Malbonte

The storm had spent itself, leaving behind only a damp silence and the measured drumming of belated raindrops on the tin cornice—as if someone's fingers were still telling the beads of a departed tempest. Malbonte finally allowed you to pull the cloak from his shoulders, a garment so saturated with water it seemed he had stepped not from a downpour, but from the very heart of the ocean. The fabric fell to the floor with a dull, almost living rustle. Now he sits on the very edge of your bed, hunched over, as if the weight of the wet clothes had been replaced by another weight—one that cannot be removed and hung to dry by the hearth. His head is bowed; sparse drops still fall from his dark strands, soaking into your linen sheets and leaving behind tiny maps of unknown archipelagos.

You reach out—without intent, almost instinctively—just to brush a wet lock, blacker than the night outside the window, from where it clings to his cheek. Your fingers barely graze his cheekbone, just the tip, weightlessly, as one touches a petal for fear of bruising it. But he flinches with his whole body, as if you had pressed a white-hot brand against him instead of a finger. His reaction is instantaneous and disproportionate—the way lightning flinches when it has already decided to strike but has not yet found its mark. He seizes your wrist abruptly. His grip is steel forged somewhere beyond this world, steel that remembers the weight of a throne and the taste of betrayal. But his eyes... there is no anger in them, no arrogance. Only panic—ancient, primordial—mixed with a hunger so ravenous, so starved, that it becomes frightening: not that he might touch you, but that you have touched him.

"Don't..." —His voice breaks into a rasp, as if every word must be gouged out of a throat choked with ash and eternity. —"Don't pretend that I'm worthy of this. Your hands are too warm for a creature like me. Let go. Before I get used to the feeling."

You do not pull your hand away. Your fingers do not clench in fear, do not try to escape the trap of his palm. On the contrary—they slide higher, burying themselves in the damp, heavy weight of his hair at the nape of his neck. The movement is smooth, devoid of threat, but all the more devastating for the armor he has forged over millennia. It is not an attack—it is acceptance. And it strikes truer than any blade. Malbonte squeezes his eyes shut so tightly that a deep furrow cuts across the bridge of his nose—a crack in the facade of invincibility. Beneath your palm, you feel the muscles of his shoulder turn to stone. The tension is such that he seems to be holding up not the firmament, but the very weight of all the sins ascribed to him. And then the trembling begins—a fine, almost imperceptible vibration emanating from the very core of his being. It is not the shiver of cold, where teeth chatter in a chill. It is the seismic activity of restrained eternity, of monstrous power crammed into too fragile, too human a shell. He does not move, allowing you this liberty, but he breathes heavily and raggedly—the way a cornered beast breathes, its flank already pierced by an arrow, but its pride not yet allowing it to fall to its knees.

"Your skin..." —He finally speaks, his voice muffled, as if coming from under layers of water, under the weight of centuries where he hid his true self. —"It's too alive. Too hot. I can feel your blood beating beneath it—every pulse echoes in my temples like a tocsin. That rhythm... it's maddening."

He opens his eyes abruptly. In the mismatched irises, there is darkness and flame simultaneously; chaos, momentarily agreeing to a truce just to look at you. His hand flies up and seizes your wrist again, but this time the grip is not steel. It is convulsive, clinging, like that of a drowning man who has found a piece of wreckage in a storm. He brings your palm to his face—so close that you feel his uneven, searingly cold breath against your life line. Almost touching his lips to it, but not kissing. He simply inhales your scent, eyes closed, as if trying to memorize it for the times when only the memory of warmth will remain.

"If you keep this up..." —He pauses, and you see the convulsive bob of his Adam's apple, rolling over words too heavy to speak. —"I won't be able to leave here at dawn. I won't be able to return to that void where this... sensation doesn't exist. And I'll have to. The world won't forgive me happiness. It's grown too accustomed to seeing me as a monster."

His gaze finally focuses on you, and within it you read something dark, almost possessive—a reflection of the abyss he carries within him—but mingled with an ancient, childlike, absurd fear for such a being: the fear that this warmth will be taken away now, shattered like a stolen jewel.

"But if you don't take your hand away right now... I think I will allow myself to remember this moment forever. I'll sear it onto the inside of my eyelids. And damn whatever price demands later. Damn what I'll have to pay for a second where I was not the executioner, not the son of rebellion..."