. “Are you going to incinerate me for speaking out of turn, or do we skip to the part where you explain why my employers are paying triple standard rate to someone who treats threat assessment like a suggestion?”

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  I exhaled slowly.

  “You’re alive,” I said. “So is the caravan. So are the people inside it.”

  “Yes,” he agreed. “Because I planned for contingencies you created.”

  That did it. I laughed.

  It startled him. Truly startled him. His posture shifted, tension easing just a fraction, as if laughter had broken some invisible expectation he carried of Saints and spellcasters alike.

  “You ran toward the goblins,” he said, less sharp now, more curious. “Not the caravan. Not the obvious defensive position. You charged.”

  “I removed the problem at the source,” I replied calmly. “Had I played defensive, more would have slipped through. Goblins thrive on attrition.”

  “And if you had misjudged?” he asked.

  “I didn’t.”

  “That’s not an answer,” he said.

  I met his gaze squarely. “It’s the only one that matters in practice.”

  He studied me for a long moment. Then, unexpectedly, he nodded.

  “Fair,” he said. “Reckless. But fair.”

  He turned and began walking back toward the wagons as if the conversation were concluded. I followed, partly out of duty, partly because I found myself unwilling to let him leave the space of my attention just yet.

  The caravan master was already shouting when we arrived, her voice high and furious, relief and terror tangled together. She fell silent when she saw me, then glanced at Matthew, clearly unsure which of us to address.

  Matthew didn’t wait.

  “Inventory check,” he said briskly. “Now. Before adrenaline fades and people forget what was where.”

  She blinked. “But the goblins—”

  “Are dead,” he cut in. “Very dead. And if anything’s missing, it won’t be because of them. Move.”

  She moved.

  That was the first time I saw it clearly. The way people listened to him. Not because he demanded it. Because he spoke as though obedience were simply the most sensible option.

  When the last crate was accounted for and the injured tended, Matthew finally allowed himself to breathe. He leaned against one of the wagons, arms crossed, and glanced at me sideways.

  “You’re a Saint,” he said. Not a question.

  “Yes.”

  “Talisman caster,” he added. “Heavy emphasis on storm and growth. You favor area denial over precision.”

  “You noticed.”

  “I notice things,” he replied dryly. “Occupational hazard.”

  “Fetch,” I said in return.

  That gave him pause.

  He did not deny it. Instead, his expression shuttered, some internal door closing with quiet finality.

  “Word travels fast,” he said.

  “It does,” I agreed. “Especially about things people want to use.”

  A muscle jumped in his jaw.

  “I don’t open doors on command,” he said flatly. “If that’s what you’re thinking, you’re wasting your breath.”

  “I wasn’t,” I said. “I was thinking you looked tired.”

  That, more than accusation, cut through him.

  He laughed under his breath, the sound rough and unpolished. “You Saints,” he muttered. “Always pretending you see more than you should.”

  “Always pretending you don’t,” I countered.

  We stood there for a while, watching the caravan settle into uneasy rest. Eventually, he spoke again.

  “They pay well for Fetch work,” he said quietly. “Too well. Enough to make it hard to say no. Especially when you don’t remember a life where saying no was an option.”

  I said nothing. He continued anyway.

  “I don’t dream anymore,” he said. “Not really. Not like I used to. When you walk through the dream-plane often enough, sleep stops being restful. It becomes… crowded.”

  I felt something twist in my chest then. Recognition. Pity. Anger, sharp and sudden, at a world that could grind someone down so thoroughly and still ask for more.

  “You don’t have to keep doing it,” I said.

  “Yes, I do,” he replied. “Because someone else will. Someone worse.”

  He looked at me then, really looked at me, and something passed between us. Not desire. Not yet. Understanding. The dangerous kind that takes root quietly.

  We traveled together after that. At first, out of convenience. Then out of habit. Then because neither of us bothered to pretend otherwise.

  He took contracts that kept us moving. I provided protection that made those contracts survivable. He taught me how to read people before they spoke, how to recognize when a negotiation was already lost, how to lie convincingly to liars. I taught him the difference between divine invocation and aetheric resonance, how to spot the signs of myth coalescing into something hungry, how to survive encounters that did not care whether you were brave.

  He argued with me constantly.

  “You don’t need to obliterate everything,” he would say.

  “Yes, I do,” I would reply. “Some things only understand finality.”

  “Efficiency isn’t the same as excess.”

  “And restraint isn’t the same as wisdom.”

  We learned, slowly, painfully, where each other was right.

  I saw him open a dream-gate once. Only once. It was small, barely wider than a doorframe, and it left him shaking afterward, pale and sweating, eyes unfocused for hours. He refused to talk about what he fetched. I did not press.

  Trust grew anyway.

  It was not sudden. It was not dramatic. It was built in shared meals, shared watches, shared exhaustion. In the way he handed me water before I asked. In the way I adjusted my spells to account for his positioning without conscious thought.

  The night he finally kissed me, it was after a contract gone wrong and a long, bitter argument about risk. He grabbed my wrist, not hard, just enough to stop me from pacing.

  “You’re going to get yourself killed one day,” he said.

  “Not today,” I replied.

  “That’s what you always say.”

  “And you’re always still here,” I pointed out.

  He stared at me for a heartbeat too long, then leaned in, as if daring the world to object.

  It didn’t.

  Later, much later, after the bond had taken root and love had stopped pretending to be anything else, I told him about the Dia-Dron. About Willow. About the burden. About what would be passed down.

  He listened. Truly listened.

  “You don’t have to give it to me,” he said when I finished.

  “I want to,” I replied.

  “And the consequences?”

  “I’ve never been afraid of them,” I said honestly. “Only of living without choosing.”

  He smiled then. Soft. Unguarded.

  “That,” he said, “might be the most dangerous thing about you.”

  He was right. And when you were born, Morgan, when the gem responded the way it did, when the world bent just a little too eagerly around you, we knew.

  We had always known.

  But knowing, and being ready, are not the same thing.

  That is why I built armories. Why I broke laws. Why I watched mana flows across an entire country.

  Because loving you meant preparing for a future that would never be gentle.

  And I would do it all again.